Public Funding

Tate website

Governance and Funding

Tate is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), funded in part by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

A NDPB is a body which carries out functions on behalf of the government department that sponsors it, but is administered independently. It is therefore able to focus entirely on its own objectives and make unbiased recommendations and decisions.

Tate supplements the grant it receives from the DCMS through other sources, including trading, sponsorship and admissions to temporary exhibitions and to Tate St Ives. In 2008–09 Tate generated over 60 percent of its income from non-government sources.

‘Funding the Arts in this way can be beneficial to artists and arts organisations, as relying on a single funding source can be risky. A variety of funding sources also gives greater artistic freedom and financial flexibility.’

(DCMS website)

DCMS(Department for Culture, Media & Sport)

• 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games• Tourism• Museums and Galleries• Libraries• Sport• Historic Environment• Creative Industries• Arts• Alcohol and Entertainment

Funding Agreementhttp://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/

publications/070216ACEFundingAgreement20052008revised.pdf

Aims of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport3. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport aims to improve the quality of life

for all through cultural and sporting activities, to support the pursuit of excellence and to champion the tourism, creative and leisure industries.

Objectives of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport4. The objectives of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are:

I Children and young people - To further enhance access to culture and sport for children and give them the opportunity to develop their talents to the full and enjoy the benefits of participation.

II Communities - To increase and broaden the impact of culture and sport, to enrich individual lives, strengthen communities and improve the places where people live, now and for future generations.

III Economy - To maximise the contribution that the tourism, creative and leisure industries can make to the economy.

IV Delivery - To modernise delivery by ensuring our sponsored bodies are efficient and work with others to meet the cultural and sporting needs of individuals and communities.

A blitzkrieg on the artsThey promised a golden age, but the coalition's cuts will chill our cities

with a cultural winter

• – Nicholas Serota – guardian.co.uk Monday 4 October 2010 21.59 BST

• 'The idea that you can cut a £180bn deficit by slicing money out of the budget of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is frankly absurd." The words of an arts bureaucrat, theatre director, artist or writer with a special case to plead? No: Nick Clegg's, in the election campaign. Now his coalition wants cuts for culture and sport, over the next four years, of between 25% and 30% – the greatest crisis in the arts and heritage since government funding began in 1940.

• With the ruthlessness of a blitzkrieg the coalition is threatening the stability of an entire system for cultural provision that has been built up by successive Conservative and Labour governments: a mixed economy of public and private support that has made Britain a civilised place to live, where all have an opportunity to enjoy the arts or celebrate our heritage, and have been doing so in increasing numbers.

• Of course, cuts are inevitable, but it is the size and pace that we challenge. Cuts on this scale cannot be absorbed by "efficiency savings" alone, they must inevitably result in a much smaller number of galleries and theatres, fewer chances for young people to broaden their experience of life, and a savage reduction in support for individual writers, artists and composers.

http://www.demos.co.uk/files/File/VACUCSmith.pdf

• Valuing Culture • Speech by Rt Hon Chris Smith, Director of the Clore Programme for Cultural Leadership • The fundamental point, made time and again today, and increasingly heard across the world of the

arts, is this simple proposition. The arts – cultural activity and endeavour and engagement – require no justification other than their innate ability to move us, to excite us, and to enhance our lives. And Governmental support for culture should acknowledge that truth.

• I have to confess that it is easier to say that outside Government than it is inside.

• And there have been significant advances in the past few years. Three spending reviews, each with major increases in funding for the arts. Exchequer increases far exceeding those in most Departments. Substantial rescue packages, for example, for regional theatres. All of this is very welcome, but the question now being insistently asked is: does all of this come with too many strings attached, too many labels and requirements and targets, and is all of this stifling the creative energy which lay at the heart of what you wanted to support in the first place?

