The original design was shelved, the financial crisis precipitated delays and costs soared from an estimated £215m to £260m, but finally Tate Modern’s extension, the Switch House, is open.
The 10-storey contorted pyramid has been likened to a fortress. A mesh of perforated brickwork covers the building, echoing the materiality of English architect Giles Gilbert Scott’s Bankside power station. Thin vertical windows like arrow slits allow light into the galleries, while long, low horizontal windows give vantage points from the public spaces.
It is not as ostentatious as most recent additions to the London skyline and, viewed from the Millennium Bridge, the building almost cowers behind the power station. But from the south it stands abreast of the surrounding office buildings and flashy apartments, affording glimpses into their occupants’ lifestyles.
The remit of the Switch House is to provide much-needed additional space for Tate’s ever-expanding collection and audiences: 60% more, in fact, although only four of its 11 floors are dedicated to art. Visitor numbers are more than five million a year, double that anticipated when it first opened in 2000, making Tate Modern “the world’s most popular gallery of modern and contemporary art”, according to the venue.
Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, which originally transformed Gilbert Scott’s Bankside into London’s cathedral of art, was also awarded the task of developing a scheme for the underground oil tanks and the site of the power station’s electricity substation in 2007. Herzog & de Meuron has also built the last in the trilogy of developments: the Switch House.
In the flesh
The new spaces are designed to be flexible, allowing the collection to develop to include live art, film and performance, with the Tanks galleries below now designated as “the first permanent museum spaces dedicated to live art”. Here, as part of the ongoing BMW Tate Live partnership, the programme includes new commissions by international artists and special events elsewhere in the gallery – during the press view I was startled by a gallery attendant bursting into song in a performance of Tino Seghal’s This is Propaganda (2002).
The new galleries are on levels two, three and four and, while the larger of these are expansive, the spaces are not as cathedral-like as those in the established Boiler House and its Turbine Hall, and the better for it. The art feels more accessible, particularly in the display called Between Object and Architecture, which serves to reinforce the relationship between the artwork, the space it inhabits and the viewer.
Well-known works such as Carl Andre’s iconic Equivalent VIII (1966) are placed alongside recent acquisitions including Pavilion Suspended in a Room I (2005) by Cristina Iglesias and Roni Horn’s four-tonne cube of pink glass.
In Performer and Participant, the contribution made by women to the development of participatory art is highlighted with work by Marina Abramovi, Suzanne Lacy, Ana Lupas and Daria Martin, and an entire room dedicated to Horn’s “performance instruments”.
The galleries include unexpected spaces carved out from under the staircases, one of which is occupied by an installation of Ricardo Basbaum’s steel-framed beds, which visitors can climb into. There is also a dedicated gallery for Artist Rooms – the collection of 1,600 works donated by dealer and collector Anthony d’Offay in 2008 that tour the country. This features Louise Bourgeois, recalling the giant steel spider, Maman, that Tate commissioned for the inaugural exhibition in the Turbine Hall in 2000.
Although these collection displays can be accessed freely, it is disappointing that the remaining six floors of the Switch House are given over to other functions: spaces for learning, including the yet-to-be-launched Tate Exchange programme; rooms for staff and members; and a high-end restaurant.
At the very top, the public terrace offers stunning views of the city. You can also see the newly installed solar panels on the roof of the Turbine Hall that contribute to the gallery’s energy efficiency, and the new public spaces connecting the gallery to Southwark.
Broad church
Tate Modern should not be judged solely by the extension but also by the all-new collection displays throughout the two buildings. About 75% of the art on show has been acquired since Tate Modern opened, highlighting the intensive international collecting programme, and names such as Ibrahim El-Salahi, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Cildo Meireles made familiar through its exhibitions. This expanded view of modern and contemporary art is also shown in the integration of film and photography in the displays, as well as the increased presence of work by women artists. It is an exciting expression of Tate’s new course under Frances Morris who, although having only recently been appointed director, has been preparing the ground in her former role as the director of collection for international art.
Physical connections at basement and ground-floor level, as well as a new bridge traversing the Turbine Hall at level four, maintain the flow between the two buildings, while thematic connections are made through the displays. The Boiler House space presents work spanning 1900 to the present day to highlight the ways in which art is made and how artists engage with social and political issues as well as mass media and technology, much of which anticipates the ideas explored in the Switch House.
A new display called Start gives first-time visitors and families an entry point by focusing on artists’ use of colour, placing familiar names such as Alexander Calder, Wassily Kandinsky and Henri Matisse alongside contemporary artists Olafur Eliasson and Gerhard Richter.
There is also a series of small interactive displays using images, quotes and video clips to introduce key concepts in the thematic displays, including: How can art change the world? When you share an image, is it yours? What comes first, the material or the idea?
Change of art
Two spaces, titled Explore (supported by Tate’s digital engagement partnership with Bloomberg and designed by the visual effects studio Framestore) enable visitors to interact with them; one explores the history of live art, the other artists’ studios around the world. They are welcome additions to the interpretation, which otherwise sticks to its tried-and-tested formula of wall-based texts.
