Tate reveals the main reason for its lower attendance figures

• Tate Fashionable alone had 609,000 guests from Europe aged 16 to 24 in 2019-20, however simply 357,000 in 2023-24

• Tate’s home customer numbers at 95% of pre-Covid stage, however worldwide numbers at round 61%

• Authorities statistics present guests from EU to UK have dropped by one-tenth in contrast with 2019

• Blended image at different UK museums: British Museum’s proportion of abroad guests near 2019 ranges

Within the six months since Tate reported a deficit price range for 2024-25, some critics have pointed on the museum group’s programming as a root trigger for its monetary plight. They argue that curatorial methods are responsible for a famous decline in footfall lately and due to this fact in earnings from paid-for exhibitions, catering and outlets (the everlasting collections are open to the general public with out cost).

The Artwork Newspaper’s annual customer figures report, revealed in April, confirmed how attendance at Tate establishments in 2024 was certainly considerably decrease than in 2019 (a yr of report highs)—Tate Fashionable noticed 25% fewer guests than earlier than the Covid-19 pandemic, Tate Britain was down 32% and Tate St Ives had a 37% drop in attendance. (Tate Liverpool stays closed till 2027.)

The Artwork Newspaper’s newest analysis—combining authorities figures, college enrolment and tourism statistics, Arts Council and Artwork Fund surveys, and Tate’s latest inner analysis—reveals that whereas Tate, like different nationwide museums, units nice retailer by programming as a think about attracting guests, footfall is formed as a lot, if no more, by exterior socioeconomic components, nationwide and worldwide. Tate’s personal analysis, group spokespeople inform The Artwork Newspaper, signifies that, whereas attendance by home audiences is near 95% of pre-Covid ranges—there was a marked drop in abroad guests to Tate establishments, particularly in folks from Europe aged 16 to 24. This age group, Tate says, is a key demographic for the group and for artwork museums versus “museum museums”.

It’s price noting that in The Artwork Newspaper’s attendance figures survey, Tate Fashionable—which accounts for round 75% of the group’s guests in any given yr—nonetheless nonetheless ranked fifth among the many world’s most visited artwork museums, behind the Louvre, the Vatican Museums, the British Museum and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Artwork on Fifth Avenue. Since 2014, it has hovered between the seventh and third spots (aside from in 2021, when Covid closures noticed it sink to the sixteenth).

That record of opponents additionally reveals that Tate Fashionable stays the world’s primary fashionable and modern artwork museum. This too is a place it has held since 2014, aside from in 2021, when it was overtaken by Paris’s Centre Pompidou and the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York.

Nonetheless, whereas the recognition of Tate Fashionable and by extension of Tate as a complete, is just not unsure, the dip in footfall can’t be ignored. Tate’s director of audiences and innovation Liam Darbon and his group have dug into extra granular demographic shifts inside the museum group’s guests over the previous decade. These shifts correlate with demographic shifts amongst guests to the UK at giant.

Darbon’s inner analysis (primarily based on exit surveys in all galleries; information and perception sharing between a consortium of different museums and galleries throughout the UK; and information from the UK tourism board and different cultural sector commerce our bodies) has revealed that, discounting Tate Liverpool (closed till 2027), the variety of guests throughout Tate galleries coming from inside the UK in 2024 was nearly the identical as earlier than the pandemic. As a Tate spokesperson places it, “Tate’s home customer numbers have recovered to round 95% of their pre-Covid stage, whereas Tate’s worldwide customer numbers are at round 61% of their pre-Covid stage.”

The common variety of complete guests to Tate Fashionable, Tate Britain and Tate St Ives, within the three monetary years earlier than Covid (2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20) was 7.4 million. Of that, Darbon’s group studies, about 3.8 million, on common, had been from inside the UK. The common variety of complete guests for the 2 full post-Covid years (2022-23 and 2023-24) was 5.8 million. Of that, Tate says, roughly 3.6 million guests had been UK-based.

In contrast, the variety of guests from exterior the UK dropped considerably, from round 3.6 million to round 2.2 million.

The most important discovering for Maria Balshaw, Tate’s director, is the decline in younger guests from the EU, particularly within the 16-24 age bracket. Younger folks of that age group are a major demographic for the museum group, accounting for one in six guests to Tate Fashionable and Tate Britain. “The figures converse for themselves,” she says. “Tate Fashionable alone welcomed 609,000 guests from Europe, between ages 16 to 24, in 2019-20 however then 357,000 in 2023-24. And if you consider that age of particular person: they’re profoundly affected by the mix of Brexit altering their academic and work alternatives after which Covid profoundly affecting the tip of their research and the best way they select to reside their lives. They’re, on the whole, additionally travelling much less.”

Analysis bears this out.

Knowledge from the Workplace of Nationwide Statistics showthat the variety of guests from the EU hardly budged between 2015 and 2019 from 24 million annually, however by 2023, it had dropped to round 22 million. Nonetheless a big quantity, to make sure. Nonetheless, the granular make-up of these tourism numbers has shifted. Ross Bennett-Prepare dinner, a journey and tourism skilled on the College of Westminster, says: “Younger individuals are going through the price of residing disaster much more than Boomers and older generations. Gen Z and Millennials are the group who face the most important pressure on the subject of journey.”

