Shrinking audiences, a cash crisis and rivals on the rise: what’s gone wrong at Tate?

When a national institution starts to sound like Spın̈al Tap, you know it’s in trouble.Recently, Tate channelled the mythic rock band’s claim that its audience was not shrinking, just “becoming more selective”. In response to a decline in visitor numbers and a cash crisis leading to redundancies, the museum group emphasised “record numbers of young visitors” to Tate Modern (who cares about all those uncool visitors above the age of 35?).Yet in the summer, Tate’s director, Maria Balshaw, blamed the group’s problems on a dearth of 16-24-year-old visitors from continental Europe. So they appeal to youth, but the wrong youth?This week, Tate Modern will open a blockbuster show that may attract paying adults

Protesters target Royal Opera House over performance by ‘Putin’s diva’

Dozens of protesters have gathered outside the Royal Opera House to demonstrate against an eminent Russian opera singer nicknamed “Putin’s diva” who performed on the opening night of Tosca.Anna Netrebko, 53, one of the world’s best-known sopranos, who draws full houses for her performances at leading opera houses globally, has denied being an ally of the Russian leader.She was ostracised by most major opera houses in the months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, despite releasing a statement unequivocally condemning the conflict.Netrebko, who has not performed in Russia since 2022, was given a People’s Artist award in 2008 by Vladimir Putin. The crowd of about 50 protesters congregated outside the central London venue included Natalia Filatova, 48, who was wrapped in the Ukrainian flag

And if your head explodes: Pink Floyd’s 20 best songs – ranked!

Fifty years after the release of Wish You Were Here, we count down the best of the band’s Syd Barrett years, their difficult recovery and later reunionLow on memorable tunes, big on racked, strangulated lead vocals, possessed of a worldview that makes every other Pink Floyd album look like a gushing font of Pollyanna-ish optimism, The Final Cut is a slog. But The Gunner’s Dream cuts through the gloom, thanks to a heartbreaking, fragile melody.Overshadowed by the albums that preceded and followed it, Obscured by Clouds might be the most underrated release in Pink Floyd’s catalogue: it boasts fantastic instrumental experiments, musical signposts to The Dark Side of the Moon and, in Wot’s … Uh the Deal?, a beautifully careworn, Beatles-y ballad undersold by its daft title.The studio half of Ummagumma is a mess – a band audibly searching for direction without success – but it contains one unequivocal triumph: Roger Waters’ evocation of the parkland on the banks of the River Cam, its pastoral calm spiked with a curious sense of menace, as if something nasty is lurking in the undergrowth.The More soundtrack throws up everything from proto-heavy metal and mock-flamenco to bongo solos

Stephen Colbert on Charlie Kirk shooting: ‘Political violence only leads to more political violence’

Late-night hosts respond to the shooting of Charlie Kirk and assess Donald Trump’s denials of a sexually suggestive birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein from 2003.Stephen Colbert opened his show on Wednesday with an acknowledgement of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the rightwing activist and Trump adviser who was shot and killed at age 31 during an event in Utah on Wednesday afternoon. “Our condolences go out to his family, and all of his loved ones,” said Colbert.“I’m old enough to personally remember the political violence of the 1960s,” the Late Show host added. “And I hope it is obvious to everyone in America that political violence does not solve any of our political differences

Jerry Seinfeld compares Free Palestine movement to Ku Klux Klan

Jerry Seinfeld denounced the Free Palestine movement as antisemitic and likened its rhetoric to that of the Ku Klux Klan during a surprise appearance at Duke University.“Free Palestine is, to me, just … you’re free to say you don’t like Jews. Just say you don’t like Jews,” the 71-year-old comedian said on stage, according to the Duke University Chronicle.“By saying ‘Free Palestine’, you’re not admitting what you really think,” he continued. “So it’s actually – compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here, because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews

Stephen Colbert on Trump’s Epstein letter: ‘A Picasso of pervitude’

Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s birthday drawing for Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, and his visit on Monday to the Museum of the Bible.Stephen Colbert has kept close tabs on the US president’s never-ending Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and on Tuesday, he noted: “The story of his disturbing friendship with Jeffrey Epstein keeps getting more.”Earlier this summer, the Wall Street Journal reported that back in 2003, Trump provided a lewd letter and cartoon to a book celebrating Epstein’s birthday – a “Picasso of pervitude”, as the Late Show host put it. The Journal reported that the note was framed by a doodle of a naked woman, and featured Trump’s squiggly signature “below her waist, mimicking pubic hair”.The note read, in part: “Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret