How we all learned to stop sneering and embrace modern art

Tate Modern's latest spectacular show in the Turbine Hall coincides with the Frieze fair and a proliferation of gallery displays. Is this conclusive proof that Britons are no longer scared of art?
Olafur Eliasson's art installation 'The Weather Project' in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern
Olafur Eliasson with his installation 'The Weather Project' in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern. Photograph: Dan Chung

Dust off your glad rags, culcha bunnies, and stiffen your Resolve, because this week is the biggest in the UK's art calendar. The Frieze fair of international contemporary art, open to the public from 15 to 18 October, will be accompanied by a dizzying array of museum-based exhibitions.

Tate Modern's 10th Turbine Hall commission, unveiled on Tuesday, is by Miroslaw Balka; the institution's John Baldessori retrospective opens on the same day. The Modern's near neighbour, the Hayward Gallery, will from Wednesday be presenting Ed Ruscha: Twenty Years of Painting. The Serpentine is already showing Gustav Metzger, and next weekend hosts a special two-day poetry marathon in its Pavilion, with Brian Eno, Gilbert and George, Nick Laird, James Fenton, Tracey Emin and Alasdair Gray among the performers. The Whitechapel is opening Sophie Calle on Friday, to accompany its Jeremy Dellar and Alan Kane-curated selection from the British Council Collection and Goshka Macuga's response to the gallery's Guernica tapestry. Oh, and there's the small matters of Turner and the Turner Prize, both at Tate Britain.

Not to mention Zoo 2009, the fringe art fair turned East End event, which brings together 50-plus smaller arts organisations and practitioners; the Museum of Everything, for non-mainstream art; plus all the commercial galleries, busily lining up their big boys: Anselm Kilmer at White Cube, Grayson Perry at Victoria Miro, Anish Kapoor at Lisson, chiming with his lauded Royal Academy show.

Frieze week promises to be a mind-boggling, foot-shredding bonanza of art. Investors, artists, gallery owners, collectors are flying in from all over the world (though there are fewer American galleries at Frieze than last year). There are so many events you could be forgiven for panicking into standing stock-still in the middle of Frieze's white tents. Even then, you'd probably be conscripted into one of the artworks made especially for the fair: Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth plan to film visitors and make them part of the show; Ryan Gander will be taking photographs of people looking at work. Everyone's ready to party. It seems almost mean to mention the R word. But here goes. Steady on, chaps, aren't we supposed to be in a recession?

"Well, it's certainly been a rollercoaster year," says Matthew Slotover, co-director of Frieze with Amanda Sharp. "Around January, February (when galleries apply to be part of the fair), that was the lowest point of confidence in the art market and we were worried. It's amazing just how closely the art world mirrors the general economy. But the response we've had has been amazing, especially in the last few weeks. There are more hotel bookings than last year, more VIPs coming in from Italy and Spain. So we're quietly confident."

Despite this, it is unlikely that sales from Frieze will reach anywhere near the levels before the credit crunch. But is Frieze solely about selling? In truth, it's a weird hybrid of commerce and curatorship, with artworks specially commissioned by Neville Wakefield, such as an intervention by Polish artist Monika Sosnowska that promises to be arresting, if not spectacular (she's crashing a replica of Warsaw's Palace of Culture into Frieze's roof). This year some commissioned artists are actively addressing the art world's relationship with filthy lucre: Mike Bouchet is bringing a motivational speaker, to help the exhibiting galleries sell their pieces; Stephanie Syjuco will assemble young artists to produce bootleg copies of works on sale. Outside the commercial sector, the heavyweights of British art institutions share an admiration for the delights of Frieze, now in its seventh year. For them, money has very little to do with it.

Julia Peyton-Jones, director of the Serpentine, regards Frieze as less of a fair, more of a focus – "both for those of us who work in art, for us to focus on our own contribution, and also a focus for people to really engage with what's happening, encouraging debate on culture. It fuels the art world in every way. It provides a marvellous moment for the market and the museum to meet," she says. "All the public institutions put on their best dresses and the galleries do the same."

The Whitechapel Gallery director, Iwona Blaswick, agrees. "It's all-singing, all-dancing," she smiles. She stops short of saying art is recession-proof, but points out the UK has had slumps before – and that the last one led to the birth of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement, as well as artists such as Martin Creed and City Racing (a not-for-profit gallery in Oval, run by artists Matt Hale, John Burgess, Peter Owen, Paul Noble and Keith Coventry, that lasted from 1988 to 1998) taking over empty properties and creating art spaces.

Alex Beard, Tate deputy director, flatly refuses to think of art in terms of boom or bust: "It's the wrong terminology. You wouldn't think of language in that way, and art is a means of communication."

Last year Frieze welcomed 68,000 visitors. Most came because they were interested in art; not in buying it, or schmoozing around it, but because they were excited by the amazing concentration of international works under one temporary, tented roof. Just to have a look.

How did this happen? When did the UK become so open to, so excited by, modern art? Shouldn't art make us anxious? Shouldn't we all be sneering, or worried that we're being sneered at?

Over the past 15 years, there has been an undeniable shift in the British public's attitudes to art, due to a combination of factors. The Turner prize is one. Established in 1984, it was after its relaunch in 1991 that it really began to excite both media and audience. (The Whitechapel's Blaswick believes that part of the appeal is because Britain is a betting nation: "The Turner prize is great for sweepstakes at offices. There's only four to choose from, you've got a great chance.") Some of its nominees helped raise art's profile: Damien Hirst's shark, Tracey Emin's bed, Grayson Perry's choice of awards frock all made for memorable headlines.

Aside from the Turner prize, Hirst and Emin's generation of YBAs, with their canny media awareness and pop sensibilities, appealed to the public: these were not stuffy, aloof crafts-people, but large personalities who rough-and-tumbled within the modern world. More artists began to reflect the diversity of modern society: there are more female artists, more from non-traditional backgrounds, and they naturally attract different audiences.

The opening of Tate Modern in 2000 was also important. It's hard to underestimate the impact of its spectacular Turbine Hall – "a particularly special space," says Beard, "on the threshold on the street and the museum" – upon the general public. A world away from a Doric-columned establishment institution, exceptionally family-friendly, with an open feel almost like an indoor play park, the Turbine's most successful installations have been the ones which not only worked within its space but actively engaged with its audience: Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project or Carson Holler's twisting slide.

Designed to hold 1.8 million visitors per annum, Tate Modern now attracts close to 5 million every year and is the most popular modern art museum in the world. It comes second in the list of most visited attractions in the UK, just behind the British Museum.

Of the Top Ten, eight are cultural institutions – their status aided by the government's waiving of entrance fees in 2001. This had an astounding effect, with an average 70% increase in visitor numbers: the V&A rose by 111% in the first year.

But it's not just London. Liverpool, during 2008, its year as the European Capital of Culture, saw £120m of public and private investment blossom into an £800m return. Ekow Eshun, director of the ICA, points out that every serious art institution places much bigger emphasis on drawing audiences into a dialogue: expanding education programmes, membership schemes, ensuring art is accessible via the net. "The issue isn't whether there is money around or not, but communication between the artist, the institution and the audience. It used to be that the audience came last, was treated as the lowest. Now the conversation is horizontal."

Eshun is also chairman of the commissioning group for Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth and he sees the huge success of Anthony Gormley's One & Other as an emblem of this audience engagement. "And Frieze is a good example. It's levelled the playing field. It's not a modernist fortress, where you have to be humble and hushed. It's inclusive, exciting. Everyone can go."

And, look! We do.