Tate Modern

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of spending the day with my friend Jenn (B), who I went to school with at Fleming College (which means she is also a museum person). We went to visit the Tate Modern, although for the first hour or so we sat on a bench in a gallery and talked... a lot. Eventually, we got up and started looking at the art.

I would like to explain that while there are plenty of ‘no photo’ signs at the museum, no one seems to care that they are there. Tourists take photos. The staff in the galleries that are there to make sure that you don’t touch anything do not seem interested in you when you take photos. So I took minimal photos. Of particular interest was this installation by Michelangelo Pistoletto, entitled ‘Venus of the Rags’.

The title seems fairly self-explanatory.

We were particularly drawn to the Andy Warhol room, mainly because of the wallpaper.

When faced with a choice of two rooms, one with plain walls and another with pink and yellow cow walls, the choice is fairly obvious.

My guidebook says that Tate Modern gets five times as many visitors as MOMA in New York, but I don’t think it’s a better museum. It doesn’t do a fantastic job of making modern art engaging. We also had some serious issues with their labels, which were placed all over the place. Some were to the left of the object, others to the right, some were above it, and others were below. Particularly for large installations, it was impossible to read the label while standing in front of the object. This isn’t an issue in an empty gallery, but when there are a lot of people in between the object and the label the problem is quite obvious.

My favourite piece was something that I couldn’t photo well, so I will tell you about it instead. In 1955, Robert Frank took an epic road trip across the States and took photos of... well, everything and everyone including cowboys, waitresses, diners, and some hot cars. He published some of the photos in a book called ‘The Americans’. The museum has the contact sheets of those photos on display and the array of photos made an interesting collage of images. The small size of each makes you really peer at them and see the image. I could have spent a long time looking at each one.

One of the best parts of the Tate Modern is outside of the museum. The view of the Millennium Bridge from the river entrance is a must-see.