HomeNewsPressPress Archive 2005Tate Modern Plans to Rehang Collection

The New York Times, 30.09.2005

Tate Modern Plans to Rehang Collection

LONDON (AP) -- The Tate Modern, the rousingly successful new gallery in a converted power plant, plans to rehang its collection for the first time since it opened five years ago.

The four main exhibits will revolve around the themes of cubism, surrealism, abstract expressionism and minimalism, replacing the current divisions of landscape, still life, history and nude works.

Each theme, or moment in modern art history, will feature a pair of artists from different generations to serve as a ''springboard which looks both back and focuses on the roots of those moments in the 20th century and looks forward,'' museum director Nicholas Serota said Thursday.

The pairings will be Martin Creed with Carl Andre, Roy Lichtenstein with Umberto Boccioni, Anish Kapoor with Barnett Newman and Jannis Kounellis with Giorgio de Chirico.

''I am incredibly excited by our plans,'' curator Frances Morris said. She said the new display concept will be a way for the audience to ''reappreciate the old and look at the new in a slightly different way.''

Serota believes the concept will answer two points of public criticism raised when the museum opened: It will better show the strengths of the Tate Collection and better display the works the public wants to see, he said.

Forty percent of the works in the new displays will be shown at Tate Modern for the first time, and 20 percent will be newly acquired works.

The changes will draw on a new partnership with financial firm UBS that will give the museum access to 900 additional works during the next three years. The UBS collection will complement the Tate collection with works by Lichtenstein, Edward Ruscha, Lucian Freud, Candida Hofer and others.

''We are delighted that works from The UBS Art Collection will be included in the display to augment areas of artistic practice which are not currently well-represented in the Tate Collection,'' Serota said.

One such area is 20th-century photography, he said. The Tate Modern will open the spring season in May 2006 with a special photography display.

Two other spring exhibitions will feature German artist Martin Kippenberger and a pairing of works by German Josef Albers and Hungarian Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

by The Associated Press

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