Tate Modern
Tate Modern is the name by which the British National Museum of Modern Art is known. It is located in central London and is part of the Tate group of museums along with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives, the latter two located outside London.
It is housed in the former Bankside Power Station, originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and built in two phases between 1947 and 1963. The power station was closed in 1981 and the building was converted into a museum by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, who after winning an international competition gave the building its current image.
Since its opening on May 12, 2000 it has become the second largest attraction in London. In 2007 it was the most visited modern art museum in the world and third overall, after the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum, also in London, with 5.2 million visitors. Admission is free for the permanent exhibition, while temporary exhibitions are free or paid depending on their nature.
The construction of Tate Modern has provided a boost to the economic and cultural development of the area of Southwark in which it is located. It has been considered an example for future projects, as a way to develop degraded areas of the city and turn them into new dynamic centers of growth and economic development.
The museum is usually open from Monday to Sunday, from 10AM to 6PM. To access, timed tickets are required, which can be obtained on their own website.
Location
Tate Modern is located in Bankside, an area that is located in the London area of Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames. Bankside is bounded by Blackfriars Bridge to the west and London Bridge to the east, and has become an important hub for tourism in recent years. The Millennium Bridge has made the Bankside area easily accessible on foot from the north bank of the Thames, connecting it directly to St Paul's Cathedral. Tate Modern is one of Bankside's top tourist attractions, along with the replica of the Golden Hind, the Rose and the Globe theaters and other buildings.
History
The Tate collection was founded in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. In 1917 its contents were changed to also include the British National Collection of Modern Art and it was renamed Tate Britain in honor of Henry Tate, who through their donations laid the foundation for the gallery's further development.
A Gallery for Modern Art (1917-1992)
In 1917, the newly renamed Tate Britain officially assumed responsibility for exhibiting the nation's collection of modern art, both by British and foreign artists. From then until 2000, this collection was exhibited in the building occupied by the Tate Gallery, in the central London area of Millbank. Throughout this time, the convenience of separating the modern art collection from the rest was discussed on several occasions in order to free up exhibition space and strengthen the identity of the two collections. This option began to take hold at the end of the 1980s, after the decision was made to create a new modern art gallery as quickly as possible.
In December 1992, the intention to create the new Tate Gallery of Modern Art by the year 2000 was announced at a press conference, and the search for a suitable location for the new museum began, which would be the first dedicated to art modern that the British capital would have in its history.
The choice of place (1992-1994)
Various locations in central London were raffled and debated between building a new building or converting an existing building. Among the locations drawn were: South Bank, Effra (near Vauxhall), Greenwich Reach and Bankside Power Station.
Bankside Power Station was situated on the south bank of the River Thames opposite St Paul's Cathedral and had been unused since 1981, when the creation of new, larger power plants led to its closure. After its closure, two options were considered: tear it down to build a new building or reconvert it to adapt to a new use. The building appeared to be excessively large, although later studies revealed that its size fell within the requirements of the new gallery. It also had a privileged location in the center of London and good accessibility by public transport. In July 1993, the commissioners visited the station to conduct a site survey and assess the feasibility of the project and in April 1994 it was formally announced that Bankside Power Station would house the Tate Gallery of Modern Art.
The International Competition (1994)
In July 1994, an international competition was presented to redesign the power plant and adapt it to its new use. Around November of the same year, a selection was made among the 148 initial projects, leaving six for the final phase of the contest: David Chipperfield (London), Rem Koolhaas (Rotterdam), Renzo Piano (Genoa), Tadao Ando (Osaka), Herzog & de Meuron (Basel), and Rafael Moneo (Madrid).
The Winning Project (1995)
In January 1995, the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron was officially designated as the winner of the international competition, with the jury valuing the simplicity of his proposal, the respect for the original architecture of the plant, the introduction of natural light into the interior of the building through large skylights and the creation of a functional interior. The Swiss intervention provided for the creation of an interior street in the place previously occupied by the Turbine Hall and which would be the heart of the new building. This street would be illuminated from above by means of a large skylight along the entire length of the building, being visually related to the exhibition halls through viewpoints that would be shown towards the Turbine Hall as light boxes and would serve as rest areas for the visitor. The large main skylight would appear to the outside as a glass box resting on the brick plinth of the former power station, and would be illuminated at night to serve as a landmark towards the City of London.
Construction works (1996-2000)
In March 1996, the final execution project of Herzog & de Meuron for the construction of Tate Modern, and two months later, the contribution of 12 million pounds made by English donors allowed the purchase of the Bankside power station, where the new museum would be located. In December of the same year, the architects opened an office on the site to supervise the construction work.