• Spare a thought, however, for the poor old Minister, faced with the daunting task of getting the increased funding out of the Treasury to start with. The Treasury won’t be interested in the intrinsic merits of nurturing beauty or fostering poetry or even “enhancing the quality of life”. So I acknowledge unashamedly that when I was Secretary of State, going into what always seemed like a battle with the Treasury, I would try and touch the buttons that would work. I would talk about the educational value of what was being done. I would be passionate about artists working in schools. I would refer to the economic value that can be generated from creative and cultural activity. I would count the added numbers who would flock into a free museum. If it helped to get more funds flowing into the arts, the argument was worth deploying.

• And I still believe, passionately, that it was the right approach to take. If it hadn’t been taken, the outcome would have left the arts in much poorer condition. Such a method however has two drawbacks. The first is that it ignores the fundamental life-force of the cultural activity that gives rise to the educational or economic value in the first place. (Not, I hasten to add, that there is anything wrong in hailing the value of the educational or economic impact of culture; culture can be profoundly important for a fulfilling education and for a flourishing economy; it is simply that these should not be elevated above the innate value of the art of itself.) The second drawback is that any measurement of numbers, quantity, or added value by figures is necessarily going to be inadequate.

• If, for example, you try and assess the impact a great museum or gallery can have on those visiting, it is a

relatively easy task to measure the number of people coming through the door. There is no harm in doing so: the huge increases in numbers attending the national museums since the policy of free admission was introduced are testimony to the success of the idea. But it isn’t enough. How on earth do you “measure” the joy on a child’s face, or the quality of the learning experience, or the thrill of discovering something new and previously unknown? These are some of the things that a museum can do for you. But they can’t be encapsulated in a target or a Treasury Performance Assessment.

• So, use the measurements and figures and labels that you can, when you need to, in order to convince the rest of the governmental system of the value and importance of what you’re seeking to do. But recognise at the same time that this is not the whole story, that it is not enough as an understanding of cultural value.

• Today, however, we have seen something new, something stirring beyond that simple proposition. Cultural leaders have begun to state openly that they no longer believe that artistic activity and value should cower behind labels other than the cultural. Have begun to assert that there will be fine educational and social and outreach work done by arts organisations, that they come as a natural development of the work that is being done, that they are of course important and need to be supported, but that they are not the heart of the matter.

Hans Haacke ‘MoMa Poll’, 1970

Hans Haacke, Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A

Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971

Mark Lombardi, World Finance Corporation

Warhol, 200 dollar bills, 1986

Cildo Meireles, Insertions into Ideological Circuits 2: Banknote Project 1970

The art market: just as absurd as the banking crisisFelix Salmon

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/05/the-art-market-just-as-absurd-as-the-banking-crisis/

• You work hard, have a long and storied career, rise to the top of your profession, and become a multi-millionaire by doing so. How many people, in that situation, will say that the amount of money they’re being paid is “absurd”, “impossible to understand”, and “daft”? Well, Gerhard Richter, for one:

• “It’s just as absurd as the banking crisis,” said the 79-year-old German, speaking to reporters on Tuesday at the press launch of a major retrospective of his work opening at London’s Tate Modern.

• “It’s impossible to understand and it’s daft,” he added, speaking through an interpreter.

• One thing that bankers and painters have in common is that their services are Veblen-like: the more expensive they become, the more demand there is for what they do. Someone like Adam Lindemann who would evince no interest in an artwork priced at $500 can suddenly become very eager when it’s $500,000. And the phrase “reassuringly expensive” might have been designed to reflect the pricing strategies of banks looking to provide M&A advice to CEOs.

• And in art, just like in banking, a healthy ego is often necessary if you want to become wealthy and successful. But occasionally, someone like Gerhard Richter is at least willing to come along and say that the whole market has gotten ridiculously out of hand. According to Artnet, 151 works by Gerhard Richter have sold at auction for more than $1 million, and ten have sold for over $10 million. In 2011 to date he’s already reached $92,412,177 in auction sales, and we haven’t even had the fall auctions yet.

Maurizio Cattelan