Tate cuts 40 roles and runs budget deficit

The Tate is cutting 40 roles, reports the Financial Times. The museum, which operates across four venues in London, Liverpool and Cornwall, is making the cuts, which amount to seven per cent of its workforce, through voluntary redundancies and a hiring freeze. In its 2023–24 annual report, the trustees approved a deficit budget using reserves built up in the two previous financial years. Although visitor numbers rose from nearly 6m in 2022–23 to 6.4m in 2023–24, they are still below pre-pandemic levels. Seventy per cent of the Tate’s funding is raised through its own activities – including ticket sales, private and corporate donations. The FT quotes Tate sources as saying that the institution is trying to break even before it embarks on fundraising ‘to support its plans for growth’. Tate Liverpool is undergoing a major redevelopment, Tate St Ives is restoring Barbara Hepworth’s studio space at the Palais de Danse and Tate Modern turns 25 in May.

On Wednesday Shelly C. Lowe, chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in the United States, stepped down at ‘the direction of President Trump’, reports the New York Times. Lowe, who is the first Native American to lead the agency, was appointed by President Biden in 2021, confirmed by the Senate in early 2022 and had 11 months of a four-year term remaining. Her forced departure is part of the new administration’s radical restructuring and stripping of government departments and federal agencies. Since the NEH was founded in 1965, it has awarded more than $6bn in grants to museums, universities, heritage sites, libraries and other cultural organisations. Lowe will be replaced by Michael McDonald, currently the organisation’s general counsel, until a permanent appointment is made.

The fate of some 26,000 artworks owned by the US government is uncertain after the Trump administration placed half of the General Services Administration (GSA) workers who care for them on leave awaiting termination, reports the Washington Post. Staff in the fine arts and heritage protection team at the GSA said the move could have disastrous effects on the upkeep of ‘precious works’ in the collection, which includes murals, sculptures and paintings dating back to the 1800s.

On Monday, Greek authorities arrested far-right politician Nikos Papadopoulos for allegedly vandalising four artworks in the National Gallery in Athens. Papadopoulos, an MP for the Niki Party, claimed that the caricatures of religious icons by Christoforos Katsadiotis were ‘blasphemous’, reports ARTnews. Papadopoulos forcibly removed the works with the help of another individual on 10 March, shattering at least two frames. The National Herald reports that he was detained by the museum, but later released by the police who regarded his act as a misdemeanour. Papadopoulos has since denied that he vandalised the works, claiming that they slipped as he took them down, and also threatened legal action against the museum for detaining him illegally. In a statement, the National Gallery’s board of directors denounced the MP’s actions and ‘any act of vandalism, violence, and censorship that violates the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of artistic expression’. The Greek Orthodox Church, on the other hand, has said that it ‘expressed its regret for the content of certain works’. Pending a decision by parliament about whether he should be open to further prosecution, Papadopoulous has been censured and his salary halved for a month.

On Monday, the Centre Pompidou in Paris closed the galleries housing its permanent collection as it prepares to close for five years for a €262m renovation. The roughly 2,000 works (out of the 150,000-strong collection) that have been on display will go into storage or on show at other museums in Paris and abroad. The rest of the museum will shutter in September, for building works that bring the 50-year-old structure up to modern standards, when the last temporary exhibition ends.

Edward Gillman is the new director of Chisenhale Gallery in east London, reports the Art Newspaper. His predecessor, Zoé Whitley, announced her departure in December. Gillman joins the gallery after 11 years at Auto Italia, a non-profit visual arts institution in London, where he was director from 2019 to April 2024.