Tate Modern

Tate Modern
Established	2000
Location	Bankside, London SE1, England
Visitor figures	5,235,000 (06/07)[1]
Director	Vicente Todolí
Nearest tube station(s)	Blackfriars, Southwark
Website	www.tate.org.uk/modern
Tate Tate Britain · Tate Liverpool · Tate Modern · Tate St Ives

The Tate Modern in London is Britain's national museum of international modern art and is, with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, and Tate Online^[2], part of the group now known simply as Tate.

The galleries are housed in the former Bankside Power Station, which was originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of Battersea Power Station, and built in two stages between 1947 and 1963. The power station closed in 1981. The building was converted by architects Herzog & de Meuron and contractors Carillion^[3], after which it stood at 99m tall. The history of the site as well as information about the conversion was the basis for a 2008 documentary Architects Herzog and de Meuron: Alchemy of Building & Tate Modern. The southern third of the building was retained by the French power company EDF Energy as an electrical substation (in 2006, the company released half of this holding).^[4]

Since the museum's opening on 12 May 2000, it has become a destination for Londoners and tourists. Entry is free for the permanent collection and some temporary exhibitions.

The Galleries

A gallery at Tate Modern.

The collections in Tate Modern consist of works of international modern and contemporary art dating from 1900 onwards.^[5]

The Tate Collection is on display on levels three and five of the building, while level four houses large temporary exhibitions and a small exhibition space on level 2 houses work by contemporary artists.

Collection exhibitions

When the gallery opened in 2000, the collections were not displayed in chronological order but were rather arranged thematically into four broad groups: 'History/Memory/Society'; 'Nude/Action/Body'; 'Landscape/Matter/Environment'; and 'Still Life/Object/Real Life'. This was ostensibly because a chronological survey of the story of modern art along the lines of the Museum of Modern Art in New York would expose the large gaps in the collections, the result of the Tate's conservative acquisitions policy for the first half of the 20th century. The first rehang at Tate Modern opened in May 2006. It eschewed the thematic groupings in favour of focusing on pivotal moments of twentieth-century art, with further spaces allocated on levels 3 and 5 for shorter exhibitions. The current layout is:

Level 3 - Material Gestures

This focuses on abstraction, expressionism and abstract expressionism, featuring work by Claude Monet, Anish Kapoor, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Tacita Dean.^[6]

Level 3 - Signs and Texture

Works made from the 1950s onwards by painters who have explored the relationship between experience and abstract mark-making. Of those included: Fred Williams, Judit Reigl and Shozo Shimamoto.

Level 3 - Poetry and Dream

The sexually explicit section on this level currently features a drawing by the pseudo-anonymous French artist Proper Man entitled 'le cock et le balls' which is his attempt to explore the tension between old and new attitudes to sexuality within an urban environment.

Tate Modern and the Millennium Bridge. The rebuilt Globe Theatre is in white, to the left

Level 5 - Idea and Object

This focuses on minimalism, conceptual art and constructivism with work by artists such as Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Martin Creed^[7] and Jenny Holzer.^[8]

Level 5 - States of Flux

This focuses on Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism and Pop Art,^[9] containing work by artists such as Pablo Picasso,^[10] Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol^[11] and the photographer Eugène Atget,^[12]

Temporary exhibitions

Level 1 - The Turbine Hall

The Turbine Hall, which once housed the electricity generators of the old power station, is five storeys tall with 3,400 square metres of floorspace.^[13] It is used to display large specially-commissioned works by contemporary artists, between October and March each year in a series sponsored by Unilever. This series was planned to last the gallery's first five years, but the popularity of the series has led to its extension until at least 2012^[14].

The artists that have exhibited commissioned work in the turbine hall are:

• 2000 — Louise Bourgeois — Maman, I Do, I Undo, I Redo
• 2001 — Juan Muñoz — Double Bind
• 2002 — Anish Kapoor — Marsyas
• 2003 — Olafur Eliasson — The Weather Project
• 2004 — Bruce Nauman — Raw Materials
• 2005 — Rachel Whiteread — Embankment
• 2006 — Carsten Höller — Test Site
• 2007 — Doris Salcedo — Shibboleth
• 2008 — Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster - TH.2058

Level 2 - The Level 2 Gallery

The Level 2 Gallery is a smaller gallery located on the north side of the building which houses exhibitions of cutting edge contemporary art. Its exhibitions normally run for 2 - 3 months^[15].

Level 4 - Major temporary exhibitions

As with levels 3 and 5, level 4 is broken into two large exhibition areas. This is used to stage the major temporary exhibitions for which an entry fee is charged. These exhibitions normally run for 3 or 4 months. The two exhibition areas can be combined to host a single exhibition. This was done for the Gilbert and George retrospective^[16] due to the size and number of the works.

Other areas

Small temporary exhibition spaces are also located in the space between the two galleries on levels 3 and 5. These are sometimes used to display recent acquisitions. Works are also sometimes shown in the restaurants and members' room. Other locations that have been used in the past include the mezzanine on Level 2 and the north facing exterior of the building.^[17]

Access and Environs

The closest tube station is Southwark, although Waterloo station or Blackfriars tube station and a short walk over Blackfriars Bridge is also convenient. A further pedestrian approach to Tate Modern is across the Millennium Bridge from St Paul's Cathedral. The lampposts between Southwark tube station and the Tate Modern are painted orange to show pedestrian visitors the way.

There is also a riverboat pier just outside the gallery called Bankside Pier, with connections to the Docklands and Greenwich via regular passenger boat services (commuter service) and the Tate to Tate service, which connects Tate Modern with Tate Britain via the London Eye.

To the west of Tate Modern lie the sleek stone and glass Ludgate House, the former headquarters of Express Newspapers and Sampson House, a massive late Brutalist office building.

Extension for 2012

Tate Modern has attracted more visitors than originally expected and plans to expand it have been in preparation for some time. These plans have focused on three areas for expansion all to the south of the building:

1. The area no longer required by EDF Energy.
2. Three large, disused, underground oil tanks originally used by the power station.
3. A major new extension building to be built above the oil drums.

The design of the new extension building has been controversial. It was originally designed as a glass stepped pyramid, or zigurat, but this has recently been amended to incorporate a brick façade (to match the original power-station building ^[18]) after feedback on the original design was unfavourable. The extension will include galleries dedicated to photography, video, exhibitions and the community, on the south side of the building, also designed by Herzog & de Meuron, which will increase the display space by 60%, was granted planning permission on 27th March 2007.^[19] This project will cost approx. £215 million and is scheduled to open in 2012, in time for the 2012 Olympic Games being held in the city.^[20]. Additionally, the Tate Britain will be undergoing refurbishment.

Gallery

References

External links

• Tate Online - Official Tate website
  • Tate Modern
  • Interactive Tate Modern gallery plan
• 'Tate Modern: a Year of Sweet Success' by Esther Leslie, in Radical Philosophy