Tate Modern will open spaces in former oil tank facilities

Author: Michael Reeve

London - The London Tate Modern will open new exhibition spaces next year before the Olympics - in the former heating oil tanks of the old power plant where this famous gallery is located. This was announced today by the Tate management. However, the planned new wing of the gallery is expected to be completed only by 2016, when the gallery gathers enough funds.
Tate Modern was opened in 2000 in a power plant building, which was decommissioned in 1981. It quickly gained great popularity and its management claims that it is the most popular museum of modern art in the world.
Its core is a huge hall where the power plant's turbines were located and where temporary installations now take place. South of it, there are two former circular heating oil tanks in the basement, which have a diameter of 30 meters and are seven meters deep.
By June next year, they will be transformed into unconventional gallery spaces, where film screenings and discussions can also take place alongside exhibitions. They are to retain their industrial character. The opening of these new spaces will be part of the London Cultural Festival 2012, which begins on June 21 and is the cultural accompaniment to the Olympics.
The gallery in the former tanks will also be complemented by a new building, which, according to Tate, is expected to be completed only by 2016. The gallery currently has 70 percent of the 215 million pounds (about six billion crowns) needed for the reconstruction of the tanks and the construction of the new building.
Plans for these expansions of the Tate Modern spaces were prepared in 2007 after it became clear that attendance exceeded the gallery's capacity. It was estimated at about two million visitors per year, but around five million come.
Tate Modern is one of four Tate galleries. Also in London is Tate Britain, which focuses on British art, while other branches are in Liverpool and St Ives in Cornwall in the southwest of England.
According to today's annual report, these four galleries were visited by nearly 7.4 million visitors by March 31 of this year, and 19 million interested parties visited its website. According to the gallery management, Tate is thus the second most visited art institution in the world after the Louvre in Paris.
In the upcoming season, Tate is preparing a number of extensive exhibitions. At Tate Modern, starting April 4 of next year, there will be the first major British retrospective of the controversial artist Damien Hirst, while Tate Britain has prepared an exhibition titled Picasso and Modern British Art for February. In Tate Britain, there will be a major exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelites in September next year, and at Tate Modern from June, a retrospective of the Norwegian precursor of expressionism, Edvard Munch. Visitors to Tate Liverpool will be able to compare the late works of British painter J.M.W. Turner, French Impressionist Claude Monet, and the recently deceased American Cy Twombly at the exhibition Turner Monet Twombly starting in June.