In order to convert the old power plant into a museum, it was necessary to clean the site and prepare it for the works. The machinery of the Turbine Hall was removed and a series of small buildings were demolished, leaving the building with its original structure of steel and brick. The roof was also removed to allow the placement of the skylights that would allow natural light to enter the interior of the building.
The Inauguration (2000)
Construction work on Tate Modern was completed at the end of 1999, and in January 2000 works of art began to be installed in the exhibition halls. Following the launch of the renamed Tate Britain in March, Tate Modern was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 11 May 2000.
Success and Tate Modern 2 (2000-present)
When work began on the project for the new British Gallery of Modern Art, an influx to the building was estimated at 1.8 million visitors a year. However, in its first five years Tate Modern was visited by more than twenty million people, with more than four million visitors a year on average.
The success of the new London modern art gallery led to its saturation and the need to expand its facilities with new exhibition spaces and services demanded by visitors. These new spaces were essential for the future development of the museum, according to the opinion of those responsible for Tate Modern. Furthermore, the increase in the size of the British collection of modern art and its diversification into photography, multimedia shows and complex installations also pointed in the same direction. The original project of Herzog & de Meuron already anticipated the possible extension of the gallery to the south, so the project of what would later be called Tate Modern 2 began to be developed rapidly.
On July 25, 2006, the president of the Tate Group, Nicholas Serota, together with the director of Tate Modern, Vicente Todolí, presented the Tate Modern expansion project, commissioned to the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron who also carried out the original design of Tate Modern. The extension originally consisted of a series of glass boxes stacked in a pyramid, but underwent a redesign made public on July 18, 2008, modifying its facade of stacked glass boxes for another facade with a continuous brick lattice. As the architects explained, the change was made to favor the relationship between the façade of the new building and the existing one, also made of brick. According to its final design, the extension will contain spaces dedicated to photography, video and temporary exhibitions, and will be It was supposed to be finished in 2012, so that it could have been inaugurated for the 2012 Olympic Games that were held in the English capital. This was not achieved, as its official opening of this expansion project opened to the public on June 17, 2016. With this new building, which had a budget of £215 million, Tate Modern expanded its exhibition area by a 60% (about 23,000 square meters).
Tate Modern Permanent Collection
Tate Modern's permanent collection is considered one of the most comprehensive and important collections of contemporary art in the world. It contains works by many of the century's leading artists XX, including Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, Mark Rothko and others. It is located between the third and fifth floors of the building, while the fourth level houses the largest temporary exhibits. On the second level there is a small exhibition space for contemporary artists. When the museum opened, the works were not exhibited in chronological order, but were divided into four large groups: History/Memory/Society, Nude/Action/Body, Landscape/Matter/Environment and Still Life/Objects/Real Life. This form of exhibition was due to the fact that the main current of exhibition of the history of modern art was then based on the lines set by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The first reorganization of the permanent collection occurred in May 2006, which removed the previous thematic grouping to focus on the major art movements of the century XX. Currently, the permanent collection is divided into the following sections:
Third floor
- Material data (Material Gestures)
Occupies the east wing of the third floor of the building. The plot line of this section is to show the new forms of abstraction and expression that emerged in post-war painting and sculpture in Europe and America, with exponents such as Mark Rothko, and their affinities with the works of previous artists such as Claude Monet and his influence on contemporary artists.
List of rooms:
- Room 1: Anish Kapoor and Barnett Newman
- Room 2: Material materials
- Room 3: Vincentian Action
- Room 4: Expression
- Room 5: Distinguished voices
- Room 6: Gerhard Richter
- Room 7: Claude Monet and Abstract Expressionism
- Room 8: Marlene Dumas
- Room 9: Paul McCarthy
- Poetry and dream (Poetry and Dream)
It is located in the west wing of the third floor of the building and is developed around surrealism, its influences, how other artists who have not been part of it have responded to this movement and how it has been treated throughout history. history of modern art the world of dreams, the unconscious and the archetypal myth. In this section, paintings by artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, among others, are exhibited. Works in which the principles of surrealism have been reinterpreted and incorporated into new contexts beyond the intentions of the creators of the movement are also shown.
