Advertisment

National Gallery Security Staff Segregated From Other Employees, Curator Claims

Outsourced security staff are being separated from other employees like “second class citizens”, a senior curator claims

The Art Journal3 August, 2026

National Gallery, London. Photo: Mike Peel via Wikimedia Commons

A senior curator has told The Guardian that the National Gallery’s outsourced security staff – the majority of whom are from non-white backgrounds – are being segregated like “second-class citizens”. 

The institution’s other employees have access to high-quality recreation rooms and a heavily subsidised canteen from which security staff are barred. They are relegated to a “stifling” basement space with broken furniture, rodent issues and no natural light or air conditioning, the curator says.

Security staff are represented by the PCS union, which wrote to the gallery’s director on 01 July to argue that the separation was  “potentially discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010”. The organisation is still waiting for a reply.

The National Gallery told The Guardian: “Security staff do not have access to the hub offices. This has been the position since those offices were established due to wider space constraints, with dedicated facilities provided elsewhere in the gallery for security staff and other contractors.”

Share:
FacebookTwitter

News

King's Library Tower at the British Library by Sam Walton

British Library Announces New CEO

The recently departed head of the UK Space Agency has been announced as the British Library’s new chief executive, as the institution emerges from a turbulent period and announces a new partnership with Netflix

The Art Journal
Advertisment
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy of the Lucas Museum

A New Hope for George Lucas’s $1 Billion Museum

 Far more than a home for Star Wars, George Lucas and Mellody Hobson’s new Los Angeles museum brings fine art, comics, illustration, photography and cinema together under the banner of ‘narrative art’

The Art Journal
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, courtesy of the Library of Congress

Washington DC’s Kennedy Center Risks Fiscal Collapse

Internal documents obtained by The Washington Post warn that the Kennedy Center faces “fiscal collapse” within weeks, after ticket sales and fundraising plunged amid upheaval following Donald Trump’s takeover

The Art Journal