There is much on show at the Tate Modern extension and sometimes the work, due to its nature, commands a level of engagement that is hard to maintain. The one-room installations of Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sheela Gowda and others, as well as the Artist Rooms displays, help to disrupt this relentlessness, and even more welcome are the few moments of calm provided by Gustav Metzger’s Liquid Crystal Environment (1965) and the installations of paintings by Richter, Claude Monet and Mark Rothko.
Tate’s opening manifesto is “art changes, we change”. We can only hope that art will play even more of a role in these changing times by challenging the status quo and providing opportunities for “quiet thinking and contemplation”. It is clear Tate Modern will continue to be a place that satisfies visitors’ appetite for both.
Frances Guy is a freelance curator and museum consultant
Tate Modern should still be seen as a whole; the new Switch House complements the way in which the collection has been reinstalled in the Boiler House, together showing more than 250 artists from 50 countries and presenting an expanded view of the world and its interconnectedness.
A number of galleries focus on specific points in history when artists came together to exchange creative ideas, such as the moment when artists converged at the Tokyo Biennale of 1970.
The Switch House’s displays range from galleries dedicated to the striking sculptures of pioneering artist Louise Bourgeois (drawn primarily from the Artist Rooms collection), to spaces focusing on artists and the urban environment, with displays titled Living Cities, From Object to Architecture and Performer and Participant.
We combine what can be termed old friends and new friends so there are familiar works as well as many contemporary works that open up new perspectives.
The galleries offer a range of contrasting experiences: Henri Matisse’s Backs reveals an artistic process in contrast to the raw physicality in Magdalena Abakanowicz’s installation Embryology, while Rebecca Horn’s “body extensions” locate her in a personal space and Cildo Meireles’ Babel is a communications overload.
Many works are new to Tate’s collection or on display for the first time, including Roni Horn’s 2009 work Pink Tons, Ana Lupas’s The Solemn Process (1964-2008) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2009 multi-screen installation Primitive.
Matthew Gale is the head of displays at Tate Modern
Main funders Government £50m; Greater London Authority £7m; Southwark Council £1m; Blavatnik Family Foundation; Artist Rooms Foundation; Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation; John Browne Charitable Trust; Ghandehari Foundation; LUMA Foundation; Eyal Ofer Family Foundation; Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation; Sackler Trust; Wolfson Foundation; Tate Members
Exhibition design, lighting interpretation, AV Tate
Architects Herzog & de Meuron
Joinery Beck
Admission Free
The 10-storey contorted pyramid has been likened to a fortress. A mesh of perforated brickwork covers the building, echoing the materiality of English architect Giles Gilbert Scott’s Bankside power station. Thin vertical windows like arrow slits allow light into the galleries, while long, low horizontal windows give vantage points from the public spaces.
It is not as ostentatious as most recent additions to the London skyline and, viewed from the Millennium Bridge, the building almost cowers behind the power station. But from the south it stands abreast of the surrounding office buildings and flashy apartments, affording glimpses into their occupants’ lifestyles.
The remit of the Switch House is to provide much-needed additional space for Tate’s ever-expanding collection and audiences: 60% more, in fact, although only four of its 11 floors are dedicated to art. Visitor numbers are more than five million a year, double that anticipated when it first opened in 2000, making Tate Modern “the world’s most popular gallery of modern and contemporary art”, according to the venue.
Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, which originally transformed Gilbert Scott’s Bankside into London’s cathedral of art, was also awarded the task of developing a scheme for the underground oil tanks and the site of the power station’s electricity substation in 2007. Herzog & de Meuron has also built the last in the trilogy of developments: the Switch House.
In the flesh
The new spaces are designed to be flexible, allowing the collection to develop to include live art, film and performance, with the Tanks galleries below now designated as “the first permanent museum spaces dedicated to live art”. Here, as part of the ongoing BMW Tate Live partnership, the programme includes new commissions by international artists and special events elsewhere in the gallery – during the press view I was startled by a gallery attendant bursting into song in a performance of Tino Seghal’s This is Propaganda (2002).
The new galleries are on levels two, three and four and, while the larger of these are expansive, the spaces are not as cathedral-like as those in the established Boiler House and its Turbine Hall, and the better for it. The art feels more accessible, particularly in the display called Between Object and Architecture, which serves to reinforce the relationship between the artwork, the space it inhabits and the viewer.
Well-known works such as Carl Andre’s iconic Equivalent VIII (1966) are placed alongside recent acquisitions including Pavilion Suspended in a Room I (2005) by Cristina Iglesias and Roni Horn’s four-tonne cube of pink glass.
In Performer and Participant, the contribution made by women to the development of participatory art is highlighted with work by Marina Abramovi, Suzanne Lacy, Ana Lupas and Daria Martin, and an entire room dedicated to Horn’s “performance instruments”.
The galleries include unexpected spaces carved out from under the staircases, one of which is occupied by an installation of Ricardo Basbaum’s steel-framed beds, which visitors can climb into. There is also a dedicated gallery for Artist Rooms – the collection of 1,600 works donated by dealer and collector Anthony d’Offay in 2008 that tour the country. This features Louise Bourgeois, recalling the giant steel spider, Maman, that Tate commissioned for the inaugural exhibition in the Turbine Hall in 2000.
Although these collection displays can be accessed freely, it is disappointing that the remaining six floors of the Switch House are given over to other functions: spaces for learning, including the yet-to-be-launched Tate Exchange programme; rooms for staff and members; and a high-end restaurant.
At the very top, the public terrace offers stunning views of the city. You can also see the newly installed solar panels on the roof of the Turbine Hall that contribute to the gallery’s energy efficiency, and the new public spaces connecting the gallery to Southwark.
Broad church
Tate Modern should not be judged solely by the extension but also by the all-new collection displays throughout the two buildings. About 75% of the art on show has been acquired since Tate Modern opened, highlighting the intensive international collecting programme, and names such as Ibrahim El-Salahi, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Cildo Meireles made familiar through its exhibitions. This expanded view of modern and contemporary art is also shown in the integration of film and photography in the displays, as well as the increased presence of work by women artists. It is an exciting expression of Tate’s new course under Frances Morris who, although having only recently been appointed director, has been preparing the ground in her former role as the director of collection for international art.
Physical connections at basement and ground-floor level, as well as a new bridge traversing the Turbine Hall at level four, maintain the flow between the two buildings, while thematic connections are made through the displays. The Boiler House space presents work spanning 1900 to the present day to highlight the ways in which art is made and how artists engage with social and political issues as well as mass media and technology, much of which anticipates the ideas explored in the Switch House.
A new display called Start gives first-time visitors and families an entry point by focusing on artists’ use of colour, placing familiar names such as Alexander Calder, Wassily Kandinsky and Henri Matisse alongside contemporary artists Olafur Eliasson and Gerhard Richter.
There is also a series of small interactive displays using images, quotes and video clips to introduce key concepts in the thematic displays, including: How can art change the world? When you share an image, is it yours? What comes first, the material or the idea?
Change of art
Two spaces, titled Explore (supported by Tate’s digital engagement partnership with Bloomberg and designed by the visual effects studio Framestore) enable visitors to interact with them; one explores the history of live art, the other artists’ studios around the world. They are welcome additions to the interpretation, which otherwise sticks to its tried-and-tested formula of wall-based texts.
There is much on show at the Tate Modern extension and sometimes the work, due to its nature, commands a level of engagement that is hard to maintain. The one-room installations of Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sheela Gowda and others, as well as the Artist Rooms displays, help to disrupt this relentlessness, and even more welcome are the few moments of calm provided by Gustav Metzger’s Liquid Crystal Environment (1965) and the installations of paintings by Richter, Claude Monet and Mark Rothko.
Tate’s opening manifesto is “art changes, we change”. We can only hope that art will play even more of a role in these changing times by challenging the status quo and providing opportunities for “quiet thinking and contemplation”. It is clear Tate Modern will continue to be a place that satisfies visitors’ appetite for both.
Frances Guy is a freelance curator and museum consultant
Focus on: International art
The Switch House at Tate Modern has a strong international slant, focusing on how “art became active” from the 1960s onwards, and including the world’s first galleries dedicated to performance art, the Tanks. Tate Modern should still be seen as a whole; the new Switch House complements the way in which the collection has been reinstalled in the Boiler House, together showing more than 250 artists from 50 countries and presenting an expanded view of the world and its interconnectedness.
A number of galleries focus on specific points in history when artists came together to exchange creative ideas, such as the moment when artists converged at the Tokyo Biennale of 1970.
The Switch House’s displays range from galleries dedicated to the striking sculptures of pioneering artist Louise Bourgeois (drawn primarily from the Artist Rooms collection), to spaces focusing on artists and the urban environment, with displays titled Living Cities, From Object to Architecture and Performer and Participant.
We combine what can be termed old friends and new friends so there are familiar works as well as many contemporary works that open up new perspectives.
The galleries offer a range of contrasting experiences: Henri Matisse’s Backs reveals an artistic process in contrast to the raw physicality in Magdalena Abakanowicz’s installation Embryology, while Rebecca Horn’s “body extensions” locate her in a personal space and Cildo Meireles’ Babel is a communications overload.
Many works are new to Tate’s collection or on display for the first time, including Roni Horn’s 2009 work Pink Tons, Ana Lupas’s The Solemn Process (1964-2008) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2009 multi-screen installation Primitive.
Matthew Gale is the head of displays at Tate Modern
Project data
Cost £260mMain funders Government £50m; Greater London Authority £7m; Southwark Council £1m; Blavatnik Family Foundation; Artist Rooms Foundation; Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation; John Browne Charitable Trust; Ghandehari Foundation; LUMA Foundation; Eyal Ofer Family Foundation; Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation; Sackler Trust; Wolfson Foundation; Tate Members
Exhibition design, lighting interpretation, AV Tate
Architects Herzog & de Meuron
Joinery Beck
Admission Free
