Turner Prize Tensions

The announcement that Susan Philipsz had won the Turner prize—for a sound piece consisting of her own frailly beautiful voice singing a Scottish lament over the black waters of the Clyde—was rendered almost inaudible tonight by the chants and whoops of student protesters, who were separated from the champagne-sipping partygoers at Tate Britain only by a hastily erected barrier. Students from London’s art schools, including Chelsea College of Art & Design and Central Saint Martin’s, had occupied the entrance hall of Tate Britain, where they demonstrated against the coalition government’s cuts to the arts and humanities in higher education.