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Art & Class: How the middle classes hijacked the nation’s galleries
On a bright autumn day in 1857, the workers from Salts Mill in Yorkshire were waiting for special trains to take them on a day trip. But they were not going to they were going to The Manchester Art Exhibition which attracted 1.3 million visitors in less than six months the majority of whom were mill hands, factory workers and domestic servants.
Today less than 8% of visitors to our great galleries are from the working class. When and why did the working classes stop visiting art galleries and why does this matter?
Art & Class describes the advent of public art in the 18th Century, the development of national galleries in London and the explosion of regional galleries, all of which were crowded with working-class visitors.
All this came to a halt in 1946 when Keynes and the Bloomsbury Group seized control of the art world by establishing the Arts Council, slashing the countrywide Art for the People budget and pouring money into opera and ballet.
The same metropolitan elite, who established the Arts Council in 1946, still dominate our national galleries. Despite free opening, a range of charging and taxation policies mean that the working classes are not only being denied access to cultural capital but are subsidising the middle classes.
Art is a key aspect of cultural capital which middle-class children absorb through visits to galleries and concerts, but which are beyond the reach of working-class parents. This precious commodity opens the door to the elite universities and then on to high paying jobs but working-class graduates entering the elite professions earn 16% less than their middle-class peers.
If the boards of today’s galleries were more diverse and had inclusive charging and curatorial policies then, as in the Victorian era, they would attract visitors from all classes.
“As the director of a national museum based outside the M25, I wrestled with metropolitan bias and London-centric funders, philanthropists and Trustees. David Kennedy’s brilliant book illustrates how back in Victorian times, things were different and argues powerfully for why, despite some change recently, we still need to see a fairer distribution of cultural spend around the country.”
Colin Philpott
Former Director of the National Science and Media Museum
“Every future curator should read David Kennedy’s inspiring but challenging story of the relationship between art and audiences since the 18th-century. Inspiring, as he shows that once upon a time – at Vauxhall Gardens in the 1740s, at the National Gallery in the 1850s and in the great new Museums of the industrial north - all classes crowded together in front of great art. Challenging, because Kennedy shows that in modern times many Museums and art institutions have become less democratic, not more; fewer working-class people visit the National Gallery than 150 years ago. A captivating, mischievous and genuinely radical new perspective.”
Christopher Woodward
Director The Garden Museum
Today less than 8% of visitors to our great galleries are from the working class. When and why did the working classes stop visiting art galleries and why does this matter?
Art & Class describes the advent of public art in the 18th Century, the development of national galleries in London and the explosion of regional galleries, all of which were crowded with working-class visitors.
All this came to a halt in 1946 when Keynes and the Bloomsbury Group seized control of the art world by establishing the Arts Council, slashing the countrywide Art for the People budget and pouring money into opera and ballet.
The same metropolitan elite, who established the Arts Council in 1946, still dominate our national galleries. Despite free opening, a range of charging and taxation policies mean that the working classes are not only being denied access to cultural capital but are subsidising the middle classes.
Art is a key aspect of cultural capital which middle-class children absorb through visits to galleries and concerts, but which are beyond the reach of working-class parents. This precious commodity opens the door to the elite universities and then on to high paying jobs but working-class graduates entering the elite professions earn 16% less than their middle-class peers.
If the boards of today’s galleries were more diverse and had inclusive charging and curatorial policies then, as in the Victorian era, they would attract visitors from all classes.
“As the director of a national museum based outside the M25, I wrestled with metropolitan bias and London-centric funders, philanthropists and Trustees. David Kennedy’s brilliant book illustrates how back in Victorian times, things were different and argues powerfully for why, despite some change recently, we still need to see a fairer distribution of cultural spend around the country.”
Colin Philpott
Former Director of the National Science and Media Museum
“Every future curator should read David Kennedy’s inspiring but challenging story of the relationship between art and audiences since the 18th-century. Inspiring, as he shows that once upon a time – at Vauxhall Gardens in the 1740s, at the National Gallery in the 1850s and in the great new Museums of the industrial north - all classes crowded together in front of great art. Challenging, because Kennedy shows that in modern times many Museums and art institutions have become less democratic, not more; fewer working-class people visit the National Gallery than 150 years ago. A captivating, mischievous and genuinely radical new perspective.”
