THIS MONTH MARKS an important moment in the history of Tate Modern. The long-awaited extension – the Switch House, which sits like its eponymous predecessor on the former Power Station’s cylindrical underground tanks – has risen to its ten-storey height and been elegantly clad with 336,000 bricks. These wrap a perforated lattice around the building, its chequerboard effect allowing these parts of the building to be pierced by light during the daytime and to emit a glow from artificial light at night (Figs.II and IV), a dual role similar to that performed by the great lantern surmounting Frederick Gibberd’s Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. But Herzog & de Meuron’s pyramidal tower both commands attention and counters expectations, denying us neat geometry as well as the more abrupt disjunctions associated with Frank Gehry. Instead the building folds in and out, twists and leans, yet retains a coherent whole. Viewed from the west (Fig.I), it nudges up to the older building, almost echoing in height the former power station’s huge central chimney on the north side, while a single tall thin window in its west wall echoes those that accentuate the sheer height of Tate Modern’s riverside façade. Long horizontal windows slice across the new building from top to bottom, but stop and start irregularly, adding a syncopated beat to the building’s external appeal. At the summit a public terrace offers a 360 degree panoramic view of London.

There are aspects of the Switch House, most noticeably in the handling of brick (Fig.III), which have no precedent in Herzog & de Meuron’s previous work and which required greater than usual precision in the process of construction. This Editorial has been written before the internal arrangement of this new building, and its displays, have been made public. Yet excitement is growing by the day. A previous Editorial for this Magazine posed a pertinent question for museums: ‘Is bigger necessarily better?’1 In the case of Tate Modern the answer is undeniably yes. The Switch House will add about sixty per cent more space for art and visitors, and not only does this make possible new galleries in a greater variety of shapes and sizes, some more intimate than others, but the new development also brings with it greater ease of access and improved flow of movement. For the first time, visi-tors will be able to enter Tate Modern from the south side, where a new piazza has been created. Access between the Switch House and the Boiler House is possible at both ground floor level and on the fourth floor, by means of a new bridge across the Turbine Hall. As it turns out, the Switch House is not just an extension to the former museum, but a unifying ingredient in the whole, not only architecturally but also in terms of Tate Modern’s concern with display and education. 

The huge success of Tate Modern means that it now attracts more visitors than New York’s MoMA. On a rainy weekend, when crowds pour in, the building can seem rebarbative and in need of better facilities. One prime goal behind the new extension is to give visitors more space to sit, read, rest and meet friends. Another is to enhance the visitor experience by offering easier and fuller access to information on the works on display and to the Museum itself. Hence the ‘Explore’ spaces in among the new displays and the app that has been created, which will enable visitors with smart phones to tap into general information in front of works of art, or to dig down, if they so wish, to the latest scholarly article on the subject. At the same time, Tate Modern is keen to attend to the needs of first-time visitors. The new Start Gallery will offer an introduction to an array of landmark items in the history of modern art and will also throw in some curatorial basics by explaining why the letter ‘T’ sits alongside the catalogue number in many of the labels. Admittedly, greater attention to the diversity within Tate Modern’s audience is long overdue. To some extent this need will be met by ‘Tate Exchange’, which will occupy one entire floor in the Switch House. Here, from noon onwards every day for the next nine months, visitors can drop in to ask questions about art and its value to society, to reflect on the role of museums and how they are changing, or to engage with a programme of talks, events and partnerships. This could be a significant development within Tate communications and is certainly a major aspect of the public benefit offered by this new building. Tim Etchells, the artist in charge of the first ‘Tate Exchange’ programme, advertises its presence through his poster Provocation (Fig.V), which plays on the word ‘exchange’, the overall title of this project but also its theme for this year.

Yet a key motivation behind this new stage in Tate Modern’s history is to affirm its recently acquired position as the world’s leading museum of modern art and to open up a new era for modern and contemporary art. The galleries in the Boiler House have been refurbished and rehung, mixing familiar items with new work in fresh juxtapositions. Photography is more in evidence, and galleries filled with traditional media alternate with installations. For the first three weeks after the opening, from the 17th June to the 3rd July, live art and performance will play a prominent role, and the film programme in the Starr Cinema will be better integrated with the collection displays. But above all what the new Tate Modern offers is the experience of modern art in a globally expanded field that now extends to some fifty-seven countries worldwide.

