On 27 March 2007, striking plans to transform Tate Modern into a new museum for a twenty-first-century audience were given planning permission. The proposed new gallery, by the Pritzker Prize-winning architects of the original conversion, Herzog & de Meuron, will adjoin the south side of the existing building and provide a new route through the building to the river. The brief is for a new space that allows us to present the broader range of work that is being created by contemporary artists and respond to the different ways our growing audiences engage with art.
Over 5 million people visited Tate Modern during the last year. The appetite for new experiences, participation and knowledge is clear from the response we had to The Unilever Series installation by Carsten Höller, the success of the inaugural UBS Openings:The Long Weekend, the increasing numbers of people involved in lifelong learning in the gallery, and the success of initiatives such as UBS Openings: Family Zone and the Learning Zone, both of which are at the heart of the new displays rehang. We have responded by programming more crosscultural performances throughout the year, raising the profile of our unique film programme and making our learning and interpretation activities more accessible and engaging than ever before.
A rich and varied exhibition programme included important shows dedicated to modern artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and David Smith. The Gilbert & George exhibition was the most comprehensive exhibition of their work ever presented in this country. For many visitors the highlight of the year was the seventh commission in The Unilever Series, Test Site by Carsten Höller. The five slides he installed in the Turbine Hall challenged visitors to 'let themselves go' in public and questioned whether slides could be more regularly used as a mode of transport in our busy cities.
In May, exactly six years after Tate Modern opened, we entirely rehung the Collection displays. We replaced the previous themes in the gallery's four wings with Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism; Surrealism and surrealist tendencies; Abstract Expressionism and European Informal Art; and Minimalism. The critically acclaimed rehang, supported by UBS in a new three-year partnership, explores how these movements reflect earlier artistic practice and shape and inform subsequent developments.
Over the late May Bank Holiday weekend in 2006 we ran UBS Openings: The Long Weekend, a special four-day programme animating the Collection displays with live performances, events and activities aimed at a variety of audiences. The dramatic Turbine Hall was the setting for performances and commissions including a live set by DJ Spooky to a screening of the haunting black-and-white film Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927) by Walther Ruttmann. Twenty-five years after it was first shown, we reinvented a spectacular promenade-style puppet parade, Merma Never Dies, designed by the surrealist painter Joan Miró. A programme of live performances continued throughout the year in the series UBS Openings: Saturday Live.
The integration of film within the Exhibition and Displays department gave the programme a new impetus. Highlights have included a series dedicated to American film-maker Robert Beavers, seasons of Polish, Brazilian and Indian film, and a Patti Smith event. An estimated 9,200 people have attended screenings at Tate Modern.
As part of the new Collection displays, we launched UBS Openings: Family Zone, a bold and attractive arrival point for families. New paper- and object-based games were designed to guide families through the galleries, and the Start programme was extended to Saturdays as well as Sundays leading to a significant increase in numbers of participants. While over 30,000 people have used the Family Zone since it opened, the Small Steps programme, aimed at local hard-to-reach families with pre-school children, attracted strong support and was awarded an Active in the Community award by Southwark Council.
The Learning Zone, sponsored by Bloomberg, was nominated for a Design Week Award and previous multimedia tours, including one for Frida Kahlo, were also nominated for an award. It is clear in the take-up of the Family Zone and Learning Zone that there is an increasing number of people eager to participate in learning programmes at the gallery. Over 350,000 people took part in our varied programme of on- and off-site learning this year. At Tate Modern alone, this included 124 courses, talks and workshops, attended by an estimated 12,000 people; 22 events for young people attended by 4,500; and workshops for 9,000 school pupils and teachers.
