The Millennium Commission has awarded £1.4 million to Tate Modern, alongside 150 new grants totalling over £32 million it announced today. The grant will be for improvements to the gallery’s North Entrance and Level 4 Concourse to provide better facilities for visitors and an additional space for contemporary art.
The Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP, Chair of the Millennium Commission and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said,
The Millennium Commission’s £50 million grant to Tate Modern created the most popular modern art gallery in the world. Our new grant of £1.4 million will enhance the riverside entrance, opposite the Millennium Bridge, and will improve access to the Tate’s world class collection.
Tate Director, Sir Nicholas Serota, said:
We are grateful to the Millennium Commission for building on the remarkable commitment of their original grant of £50 million, which was critical to the creation of Tate Modern, with this new award. It will enable us to make the gallery even more accessible to art lovers and improve facilities to cater for more than double the number of visitors originally anticipated.
Tate Modern has had over 11 million visitors since it opened to the public in May 2000. The gallery is estimated to have brought direct economic benefits to London of between £50 million and £90 million each year and has helped to create 2,400 new jobs.
Tate Modern’s current exhibition, Cruel and Tender: The Real in Twentieth-Century Photography, the gallery’s first major exhibition of photography, runs until 7 September 2003.