London’s Best Modern Art At The Tate Modern

By Steffi Carter, to Museum Spotlight Europe

The Tate Modern, London, England

“The Tate Modern? Ah, you can skip it.”

This is what a native British gentleman and engineer says to me, a starving ballerina visiting from the States. Having never met ballet’s ideal standards for beauty, age, weight, or race, I am defensively inclined to give the Tate Modern a chance. Plus, it sounds like a dare, so I go twice in two days.

The Tate is an institution boasting the United Kingdom’s collection of British art, international contemporary, and modern art. Its mission is to amplify the public’s accessibility to, enjoyment and understanding of art through its four magnificent galleries: The original Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, and Tate Modern. Together, these sites house nearly 70,000 artworks of unimaginable variety.

The Tate Modern is my favorite. To get to there, I recommend taking the Tube and hopping off the Central Line at St Paul’s. You could, of course, get closer, faster, but hopping off here gives you a gorgeous fifteen minute walk past St Paul’s Cathedral, over the River Thames stretching under the Millennium Bridge, just brushing shoulders with Shakespeare’s Old Globe theater before embracing the monolith we know as the Tate Modern. This is the world’s favorite modern art museum, the fifth most-visited museum, the youngest and most popular branch of the Tate group. Upon its opening in 2000, the Tate Modern attracted 5.25 million visitors – more than twice the amount of visitors from the other three Tate sites combined! When it became abundantly clear that this museum would remain among the world’s heavy-hitters in way of record high attendance, plans for expanding the Tate Modern were promptly announced. As it stands, the building is a dazzling, dizzying, thought-provoking piece in itself.

Now, let’s pretend you took my advice. You do stroll from beholding the classical beauty of St Paul’s Cathedral to confront the perhaps imposing but nonetheless iconic combination of steel, brick, and glass pictured above. If this is mildly shocking and slightly, secretly disappointing, don’t worry. This doesn’t make you a bad person.

Let’s take that stroll together from Old World beauty to contemporary reflection. Let’s go slowly over Millennium Bridge and look back, to see St Paul’s Cathedral framed in blue glass and sky.

Let’s pause outside the intimidating brick facade and wonder together if we’re shallow or simple-minded for not instantly appreciating the significance of the Tate Modern. Let’s allow for the possibility that our first impressions may be disproven, and let’s stride right inside.

We’ve stepped over the threshold to the First Floor River Entrance. We glance over the life-sized map on the wall to our right or we take to wandering, which I prefer. The Tate Modern may be thought of in terms of three separate pillars under one roof: The main Turbine Hall in the center, the Boiler House to the north, and the Blavatnik Building to the south. Let’s push past light, quiet crowds to peer over the first floor balcony or bridge stretching over the striped ground floor. We’ll see an immense pendulum swinging side to side along the seam of the Turbine Hall. We’ll watch children and adults alike chase the moving metal sphere, sprinting and craning up to catch a glimpse of themselves in the orb above. We wonder together whether this was meant to illustrate the push and pull between childlike playfulness and existential profundity, or if our wild imaginations are working overtime. We keep walking.

Were we to scuttle downstairs to Level 0, we would stumble across three enormous underground oil tanks known un-mysteriously as The Tanks: One serves simply as a utility space while the other two showcase performance art and installations, earning the description as “the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to live art.”

Level 1 contains the Terrace Bookshop and gift shop. Levels 2, 3, and 4 provide the breathtaking public space packed with free displays because like all UK national galleries (and unlike many museums in the United States), the Tate Modern grants general admission free of charge. Only special exhibits require an additional fee, but we ought to feel very free exploring the ever-changing collections of Levels 2, 3, and 4. Each floor is separated into east and west wings, breaking tradition for organizing the artworks not chronologically, but thematically: Artist and Society, In the Studio, Between Object and Architecture, Performer and Participant, Materials and Objects, Media Networks, and Living Cities. Let’s start at the Start Display, an introduction to basic ideas of modern art.

Level 5 buzzes with open-ended questions for being home to the Tate Exchange, a place devoted to engaging, communal conversation, collaboration, and discovery of new ideas and perspectives on life through art; the Tate Exchange is free and open to all. The Blavatnik Building runs a tall ten stories, each floor after Level 5 featuring places of varying exclusivity indelibly designed for contemplation. If we’re not buying Tate membership today, I recommend the top floor open viewing terrace, which is free and accessible to all (just be sure to use the dedicated elevator from Level 0). We can eat and drink at any one of the cafes and restaurants located on Levels 1, 3, 6, 9 or 10, but let’s be sure to end up on Level 10 to steal a spectacular 360-degree view of the London skyline.

That’s the long and short of the Tate Modern’s floor plan. Now let’s talk about its contents.

Maybe you’re enlightened enough to immediately understand every piece in the Tate Modern, all contemporary and modern art. But maybe you’re like me, and this doesn’t come naturally. The Tate Modern’s collection will be challenging. Bear in mind and rest assured: Reckoning with modern art is meant to be difficult.

I am a classical ballet dancer, through and through. Classical ballet is, like the architecture of St Paul’s Cathedral, classical for being built in a restrained Baroque style. This style of architecture and art was born of the Renaissance, the rejuvenation of classical antiquity and Greek thought within the then modern world, a style characterized by grandeur, exuberance, richness, and drama. My British gentleman from the beginning of this tale thought I might as well skip the Tate Modern because I more instinctively belong to the Baroque, to environments like the National Gallery with its sumptuous color schemes and ornate ceilings. I, of all people, am trained, programmed, and paid to adore and support classicism, idyllic lines and art and architecture. I am spoiled for clarity and a tad demanding for easy understanding. I encourage you to walk with me, past St Paul’s renowned and widely accepted beauty, over the hallmark of the Millennium Bridge to the edge of our comfort zone, onto the brink of the Southbank and into something new – the Tate Modern mindset.

Architects Herzog and de Meuron made light work of converting the old Bankside power station, rendering a truly contemporary public space which is deftly integrated with the existing historical structure. The lines are blurred between what is new and what is old within the Tate Modern, the minimalist, urban character of the building only enhanced by the non-obnoxious, thoughtful way. The effect is focused, undistracted, but still welcoming. Its halls feel unperformative, expansive and symbolic, but matter of fact. This is refreshing, when you open your mind and allow it to be.

The Tate Modern is important to me because it wakes me up and makes me think. To me it feels like a ballet studio, a productive, experimental, progressive, rehearsal space with plain walls devoid of pretension, costumes, and dramatic lighting. It’s about the work. Our experience at the Tate Modern differs from our experience at places like the National Gallery because there’s more work to be done. The art here doesn’t play easy on you! You have to ponder, weigh out and decide what pieces mean to you, and in turn wonder what those conclusions mean about you.

We become scientists and philosophers immersed in the museum rather than mere spectators separated from art, tasked with revealing meaning unique to our individual experiences as we wander along walls with Dali, Warhol, Picasso, Rothko, and more. The wooden floors of the Tate Modern are left unsealed so as to show the natural wear of life, the grit and lack of glamor left under our crisscrossing footsteps. You begin to feel at home. You begin to find the work rewarding. You begin to appreciate that you are never entitled to understand the world and the people wandering these halls with you, and you begin to work harder to earn the privilege of elevated understanding and tolerance.

And you begin to remember what you’ve always known: Our humanity is not just what we package up prettily, perfectly, and put onstage for the world to see. Our humanity requires work, activity, trying, failing, honesty, respect, and courage to listen to and uplift one another.

Let’s not skip the Tate Modern. Let’s go twice.