Article made by Vince Engelborghs
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group (together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives and Tate Online). It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of the London Borough of Southwark. Tate holds the national collection of British art from 1900 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art.The galleries are housed in the former Bankside Power Station, which was originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of Battersea Power Station, and built in two stages between 1947 and 1963. The power station closed in 1981. In 1992 The Tate Gallery at the British National Art Museum proposed a competition to build a new building for modern art. The purpose for the new building would help with the ever-expanding collection on modern and contemporary art. In 1995 it was announced that Herzog & de Meuron had won the competition with their simple design. The architects decided to reinvent the current building instead of demolishing it. The Tate modern is an example of adaptive reuse, the process of finding new life in old buildings. The building itself still resembles the 20th century factory in style from the outside and that is reflected on the inside by the taupe walls, steel girders and concrete floors. The façade of the building is made out of 4.2 million bricks that are separated by groups of thin vertical windows that help create a dramatic light inside. The history of the site as well as information about the conversion was the basis for a 2008 documentary Architects Herzog and de Meuron: Alchemy of Building & Tate Modern. This challenging conversion work was carried by Carillion. The southern third of the building was retained by the French power company EDF Energy as an electrical substation(in 2006, the company released half of this holding). The collections in Tate Modern consist of works of international modern and contemporary art dating from 1900 until today.Tate Modern currently has seven floors, originally numbered 1 to 7, they were then renumbered 0 to 6 in 2012. Levels 0 to 4 contain gallery space.Tate Modern has attracted more visitors than originally expected and plans to expand it have been in preparation since 2004. These plans are focused on the south west of the building and will provide 5,000m2 of new display space, almost doubling the amount of display space.This project was initially costed at £215 million. Of the money raised, 50 million pounds is coming from the U.K. government; 7 million pounds from the London Development Agency; 6 million pounds from philanthropist John Studzinski; and donations from, among others, the Sultanate of Oman and Elisabeth Murdoch.As of 2 June 2013, international shipping and property magnate Eyal Ofer pledged £10m to the extension project, making it to 85% of the required funds. Eyal Ofer, chairman of London-based Zodiac Maritime Agencies, said the donation made through his family foundation would enable "an iconic institution to enhance the experience and accessibility of contemporary art". The Tate director, Nicholas Serota, praised the donation saying it would help to make Tate Modern a "truly twenty-first-century museum". Two wings of the main building are used to stage the major temporary exhibitions for which an entry fee is charged. These exhibitions normally run for three or four months. When they were located on a single floor, the two exhibition areas could be combined to host a single exhibition. This was done for the Gilbert and George retrospective due to the size and number of the works. Currently the two wings used are on levels 2 and 3. It is not known if this arrangement is permanent. Each major exhibition has a dedicated mini-shop selling books and merchandise relevant to the exhibition. A 2014 show of Henri Matisse provided Tate Modern with London’s best-attended charging exhibition, and with a record 562,622 visitors overall, helped by a nearly five-month-long run.