There are two types of people in this world: those who plan every detail of a trip, and those who play it by ear. I’m firmly in the latter category. My itineraries are often loose – maybe a viewpoint here, an overhyped restaurant there, a souvenir shop if I’m feeling generous. ‘Unstructured’ structured days are the best. But I always slip in a visit to a museum or an art gallery, wherever I go, UK or abroad.
Evolving perspectives
Not everyone understands this. “Jacob, you’re just going to see another Rembrandt,” they’ll say. Fair point – most galleries do cover similar eras: Renaissance, Impressionism, Modernism, the list goes on. So why go if you’re not expecting to learn something new?
For me, these places have always been more than the sum of their collections: rather, a space of comfort and solitude. My mum is an artist, so weekends often meant gallery trips from a young age. At six years old, my priority was simple: pretty pictures first, any deeper meaning… maybe never. I didn’t yet have the patience, or the context, to understand what hung on the walls.
But I kept going. And over time, I began to see what was there. Nowadays, I’m drawn for different reasons. Sometimes I’m pulled in by the skill of a Renaissance painter whose work was, in effect, the photography of its time. Other days it’s an artefact, standing silent but powerful, memorialising a culture or a person across centuries.
Is the purpose of art subjective?
Still, the truth is simpler. I just like being there. In a world where arts and culture are often caricatured as elitist or irrelevant, these spaces are quietly democratic. According to a House of Lords report, the UK’s creative industries added £126 billion to the economy in 2022, employing 2.4 million people. Yet the sector is treated as an afterthought.
The hostility is sharper when the work challenges and intrigues. Modern art can especially be a target for ridicule. Take Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ (1917)- a urinal signed “R. Mutt”. That’s it. It’s absurd. But it was never meant to be just a urinal. It was a provocation: an invitation to engage, to question what art is allowed to be.
When I was nine, I remember visiting Tate Modern and spotting a teenager taking a photo of every single piece of work. I wondered if they were trying to prove something. I’m now not too sure. Maybe they wanted to keep a record of the afternoon. And really, why not? As long as you’re not disturbing anyone else, I’m not one to judge.
Treating the creative industry better
We’re lucky that in the UK, unlike many other countries, national museums and galleries are often free to enter. But the funding model is imperfect. Since 2017, arts funding from UK arts councils has been cut by 16% in real terms, hitting major institutions like the English National Opera. The situation is so dire, the chair of Arts Council England has said the sector is at a “tipping point”, particularly without continued and sustained public investment.
Young people from working-class backgrounds are four times less likely to work in creative industries than their middle-class peers, and the number of pupils taking creative subjects at GCSE and A-level has collapsed – down by as much as 73% in some subjects since 2010.
Keeping these places open for all is vital because you don’t know who could take inspiration from their visit to pursue a career in the sector. For a student whose creative arts education has been cut due to funding problems, a visit to these institutions can keep their spark lit.
You don’t have to ‘get’ everything you see, or anything at all. You don’t have to come in with a checklist of facts to absorb or armed with a notebook to take every last detail down. These places welcome both art historians, bored teenagers killing time, and everyone in between. The doors are open.
But one day, if we stop valuing them, the doors might close – and we’ll wish we’d wandered through them more often.
