Carmel Allen was appointed to the role of managing director at Tate in September 2022. Prior to this, she was CEO of Tate Commerce, leading the organisation’s publishing, retail, product development, image and licensing businesses.
In that role, Allen was instrumental in ensuring Tate’s commercial activities chimed with its artistic and social ambitions, championing a diverse range of designers and writers, and putting environmentally sustainable practices at the heart of her work.
Before this, she was creative director for brands such as Heal’s, the Conran Shop and Linley. She also worked at internationally renowned media companies such as Time, Conde Nast, Guardian Media Group and the Financial Times.
A background in art & anthropology
“I read art, anthropology, and archaeology at university,” Allen tells blooloop:
“Funnily enough, I was at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and a lot was focused on West Africa, certainly in my latter years. I remember my mother saying to me one day, ‘What on earth are you ever going to do with all this knowledge about Benin bronzes?’ I was reminded of it last year when I was working on a workshop with the Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA), and thinking, isn’t it funny how life comes full circle 32 years later?”
She spent the first part of her career in publishing:
“Then I moved over into retail. But really the common thread in both parts of that career lies in putting people, places and things together. The study of anthropology is about humankind and what makes people tick. Whether you’re writing about red lipsticks and perfumes in Vogue one Christmas, or working in retail and looking at what furniture works in a home and coming up with the design brief, it’s always audience-focused, rooted in human behaviour..”
A change of careers
Her pivot into retail from consumer magazines was a result of needing a job where she didn’t have to travel:
“My daughter had a very rare form of cancer as a child, so she required lots of care and hospital time. She’s very well now and studying product design at Edinburgh, I’m very lucky. But it meant that doing shoots and going to fashion shows was out of the question. So, I moved into interior magazines.”
After around four years, she got a role at Heal’s, working as communications director:
“As time went on, I went on to the Conran shop and worked more on that creative marketing business side.”
When she was approached by Tate, it was to become CEO of Tate Commerce, leading commercial activity across publishing, retail, product development, licensing, and e-commerce. She observes:
“Of course, I had both the publishing and the retail experience. It’s interesting: what I’d often thought of as an unfortunate pivot in my career because of my daughter’s illness actually put me in a unique position years later.”
When she was four years into that role, in September 2022, the managing director role came up:
“Because my early career was very much on the creative rather than the commercial side, I’ve got a good balance of creative and commercial insight,” she explains. “I understand the curatorial aims and desires, but also the business needs.”
Carmel Allen & Tate
The first year, she comments, has been intense:
“I’ve been trying to understand not just the complexities of the business needs here at Tate, but the cultural sector in general. I’ve come to the role straight out of COVID. The problems that Tate faces are the problems that every other cultural institution is facing. We’ve got less grant aid in real terms from the government, reduced visitor numbers, and, obviously, a cost of living crisis.
“Tate faces the same business problems as every other museum. We have to be very creative in reinventing the business model and thinking about where we can take that. The other complexity that, again, every other cultural institution is facing, is sustainability, and looking at the business model in terms of whether we should be doing these great big exhibitions that ship art from around the world.
“Should we be encouraging people to travel internationally to see these exhibitions? Where do we sit, and what are we doing there? What is our take?
“There is a lot of getting the teams to start with a blank piece of paper. We are trying to use COVID in a positive way to start again and see this as a ground zero where we can create a new business. But at the same time, you’re trying to shore up income and visitor numbers, and keep the show on the road.”
Caring for the national collection & furthering the enjoyment of art
Addressing the digital contribution, she says:
“I think that we are trying to see digital as a way of doing things, rather than a separate entity. It has to be introduced in a very natural way. During COVID it was rather forced upon people. We can see that millennials want experiences in real life; to get together. As much as we’re developing our digital assets, we don’t want them to be an alternative; we want them to work alongside.
“Nothing replaces actually coming together at the galleries.”
The mission of Tate has remained the same since the doors opened in 1892: to care for the national collection, and to further the enjoyment and understanding of art.
Allen highlights the enjoyment part:
“As we look at the model going forward, we’ve got to remember that enjoyment: bringing joy back. Audiences need that joy and surprise.”
A more participatory approach at Tate
The old model of galleries tended to engender a reverential hush rather than a sense of joy. She says:
“I think Tate Modern broke the model in the sense that people feel it’s very participatory. In the Turbine Hall, and the Duveen galleries at Tate Britain, and of course, at Tate St. Ives and Liverpool, you see people interacting with the art and the spaces in a much more friendly manner.”
UNIQLO Tate Play, a free programme of art, activities and play drawing inspiration from the art on display, is an example:
“People think they’re aimed at children, and to a large extent they are, but actually it’s all ages that get involved.,” she says. “At the moment we’ve got the Rasheed Araeen one in Tate Modern, and just seeing people playing and enjoying and being part of the artwork is wonderful: the same with Yayoi Kusama‘s interactive Obliteration Room, last year.
“Seeing that participation, I think, is what is unique to Tate, that people feel it’s very much theirs, and can interact with it. Nothing makes me happier than hearing voices in the galleries.”
