Today the Clore Learning Centre at Tate Modern, located alongside the Turbine Hall, re-opens with a suite of newly revitalised spaces. Architects Herzog and de Meuron have worked closely with Tate’s Learning team to rework the gallery’s learning spaces, allowing visitors more opportunities to make, construct, contribute, display and join in.
The new Clore Learning Centre includes gallery-like spaces for the display of work, a welcome room full of resources and information and a small cinema. The Clore Studio, similar to an artist’s studio, has been designed to allow visitors to develop and explore art practice and the McAulay Seminar Room is for discussion events. The McAulay Schools and Family Room is a new space for school groups and families to relax and eat their lunches in the gallery.
Anna Cutler, Director of Learning, Tate said:
We have developed a more artist-led, workshop-orientated approach to learning at Tate over the past year which is more visual and engaging and encourages participation. The Clore Learning Centre provides a brilliant foundation from which we can build and develop our new learning programme. Far removed from the classroom feel of old, the Centre is filled with laboratory spaces in which visitors can come to experiment, ask questions and have discussions, and make their own work by way of response and exploration. I hope that visitors of all ages will come and enjoy them and that this in turn encourages them to develop a depth of understanding and a lifetime love of gallery-going.
Spaces:
1. Clore Welcome Room
The first entry point to Tate Modern’s learning activities, functioning both as a reception and a display area for learners of all ages. The Clore Welcome Room contains the Eranda Resource Area lined with shelving which houses resources developed by the Learning team. The small meeting area will allow groups of the public to explore Tate’s learning resources, both digitally and through written material.
2. Clore Studio
Designed for up to 30 participants plus staff, this room is a ‘wet’ workshop facility allowing participants to directly engage with artists and their practice and develop ideas and skills through making art.
3. Clore Screening Room
A small cinema designed for approximately 20 people. This screening room allows visitors to view films about artists and other relevant documentary and archival footage, and also provides a forum for showing participants’ own films.
4. McAulay Gallery
A space for collaboration with curatorial colleagues with art and audiences, the display of participants’ work, as well as a space for courses based around the exploration of the displays and exhibitions on show at Tate Modern.
5. McAulay Schools and Family Room
A flexible space designed to hold 120 people and to act as the social hub of the Clore Learning Centre. This room is equipped with lockers, tables and chairs, and includes a ceiling mounted projector as well as a self-catering unit with a sink, vending machines and microwaves.
6. McAulay Seminar Room
Intended for discussion-based learning for a broad range of groups. With day-to-day capacity for approximately 30 participants, this room will be used flexibly as a space for seminars or workshops.
Studio C, the Learning area in the L3 West galleries next to Room 9, has also been upgraded to improve the acoustics of the space.
The re-opening of the Clore Learning Centre provides an opportunity to celebrate the start of a more integrated approach to learning at Tate. It also marks the first stage in the wider Tate Modern Project, developing Tate Modern to the south of the current building. The transformative effects of this project will be felt across both the current gallery and through the new building, where innovative learning spaces will play a central role.
These spaces have been generously supported by the Clore Duffield Foundation, Mr Ronald and the Hon Mrs McAulay and the Eranda Foundation.