List of rooms:
- Room 1: Giorgio de Chirico y Jannis Kounellis
- Room 2: Poetry and dream: Surrealism and beyond
- Room 2: Poetry and dream: Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid
- Room 2: Poetry and dream: beyond Surrealism
- Room 3: Max Ernst
- Room 4: Natural History
- Room 5: Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso
- Room 6: Joseph Beuys and Anselm Kiefer
- Room 7: Miroslaw Balka and Pepe Espaliú
- Room 8: Eileen Agar, Claude Cahun and Zoe Leonard
- Room 9: Realism
- Room 10: Cornelia Parker
Fifth floor
- Conceptual models (Conceptual Models)
In this section, located in the central part of the fifth floor, contemporary works recently acquired by Tate Modern are exhibited, and its axis is developed around the potential of buildings and architecture in general to carry out social changes and allow the modification of people's behaviors. Some of the works on display use existing buildings as inspiration, while others consist of scale reproductions of entire buildings or specific spaces.
List of rooms:
- Conceptual models: recent temporary procurement
- Idea and object (Idea and Object)
Occupying the east wing of the fifth floor of the building, it focuses on the movement commonly known as minimalism, which emerged in the 1960s as a reaction to subjectivism and expressionism in post-war painting, and which was based on objectivism and art. impersonalism as radical ideas and opposed to the previous ones. The antecedents of this movement, such as constructivism, are also exposed. Major artists include works by Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, and Donald Judd.
List of rooms:
- Room 1: Carl Andre and Martin Creed
- Room 2: Utopia and Abstraction
- Room 3: Around Minimalism
- Room 4: Pawel Kwiek
- Room 5: Sun LeWitt
- Room 6: Hélio Oiticica
- 'Sala 7: Ellsworth Kelly
- Room 8: Image/Text
- 'Sala 9: Dan Graham
- Room 10: Joseph Beuys
- Room 11: Víctor Grippo
- States of change (States of Flux)
It is located in the west wing of the fifth floor and the central space of the block is dedicated to the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the century XX: cubism, futurism and vorticism. These movements broke with the traditional ideas of representation of painting, and searched for a new, more dynamic and fractured way of representing the complex reality of the machine age. It also shows how these avant-gardes influenced experimental films, photography and design, sometimes accompanied by a political message or social criticism, and how they laid the foundations for later movements such as Pop art and the work of some contemporary artists. Among the best-known artists in this section are Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Roy Lichtenstein.
List of rooms:
- Room 1: Umberto Boccioni and Roy Lichtenstein
- Room 2: Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism
- Room 3: After Impressionism
- Room 4: Japanese Photography and The Bauhaus
- Room 5: Bridget Riley
- Room 6: Braco Dimitrijevic
- Room 7: Pop Art
- Room 8: Jenny Holzer
- Room 9: David Maljkovic
- Room 10: Architecture and Power
- Room 11: Double Life'
- Room 12: Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton: The Large Glass
Temporary exhibitions
Current
Tate Modern has spaces of different dimensions to host various types of temporary exhibitions. Some of them are free, mainly those that take place in the gallery on level 2, and for the rest it is necessary to buy a ticket at the ticket office located in the Turbine Room.
Previous
Since its opening, Tate Modern has hosted major temporary exhibitions, featuring works by artists such as Wassily Kandinski, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso and Frida Kahlo, among others.
The latest temporary exhibitions hosted at Tate Modern have been:
- Latifa Echakhch: from 19 September to 23 November 2008
- Cildo Meireles: from 14 October 2008 to 11 January 2009
- Rothko: from 26 September 2008 to 1 February 2009
- Nicholas Hlobo: from 9 December 2008 to 29 March 2009
- UBS openings: paintings from the 1980s: from 12 November 2008 to 13 April 2009
- Ródchenko and Popova: defining constructivism: from 12 February to 17 May 2009
- Roni Horn, also known as Roni Horn: from 25 February to 25 May 2009
- Stutter: from 23 April to 16 August 2009
- Per Kirkeby: from 17 June to 6 September 2009
- Futurism: from 12 June to 20 September 2009
- Jill Magid, authority to eliminate: from 10 September 2009 to 3 January 2010
- Pop Life, Art in a Material World: from 1 October 2009 to 17 January 2010
- John Baldessari, pure beauty: from 13 October 2009 to 10 January 2010
The building
The Bankside Power Station has housed the British National Collection of Modern Art since the building's renovation was inaugurated in 2000, when it was renamed Tate Modern. While other architectural firms selected for the competition proposed a more radical approach to the existing building, the Herzog & de Meuron based his proposal on respect for the existing building, the consolidation of its steel and brick structure, and the simplicity of action. The building was planned with the aim of being the engine that would accelerate the revitalization of Banskide, a neighborhood depressed that had begun to pick up with the reconstruction of the Globe Theater and that continued later with the inauguration of the Millennium bridge, which served to directly connect the neighborhood with the area of the cathedral of San Pablo.