Younger & more diverse audiences
In 2019, the Year 3 Project began, Steve McQueen’s portrait of London’s children through the vehicle of a school photograph:
“Every Year 3 pupil from every primary school in London was photographed and all their photos were in the Duveen Galleries,” she comments. “Of course, that meant that every year three class – or year four, by that point – then came back to see themselves and to engage. The noise and the chatter in the Duveens were absolutely joyous.
“In fact, when it gets stressful and I’m wondering how the hell we are going to make ends meet and settle the books, I go into the galleries. If I see a school group going round and listen to the voices, I think, ‘This is why we do it.’”
Increasing the diversity of the audience is an important focus. She explains:
“I think the key to that is bringing in children and families, and also really looking at the local audience. We’re in Pimlico and we’re in Southwark, and deepening those relationships that we have with the local communities is important. We make a point of going out to try and find them.
“It’s very much the same with recruitment; we want a more diverse workforce, as well, but that means going to different places and not just advertising on our website or in the Guardian. You’ve got to go out and look elsewhere.”
Sustainability at Tate
Sustainability – both financial and ecological – is also a focus:
“We are doing all sorts in terms of eco-sustainability; everything from capturing the water on the rooftops to flush the loos to looking at how we source our food, how we ship art, how we package it, how we store it. The collection care group spend a lot of time working on where things can be improved.
“On financial sustainability, it’s really about looking at how we can use our collection more. Often the model has been borrowing art from elsewhere, but we do have over 75,000 pieces in the national collection. We want to use that more, but also share it more.”
The Plus Tate group, a network of (currently 47) visual arts organisations across the UK further this objective, exchanging ideas, skills and resources, while collaborating on programmes:
“We want to circulate the collection, and share the curatorial work and exhibitions so it can get to a wider audience,” she says:
“We are also looking to our membership, and how we can open that up to more people. Often a membership can be a hundred pounds a year, so we’ve started direct debits for people where it’s just £7.50 a month. It’s really to help younger people or people who need to manage their budgets.”
Changing interpretations
Interpretation is another aspect of galleries that evolves.
“We have a separate interpretation and learning and research team, as well as the curatorial team,” she explains. “We also have a new director of research. Dr. David Dibosa joined Tate as director of research and interpretation in April. We have lots of research going on about the collection, and about viewing it in different ways.”
Part of this concerns decolonising the collection:
“We are constantly reappraising the captions. Each work of art in the collection will have all the captions it’s had over time in its archive, so you can see how knowledge, history and what’s appropriate changes over time. That’s a work in evolution all the time – and, of course, it’s something you can never catch up on. We’re constantly behind.”
Current exhibitions at Tate
Rasheed Araeen’s endlessly changing sculpture, Zero to Infinity, is on at Tate Modern until the 28th of August:
“The Rossettis is still on,” Allen adds. “That’s wonderful, as well.”
The exhibition, which follows the Rossetti generation (Dante Gabriel, Christina and Elizabeth Siddal) through and beyond the Pre-Raphaelite years, is on at Tate Britain until the 24th of September.
“A World in Common is the contemporary African photography exhibition that is on until January over at Tate Modern, and if you haven’t seen that – I really recommend it. It was curated by Osei Bonsu; it’s his first big show at Tate Modern. It’s really rather wonderful.
“At Tate St. Ives, we’ve got The Casablanca Art School.”
The rehang at Tate Britain is still very new, she points out:
“It has some great little spots within it. Seeing the Tudor rooms in a different light is fantastic, but in the Turner rooms we’ve paired Turner with Rothko: Rothko was really inspired by Turner’s work, and that room in particular is fabulous. It is really important to remember we don’t just have paid exhibitions. We’ve got the free offer that’s on all the time.”
Look Again
Tate has produced a series of books aimed at developing perspectives on the collection:
“When we were looking at the rehang of Tate Britain we were thinking about doing one big book. In the end, we decided to do a series of books. We began with a working title of One Word, Many Voices, where we would get diverse voices to look at aspects of the collection and write an essay.”
This became Tate’s Look Again series:
“We have Johnny Pitts on Visibility, Afua Hirsch on Empire, Shahida Bari on Fashion, Jay Bernard on Complicity: we’ve got about 15 or 16 in the series now, and are bringing in many different voices, reappraising the collection and bringing their thoughts.
“It is important that Tate can display and show the art as the art itself. We need to allow our visitors to have an opinion on it. We thought this series would help people to develop their own opinions.”
The power of art
Addressing the direction of the art and museum spaces, and emerging trends in the sector, she says:
“What I hope is that people see that all these national institutions are their institutions. It’s our job to be the custodians and to keep the galleries open for them, but every work of art at Tate is theirs.
“I want people to feel that it’s really their building, their art, their collection. I am personally keen on the idea of social prescribing of the arts. If we can encourage people to feel that these spaces are theirs and to come, galleries, and art spaces, have a transformative power.”
“I doubt anybody ever comes in and leaves feeling worse than when they came in. Just being together and experiencing art in some way is wonderful, whether you have to be prescribed it by your doctor, or you just have this sense of – come: enjoy this, it’s yours.”
Top image: Tate Britain rehang, installation view 2023. Photo © Tate (Madeleine Buddo)
