Tate Modern today revealed plans for entirely new collection displays, 75% of which will have been acquired since 2000, opening on 17 June 2016. The new displays will demonstrate how the collection has been transformed since Tate Modern first opened. The world’s most popular gallery of modern art will be even more international, diverse and engaging, with works by over 300 artists from around the world displayed across the existing Boiler House and the new Switch House – the most important new cultural building in Britain for almost 20 years.
Old friends and new friends will be brought together, with works by Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin and Henri Matisse joining new acquisitions from Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, including Meschac Gaba, Sheela Gowda and Cildo Meireles. The most recent work to join the collection will take centre stage in the Turbine Hall: a huge sculpture of a tree almost seven metres tall, created by acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei.
The new Tate Modern will open with three weeks of live art. This free programme, part of the ongoing BMW Tate Live partnership, will include performance-based works 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 and Amalia Pica’s actors holding up a string of bunting. The Tanks – the world’s first museum spaces dedicated to live art – will also 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.
To celebrate the new Tate Modern, the gallery will stay open until 22:00 each evening for an opening weekend of special events, supported by Uniqlo. The centrepiece of the weekend will be 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. This cycle of songs was inspired by conversations the artist held with gallery staff, construction workers, visitors and local residents. Free screenings of film and video works from Tate’s collection by artists including Derek Jarman, Andrea Fraser and Rabih Mroue will be held throughout each day in the newly refurbished Starr Cinema, while special events for young people and families will take place across the weekend.
Digital technologies will be 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, Tate will launch an innovative new app and create new interactive galleries and content sharing tools to expand the museum’s collection to wider audiences.
One of the most exciting developments of the new Tate Modern will be the launch of an ambitious ‘open experiment’ called Tate Exchange. Occupying an entire floor of the new Switch House building, it will invite over 50 organisations to participate in Tate Modern’s creative process for the very first time, running events and projects on site and using art as a way of addressing wider issues in the world around us. The programme will bring together artists such as Guerrilla Girls and Tim Etchells alongside charities, community radio stations, universities and healthcare trusts.
3,000 school children from across the UK, from Orkney to St Ives, will be the first members of the public to see the new Tate Modern at a special preview on Thursday 16 June 2016. Welcomed by artist Bob and Roberta Smith, these children will get an exclusive opportunity to explore the new displays and the new building, and be inspired by modern and contemporary art from around the world.
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
NOTES TO EDITORS
TATE MODERN
Tate Modern opened to the public in May 2000. Located in the former Bankside Power Station, it is the world’s most popular museum of modern and contemporary art, attracting around 5 million visitors each year. It is one of four Tate galleries around the country, and part of a wider network of partner institutions – the Plus Tate network – which champions the visual arts in the UK. Tate manages a growing national collection of over 70,000 works of art, acquired and cared for on behalf of the public and shown in venues throughout the UK and across the world.
PROJECT DONORS
The Tate Modern Project is being made possible by a number of significant donations from public funders, notably a £50m investment from the Government, £7m from the Greater London Authority and £1m from Southwark Council. We are also most grateful for the generosity from private foundations, starting with a major donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation and including gifts from Artist Rooms Foundation, The Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation, The John Browne Charitable Trust, The Ghandehari Foundation, LUMA Foundation, The Eyal Ofer Family Foundation, The Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation, The Sackler Trust, and The Wolfson Foundation.
Major support for the project has also been received from individual donors, including Joseph and Abigail Baratta, John and Michael Chandris and Christina Chandris, James Chanos, Ago Demirdjian and Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian, George Economou, Maryam and Edward Eisler, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, Mala Gaonkar and Oliver Haarmann, Lydia and Manfred Gorvy, Noam Gottesman, Maja Hoffmann and Stanley Buchthal, Peter and Maria Kellner, Catherine Lagrange, Pierre Lagrange, Allison and Howard W. Lutnick, Elisabeth Murdoch, Simon and Midge Palley, Stephen and Yana Peel, Catherine Petitgas, Franck Petitgas, Barrie and Emmanuel Roman, John Studzinski CBE, Julie-Anne Uggla, Lance Uggla, Viktor Vekselberg and others who wish to remain anonymous.
Tate Members have also supported the project.
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