There are some museums that are so good, you have to go (at least) twice. That’s how I feel about the Tate Modern every time I visit London.
For those unfamiliar with the Tate Institutions, the Tate is a network comprised of four different locations: Tate Modern; Tate Britain; Tate Liverpool; and Tate St. Ives. Opening in 1897 with only the Tate Britain, and focusing only on British artworks, the four institutions now present both British and international art from 1500 to the present. (For more about the Tate’s history, go here: https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/history-tate.)
Each building presents a distinctly different collection, as well as different rotating exhibitions, incentivizing visitors to travel the different Tates, and visit multiple times. You can even travel by boat along the Thames River from the Tate Modern to the Tate Britain! The permanent collection at each Tate is free to all, and only certain exhibitions have fees ranging from £5 to £20 pounds, making the museum very accessible to visitors. They’re open seven days a week for everyone to enjoy.
There are two reasons I love the Tate: first, their integration of the global contemporary, specifically art from the Arab world; and second, their most recent special exhibition of Olafur Eliasson.
Let’s start with the Tate Modern’s current exhibition Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life, open until January 5, 2020. The admission price might seem steep at £18 (£17 for students, £5 for kids ages 12-18, and free for kids under age 12), but it is worth every penny. Eliasson is no stranger to the Tate: his 2003 exhibition The Weather Project in Turbine Hall attracted over two million people in 2003. In Real Life is a unique exhibition of installation works, along with some photographs, many of which have never been seen before in the UK. The show not only examines Eliasson’s complex installations but also shows his extensive studies of geometry and color. In Real Life also expands beyond the walls of the museum with his Waterfall, engaging the entirety of the vast Tate Modern complex.
My favorite work in this show was Din Blinde Passenger from 2010; the title translates to a Danish expression meaning “blind passenger.” This is an installation that visitors can walk through in order to transition from one part of Eliasson’s show to the other (note: if you’re claustrophobic, this is not a space I recommend you enter; pictures are available online at https://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK100196/din-blinde-passager). “Blind passenger” immediately engages and disables all your senses. The vast change of light temporarily disrupts your vision; the air is so thick you can touch it, feeling how sticky and dewy it is, and even taste the sweetness of the non-toxic chemicals used to make the fog; the smell of the fog is intoxicating; sound becomes the only way to walk through, as you listen to and rely on the visitors around you to navigate the space. The experience is one that can’t be summarized in photos, or accurately described in words; it simply must be experienced to be believed.
The other reason I love the Tate Modern is because of the way that they integrate the global contemporary. As an art historian of contemporary Arab, Iranian, and Turkish art, I arrange my museum visits around what museums have these collections. Not only does the Tate Modern have a wonderful array of contemporary art from the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey, but it is also well integrated into their permanent displays. Contemporary Arab art (sometimes called Middle Eastern or Islamic) is not placed in its own room isolated from other artists but instead integrated into the larger canon so visitors can place these artists within a larger art historical context. Moreover, it shows the Tate’s commitment to disrupting the Eurocentric canon that has long prevailed in museums.
Although there are so many great works in the Tate’s collection by artists such as Mona Hatoum, Marwan Rechmaoui, and Kader Attia, just to name a few, my favorite is Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982-3 by Iraqi painter Dia al Azzawi. For those unfamiliar with the history of Arab art, Dia al Azzawi is not just an Iraqi painter, but also an important art historian and curator who helped bring contemporary Arab art to England in the 1970s with shows such as Seven Iraqi Artists at the Iraqi Cultural Centre.
Does Sabra and Shatila Massacre look familiar to you? It should! It recalls Pablo Picasso’s infamous Guernica from 1937, a massive painting about the violence of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Al Azzawi’s painting is about the Sabra and Shatila massacre at the refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon after a right-wing militia attacked the camp, causing the deaths of many Palestinians, despite the fact that the Israeli Defense Force was guarding them at the time. I could sit for hours and work through the complex shapes, symbols, and writing in Arabic in this painting, learning about a complex history of foreign military involvement and conflict in the Middle East.
I don’t just love that the Tate has work by Dia al Azzawi and that it hangs so prominently, but I love that it’s in a room that shows a larger context and narrative about how artists are confronting issues of violence through their work. I love that I don’t have to go to a remote room to see art from the Arab World. The Tate’s outstanding curatorial choices promote a new kind of art history beyond national borders, and that works to represent all voices equally in an era of globalization.
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Rachel Winter is a Ph.D. candidate, emerging curator, and museum educator. Rachel’s specialization is contemporary artists from Southwest Asia and North Africa, or the Middle East. Her dissertation examines the relatively unknown history of curating and collecting contemporary art from the Arab world, Iran, and Turkey before 9/11 in both the US and the UK, as well as how collecting and curatorial practices were informed by earlier fairs and festivals.