Why are British museums losing visitors?

LondonWith less than a month to go until the 25th anniversary of the Tate Modern's opening on May 12, the institution is going through a difficult time. The symptoms are clear: a progressive loss of visitors over the past five years (COVID-19 undoubtedly played a role in the start of the decline), a budget deficit that has forced it to use reserves in 2025, staff cuts (40 layoffs since January), and ongoing talks with the government, on which the situation depends.

And yet, over the past quarter of a century, the Tate Modern has become an iconic space that has managed not only to change the image of museums in the British capital but has also rebalanced the city on both sides of the river. The former Bankside Power Station building quickly became, thanks to its intervention, comparable to the MoMA in New York and the Pompidou in Paris, and the grand access ramp to the so-called Turbine Hall made it possible to enter the art world that favored its challenge.

The initial success surprised the same management, which expected two million visitors in 2000 and actually had four. In 2007, it already exceeded five million, and six million visitors were reached in 2019. Since then, there has been a progressive decline: in 2023, 4.74 million people visited the Tate, and in 2024, 4.60 million. In total, the Tate group of museums (Britain, also in London; St. Ives, in Cornwall; and Liverpool) has lost 2.2 million visitors since 2019.

In the specific case of the Tate Modern, one of the reasons pointed out by specialists is the strong dependence on visitors, much below pre-pandemic levels, and also the exceptional nature of 2019, when a record number of 6.09 million visitors was reached.

While institutions such as the British Museum, the Natural History Museum and others have seen modest growth in attendance in 2024 compared to the previous year, other benchmark centers in London and the rest of the country are struggling both to attract the public and to maintain balanced finances. The Royal Academy of Arts, for example, is facing a critical situation, caught in a perfect storm of economic woes. Visitor numbers remain well below pre-pandemic levels, falling to 622,000 in 2024 from 1.25 million in 2019 or 709,000 in 2023. Meanwhile, costs are rising and revenues are falling. The current deficit is £7.1 million. Management is currently looking to shed sixty staff.

The Museums Association has reported that more than 4,000 jobs among its members were lost in the decade and a half from 2010-21, with the pandemic being the final straw. In total, 63% of British centers have reduced staff during this period. In 2020, the first of the pandemic, £1 billion in revenue was lost.

Ideological and economic debate

Aside from COVID, some experts have pointed to more ideological reasons. For example, choreographer and essayist Rosie Kay published this week in the British press a short essay in which he points out that the militant culture of those responsible for and curators of museums – what the far right pejoratively calls woke– has alienated visitors. "There has been a broader ideological shift in the arts world, with museums increasingly used as platforms for activism rather than centers of artistic and historical exploration. Everything is now seen through a political lens: climate change, decolonization, trans issues, diversity, equity, and inclusion," she wrote.

An example of this criticism is what Kay put forward when referring to the 2021 exhibition at Tate Britain on the painter William Hogarth and his relationship with Europe.. A comment next to a self-portrait suggested that the chair the painter sat in, possibly made of colonial wood, might "represent all those unnamed Black and brown people who made possible the society that sustained his vigorous creativity."

Another exhibition that received similar criticism was Entangled Pasts 1768-now. Art, colonialism and change at the Royal Academy of Arts last year. The exhibition explored the institution's history and offered a critical reading in relation to its colonial past and how it had benefited from it.

According to the choreographer and essayist, "policymakers are beginning to perceive museums as disconnected from reality." And she added: "If institutions delve too deeply into activism at the expense of engaging exhibitions, they offer an easy victory to those who want to completely cut cultural budgets." In fact, a statement that accepted a form of censorship.

Amid the debate about the decline in attendance and the financial problems of some of the country's large institutions, and many small museums, in order to remedy the lack of money and guarantee the independence of programming from possible political pressures, the director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tristram Hunt, published a few weeks ago an article in Financial Times in which he asked that "as long as we need the money," an entry fee be charged to "international tourists" to help meet the sector's ever-increasing costs. National Gallery Trafalgar Square— is free for everyone, residents and tourists alike.

Hunt cited France as an example, which plans to raise admission fees to the Louvre Museum for visitors from outside the European Union starting in 2026. With this money, the museum hopes to raise €700 million to €800 million for a new entrance to the east wing, Grande Galerie of Italian painting and, most importantly, to relocate the Mona Lisa.