A record number of people have visited the new Tate Modern in its opening days with 143,000 visits since the gallery opened on Friday 17 June. On Saturday alone there were over 54,000 visits to the gallery, around double the usual visitor number and the highest ever attendance for a single day to the museum.
Frances Morris, Director, Tate Modern said: “We are absolutely delighted that so many visitors experienced the new galleries and performances at Tate Modern over the opening weekend. The Switch House increases the size of Tate Modern by 60% and offers a huge new variety of experiences for visitors. Although we have almost doubled the number of regular visitors to the galleries during our opening weekend, we have space for it to feel comfortable even when busy. There has been a tremendous response from the public and we look forward to welcoming many more visitors over the coming months.”
A weekend of special events, supported by UNIQLO, was held to celebrate the opening. The centrepiece was a specially-commissioned choral work by artist Peter Liversidge, performed at 17:00 on Saturday 18 June by over 500 singers from community choirs across London. Over 650 Tate staff and volunteers gave free Uniqlo Ten Minute Art Talks about art works over the weekend. Free screenings of film and video works from Tate’s collection were held throughout each day in the newly refurbished Starr Cinema, while special events for young people and families took place across the weekend.
The opening weekend launches three weeks of dedicated free live performances, new commissions and a host of other special events. Three weeks of live art will animate the displays. This free programme, part of the BMW Tate Live partnership, includes work from Tate’s collection staged intermittently throughout the building, from Tania Bruguera’s police on horseback to Tino Sehgal’s gallery attendants bursting into song. The Tanks will host new performance commissions running every day from 17 June to 3 July 2016, highlighting the place of live art in the 21st century museum.
The new Tate Modern opened to the public on Friday 17 June. The new Switch House building is designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, who also designed the original conversion of the Bankside Power Station in 2000. It is the most important new cultural building to open in Britain since the British Library. The world’s most popular gallery of modern and contemporary art is now even more international, diverse and engaging.
Tate’s collection of modern art has been completely transformed since Tate Modern first opened in 2000, in order to show that great art is made all over the world. As a result of a focused and intensive international acquisition programme over recent years, the collection is now far more diverse, including more photography, performance and film, as well as more work by women artists.
The completely re-hung free collection displays feature 800 works by over 300 artists from over 50 countries from Chile to India, Russia and Sudan to Thailand. The new displays tell a broader story of modern and contemporary art over the last 100 years. Seventy-five percent of the art on show has been acquired since Tate Modern first opened and half of the solo displays are dedicated to women artists. The works are displayed across the existing Boiler House and the newly built Switch House.
Digital technologies are now more fully integrated into the experience of Tate Modern than ever before, through an expansion of the Bloomberg Connects initiative. In partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, who have supported Tate Modern since it first opened in 2000, Tate has created new interactive spaces and an innovative new app to bring the museum’s collection to wider audiences in new ways. These are joined by the Timeline of Modern Art touchscreen and the popular Digital Drawing Bar, as well as Tate Shots, the hugely successful online series of weekly short films.
For press information contact Helen.Beeckmans@tate.org.uk or Duncan.Holden@tate.org.uk or call +44(0)20 7887 4939/4940. For high-resolution images visit tate.org.uk/press
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