Interior layout
The internal organization of the original building was divided into three parallel strips of different uses: north, central and south. On the northern fringe, facing the River Thames, was the old boiler room. This area currently houses the main program of the museum: an auditorium, cafeteria, shops and three exhibition floors. The central strip was occupied by the turbine room, which after the intervention maintains its name and is the main space of the museum; The Unilever series, temporary installations by renowned artists, take place here. The third strip, the south, was occupied, and still is today, by transformers. It is the only part of the old power station that is currently in use, although this situation will end when the museum is expanded, since the central part of the new building will be located in this area, directly connected to the auditorium. the turbines. The cylindrical spaces that housed the fuel tanks of the old plant will become new exhibition rooms after the expansion.
The main entrance to the museum is located on the west façade of the building through a ramp that takes the visitor to the turbine room, whose level is located below the water level of the Thames. There is also a secondary entrance on the north façade, which extends the pedestrian access from the Millennium Bridge to the interior of the building. The Turbine Hall is conceived as a street that crosses the museum from west to east along its entire length and height. From the old ground level of the room, only a platform remains that crosses the building from north to south and allows access from the entrance of the north façade, at street level and therefore elevated with respect to the main entrance, to the ground floor. lower where the ticket offices are located.
The north flank of the room with the turbines is closed off by the interior façade of the museum, in which there are some elongated viewpoints illuminated by luminaires. These viewpoints serve as a resting and observation point, and visually relate the room with the turbines to the three exhibition floors of the museum. The architects designed them with the aim of serving as a lure for those visitors who accessed the room with the turbines, and thus invite them to enter the museum's exhibition rooms.
Structure
The original structure designed by Giles Gilbert Scott is based on porticos composed of steel beams and pillars that support the brick masonry walls and have no structural function. The Herzog & de Meuron for the conversion of the power station into a museum of modern art, provided for the conservation and reuse of the original structure with minor modifications. The works related to structure and engineering were carried out by the firm Ove Arup, previously in charge of works on large projects such as the Sydney Opera House.
Finishes
The criteria on which the architects were based when defining the different finishes of the building was sobriety and simplicity. The materials used in the building were steel, wood and glass. The original steel structure was painted matt black, while the vertical walls of the turbine room were painted grey, in keeping with the exposed concrete floor of the lower floor and the entrance ramp. In the exhibition rooms, vertical walls painted in matt white were used, while an untreated oak flooring was chosen for the flooring, creating sober spaces for the exhibition, leaving the works on display taking center stage.
The Hall of Turbines
Turbine Hall at Tate Modern is the museum's main atrium. It is the space in which the electricity generators of the power station were formerly located. It is a space 155 meters long, 23 wide and 35 meters high, with an area of about 3,500 square meters, and is used to exhibit installations by contemporary artists between October and March of each year, sponsored by the multinational Unilever and therefore called The Unilever series. It was planned that this type of installation would be carried out during the first five years of the museum's life, although its success has caused it to last until the present. To this day, the artists who have exhibited their work in the Tate Modern Turbine Room are:
- 2000 — Louise Bourgeois — Maman, I do, I, 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 González-Foerster — TH.2058
- 2009 — Miroslaw Balka — How it is:
Tate Modern 2
Currently, the extension of the British gallery of modern art, known as Tate Modern 2, is being built, which will take advantage of those spaces related to the infrastructures of the Bankside power station that were not altered in the first phase of construction. the construction of Tate Modern. This new building will also add new spaces that will complete the projected volume. The extension is expected to open in 2012, so it will be functional when the next Olympic Games are held in the British capital.
The aspects that were prioritized in the Tate Modern expansion project were:
- Favor the exhibition of all works belonging to the museum collection in the most specialized way possible.
- Allow the placement of the most radical facilities.
- Provide the learning spaces required by the public.
- Fully integrate learning into building design.
- Improve reception facilities for visitors and create new social spaces.
The main space of the expansion will be the room for the fuel tanks, which provided power to the turbines of the plant when it was in operation. This space will be accessible directly from the Turbine Hall and is considered the foundation of the future Tate Modern 2 and an essential part of its programming will be based on it.
Impact of Tate Modern
Tate Modern has generated a major impact on different levels both in London and across the UK. According to the Transforming Tate Modern site, the most visited modern art museum in the world is Tate Modern, with more than 30 million visitors since it opened in 2000. Initially, the museum was designed anticipating an influx of around 1.8 million visitors. per year, but in 2006 and 2007 visitors exceeded five million each year. According to the same reference, Tate Modern is one of the three largest tourist attractions in the United Kingdom; two million people have participated in one of its educational programs; generates an annual profit for the city of one hundred million pounds; it has created over 4,000 jobs so far, mainly in the Southwark area; and 60% of visitors are under the age of thirty-five. All these data were used by representatives of Tate Modern in the presentation of the museum's extension to support the project, which has a budget of 215 million pounds.
