Tate blames Brexit for slump in visitors

Telegraph

7 days ago

The director of the Tate has blamed Brexit for a steep decline in the gallery's attendance figures.
Maria Balshaw said leaving the European Union, and the Covid pandemic, had left the institution struggling to attract young European visitors.
Visits to London's Tate Modern and Tate Britain have fallen by 27 per cent since 2019 – a drop of 2.2 million visitors, according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (Alva).
'The figures speak for themselves,' Ms Balshaw told the Art Newspaper, adding: 'Tate Modern alone welcomed 609,000 visitors from Europe, between ages 16 to 24 in 2019-20, but then 357,000 in 2023-24.
'And if you think about that age of person, they are profoundly affected by the combination of Brexit changing their educational and work opportunities and then Covid profoundly affecting the end of their studies and the way they choose to live their lives. They are, in general, also travelling less.'
Some critics of the Tate have blamed 'woke' curatorial decisions for underwhelming footfall in recent years. It attracted controversy with an 'inclusive' rehang in 2023, which sidelined prized landscapes and portraits for paintings linked to slavery and colonialism, complete with labels alerting visitors to historic injustices.
Ms Balshaw, who has led the institution since 2017, said the Tate's internal research, which is made up of exit surveys and data from its galleries, had shown domestic visitor numbers have recovered to 95 per cent of pre-Covid levels, but international visitors are at just 61 per cent.
Tate's internal research found the average number of visitors to Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Tate St Ives in the three financial years before the pandemic was 7.4 million. Of that, around 3.8 million were from the UK.
The average number of visitors for the first two full years post-Covid was 5.8 million, of which 3.6 million were domestic. The number of visitors from outside the UK has dropped significantly, from around 3.6 million to around 2.2 million.
The attendance figures come after Tate announced it would be firing 7 per cent of its workforce to plug a funding deficit left over from the pandemic.
Next year's programme includes exhibitions of the works of Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo, while this November, Tate Britain will host a 'grand face-off' between Turner and Constable.