Additional, economists on the universities of Tub and Antwerp have discovered a decline in EU college students taking on locations at UK universities of between 48% and 64%. And the Migration Observatory on the College of Oxford has proven that web EU migration to the UK has fallen by nearly 70% in contrast with 2016: extra EU residents are leaving the UK than coming. In each circumstances, the result’s that there are fewer EU residents within the UK (college students or in any other case) for EU family and friends members to go to.

Over its latest Birthday Weekender, Tate Fashionable welcomed 76,000 guests over three days, “70% of whom had been beneath 35”, says Balshaw. “That’s double what we’d usually count on for that form of occasion. And our Tate Collective membership, which is for under-25s, has now bought 180,000 reside memberships. So what we’re doing within the galleries is basically attracting youthful guests from the UK, which we’re actually happy about. As a result of, after all, in the event that they love us after they’re 24, 25, they’ll be coming after they’re 55 or 70. However we’re not seeing that very same group from the European international locations coming as a result of they’re simply not in London in the identical method.”

Darbon additional underscores a “actually steep decline” in guests from north-east Asia. This correlates with UK journey tourism information, displaying extra sluggish progress relative to guests from North America, Australia and Saudi Arabia.

Whereas there are variations in audiences between the totally different Tates, Darbon says these demographic shifts are noticeable throughout the group. He additionally highlights that “the 16-25, 16-35 market is the place you see the visitation shift away from a basic museum into an artwork gallery area”. In different phrases, to his thoughts, younger adults are extra necessary as a demographic to artwork galleries than to so-called “museum museums”, and the lack of younger EU guests is due to this fact extra impactful.

That is much less clear on the bottom. As India Divers, the coverage and ethics lead on the Museums Affiliation places it, “post-Covid customer figures to UK museums stays a blended image”. She highlights the latest figures from the Affiliation of Main Customer Sights (ALVA) that present establishments together with the Pure Historical past Museum, the Nationwide Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Liverpool, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, the Fitz­william Museum in Cambridge and the Nationwide Museum of Scotland all seeing notable progress in numbers in 2024.

A spokesperson for the British Museum—quantity three on the planet—says, “Our most up-to-date analysis reveals that worldwide guests made up 64% of our viewers. That is near pre-pandemic ranges, when worldwide guests made up 70% of our viewers. Home visits proceed to develop in actual phrases, and these identical figures present that London visits overtook pre-pandemic numbers.”

On the identical time, the Manchester Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts, Liverpool’s Maritime Museum, Nationwide Museum Cardiff and Scotland’s Gallery of Fashionable Artwork all had lacklustre years. The Science Museum, whose customer numbers dropped by 4% relative to 2023, is but to see worldwide guests return to pre-pandemic ranges. In response to a museum spokesperson, “In 2024/25 round a 3rd of all visits had been made by worldwide guests in comparison with a median of 46% pre-pandemic. The discount in worldwide guests has been partly offset by a rise in UK-based guests.”

Of the 324 museum administrators who responded to Artwork Fund’s 2024 Museum Director’s Analysis survey, 57% noticed general customer numbers enhance over the earlier yr, however solely 25% noticed a selected enhance in worldwide customer numbers.

The socioeconomic components

In response to Arts Council England’s Annual Museums Survey, which was revealed in March, “the typical change in customer numbers throughout museums is –10%, three in ten museums have seen their customer numbers drop by greater than 25% in comparison with 5 years in the past.” In Scotland, in the meantime, Museums Galleries Scotland’s 2024 Survey of Scotland’s Museums and Galleries, revealed in October 2024, famous that visits to Scottish museums in 2023-24 had been larger than in 2019-20, with 21% of tourists native, 36% nationwide and 42% worldwide.

All events, after all, insist that programming is essential to attracting audiences. Darbon says Tate expects continued progress, “notably in these audiences we’re speaking about at this time, due to the pull of the programme”. The “customer perspective”, says the British Museum spokesperson, is central to the Masterplan launched in 2024. And the Science Museum’s public, its spokesperson says, is drawn by “our thought-provoking exhibitions, free new galleries and interesting experiences”.

But when Tate’s analysis reveals something, it’s that footfall is formed as a lot, if no more, by exterior socioeconomic components, nationwide and worldwide.

Moreover, in UK museums and galleries the place collections are free to entry, footfall, and every thing else that intrepid museum administrators have devised to lift funds, is just ever going to herald a lot cash.

That cultural establishments’ survival depends upon much more than customer numbers is highlighted by the alarm the UK authorities’s lately introduced Spending Assessment has triggered. Cultural organisations are set, but once more, to face pay evaluations and workforce reductions, amid real-term cuts to authorities funding over the following 4 years.

The general public accounts committee, in the meantime, has reportedly warned the Treasury that over 50% of native councils in England face insolvency. And that by no means bodes properly for native authorities arts and tradition funding and the museums and galleries that rely on it.