Tate is reportedly poised to chop 7% of its workforce as a part of an institution-wide push to cut back prices. Roughly 40 roles have been lower through recruitment freezes, focused restructures and voluntary exits. This follows the publication on 3 December 2024 of its 2023-2024 annual report and accounts, which said that for 2024-2025 the museum group can be working on a deficit funds.
In January, when requested for the precise quantity of this deficit, a spokesperson declined to reply. As a substitute, they informed The Artwork Newspaper: “All the sector is being affected by the rising price of utilities and companies, the real-terms decline in public funding, and the impression of inflation on client spending and tourism.”
In 2020, after six months of Covid-induced closure, the establishment overtly sought staffing cuts of 12% with the intention to save the £4.8m it stated it wanted to outlive the pandemic. The scheme was introduced on its web site; 167 individuals took up that provide. This time round, nonetheless, no voluntary redundancy scheme was publicly introduced.
In December 2024, The Artwork Newspaper was knowledgeable that a number of senior administrators have been “being made redundant” and that “jobs throughout the establishment have been underneath session”. When requested to substantiate this in January, a Tate spokesperson confirmed solely that “there have been no obligatory redundancies final yr [in 2023-2024] and none to date this yr [in 2024-2025].” When requested in late February about voluntary redundancies, a spokesperson stated that there had “not but been any voluntary redundancies within the 2024-25 monetary yr.”
In the meantime, Polly Staple introduced through Instagram on 12 December 2024, that she can be stepping down from her position because the Tate’s Director of Assortment, British Artwork, on the finish of the yr. Neil McConnon, who was employed in 2020 as Director, Worldwide Partnerships, Tate Fashionable, has additionally departed.
These high-level exits have raised concern that by reducing roles, Tate dangers stripping out essential experience at senior management stage. Curatorial roles like Staple’s include entry to skilled networks (of museum companions, artists and collections), in addition to the vital creativity, expertise and judgment that maintain the establishment’s programming sturdy, and now stands to be misplaced.
The Artwork Newspaper’s unique customer figures survey, which might be printed later this month, exhibits that attendance in 2024, relative to 2019, put Tate Fashionable at -25%, Tate Britain at -32% and Tate St Ives at -37% (Tate Liverpool is closed till 2027). Whereas that is in keeping with different struggling London museums (the Nationwide Gallery is at -47% and the Royal Academy, a staggering -50%), Tate is nonetheless doing worse than most worldwide opponents. Even the Hermitage in St Petersburg is simply down by -28% in contrast with 2019.
Whereas some criticshave blamed Tate’s curatorial programming for its anaemic customer numbers, Frances Morris, Tate Fashionable’s former director, says the providing shouldn’t be accountable. Morris, who served on Tate workers for 35 years in complete, sees it as “radical, broad, numerous”. She says: “Tate does genuinely attain out. There’s one thing for everyone. There have been some heavy hitters and perhaps it might do with some extra, however I commend the curatorial group, notably at Tate Fashionable. All the pieces is finished with integrity and ability, and that is the factor that is most in danger, in lowering the group that delivers the programme.”
The “real-terms decline” in public funds has made museums throughout the board notably susceptible. “I really like the Tate and at all times have carried out,” Morris says. “I believe it is a tremendous organisation with a fantastic historical past and it’ll have a fantastic future, it would survive. Nevertheless it’s having a battering in the mean time and that is very upsetting to see — I’ve loads of nice pals there, too, and I do not wish to see them in misery. It’s evident that this authorities must step up and perceive that these are actual crises affecting actual individuals in museums whose work brings that means to their audiences’ lives.”
Authorities assist, nonetheless, is simply a part of the answer. As a number of sources put it, for Tate to climate this specific storm, its senior management wants a stronger sense of function and imaginative and prescient. It must basically bolster its monetary administration. And it wants to raised take care of its workers.
