Tate Modern’s new Switch House extension in London has been greeted with acclaim. It is a building designed in the distorted geometry of neo-modernist cliché, and offers a breathtaking array of piazzas, shops and cafeteria, with the added attraction of a free panorama of London that is much better than the adjacent Shard’s. There has been criticism of the contents, which are more appropriate to an experimental Shoreditch warehouse than a national gallery of 20th-century art. But who cares? The Tate attracts almost five million visitors a year.
League tables now dictate how we judge London visitor attractions, just as exam results are used to evaluate schools and waiting times hospitals. Last year the British Museum drew 6.8 million visits, the National Gallery 5.9 million, the Tate Modern 4.7 million and the V&A 3.4 million. These figures cannot be compared with overseas museums because London does not charge while others do. The Louvre charges €12 and wins 9.2 million visitors, New York’s Metropolitan gets 6.2 million at $25 and Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum 2.4 million at €17.50. What we should compare is the quality of the displays.
Tate is simply not in the same league as museums of modern art in New York or San Francisco that charge for entry. It cannot buy the best, for all its director Nicholas Serota’s ingenuity in pleading with his friends. Of its 11 floors — costing £260 million — just four are art galleries, the rest being offices, private rooms, commercial and for circulation.
London’s museums have been remarkably successful in browbeating successive chancellors, including George Osborne, into butchering regional and local museums (39 of which have closed in five years) so as to retain free entry in London. Even the Tate in St Ives has to charge.
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