British history at Tate Britain post-Brexit: Rich, white men and space invaders

In 2023, Tate Britain rehung its semi-permanent collections display as a revisionist history of Britain. This major curatorial project makes compelling storytelling. Its critically engaged approach opens British art and history to wider interpretations. At the same time, the display elevates rich, white men. Drawing on a range of theoretical literature from cultural studies, sociology and art history, this article considers how Tate Britain operationalises difference and hierarchy as a British inheritance post-Brexit. I argue that key areas early in the first section of the display, Historic and Early Modern British Art (1550 to 1930), augment a rich, white, male hegemony, against which ‘others’, people of colour, the working classes and (some) white women, are presented as what Nirmal Puwar calls ‘space invaders’. I explore how curatorial revisions and other display strategies – chronology, staging, portraiture and binaries – both disrupt and reinforce the hegemony. The article includes my drawings of key areas of the display, which guide my research.