Liberate Tate: Activists demonstrate in the gallery
In the year 2013, the future of the arts has never looked so bleak. Newcastle has just announced plans to cut its arts budget in its entirety, threatening the livelihoods of many of the arts based institutions in its city and the question burning is when, rather than whether, will other cities follow suit. In order to keep the culture afloat, arts establishments have no choice but to turn to corporate sponsorship or other privatised funding options to save the future of the arts, especially in the North. But at what cost?
In recent years the Tate has undergone a massive backlash for having BP as one of their sponsors, with the movement Liberate Tate heading the attacks, but the question is, do they really need it? How far do we have to go to conserve the arts in a period of economic unrest that we have to seek unethical support merely to survive? It poses a moral dilemma to arts enthusiasts everywhere, without this corporate sponsorship prices to enter galleries will rise and suddenly art becomes an endeavour only accessible to the elite. Do we really want culture to follow suit of education under the cuts and become something only realistically available to those who are better off?
Whilst the arts still has access to funding from the arts council, it makes me wonder how thinly they can spread their already drastically cut budget across ever suffering British city to help avoid the fate that Newcastles arts have succumbed to. Britain is currently suffering its third recession in 2 years, and unfortunately no amount of protesting is stopping those scissors snipping at all areas that rely heavily on public funding. Slowly but surely we are slipping further into Thatchers Britain of privatising public companies, and whilst that creates revenue elsewhere to keep us from drowning in debt, thousands of independent businesses are going under.
So through this, it seems the obvious answer to privatise the arts rather than let them sink, but by keeping art free and therefore culturally enriching all, we have no choice but to turn a blind eye to evil global corporations who are in a position of great power to censor the art that comes into the institutions that display it. I cannot imagine for one second that the ever influential Tate Gallery would feature an exhibition that concentrates on the monstrosities at the hands of the BP that happend in the Gulf of Mexico. Nor can imagine its Turbine Hall to host a performance arts piece that has half naked woman washing men on one half and ‘real woman’ soaping themselves up in the other (n.b. the lynx vs dove controversy).
In the world I have been bought up in, the arts have been synonymous with liberal, and for unethical works to be produced has been seen as outrageous. Now I live in a world where supporting morally unsound corporations is the price we have to pay to ironically avoid having to pay for culture. In a Capitalist led society we cannot escape the money issue that consumes almost every action a human being takes, and as much as I’d like it to be, the arts are no exception.
I hate to say it, but in order to conserve the future of art, privatisation may be our only answer especially in the North. I just hope that the companies who hopefully choose to save a small handful of our galleries, libraries and theatres, aren’t all corrupt. It seems about as appropriate as McDonalds sponsoring the Olympics. Oh wait, that did actually happen. Our modern day society is doomed to dystopia.
punching 