The Tate's in a State!

I have always loved visiting the Tate Modern and so was looking forward to seeing the new "rehang". UBS sponsored the new rehang which opened on May 23rd this year.

We decided to spend our 1st wedding anniversary in London wine tasting and gallery visiting so this seemed a good opportunity to visit the new and exciting Tate Modern collection. It was great to see some new exhibits but overall I wasn't too impressed. In fact I didn't like it.

"Study for Composition VII", 1913, oil and tempera on canvas, 785 x 1005 mm

The Kandinsky exhibition was fantastic and the new multimedia guide on a pda was excellent - highly recommend this to everyone (although the Kandinsky exhibition has finished!)

After seeing the Kandinsky work we visited the rest of the gallery- it was a busy Sunday morning and there were LOTS of people there which made it hard to view the work.

We were most disturbed by the new hanging of some of the rooms. The new hanging made the rooms very cluttered with multiple artworks displayed at different heights. We felt that this made it very difficult to appreciate each one individually.

Before we left we filled in a comment card explaining our feelings about the rehang...

A few weeks later I took a group of year 11, 12 and 13 students from school to the Tate Modern as part of their GCSE and A Level Art courses. While they wandered around completing the tasks we'd set I was able to wander round too. It was a much quieter Friday afternoon this time and I had time t hire the new multimedia guide for the main collection - this was just a impresive as the one we'd had for the Kandinsky exhibition - infact I didn't have time to finish it so will have to go back again.

When I got to that displeasingly cluttered room my multimdia gude put me in my place by explaining why it had been hung inthat way. Now with less people there I was able to appreciate that it was the Surrealist section of the gallery and that the earliest Surrealist exhibitions had been displayed in this way because of lack of space and to create a sense of disorder. The rehang has tried to recreate this Surrealist salon experience.

At least they haven't messed with the Rothko room.

Emma