Tate Trims Workforce by 7 Percent as Post-Pandemic Deficit Lingers
129March 18, 2025
England’sTatehas revealed that it is reducing its staff by 7 percent through voluntary departures and hiring freezes as it attempts to reckon with a funding deficit that stretches back to the Covid-19 crisis. Encompassing four institutions—London’s Tate Britain and Tate Modern, as well as Tate Liverpool and, in Cornwall, Tate St. Ives—the organization will eliminate roughly forty roles. British cultural institutions have seen an increase in domestic visitors as the pandemic’s peak recedes further into memory, but international attendance remains comparatively low. Per theFinancial Times, which first reported the news, museums and galleries across the UK in 2023–24 welcomed three-quarters the number of visitors they did in the fiscal year immediately preceding the pandemic.
Though ticket sales and private donations account for 70 percent of Tate’s funding, government grants make up roughly 30 percent of its income. Tate’s trustees at the end of the2023–24 fiscal yearapproved a deficit budget to give the institution time to come up with a viable and sustainable business plan. “Tate has an ambitious program to grow our audiences across the nation and beyond,” a spokesperson toldTheGuardian. “To eliminate the deficit left over from the pandemic, we have strengthened new income streams, strategically prioritized our most impactful activities, and carefully streamlined our workforce.”
Tate director Maria Balshaw, who chairs the National Museum Directors’ Council, told the FT that the organization had “carefully streamlined our workforce through voluntary means.” The move to eliminate staff comes as Tate, like cultural institutions across the UK, faces government cuts to the cultural budget. It also arrives as the organization is busy with a variety of projects, among them the £29.7 million ($38.6 million) redevelopment of Tate Liverpool; the restoration by Tate St. Ives of a studio space formerly belonging to Barbara Hepworth; and the celebration of Tate Modern’s twenty-fifth anniversary.