Christopher Woodward
Director The Garden Museum
280 pages, Paperback
Published May 9, 2024
About the author
David Kennedy
523 books17 followersDave is a guidebook writer/publisher turned novelist. He began rock climbing around 1984, which was a “logical” extension of hiking, camping and backpacking since boyhood. After his first article on climbing in San Diego’s back-country was published in Rock & Ice magazine, he created the San Diego County Climbing Guide, which proved extremely popular. Next came San Diego Adventures: Classic hiking, mountain biking and rock climbing. In 2007 he completed and published a second edition of the climbing guide, which vividly detailed over 2,000 routes.
Subsequently, he embarked on a fiction-writing odyssey, producing sci-fi novels and short stories “rather unsuccessfully” in terms of publication. He finally found his proper voice in 2017 when he wrote Ricochet, an intense modern-day thriller about a young female vigilante. Upon its completion, he learned about Acorn Publishing while attending the 2018 Southern California Writers’ Conference and was signed by them shortly thereafter.
David is also an accomplished horticulturist. He became interested in tropical plants called Bromeliads in 2010, which quickly turned into a passion. He is an active member of the San Diego Bromeliad Society, and has won “Best of Show” awards in their annual show multiple times. His Tillandsia collection is considered one of the best in the region. For many years he and his wife Debbie have been chief volunteer caretakers of the San Diego Zoo’s Kent Bromeliad Garden.
Becoming a novelist is the realization of a lifelong dream. David loves the process of storytelling, of waking up each day well before dawn and diving into the art of making words come together in a way that appeals.
Subsequently, he embarked on a fiction-writing odyssey, producing sci-fi novels and short stories “rather unsuccessfully” in terms of publication. He finally found his proper voice in 2017 when he wrote Ricochet, an intense modern-day thriller about a young female vigilante. Upon its completion, he learned about Acorn Publishing while attending the 2018 Southern California Writers’ Conference and was signed by them shortly thereafter.
David is also an accomplished horticulturist. He became interested in tropical plants called Bromeliads in 2010, which quickly turned into a passion. He is an active member of the San Diego Bromeliad Society, and has won “Best of Show” awards in their annual show multiple times. His Tillandsia collection is considered one of the best in the region. For many years he and his wife Debbie have been chief volunteer caretakers of the San Diego Zoo’s Kent Bromeliad Garden.
Becoming a novelist is the realization of a lifelong dream. David loves the process of storytelling, of waking up each day well before dawn and diving into the art of making words come together in a way that appeals.
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June 3, 2026
This book is a bit of a tease! It doesn’t get into the feisty claim of the sub-title until over half-way through. The first half is interesting enough - a review of the public exhibition of paintings before the C19th. Of course people didn’t have television or even movie theatres back then, so they were slavering for pictures. Images of battles and generals were big crowd pullers across London in places like Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and this was the first time that the aristocratic monopoly on art had been broken. People in the expanding towns and cities had started to generate ‘public opinions’ through heated discussions in coffee houses and crowded spouting corners from Kennington Common in South London to, what is now, Speakers Corner at Marble Arch. Yes, for a long time tasty fine arts had been amassed in the privacy of ‘stately’ homes. But they were intimately studied by the servant class - some of whom were inspired. My granny Daisy was one such servant who worked at Uppsley Castle in Yorkshire as a teenager in the early C20th. She did needle work herself but transmitted a love of drawing and painting to her daughter Joan, who was my mum.
In the C19th rapid industrialisation was followed by urbanisation and town councils. The bourgeoisie cleverly managed municipal resources to meet our basic needs for water, roads and sewerage and in the process pocketed tidy profits in a more or less business-like way. The masses who poured into the towns posed a threat to the old order with their anarchic new urban cultures so they were directed to spend their minimal, but increasing, leisure time engaged in more ‘Rational Recreations’. Things like choral societies, rather than sing-songs down the local pub. Cycling clubs were another example of an approved leisure pursuit and sometimes there were railway outings to see blockbuster style art shows in the bigger northern cities. Kennedy tells us that some of the newly minted beneficiaries of the explosion of British industry had ‘risen up’ from the working classes, and although newly rich still retained a sensible connection to working class culture. Some of these people helped fund a growing number of municipal art galleries. Examples of the more pleasant characters quoted by Kennedy include: Joseph Whitworth (1803 - 1887), Thomas Horsfall (1805 -1878), Thomas Ferens (1847 - 1930), John Mitchell Keiller (1851-1899) and Joseph Briggs (1873 - 1937). You may recognise galleries named after them.
