London’s National Gallery has launched a “voluntary exit” scheme for staff to address an £8.2 million deficit, with the possibility of redundancies to follow. The news bodes ill for cultural institutions and cuts, in contrast to the recent announcement of additional cultural funding from the UK government.

If the National Gallery – one of Britain’s leading attractions with over 4 million visitors a year – is struggling to balance its books, it indicates wider structural problems in the arts industry. The National Gallery’s predicament is indicative of pressures that have been building across the arts. Among these are increased operating costs, public funding not keeping pace with inflation, and increased reliance on commercial income at a time when belts are tightening across the board.

Cash injections, when they come, are not enough in the face of longitudinal real-terms decline. Competing needs for infrastructural repairs and capital projects are leaving a gap in the recurring revenues that support educational work, staff and daily activity.

Read more: UK earmarks £1.5 billion in arts funding until 2030 – expert panel responds

As with the crisis in higher education, years of funding pressure and inflation are catching up with the sector and exposing the underlying fragility. The dawning scale of the problem has prompted a parliamentary inquiry into the financial resilience of government-sponsored museums and galleries. This is an acknowledgement of the deep-rooted nature of the........

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