Rex Whistler’s mural In Pursuit of Rare Meats 1927, which decorates the walls of Tate Britain’s former restaurant, contains racist scenes. While the mural has been the subject of discussions since the 1970s, its visibility on social media in 2020 brought these debates under renewed public scrutiny. Following concerns from visitors and staff, Tate’s Board of Trustees made the decision in late 2020 to close the restaurant and seek new ways to present the mural. In 2022 Tate commissioned the artist Keith Piper to create a response to the work.

The COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 ignited institutional debates on systemic racism. In museums these debates often centred around the critical question of what to do with cultural heritage that includes racist imagery or artworks that are linked to forms of oppression such as racism, sexism and imperialism. The questions are especially complex where artworks and cultural artefacts are integrated in the physical fabric of a city or institution and cannot be consigned to storage or conveniently forgotten. They are further complicated by the realities of national political contexts, including government policies, and the way they impact public institutions.

Tate Papers is seeking contributions that examine contemporary responses to legacies of racism and oppression in art and its institutions. Possible areas of focus include:

– Examinations of the challenges involved in addressing historical artworks and other examples of cultural heritage that contain offensive imagery or are linked to forms of oppression such as racism, sexism and imperialism

– Considerations of the ways art practice can engage with such histories by revealing or transforming historical relationships and power structures

– Analysis of responses to legacies of oppression where artworks are integrated in the physical fabric (or integrated in some other way – for example, naming) of a city or institution

– Case studies or analyses of institutions as facilitators of collaborative meaning-making in critical relation to offensive artworks or heritage relating to histories of oppression

– Consideration of cultural heritage in relation to the realities of national political contexts, including government policies such as ‘retain and explain’ in the UK and their impact on public institutions

– The presentation and management of public statues and monuments

We also welcome practice submissions of artworks that respond to these focus areas.

Please send submissions via email to tatepaperstate.org.uk, including your full name and affiliation, as well as those of any co-authors or contributors.

Deadline for submissions: Monday 2 November 2026

Submissions received after the deadline will not be considered.

Submitting a Contribution
We invite the submission of research articles and practice-based outputs, including artworks and films. All submissions must demonstrate an original contribution to knowledge of art and its history or to museum practice.

We post calls for papers to themed issues twice a year. See past and current call for papers here (https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/call-for-papers). All current calls for submissions are also posted on the Tate Research home page: https://www.tate.org.uk/research

Text-based submissions should be no longer than 5,000 words in length, excluding endnotes. All submissions must respond to the themes outlined in the call for papers.

Suitable submissions are reviewed by the editors and will be sent for peer review (see About Tate Papers for editorial policies: https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/about). We aim to respond to submissions within twelve weeks.

Please send submissions to us by email to tatepaperstate.org.uk, including your full name and affiliation, as well as those of any co-authors or contributors.

Authorship and Plagiarism
Originality
Authors should only submit original work that has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration, peer review or accepted for publication elsewhere.
Any previously published material by the author that contains substantially similar content to the work being submitted must be disclosed at the time of submission. Authors should explain in a covering email how the submitted work differs from related content, which should be cited as references and described in the submitted manuscript.

Plagiarism
Authors must appropriately cite and reference the work of others in the submitted manuscript (see ‘Style and Formatting Guide’ below for detailed instructions regarding references).

Authorship
Authors should list all individuals who have made a significant contribution to the submission as co-authors and ensure that they have seen and approved the final version of the contribution and have agreed to its submission for publication.

File Formats
Text should be submitted as a Word (.doc or .docx) document.
Images should be submitted as .jpg (or .jpeg) files with a minimum resolution of 72 dpi and 1200 px on the longest side. They should be no larger than 4 MB.
Videos should be submitted as .mp4 files at the highest possible resolution. Video files will be hosted on the Tate YouTube account.
Sound files should be submitted as WAV files.
Images, videos and sound files should be sent as a download link using Dropbox, WeTransfer or Google Drive.

Before submitting an article, we recommend reviewing past articles published in Tate Papers and consulting our submission guidelines (https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/how-to-submit).

More information on editorial policy, criteria for publication and our peer review process can be found on the 'About Tate Papers' page (https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/about).