“The National Gallery is doing a great job isn’t it?” David Hockney reflected in 2024. “Everything in the collection is good, every single picture is good.” Judging by recent performance, the artist would seem to be right. The gallery’s blockbuster Van Gogh exhibition closed in January last year after a record-breaking 335,000 visitors. Its 200th anniversary celebrations, including the opening of the newly designed Sainsbury Wing and rehang, attracted a 60% rise in visitors since May.
But barely 10 months later, the art world is digesting the stark news that the National Gallery will face a deficit of £8.2m in the coming year. Proposed cuts could include fewer free exhibitions, higher ticket prices, less international borrowing and job losses. Two huge cash donations of £150m each are ringfenced to build an ambitious new wing for contemporary art, not for daily running costs.
The National’s predicament is a grim reflection of the perilous state of the country’s cultural sector as a whole. Last year the Tate lost 7% of its workforce, and staff took strike action over “endemic low pay”; jobs have been also lost at London’s opulent Royal Academy.
