Whitechapel Gallery appoints UCL Prof. Mazzucato as the Gallery’s first Economist-in-Residence

London, 23 April 2026- The Whitechapel Gallery has appointed Mariana Mazzucato - Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London and Founding Director of the Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP)  - as its first Economist-in-Residence. 

The three-year residency, initiated by Whitechapel Gallery Director Gilane Tawadros, extends Mazzucato’s Public Value of Arts and Culture (PVAC) programme, which she leads with a high-level Working Group of policymakers, cultural leaders, artists, and economists.

PVAC challenges the conventional economic thinking that has long undervalued arts and culture, developing new frameworks that treat culture not as a cost to be managed, but as a strategic public investment that shapes societal outcomes and the direction of economic growth. 

Whitechapel Gallery will operate as a research partner and live site for this work- allowing Mazzucato and the Gallery to develop together, from the inside, what a public value approach to a cultural institution actually looks like in practice: how it is governed, how it is funded, and what it can tell us about culture’s wider role in the economy. The residencybuilds on other place-based case studies, including work with the BBC on dynamic public value, and Carnival Economics, developed with artist Alvaro Barrington and Brazil’s Minister of Culture, Margareth Menezes, which explores Carnival ecosystems from Notting Hill to Rio de Janeiro and Salvador as living examples of how culture creates public value at scale.

As Economist-in-Residence, Professor Mazzucato and her team will work closely with Director Gilane Tawadros, key staff and stakeholders – informing internal discussions, and advising on key aspects of the Gallery’s strategic plan as part of a broader inquiry into the funding and governance models that shape cultural institutions. The appointment runs from April 2026 until the end of March 2029.

Gilane Tawadros, Director, Whitechapel Gallery:

“I am thrilled to welcome the trailblazing economist Mariana Mazzucato as Whitechapel Gallery’s first Economist-in-Residence. As a publicly funded art gallery, we have made an unflinching commitment to confirm and extend our role as an active locally focused cultural and civic space at a time when community support and advocacy feels increasingly important. Building on Professor Mazzucato’s significant work on innovation and public value, we shall be working together to understand how culture promotes the common good in unique, complex, and essential ways.”

Mariana Mazzucato, Professor, University College London

”Places like the Whitechapel Gallery do more than present art. They convene publics, sustain local cultural ecosystems, and generate value at an individual and societal level - from education and health outcomes to social cohesion and democratic participation. They are also spaces where people can begin to imagine better collective futures. It is an honour to be appointed Economist-in-Residence at the Whitechapel Gallery. We need to go beyond valuing the cultural sector, to developing a truly creative economy and society. This requires measuring the long-term public value of arts and culture; questioning who defines culture and bringing arts to the heart of economic strategies.”

Launching her Whitechapel Gallery residency, Professor Mazzucato will lead a panel discussion titled The Value of Culture on Thursday 30 April. The event is a highlight of Whitechapel Gallery’s new talks series, Art Futures, which interrogates the role and responsibilities of public art institutions in a time of multiple economic and socio-political challenges.  

Mazzucato will draw on her forthcoming publication The Common Good Economy: A New Compass to offer an initial provocation, after which she will be joined by the artist Alvaro Barrington and philanthropy strategist Darren Isom in a debate looking at how alternative notions of value can reshape funding models and illuminating the vital role of public arts institutions within a modern and just democracy. 

For details and bookings, please visit: 

whitechapelgallery.org/events/art-futures-the-value-of-culture

Press Contacts

For Whitechapel Gallery:

• Eleanor Gibson, Rees & Co | eleanor.gibson@reesandco.com | +44 (0)20 3137 8776 / +44 (0)7432 704833
• Yulia Ivanova, Whitechapel Gallery | press@whitechapelgallery.org | +44 (0)207 539 7880

For UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose:

• Sol Hallam, Director’s Head of Communications, UCL | iipp-dir-comms@ucl.ac.uk | +44 (0) 7503 575 719

Notes to Editors

About Professor Mariana Mazzucato: Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, where she is Founding Mariana Mazzucato is Professor at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). Her highly acclaimed books include The Entrepreneurial State, The Value of Everything, Mission Economy, and The Big Con. Her forthcoming book, The Common Good Economy: A new Compass will be published by Penguin in June 2026, and is the foundation for her Public Value of Arts and Culture project. 

About IIPP: The Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at University College London (UCL) aims to develop a new framework for creating, nurturing and evaluating public value in order to achieve economic growth that is more innovation-led, inclusive and sustainable. This requires rethinking the underlying economics that has informed the education of global civil servants and the design of government policies. A key pillar of IIPP’s research is its understanding of markets as outcomes of the interactions between different actors. In this context, public policy should not be seen as simply fixing market failures, but also as actively shaping and co-creating markets. Re-focusing and designing public organisations around mission-led, public purpose aims will help tackle the grand challenges facing the 21st century. IIPP is housed in The Bartlett, a leading global Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London (UCL), with its radical thinking about space, design and sustainability.

About PVAC: The Public Value of Arts and Culture (PVAC) is an applied research programme, directed by Professor Mazzucato, at UCL IIPP that places arts and culture at the centre of economic thinking, developing new frameworks for understanding and governing culture as long-term public investment and social infrastructure.

About The Common Good Economy: In The Common Good Economy, Mariana Mazzucato builds on her visionary ideas of the entrepreneurial state and mission-oriented policies to establish a new theory of the common good, one which allows governments and businesses to develop purposeful economic relationships, creating value and building spaces where human flourishing can happen. She argues that how we achieve collective goals – through collective action, participation and reciprocity – matters as much as what those goals are. The book provides a practical ‘common good compass’ to help navigate our economies in a radically different direction.

About Whitechapel Gallery:

2026 marks Whitechapel Gallery’s 125th Anniversary, providing a unique opportunity to celebrate the Gallery’s groundbreaking history and set a bold agenda for the future.  

Founded in 1901 with the aim to bring ‘the finest art of the world to the people of East London’, the Gallery has been responsible for bringing some of the most radical, innovative and influential artists of our times to its East End home. 

From the outset it has pushed the boundaries of what a locally embedded cultural institution could do: giving voice and platform to local, national and international artists at all stages of their careers; presenting diverse practices, forms and ideas; exemplifying sector-leading learning and community outreach programmes; and being at the forefront of the global cultural scene.

The Gallery has presented ground-breaking solo shows from artists as diverse as Barbara Hepworth (1954), Jackson Pollock (1958), Helio Oiticica (1969), Gilbert & George (1971), Eva Hesse (1979), Frida Kahlo (1982), Sonia Boyce DBE RA (1988), Sophie Calle (2010), Zarina Bhimji (2012), Emily Jacir (2015), William Kentridge (2016), Theaster Gates (2021), Nicole Eisenman (2023), Zineb Sedira (2024), Gavin Jantjes (2024), Peter Kennard (2024), Lygia Clark (2024), Sonia Boyce (2024), Donald Rodney (2025), Hamad Butt (2025) and Joy Gregory (2025), as well as thought-provoking group and thematic exhibitions that reflect key artistic and cultural concerns. The Gallery’s focus on bringing artists, ideas, and audiences together remains as important today as it did over a century ago and has helped to cement the East End as one of the world’s most exciting and diverse cultural quarters.

The programme for our anniversary year continues to give space to a range of perspectives from the local to the global, with priority given to those systemically under-represented, especially women-identifying artists and artists of colour. Our mission is to ensure that Whitechapel Gallery continues to claim a distinctive and radical position in the wider social and cultural landscape, building on its pioneering history while translating and animating it for our time.

www.whitechapelgallery.org