Of course there were also plenty of base motives for industrialists to support art galleries, like having a portrait of your inflated ego hung in the centre of town, or even a statue. Kennedy does mention these and others who had all too familiar motives for donating, like finding favour with the local planning department!
Posh progressive cultural thinkers, like John Ruskin (1819 -1900), the author of ‘The Stones of Venice’, were keen to guide the leadership of these plebeian initiatives. Ruskin rushed around the country giving Ted-type talks promoting a better kind of taste. However, as Kennedy says the narrative basis of much of Victorian art had an easy appeal to a working class sentiment.
But these seemingly halcyon days of ‘Art for the people’ were numbered. Most of the provincial town councils and the local authorities in the big northern cities began to subside into a bureaucratic miasma by the end of the C19th. In spite of the efforts of Ruskin and other patricians the art expertise and vision of local councillors was not there.
At the same time the aristocracy in the London had maintained its control of the new national art institutions that were open to the public - The National Gallery, Royal Academy, National Portrait Gallery, V&A Museum and The Tate. The London art institutions were cleverly managed by powerful upper class operators like John Keynes (1883 - 1946).
David Kennedy tells a fascinating story of how the metropolitan elite managed the upsurge of social democracy in the mid C20th. The Arts Council was first led by John Keynes from 1946 - 1953. He was followed by Kenneth Clark, who had been heading up the National Gallery from 1934 to 1945. Clark then became chair of the Arts Council from 1953 - 1960, and went on to make the influential and record breaking TV series on Art called ‘Civilisation’. (BBC 1966 - 69).
“Keynes said he wanted to see art flourish throughout the country but then poured money into Covent Garden” p.189 (his wife was Lydia Lopokova a Russian Balerina…)
Behind Keynes was The Bloomsbury Group who were the Fine Art influencers of the early C20th promoting an elite London centric British modernism. The core operators in this group were: Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Clive and Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster, Desmond MacCarthy, Duncan Grant and the aforementioned John Keynes. Difficult art showed the mental superiority of the ruling class. (Don’t forget classism is based on the supposed mental inferiority of the working class). Many if not most working class people nowadays feel they aren’t able to express a valid opinion about a piece of art. This is the result of a prolonged and concerted campaign. Fry and Bell are quoted saying, “The normal man cannot know if a work of art is beautiful”, because, "judgment is a matter of taste that requires a degree of sensibility higher than that which the normal voter has been blessed.” p.182
“Keynes and the Bloomsbury group pulled off the trick of obtaining taxpayers funding whilst remaining completely unaccountable.” p.173
Raymond Williams described them as ‘the informal ruling class’ - an unusually compact and organic ruling class. The Oxbridge old boys club ruled. Williams served on The Arts Council from 1976 - 78. Richard Hoggart, who was vice chair from 1977 - 81, commented in 1977; “Most of the new money is going towards subsidising and improving the artistic pursuits of those who already know and enjoy the arts.” p.180. I find it interesting that even with these powerful working class intellects on board, no significant changes were made.
The result is that London Art institutions still get a much bigger slice of the cake than the provinces; with crumbs for places like the North East. And, although I wouldn’t put the blame solely on a lack of art, the end result of the general attitude of indifference, contempt and neglect of the regions is our current Reform nightmare.
What Kennedy doesn’t discuss in this first edition (and hopefully more editions will follow!) is the complex influence of the burgeoning C20th art market. Firstly in Europe and America but then in the last 50 years a global expansion. As neoliberal capitalism expanded exponentially into every corner of the globe bourgeois classes formed in each country and quickly built national art and music institutions. The movers and shakers of the global trade in art have upmarket bases in London and carry out complex and private negotiations with the National Galleries to maintain a dynamic but unthreatening canon.
Kennedy himself seems to favour ‘narrative art’ over conceptual or abstract modernism. But as a working artist I’ve noticed that working class people will often come onside with experimental art if they have a chance to talk to the artist about their reasoning and motives. I mounted a Flying Disc outside of Ealing Town Hall in 1972. As some of the catering staff were leaving the building I noticed them pointing at it whirling about in the sky, so introduced myself to them. They seems to appreciate a level conversation about the ‘thing’ that had caught their eye
Working class artists don’t get much of a look-in on Kennedy’s survey. There is no connection made between the working classes and their artists. He only refers to ‘working class culture’ twice and doesn’t discuss it. It is difficult to make generalisations but it is clear that the elite does not want to make the connection between the content of working class artists’ work and class oppression. The remarkable story of Emmanuel Cooper’s energetic campaign for a museum of ‘people’s art’ doesn’t get considered. 'People's Art: working class art from 1750 to the present day' by Emmanuel Cooper, Mainstream Publishing, 1994. Too often attempts by radicals to rattle the cage slip out of view.
