Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/666019
ajor art museum expansions have become something of a Game of Thrones, with the world's top architects competing for territory, lusting to make a mark for all eternity—or at least until their shiny new structure is deemed insufficient and must be supplanted yet again by something larger. The Tate Modern's boffo renovation and expansion, a nearly $376 million project by Swiss maestros Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron that opens June 17, qualifies as an outlier to that game in several ways. Herzog & de Meuron's original 2000 building, which transformed Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's 1963 Bankside Power Station on the River Thames in London, was heralded by all when it opened as an example of architecture that served its purpose by making people actually want to look at art. Fairly quickly, the Tate Modern became the world's most popular modern and contemporary art museum, and a building meant for two million yearly visitors was getting five million instead. The collection doubled in size over that time, too. "It's probably the first time ever an architect was commissioned to do a museum, and then to expand it less than 20 years later under the same director," says Jacques Herzog, talking from a cafe in Basel, Switzerland, where his powerhouse firm is headquartered. "When we were first selected, we were rather young architects." In the intervening years, the firm won a Pritzker, and its reputation has skyrocketed with designs for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Parrish Art Museum in the Hamptons. That's not to mention the Beijing National Stadium, the intricate restoration of New York's Park Avenue Armory and other high-profile buildings. So why agree to add on to their previous work? "The question is rather, 'Who could say no to such a commission?'" says Herzog. "We have always said how we like being in an ongoing relationship with our best clients." He reels off the names of Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of the family of Tate museums, Bordeaux's Moueix family and fashion icon Miuccia Prada. "It's part of how we like to work," he adds. Of his relationship with Serota, Herzog says, "It was a very intense exchange between architect and client. Nick was coming to Basel all the time. Not intense in the way of a clash, but Nick is so interested in architecture, and he is so fast." He adds, "We would lay things on the table and discuss them. I don't believe in architecture based on hidden agendas. That's an old bad tenet of modernism: Architects can only do great stuff behind the back of the client. We believe the opposite is true. We love strong clients." Despite that cozy mind-meld, the addition did force Herzog & de Meuron to stretch. "It's always a challenge to do an addition to something," says Herzog. "Like a movie, blockbuster one and then two and three—which one was better? We wanted it to be one body, one organism, not an addition of different things." The original Tate Modern was anchored by the soaring Turbine Hall, and the expanded version is, too. On one side is the 2000 Boiler House, with the original galleries, and now Herzog & de Meuron has added a taller, 10-story pyramid-shaped structure on the other side of the Turbine Hall, called the Switch House, which will be devoted to showing works and include dedicated learning spaces. Schematically simple in the best way (though promising to feel more intricate inside), the new structure has the same elemental power of their first one. In addition to getting a new building, at the same time the Tate Modern also has a new director, picked by Tate's trustees from the existing team: Frances Morris, who was previously the director of international collections. She's a 29-year veteran of the organization who has seen enormous changes during her tenure. "I feel that I arrived at what was essentially a 19th-century institution and have been part of dragging it into the 21st century," says Morris, a low- key sort who is entirely in her element at the Tate and fluent in the lingua franca of today's art world. Like Herzog & de Meuron's design, she doesn't seem to need to speak loudly to be bold. On a practical level, she is most excited by simply having more gallery space—60 percent more than before. "I think what's really interesting is that 2000 was a beginning, it wasn't an end," says Morris. "We learned a huge amount when we opened." The Tate is free and that has helped drive its enormous traffic. "I knew we would be an architectural icon," Morris adds, but she doubted it would spill over into the galleries. "I thought people would come and they would flood the Turbine Hall. I imagined that that crowd would be complemented by very calm peaceful gallery spaces. But actually when you come to Tate Modern on most days of the week and certainly on weekends, it's heaving with people." Morris cites the addition's facade as a typically subtle achievement from Herzog & de Meuron. "The new building is faced in brick, which is not identical to the old brick but is very sympathetic," she says. "It knits two very disparate buildings together." The industrial character of the old power plant continues to inspire the architects, as evidenced by The Tanks, the newly renovated subterranean foundation to the building—massive clover-shaped spaces made of raw concrete—which will serve as a counterpoint to the white box galleries above. They will be a "robust but friendly" place for media art and performance pieces, says Herzog. Perhaps his most surprising take on the power of museum architecture is that what goes in them trumps the envelope of their surroundings. "Even in the old MoMA, with those awful carpets and the ceiling far too low, the Pollocks still looked amazing," says Herzog, going back a few decades in the museum's history to recall the sturdy presence of great art. "That was an interesting lesson. We shouldn't overestimate the importance of architecture—but if the presentation is great and it comes together, even better." So far, the coming together at the Tate Modern looks promising. Morris and her team certainly intend an ambitious level of programming so that the new building and the art both push each other ever higher. Her experience with the international collections thoroughly informs her plans—it reflects the direction of the art world, and Britain itself, toward new voices. "I think food is a brilliant analogy: Food has not only gotten better, but it's also fusion food," Morris says about the rise of serious cuisine in her home country. "You can rarely eat anything in Britain that hasn't been inflected with a sense of diversity, the mingling of traditions and places. The same stands for art." One of the highlights of the new building when it opens in June will be the dedicated gallery for Louise Bourgeois' work that will inaugurate the "Artist Rooms" series on the site. And it's no accident that the first artist given that honor is a woman. The gender balance at the Tate Modern is going to be quite different than what museumgoers are used to. "In terms of what we would call our solo artist presentations, I think about 50 percent of the new hang will be by women," says Morris. "Amongst those will be very thought-provoking, interesting, revelatory work by people like Sheela Gowda and Magdalena Abakanowicz—names you don't bandy about in the way people bandy about some of the well-known, senior male artists of their generations." It's clear that on Morris' watch and supported by Herzog & de Meuron's design, the Tate Modern has more changes in store, and June's opening may be just another beginning. "Museums tend to move very slowly," says Morris. "We have been on a pretty fast trajectory here." 206 culturedmag.com M