HomeNewsPressPress Archive 2005Tate Modern answers critics with its first revamp

The Daily Telegraph, 30.09.2005
 

Tate Modern answers critics with its first revamp

Tate Modern, attracting twice as many visitors as forecast, is to have its first complete re-hang since it opened in 2000.

All 48 galleries showing the permanent collection will be re-hung for May next year with many works now on display consigned to storerooms.

Forty per cent of the new look - paintings, videos, installations, sculptures, photographs and assorted bric-a-brac used by today's artists - will be seen at Tate Modern for the first time.

Among the fresh work to go on show will be Roy Lichtenstein's 1963 pop art cartoon classic Whaam!, and some recently acquired feminist posters by the Guerrilla Girls, an American team who use the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks in the name of fighting violence against women. More than 22 million visitors have tramped through the galleries since Tate Modern opened.

The re-hang had been planned for this year but was delayed by difficulties in finding a sponsor. The Swiss bank UBS has stepped into the breach with an undisclosed sum.

In an unusual deal, Tate Modern will devote one area to showing a rolling selection of works from UBS's own art collection for the next three years. Tate Modern defended the arrangement yesterday, saying that UBS, with some 900 works, had one of the best corporate collections of contemporary art in the world.

When it opened, Tate Modern defied the convention of showing off its wares chronologically.

In a move that some found controversial, and others confusing, works were arranged thematically, grouped under gallery names such as History/Memory/Society, or Landscape/Matter/Environment.

These will be swept away and replaced by four new themes - Minimalism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

Sir Nicholas Serota, the gallery's director, said yesterday that by sticking with themes, works of different periods could still be shown alongside each other.

Also, Tate Modern is weak in several areas of 20th century art, and the new themes will allow the gallery to show its holdings off to best advantage.

Sir Nicholas said that the re-hang would answer some of the criticism about the original hanging.

He said: "It will probably answer one or two points in a very direct way - are we displaying the strengths of the Tate collection, and are we foregrounding works that the public really wants to see instead of illustrating a point of view?''

A portrait of UBS as an art collector edited by Sophie Brodie

UBS bigwig Jeremy Palmer was busily trying to upstage HSBC's eye-brow Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Tate Modern yesterday. The Swiss bank has pencilled in a three-year deal with the gallery which will display some of UBS's own collection.

It's all about showing off your assets and brand values, according to Palmer. How about value for money advertising? "Ask me in three years' time,'' he says.

by Nigel Reynolds Arts Correspondent

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