January 28, 2005
The Sun Never Sets on the Tate Empire
Yesterday, Tate Modern Director, Nicholas Serota, announced that Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron have been commisioned to design the expansion of the London Museum. Is it a surprise that H&dM were hired? No. Is it a surprise that the Tate is expanding? Well….sort of. Since the inception of the current Tate Modern, there has been a massive real estate boom on the South Bank, and Serota wants to expand while land is still available. The plan calls for a massive 60% expansion of the already 12,000 square metres of display area. Sir Nicholas wants to create drastically different gallery spaces to house some of the more popular exhibits that, despite objects, have had to be removed to to spacial restrictions. He also wishes to create a permanent education facility and performace art space. There are concerns, however, that with its relatively small acquisitions budget, the Tate will have trouble filling these new galleries.
The Guardian asked British Art experts what they thought the expansion should be used for:
Dinos Chapman
Artist
Sixty per cent? We’ve probably got that much. It’d be a good place for our new Hell [the Chapman brothers are remaking their most famous sculpture after the original was destroyed in the Momart fire]. But they can’t afford it. Or you could put in a skating rink. Or bicycle racks. Or a restaurant. After all there’s too much art and I don’t like art very much.
Matthew Slotover
Publisher Frieze magazine
The Dia centre in New York does something quite interesting with rooms that are permanently installed. Walter De Maria’s New York Earth Room is completely filled with earth to a depth of about four feet and there’s another [of De Maria's works] there called The Broken Kilometre that’s a thousand-metre golden strip. They’ve been there for years and it’s amazing to pop in and see them.
Michael Craig-Martin
Artist
One of the things about the existing building is that even the larger spaces are not, in contemporary terms, enormous. It would be a great addition to the Tate to have much large, flexible spaces.
Plans for the expansion will be submitted this May.
via The Guardian
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