Maria Balshaw
(Picture: Daniel Hambury: Stella Pictures)This week marks 125 years since the first Tate gallery — Tate Britain (known initially as The National Gallery of British Art) — opened on the marshy foundations of what had once been the largest prison in Europe. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer declared “a new palace of art will rise on the site of the old Millbank Penitentiary”!
A palace of art did indeed rise, at the bequest of Henry Tate. He was a quintessentially Victorian figure: a grocer from the north of England turned millionaire sugar magnate. He was a celebrated philanthropist in the fields of medicine and education as well as the arts, but his industry is impossible to separate from the legacies of slavery, even if Tate himself was born after the abolition of the British slave-trade.
That 19th-century world, with its class hierarchies, was also ingrained in the museums it built. When the British Museum opened you had to be “recommended by a gentleman or lady of standing” to enter. But even then there were the seeds of something more genuinely democratic. When the Tate first opened, it offered free “student days” twice a week, during which young people could escape the chaotic streets of Victorian London, to sit and sketch.
I love the fact this activity has been a constant across centuries. Head to the free collection displays at Tate Britain today, and you’ll find easels set up, as people quietly sketch the pre-Raphaelite paintings in front of them, the noise of their daily lives briefly paused.
As did our forebears, we believe that young people should not only see and enjoy the art in our national collection but use our galleries to actively express their own creativity. A study carried out by Tate, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the University of Nottingham found overwhelming evidence that young people see arts as a valve for releasing the pressures they experience elsewhere in their lives. And what pressure today’s children face. As well as the indelible mark a global pandemic has made on young lives, Children’s Commissioner Rachel de Souza reports “a real concern coming now from children about cost of living. They’re hearing it; they’re talking about it.”
This summer at Tate, we want to ease the pressure on families by offering a wide range of free art-inspired activities. As part of UNIQLO Tate Play, visitors to Yayoi Kusama’s The Obliteration Room at Tate Modern will be invited to transform a large white space into a riot of colour, expressing their own creativity.
At Tate Britain, kids can join artist-led workshops in our Play Studio, inspired by Hew Locke’s joyful Procession at the heart of the gallery. The launch of Tate Draw at both London galleries and online provides budding young artists with a free platform to produce their own digital drawings. We’ll also be challenging young audiences to design a new Tate Liverpool building for the future. They’ll be encouraged to share their designs and mini models on social media. At Tate St Ives, our Locals pass means local children and their parents can come to visit and make and draw within Ad Minoliti’s remarkable alternative universe in the gallery as often as they wish.
This sort of out-of-school experimental play provides a vital function, especially with the overburdened curriculum having less space than ever for the arts — an issue that the Times Education Commission recently reported on, with input from myself and other leaders from the creative sector. I was delighted that the recommendations included an “electives premium” of £50 a year per secondary school pupil to fund additional cultural clubs and museum visits.
On the 125th birthday of this incredible institution I am lucky enough to lead, I want to end with a brief sketch, pardon the pun, of my hopes for Tate in the years to come.
Tate must belong to everyone. The days of seeing the grand, porticoed Tate Britain facade and feeling ‘it’s not for me’ must be consigned to history. Chila Burman’s Winter commission, that illuminated our museum and drew people together, even as we were closed, made that point emphatically and with joyous energy. There is a wider and more diverse public coming through our doors than at any point in our history. Museums are a dynamic part of the fabric of this country, and as this story evolves, so must we. New and curious art explorers should be welcomed, long-standing friends treasured. They should come together in our galleries — which are, do not forget, civic spaces — to find common ground to explore, debate, disagree and celebrate. This is how they should remain, barometers of time and place, playful guardians of human complexity and invention. Here’s to another 125 years.
