The Tate Modern... What can you say about it? Its a major international art institution, even if you don't care about art and you visit London you will likely go there. It has great works by great artists and incredibly high paid curators that know what they are doing.
But when it comes down to it all we really care about is what is going on in the Turbine room. The building was originally as a huge power plant on the south bank of River Thames, but converted into art museum following the trend of contemporary art spaces taking over unused industrial spaces. Walking into the Tate modern you enter a vast space that makes for interested exhibitions that are made specifically for the enormous room.
Currently there is a show on by Chinese artist Al Weiwei who hired an entire factory to execute his project. He hired factory manufacture millions of sunflower seeds made out of porcelain and each one hand painted.
These seeds were to take up the entire space and visitors were intended to be able to walk through and interact with this landscape. For a time you were able to however when officials came to the understanding that the seeds were being stolen then quickly put a stop to it and put a rope around the exhibition. This is another example of art spaces doing that they believe to be their duty to protect the work that they are showing actually does more damage to the work than good. Having the Tate Modern stop the public from getting walk around the work destroys it.
What’s the worst that could have happened? If the gallery was completely cleared out of seeds and the floor empty, it would just bring an interesting dialog about how greedy we are and how dependent we are on Chinese factory produced goods.
Francis Picabia
Francis Bacon
Andy Warhol
Joseph Beuys
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