Towards Tate Modern provides a new interdisciplinary account of Tate’s shifting position as a national arts institution. The book examines how earlier government directives impacted on Tate, which saw the organisation refocusing its aims and resulted in it pioneering new models for working across the public and private sectors.
The decade prior to the opening of Tate Modern witnessed a changing political, economic, cultural and social landscape. As London was rebuilding its own vision, Tate re-configured its role as a public museum and gallery by engaging with the market. Tate re-imagined what a public museum and gallery can do, what it can look like and where it can be and, in doing so, responded to a new kind of audience with a larger appetite than before. Re-cast as a cultural and social forum, Tate Modern turned itself into a popular public event. This research considers how Tate Modern generated a set of new debates and what this might mean for the future role of the public museum and gallery.
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Towards Tate Modern will be of particular interest to academics and students, art practitioners and policy makers working in the fields of museum studies, policy studies, cultural studies, urban studies, and political and economic history, as well as those involved in archival research. It will also engage those wishing to widen their understanding of how an institution such as Tate Modern was created.
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About the Author
Caroline Donnellan is a Lecturer in History of Art & Architectural History at Boston University Study Abroad London, UK

motw/Towards Tate Modern_ Public Pol - Caroline Donnellan.epub

motw/Towards Tate Modern_ Public Pol - Caroline Donnellan.pdf

Ashgate Publishing Limited

Gower Publishing Ltd

Taylor and Francis

CRC Press

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

London ; New York, 2018

1st ed, Florence, 2016

London, 2017

producers:
iTextSharp 5.1.3 (c) 1T3XT BVBA

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

Cover 1
Title 4
Copyright 5
Contents 6
List of figures 8
Introduction 10
Thatcher’s museum 11
Envisioning change 13
Cultural policy: museums and galleries 14
Competing claims 18
1 Past, present and future – government and city 28
Merseyside Development Corporation – the Tate Gallery Liverpool 29
The National Lottery 33
Rebranding politics – rebranding the nation 35
London world city 37
Building Bankside 42
2 Defining the vision 48
The Communications Department 51
The Tate Gallery St Ives 53
Defining the vision 55
Operation Moby Dick 57
Site proposals 58
Tate Canary Wharf – Tate Vauxhall 60
Tate South Bank – Tate Greenwich 61
Tate Bankside 63
Buying Bankside 65
Negotiation and consultation 66
Creating the brief – completing the vision 68
3 Funding and branding 74
The Development Office 75
Speculating for the future 78
Economic and cultural impact 79
The Millennium Commission 80
Regenerating Bankside 81
Southwark station 83
Branding Tate 85
The Change Management Programme 89
4 Competition and building 94
Researching the process 95
Regulating – deregulating architecture 97
The competition jury 99
The architecture competition 100
Building Tate Modern 103
Construction costs 108
The Millennium Bridge 110
5 Opening Tate Modern 114
Experiencing Tate Modern 114
London’s spatial turn 122
Assessing the impact 125
Industrial adaptive reuse 128
The Switch House and the Tanks (2016) 129
Bibliography 140
Index 148

Tate Modern is not modern - it was a century in the making. This interdisciplinary book is a unique account of a how Tate Modern transformed itself into the highly successful museum it is today. Tate Modern had to entice an audience which had earlier railed against modern art but by creating its own vision of art, its own vision of a public, and its own vision of London, it offered new thinking what a public institution can do. The author examines why the public became willing to visit the new art at Tate Modern and how the Tate pushed the cultural boundaries of national museums and galleries to the south bank of London. She also critiques how the Tate facilitated a new economic paradigm for the funding of a public arts organisation. This book should be read by students and researchers working in the disciplines of museum studies, as well as art history, architectural history, cultural studies, history, organisational studies, visual studies and interdisciplinary research. As an account of cultural policy relating specifically to museums and galleries, it will be of great interest to those working in museums and arts organisations

2025-10-27