The glamour of the Bloomsbury/Keynes/ Kenneth Clark/ elite was hard to resist in the provinces and it’s still rare to find a gallery director who can give this elite the middle finger and live to tell the tale.
“Popular taste is bad taste, as any honest man with experience will agree.” Kenneth Clark, (quoted by B. Foss 2007). The charismatic Clark is long dead but this maxim has yet to be effectively challenged. This book starts that job.
The general population pay their taxes and buy their National Lottery tickets but the London Galleries not only benefit disproportionally from this income but the elite that run them also control the art that the regional galleries can show.
I putting this draft up for comment.
NB The author listed here is the wrong person! The author of this book - David Kennedy spent his early career working as a social worker in Manningham, inner-city Bradford, in 1972. Over a span of more than 30 years, he held 11 different positions before becoming the interim head and eventually the Chief Executive of the Bradford Council in 2005/2006. While at the council he made art accessible to all by promoting exhibitions which drew visitors from all classes in record numbers. Two exhibitions illustrate this policy. A History of the Independent Labour Party, founded in Bradford, created a new audience by attracting trade unionists and blue-collar workers. Similarly, an exhibition of the paintings found in the nation’s homes, loved by the public but loathed by the critics, brought in thousands who had never visited an art gallery....
In the C19th rapid industrialisation was followed by urbanisation and town councils. The bourgeoisie cleverly managed municipal resources to meet our basic needs for water, roads and sewerage and in the process pocketed tidy profits in a more or less business-like way. The masses who poured into the towns posed a threat to the old order with their anarchic new urban cultures so they were directed to spend their minimal, but increasing, leisure time engaged in more ‘Rational Recreations’. Things like choral societies, rather than sing-songs down the local pub. Cycling clubs were another example of an approved leisure pursuit and sometimes there were railway outings to see blockbuster style art shows in the bigger northern cities. Kennedy tells us that some of the newly minted beneficiaries of the explosion of British industry had ‘risen up’ from the working classes, and although newly rich still retained a sensible connection to working class culture. Some of these people helped fund a growing number of municipal art galleries. Examples of the more pleasant characters quoted by Kennedy include: Joseph Whitworth (1803 - 1887), Thomas Horsfall (1805 -1878), Thomas Ferens (1847 - 1930), John Mitchell Keiller (1851-1899) and Joseph Briggs (1873 - 1937). You may recognise galleries named after them.
Of course there were also plenty of base motives for industrialists to support art galleries, like having a portrait of your inflated ego hung in the centre of town, or even a statue. Kennedy does mention these and others who had all too familiar motives for donating, like finding favour with the local planning department!
Posh progressive cultural thinkers, like John Ruskin (1819 -1900), the author of ‘The Stones of Venice’, were keen to guide the leadership of these plebeian initiatives. Ruskin rushed around the country giving Ted-type talks promoting a better kind of taste. However, as Kennedy says the narrative basis of much of Victorian art had an easy appeal to a working class sentiment.
But these seemingly halcyon days of ‘Art for the people’ were numbered. Most of the provincial town councils and the local authorities in the big northern cities began to subside into a bureaucratic miasma by the end of the C19th. In spite of the efforts of Ruskin and other patricians the art expertise and vision of local councillors was not there.
At the same time the aristocracy in the London had maintained its control of the new national art institutions that were open to the public - The National Gallery, Royal Academy, National Portrait Gallery, V&A Museum and The Tate. The London art institutions were cleverly managed by powerful upper class operators like John Keynes (1883 - 1946).
David Kennedy tells a fascinating story of how the metropolitan elite managed the upsurge of social democracy in the mid C20th. The Arts Council was first led by John Keynes from 1946 - 1953. He was followed by Kenneth Clark, who had been heading up the National Gallery from 1934 to 1945. Clark then became chair of the Arts Council from 1953 - 1960, and went on to make the influential and record breaking TV series on Art called ‘Civilisation’. (BBC 1966 - 69).