Visitors
The year it opened, 4.9 million people visited the museum. This number of visitors gradually decreased, reaching around four million visitors and reaching its lowest level in 2001, when they visited it 3.75 million people. Between 2005 and 2006 there was a 12% drop in the number of visitors, which was blamed on the fear caused by the attacks on July 7. In 2006 there was a significant increase in the number of visitors, which meant that in 2006 and 2007, Tate Modern was the second most visited tourist attraction in the UK, with 4.9 and 5.2 million visitors respectively. In addition, the museum is estimated to attract more than one million visitors each year foreigners, generating an impact at the national level. In the future, it is expected that the influx of visitors will continue to increase, especially from 2012 with the inauguration of the extension and with the effect derived from the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Economy
The development of Tate Modern has been considered an example for future projects, as a way to develop run-down areas of the city and turn them into new dynamic foci of growth and economic development.
According to a study carried out by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company after the museum opened, the impact of the modern art gallery on the local London economy significantly exceeded expectations prior to the start of construction. The economic benefit produced by the museum was estimated between 75 and 140 million pounds, about half in the Southwark area. In 1994, a total profit of £50 million had been forecast, far below the actual profit achieved. As of 2005, between 2,000 and 4,000 jobs have been created in London, half of them in the Southwark area. Tate Modern generated 467 direct jobs, plus the 283 created during the construction phases. 30% of these workers came from the same neighborhood in which the museum is located.
According to the same study by McKinsey & Company, the number of hotel and catering businesses in the Tate Modern area between 1997 and 2000 (the museum's opening year) increased by 23%, creating 1,800 jobs in the Southwark area. Property prices and commercial investment increased more in Southwark than in the rest of London, increasing the number of new businesses in the area.
Culture
Tate Modern's programming is complemented by a series of cultural and educational activities carried out both within the museum and beyond the building. The objective of this cultural agenda is to complement the museum's programming and facilitate access to modern art for as many of the population as possible, including sectors of British society that normally do not have access to it.
A total of 282,864 people participated between April 2007 and March 2008 in the different learning programs and various activities organized inside the Tate Modern. A further 5,212 people participated in events organized during the same time period by Tate Modern outside the museum, and 164,223 children attended educational sessions organized by the museum.
In 2005, a total of 21,300 people were employed in cultural industries located in the Bankside, Bermondsey and South Westminster areas, generating £606m of revenue a year. Tate Modern's impact on this sector and dependent sub-sectors has been significant, creating some 1,000 new jobs and an additional £17 million in annual profit.
How to get there
Tate Modern is connected to the rest of London in many different ways due to its privileged location. From the museum's website it is not recommended to arrive by car due to the lack of parking in the area, proposing to use one of the many means of public transport that serves the museum area, among which are:
- By boat
- There is a Tate group service called Tateboat (Barco Tate) that connects Tate Britain and the London Eye with the Tate Modern, with a service frequency of forty minutes during the opening hours of both museums. The catamaran offering the Tateboat service has 220 squares, and its interior and exterior decoration was made by Damien Hirst.
- By metro
- There are several London metro stations near Tate Modern, both in the North Bank and in the South Bank of the Thames, among which are Southwark, belonging to the Jubilee Line (in the South Bank and fifteen minutes walk from the museum), and Blackfriars, District and Circle Lines, located in the North Bank, on the opposite bank of the Thames, about ten minutes away.
- By bus
- There are multiple urban bus lines that circulate around the Bankside area and stop at Blackfriars Bridge Road, Southwark Street or Southwark Bridge Road, all of them close to Tate Modern. The main lines are RV1, 45, 63, 100, 344 and 381.
- By train
- Thameslink, the train line connecting Bedford and Brighton and crossing London from north to south, features stations in Blackfriars and London Bridge. The latter also includes a service that connects with Southeast London and Kent.
Image Gallery
Tate Modern, with the Millennium Bridge of Norman Foster crossing the Thames.
Tate Modern Facade, view from the Millennium Bridge.
Maison tropicale by Jean Prouvé outside Tate Modern.
View of the tower from the base.
Installation EmbankmentRachel Whiteread.
Installation Test SiteCarsten Höller.
Temporary installation in the Turbine Room.
The Turbine Room with Installation TH.2058from Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster in 2009.
The Turbine Room without facilities.
Rest space.
View of St. Paul's Cathedral from the restaurant on the top floor.
Exposure room.
Sculpture of David Smith exhibited at the Tate Modern.
SourceMarcel Duchamp.
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