![\"Painting](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/4285e21f-4b41-461e-b177-52d71078838e.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBigger is not always better. It becomes overblown. And this, at least in large part, may be the problem troubling that behemoth of the British art world: Tate.<\/p>\n
This week the Tate director, Maria Balshaw, the first woman to front this most influential of British cultural institutions, unexpectedly announced that in spring she would be stepping down from her directorship. The Tate group \u2014 Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives \u2014 likes to refer to itself as \u201ca family of galleries\u201d but like most families, and most especially extended families, it must face some rough patches. It appears to be slap-bang in the middle of one right now.<\/p>\n
Tate has some fundamental problems. They begin at grassroots with the permanent collections. For all that Tate Britain may have several crowd-pulling contributors \u2014 Hogarth, Reynolds and Gainsborough, the pre-Raphaelites, Constable and Turner \u2014 our nation is hardly a frontrunner in terms of the visual arts, not compared with many of our European counterparts. And, where a walk through MoMA in New York is akin to a stroll through a real-life art history book, Tate Modern offers a fairly incomplete picture. We were too far behind the curve when it came to collecting. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Caligula\u2019s Palace and Bridge by JMW Turner at Tate Britain\u2019s Turner and Constable exhibition<\/p>\n
TATE<\/p>\n
Curators try to make up for this by exploring more widely \u2014 at present at Tate Modern, modernism as it developed in Nigeria<\/a> \u2014 but however pleasing, it\u2019s not Picasso. It\u2019s not a patch on the Courtauld\u2019s impressionism. Little wonder that hackles bristled when the National Gallery announced it was tearing up its informal agreement to stick to collecting only pre-20th-century art. It now sets itself up as a significant rival.<\/p>\n Nigerian Modernism at Tate Modern this year<\/p>\n In the 1990s, just before Tate Modern was built, Britain was enjoying its moment in the limelight. Britart was booming. Commercial galleries leapt on to the bandwagon. Suddenly it seemed as if the art world got too big. Trends started to change faster than high street fashions. For the public that became a problem. How could people keep up? It all changed so often. The Turner prize is an example. Where once it drew excitably argumentative audiences, it is now all but dismissed. Shipping it off to different outposts didn\u2019t help: it merely exported inscrutable metropolitan tastes to the regions.<\/p>\n Tate responded to the initial new enthusiasm for art by expanding. Balshaw inherited the just opened Blavatnik Building. It increased the Tate Modern display space by 60 per cent. But what to put in it? Vast video pieces by little-known Vietnamese artists were hardly popular. Now, judging by the feeble installation that now occupies (or rather fails to occupy) its vast Turbine Hall, it struggles even to fill its main building.<\/p>\n Tate St Ives added a further 1,320 sq m \u2014 including a contemporary art gallery \u2014 to its footprint in 2017. Meanwhile, Tate Liverpool\u2019s revamped building \u2014 much delayed because of shortages in funding \u2014 is expected to reopen in 2027. When it does it will accommodate up to a million visitors a year, five times the number it was designed for when it opened in 1988.<\/p>\n But visitor numbers have fallen drastically. The visual arts are no longer as fashionable as they were when these projects were planned. A new generation, reared on digital, is increasingly indifferent to cultural institutions. The static image is no longer enough. Museums need instead to rethink how they can turn collections into living, breathing narratives that resonate with the expectations of new audiences.<\/p>\n \u2022 Female artists hit their peak in later life, says Tate director<\/a><\/p>\n The blame for declining visitor numbers and financial difficulties cannot necessarily be laid at Balshaw\u2019s door \u2014 even if, by stepping down, she appears to accept the flak. First came Brexit. Binding the British art market in kilometres of red tape, it has seriously threatened London\u2019s art world premiership. It also makes our country far less attractive to the flocks of young tourists who would once have seen the Tate galleries as not-to-be-missed destinations.<\/p>\n Hot on the heels of Brexit came Covid. Overall attendance across Tate sites has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Visitor numbers have dropped by as much as 25 per cent since before the pandemic. Perhaps it is simply that we got out of the habit. But in 2024 Tate Modern visitor numbers were 3 per cent down year-on-year, while British Museum numbers rose by 11 per cent. The cost of living crisis is not helping. When an exhibition ticket costs a pretty standard \u00a325, it\u2019s no wonder that so many give it a miss.<\/p>\n Balshaw has battled against all this. But if her emphatic attempt at diversification was a bid to broaden audiences, it appears to have backfired. Tate has been mocked for the frequently ludicrous political correctness of its curatorial labels. Social politics have been prioritised over aesthetics. Putting the spotlight on underrepresented talents \u2014 most notably, during Balshaw\u2019s time, on overlooked women (her particular passion is textiles) \u2014 has often come at the expense of the sort of classics that reliably pull people in. <\/p>\n In 2022 Frances Morris, the director then of Tate Modern, heralded the end of the blockbuster show, due to the financial cost and the cost to the planet. \u201cWe will continue to do exhibitions of this type but in a very selective way,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd only ever in partnership and only when we can consolidate loans to minimise impact on carbon emissions in terms of transport.\u201d She left her post in 2023. <\/p>\n And though Balshaw may be commended for taking a stand on the funding of arts by fossil fuel companies \u2014 she has been openly critical of British Museum for its decision to accept a \u00a350 million sponsorship from BP \u2014 her refusal to deal with such patrons has left Tate with a financial shortfall that it cannot fill, despite its \u00a351 million government subsidy.<\/p>\n The shortfall has bred discontent among Tate employees. \u201cTreat staff like art! Handle with care\u201d, read the banners of those who stood on Tate Britain picket lines during a week-long strike in November. Tate\u2019s annual wage bill rose from \u00a349 million in 2021 to \u00a362 million last year. Two restructures in five years, numerous redundancies (about 7 per cent of staff were cut earlier this year) and below-inflation pay rises (a salary increase of less than 3 per cent was considered inadequate in a period of dramatically rising living costs) has badly damaged morale. <\/p>\n Balshaw has far from made a mess of it. She has helped to expand Tate\u2019s membership to 150,000, bringing in about \u00a320 million a year. That is the largest arts membership in the world. Tate Modern\u2019s Friday night Lates sell out almost instantly. Turner & Constable, running at Tate Britain, is a five-star hit<\/a>. Upcoming retrospectives of Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo are sure to prove popular too. But as Balshaw steps down she leaves a legacy of money problems, staff unrest and squabbles over the direction that Tate should take. These problems are beginning to look as big as Tate itself. And tankers are famously slow to turn. Her successor will have an enormous task on their hands.<\/p>\n![\"Visitors](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/d1347405-7d20-4329-abe1-002e70b8834d.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"Jessica](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/52e16db4-c125-4463-82d1-10d062282fde.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Director](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/5c4d6ee1-151b-4c9e-a582-e4c27adc6040.jpg\")
<\/p>\n