Museum Smackdown

Tate Modern, originally uploaded by kayodeok.

MoMA vs. Tate Modern -- the NYT's Roberta Smith has the tale of tape:

The contrast with MoMA’s overly refined building, whose poor layout shortchanges the world’s greatest collection of Modern art, is striking. That MoMA could have spent so much money on a design that seems so unaccommodating — and already feels too small — for its growing audience is a travesty.

Tate Modern has been a hit with the public since the 2000 opening of its immense Bankside building, a former power station converted by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog and de Meuron at a cost of about $200 million. The art world, though, had plenty of complaints: the cavernous Turbine Hall, the dust generated from the unfinished oak floors, the relentless progression of galleries and the weak collection.

But Tate Modern appears to have worked out many of its kinks. It is using its limitations to its advantage and evolving into a people’s palace that the art world can also love.

The lessons of Tate Modern challenge a lot of conventional wisdom, at least that expressed in many American museums these days. Most important, Tate Modern’s huge building proves that being big is not the same as being corporate: it is possible to have a large institution feel personal to its visitors.

I love the Tate Modern -- it was the hands-down highlight of my visit to London last year. Of course, I'm a sucker for the steampunk-influenced converted-power-station architecture, but I thought the gallery organization was brilliant. Instead of grouping works chronologically, they are presented thematically -- landscapes in one wing, still lifes in another, etc, challenging you to find the commonality in juxtapositions of dramatically different works.

I wouldn't be quite as harsh on the MoMA redesign as Smith is, but it's certainly true that the Tate is far more inviting, in spite of its imposing, almost menacing exterior. It also feels much more hip, contemporary, and alive, where MoMA often feels corporate and sterile. It tends to reinforce the idea of museum-going as a cultural duty rather than a fresh and exciting aesthetic experience.

Comments

[Tim Rutherford-Johnson]

Hey Darcy - just saw this, and as a Londoner who's just returned from his first visit to New York felt I had to add a comment. While I *love* the Tate, I felt MoMA easily stood up, and in many respects surpassed it. It has a much superior collection for a start, and that's hard to beat. Plus the layout - while conforming more or less to the standard history - made sense and revealed connections between things that I'd never seen before. It got me thinking about those connections too, whereas the Tate has never done that for me. It's such a peculiar layout (although I've not seen the recent rehang) that there's no sense of passing through periods, or styles, or anything. You just head straight for the paintings you want to see and ignore the rest. There's no narrative.

That said, the Tate's Turbine Hall is the greatest art space I know - and the series of Unilever commissions they've used to fill it have all been staggering. The museum is also free, too, which makes a huge difference in incorporating it into the local community. But still, I can't help but feel that a small part of Londoner's love for the Tate is simply that we don't have anything else quite like it, so it monopolises a need.

[DJA]

Hey Tim,

This may be a case of "grass is always greener" phenomenon. It's easy to take MoMA's permanent collection for granted when you've seen all the highlights many times, and it's possible that I would eventually become more impatient with the Tate's nonlinear approach after multiple visits. But I've never been one to "head straight for the paintings you want to see and ignore the rest." I'm always excited to discover exciting, compelling works by artists I've never heard of, and that happened a lot more at the Tate -- like with Giuseppe Penone's trees, Rebecca Horn's Concert for Anarchy, or Richard Hamilton's The subject. And, as I said, I found the layout of the Tate Modern far more functional and appealing.

And yes, Turbine Hall rocks, and "free" beats the pants off "$20."