Anthony McCall, “Solid Light,” Tate Modern (photo by Agnieszka Matejko)
My favourite beauty spot lies in the heart of almost every city. From London to Vancouver, these sanctuaries hide in plain sight. Within their walls, urban clamour fades and only faint echoes of traffic seep through. Benches offer respite, inviting visitors to let their worries drift away.
I am not speaking about temples or churches but contemporary art galleries. With their stunning architecture, low or optional entry fees, and often riveting shows—including immersive installations that captivate children—these spaces should be humming with crowds.
Yet, on recent visits to art exhibitions in cities ranging from London, England, to Victoria, Canada, I was astonished to wander through largely empty rooms. Even at the renowned Tate Modern, Anthony McCall’s astounding interactive light installation Solid Light drew only a handful of visitors.
In most galleries, the only sound was the echo of my footsteps.
The problem is not just anecdotal– it’s well documented. As Art Plugged and other media sources report, attendance at the Tate and other major UK galleries has dropped by 27 per cent since 2019.
Anthony McCall, “Solid Light,” Tate Modern (photo by Agnieszka Matejko)
According to The Times, New York’s iconic Guggenheim Gallery has seen a 33 per cent decline.
And a recent Globe and Mail story on major budget cuts at the Vancouver Art Gallery mentions that gallery attendance is at a 15-year low.
What causes this silence? Why is my beloved art scene so undervalued?
As a visual arts writer and devoted art lover, I want to understand the gulf between contemporary art and the wider public. Why don’t more crowds bustling through city centres step through gallery doors?
My search for answers has felt like navigating a maze of dead ends. Some sources point to economic pressures, others cite a lack of online visibility or poor communication.
But one site offers a goldmine of blunt, unfiltered criticism. A quick glance at a popular Q&A forum reveals a chorus of complaints: contemporary art is called elitist, hideous, shoddy, confusing, and even foul-smelling.
They aren’t entirely wrong. Many artworks defy beauty standards, some disturb, and some even reek. But often, that’s the point.
Take Edmonton-based artist Riisa Gundesen’s painting of a toilet filled with blood-soaked tissues. It’s unlikely to hang in many boardrooms, but that doesn’t make it bad or even ugly. Gundesen explores intensely private moments and mental illness, pushing the boundaries of what is considered “acceptable” subject matter for painting.
Riisa Gundesen, “Toilette,” 2020, oil on drafting film, 38" x 24" (courtesy of the artist)
And yes, some contemporary art stinks — literally. Olfactory art is on the rise, and that’s a good thing. One of the most powerful feminist sculptures ever made, Czech-born Canadian artist Jana Sterbak’s Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorexic, reeked as 60 pounds of raw steak flanks slowly rotted in the National Gallery of Canada.
Most online art critics are easy to dismiss, but one complaint rings painfully true: elitism. And often, it starts right at the entrance. At both commercial and public galleries, visitors are rarely greeted with warmth. Staff sometimes seem chosen more for their cool detachment (or low body mass index) than their people skills.
While there’s been progress in racial diversity, the public face of the art world remains as uninviting as ever.
Still, change is possible. Two artist friends recently returned from Australia buzzing with excitement after visiting some regional contemporary galleries where curators mingled with visitors chatting, answering questions, and showing off the work like proud hosts at a dinner party.
Galleries could also take a cue from family-friendly McDonald’s or IKEA and create children’s galleries—one of the rare exceptions is the Art Gallery of Alberta, where artists create interactive exhibitions designed for kids.
But even when visitors do make it through the doors, the trouble only deepens. They’re often met with curatorial panels thick with theory and impenetrable artist statements that feel more like academic puzzles than invitations to connect.
Take, for instance, the 2024 Stepping Softly on the Earth exhibition at Newcastle’s Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, featuring work by 20 non-Western and Indigenous artists. The show opens with a prominent entrance panel —unattributed to any curator — declaring it will explore “ancestral cosmovisions, spirituality, inter-species communication” and “challenge the binary separation of human/nature and mind/body.”
Such lofty ambitions set visitors up for grand disappointment.
Overblown phrases like “temporal dynamics,” “subverted frameworks,” and “suspended temporality,” tossed around like confetti in art writing, attempt to manufacture profundity.
But art is already profound. In countless interviews with artists, I’ve found them to be deep thinkers, passionate, articulate and capable of offering rich insights into their work. The jargon doesn’t add depth – it drains it.
And this style of writing is far from new.
As early as 2013, American artist David Levine and social scientist Alix Rule dissected the art world’s language problem with scalpel precision. Their essay, International Art English, published in the online American art journal Triple Canopy, traces the roots of torturous art writing—where perfectly good adjectives like “visual” and “global” morph into clunky nouns such as “visuality” and “globality”— to 1970s art historians influenced by dense French and German post-structuralist theory.
The essay sparked a flurry of media attention. With headlines like “Artspeak Sucks, and That’s Putting It in Plain Language” (Ottawa Citizen) and “‘International Art English’: The Joke That Forgot It Was Funny” (HuffPost), it seemed that the public shaming might finally send “artspeak” into a well-deserved retirement.
But it didn’t.
The breathless prose that clogs catalogues and press releases continues to spread like a virus. No amount of ridicule — not even Artybollocks.com, the go-to generator for absurdly vague artist statements—has loosened “artspeak’s” grip on artists, curators and academics.
The result? A public that sees contemporary art as either a club for the initiated or, worse, an elaborate con.
If I were more selfish, I might relish contemporary art’s air of exclusivity. Few things delight me more than stepping into a quiet, spacious gallery amid the city’s noise and clamour.
But the truth is, I want more people to experience the wonder art offers. Empty galleries are a loss for audiences and deeply unfair to artists who pour their hearts into meaningful, memorable or moving work that too often goes unseen.
Let’s break down elitist barriers. Let’s hire front desk attendants based on their warmth and hospitality, make galleries family-friendly, and ditch the alienating jargon.
Art isn’t just for those with a PhD in art history. With engaging curators and inclusive communication, art speaks to everyone.
Changing public perceptions won’t happen overnight, but that’s all the more reason to start now. ■
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