“Keynes said he wanted to see art flourish throughout the country but then poured money into Covent Garden” p.189 (his wife was Lydia Lopokova a Russian Balerina…)
Behind Keynes was The Bloomsbury Group who were the Fine Art influencers of the early C20th promoting an elite London centric British modernism. The core operators in this group were: Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Clive and Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster, Desmond MacCarthy, Duncan Grant and the aforementioned John Keynes. Difficult art showed the mental superiority of the ruling class. (Don’t forget classism is based on the supposed mental inferiority of the working class). Many if not most working class people nowadays feel they aren’t able to express a valid opinion about a piece of art. This is the result of a prolonged and concerted campaign. Fry and Bell are quoted saying, “The normal man cannot know if a work of art is beautiful”, because, "judgment is a matter of taste that requires a degree of sensibility higher than that which the normal voter has been blessed.” p.182
“Keynes and the Bloomsbury group pulled off the trick of obtaining taxpayers funding whilst remaining completely unaccountable.” p.173
Raymond Williams described them as ‘the informal ruling class’ - an unusually compact and organic ruling class. The Oxbridge old boys club ruled. Williams served on The Arts Council from 1976 - 78. Richard Hoggart, who was vice chair from 1977 - 81, commented in 1977; “Most of the new money is going towards subsidising and improving the artistic pursuits of those who already know and enjoy the arts.” p.180. I find it interesting that even with these powerful working class intellects on board, no significant changes were made.
The result is that London Art institutions still get a much bigger slice of the cake than the provinces; with crumbs for places like the North East. And, although I wouldn’t put the blame solely on a lack of art, the end result of the general attitude of indifference, contempt and neglect of the regions is our current Reform nightmare.
What Kennedy doesn’t discuss in this first edition (and hopefully more editions will follow!) is the complex influence of the burgeoning C20th art market. Firstly in Europe and America but then in the last 50 years a global expansion. As neoliberal capitalism expanded exponentially into every corner of the globe bourgeois classes formed in each country and quickly built national art and music institutions. The movers and shakers of the global trade in art have upmarket bases in London and carry out complex and private negotiations with the National Galleries to maintain a dynamic but unthreatening canon.
Kennedy himself seems to favour ‘narrative art’ over conceptual or abstract modernism. But as a working artist I’ve noticed that working class people will often come onside with experimental art if they have a chance to talk to the artist about their reasoning and motives. I mounted a Flying Disc outside of Ealing Town Hall in 1972. As some of the catering staff were leaving the building I noticed them pointing at it whirling about in the sky, so introduced myself to them. They seems to appreciate a level conversation about the ‘thing’ that had caught their eye
Working class artists don’t get much of a look-in on Kennedy’s survey. There is no connection made between the working classes and their artists. He only refers to ‘working class culture’ twice and doesn’t discuss it. It is difficult to make generalisations but it is clear that the elite does not want to make the connection between the content of working class artists’ work and class oppression. The remarkable story of Emmanuel Cooper’s energetic campaign for a museum of ‘people’s art’ doesn’t get considered. 'People's Art: working class art from 1750 to the present day' by Emmanuel Cooper, Mainstream Publishing, 1994. Too often attempts by radicals to rattle the cage slip out of view.
The glamour of the Bloomsbury/Keynes/ Kenneth Clark/ elite was hard to resist in the provinces and it’s still rare to find a gallery director who can give this elite the middle finger and live to tell the tale.
“Popular taste is bad taste, as any honest man with experience will agree.” Kenneth Clark, (quoted by B. Foss 2007). The charismatic Clark is long dead but this maxim has yet to be effectively challenged. This book starts that job.
The general population pay their taxes and buy their National Lottery tickets but the London Galleries not only benefit disproportionally from this income but the elite that run them also control the art that the regional galleries can show.
I putting this draft up for comment.
NB The author listed here is the wrong person! The author of this book - David Kennedy spent his early career working as a social worker in Manningham, inner-city Bradford, in 1972. Over a span of more than 30 years, he held 11 different positions before becoming the interim head and eventually the Chief Executive of the Bradford Council in 2005/2006. While at the council he made art accessible to all by promoting exhibitions which drew visitors from all classes in record numbers. Two exhibitions illustrate this policy. A History of the Independent Labour Party, founded in Bradford, created a new audience by attracting trade unionists and blue-collar workers. Similarly, an exhibition of the paintings found in the nation’s homes, loved by the public but loathed by the critics, brought in thousands who had never visited an art gallery....
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