With hindsight, it seems ironic that for much of its life Tate has struggled to be modern. Its original donor, Henry Tate, first conceived of a gallery of modern British art. Before its opening in 1897, as the National Gallery of British Art and as an adjunct to London’s National Gallery, the latter’s Trustees approved the transfer of ‘modern’ pictures in its national collection to Millbank. ‘Modern’ then meant works by artists born after 1790, a date that conveniently kept Constable and Turner at Trafalgar Square, although in the end a few Constables did travel to Millbank, on the understanding that they would immediately be returned if the National Gallery Trustees requested it. More problematic was the issue of modern art from abroad. It is fairly true to say that during the first decade of the twentieth century if a private donor offered to give to the nation what was then called ‘modern foreign art’, the nation did not quite know what to do with it. Tate’s widow liked to remind people of the nationalist purpose behind her husband’s gift. And when the National Gallery accepted Giovanni Boldini’s portrait of the famous beauty Lady Colin Campbell and hung it among old masters at Trafalgar Square, it seemed foreign, flashy and horribly new. 

This, however, was merely the beginning of a long and complicated history of prejudice, indifference and missed opportunities that for many years shut Cézanne, Picasso and much German art out of the Tate Collection and left it trailing far behind the achievement of New York’s MoMA. You can study the history of Cubism at MoMA, but not at Tate Modern. It was assumed, when Tate Modern first opened in 2000, that its thematic layout was a deliberate ploy to disguise its inability to mount a strong narrative, owing to an insufficient number of important works within the history of Modernism.

Nevertheless, Tate Modern has succeeded in making us look at modern and contemporary art in new ways. For many years now it has been acquiring a more international view of art that reaches beyond Europe and North America. It has been cultivating connections in other countries, building up support groups and acquisition committees and mounting exhibitions of work by artists such as Saloua Raouda Choucair and Cildo Meireles, both of whom had never previously been given solo exhibitions in Britain. In an era of global communications, there is no longer such a thing as ‘modern foreign art’, for we are all today foreigners or ‘others’, and can, like Diogenes, claim to be ‘citizens of the world’. 

Interest in world art expands as narratives around modernism become stale with retelling and laboured revisionism. Globalisation is fast becoming one of the most popular subjects in art history departments. Yet art historians, to some extent, have always been globalists, interested in seeking out origins and interactions and identifying trade routes that link distant countries, regions and cultures, across a period of time that reaches back thousands of years. Ever since its foundation in 1903, this Magazine has been open to the history of world art and architecture. Nevertheless, contemporary world art does require new forms of attention, frames and perspectives, if the traditional tasks of the art critic and art historian are to be performed. 

It is here that the promise of Tate Modern sometimes disappoints. There are currently four displays in the Boiler House galleries – Making Traces, Citizens and States, Material Worlds and Media Networks – and each is introduced in an informative manner. But half way round each display it is easy to forget what is the overall theme, for the selection and presentation sometimes conveys a want of intellectual coherence, and there is some inexpert hanging to boot. Once the Switch House opens it will almost certainly have the edge on the Boiler House, with its more variable galleries, its Louise Bourgeois exhibition and the fact that almost three-quarters of its items on display have been acquired since 2000 and many of them not previously seen by the public. Already it is evident in the Boiler House that geography has become a significant theme. Whether aware of this or not, the visitor encounters art made in Beirut, Rio de Janeiro or Bangalore, that comes from Japan or the Sudan, with sometimes inadequate discussion of concepts and problems of space and place. Wall panels are helpful, but they do not remove a growing awareness that an historical perspective is often lacking, and art, reduced to spectacle, is shorn of its context. The Mona Hatoum exhibition in the Boiler House is a strong attraction but, at the same time, there is a growing desire for a broader context than monographic exhibitions permit.

Yet Tate Modern’s shift of focus is timely and ambitious. Many of the master narratives on modern art have grown tired or been discredited, and Alfred Barr’s map of modernist movements leading up to 1935 has come to seem absurdly simplistic. Still, Modernism itself survives, and has been assimilated in certain countries where it was initially resisted, if on different terms. The enormous diversity within contemporary art not only links back to ‘other’ modernisms but also connects us with the way we think about history. A visit to Tate Modern in the coming months will remind us how much the world has changed since 2000. A clear focus on particular cities and countries, a unity of purpose and consistent professionalism lie behind the pursuit of this museum’s goals. Bigger can mean better, and the keen anticipation generated by the opening of the Switch House and Tate Modern’s new displays is fully justified.

1 Editorial: ‘Tate Modern five years on’, The Burlington Magazine 147 (2005), p.449.