South London Memories: Tate Modern gallery had surgery start

Tate Modern celebrates the 20th anniversary of its opening on Monday, May 11, 2020. The gallery has welcomed nearly 100 million visitors since it was first officially opened by Her Majesty The Queen.
It is now the world’s most visited museum of modern and contemporary art. Its curators can boast it has “transformed the British public’s relationship with contemporary art” in the 21st century.
It has done this through eye-catching big-name exhibitions. Its unique commissions in the Turbine Hall and live programme in the Tanks have made it a place to make a special trip to. And the bookshop is one of the best in the country. TOBY PORTER looks at its history.

The original Tate Gallery’s history goes back to 1889 when industrialist Henry Tate, who had made his fortune as a sugar refiner, offered his collection of British 19th century art to the nation.

Tate was a patron of Pre-Raphaelite artists – his bequest of 65 paintings to the National Gallery included John Everett Millais’ Ophelia 1851–2 and J.W.Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott 1888. But the trustees said there was not enough space in the gallery.

With the help of an £80,000 donation from Tate himself, the gallery at Millbank, now known as Tate Britain, was built and opened in 1897. Tate’s original bequest of works, together with works from the National Gallery, formed the founding collection.

In December 1992, the Tate Trustees announced their intention to create a separate gallery for international modern and contemporary art in London.

The former Bankside power station, which had been redundant since 1981, was selected as the new gallery site in 1994.

The following year, Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron were appointed to convert the building into a gallery. Their proposal retained much of the original character of the building – a key factor in this decision.

In 1996, the gallery design plans were unveiled and work began. Huge machinery was removed and the building was stripped back to its original steel structure and brickwork.

The turbine hall became a huge entrance hall and display area, and the boiler house became the galleries.

Since it opened in May 2000, more than 40 million people have visited Tate Modern. It is one of the UK’s top three tourist attractions and generates an estimated £100million a year to the London economy.

In 2009, the gallery, again with Herzog & de Meuron, transformed the redundant oil tanks, for more gallery space.

Bankside power station had been built at Meredith Wharf Bankside in 1891.

It was owned and run by the City of London Electric Lighting Company Limited (CLELCo) and supplied electricity to the City and north Southwark.

There were numerous complaints against the power station throughout its life.

In October 1901 the CLELCo paid the Corporation of Southwark £250 in settlement of a smoke nuisance action against the company. In January 1903, the company was fined £20 plus costs for “creating smoke”.

London County Council estimated up to 235 tonnes per square mile of grit was deposited in the area from Bankside power station during September 1950.

Bankside A was decommissioned in March 1959 and was demolished to allow the eastern end of Bankside B to be built.

The new Bankside B power station was approved by the cabinet in April 1947.

It was built in two phases between 1947 and 1963, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott – the architect of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and the red phone box.

He created a massive turbine hall, 35m high and 152m long, with the boiler house alongside it and a single central chimney. But the site had been redundant since 1981.

Bankside B was designed to be coal-fired but, but after a coal and power shortage in early 1947, was redesigned to be oil-fired – the first such power station in Britain.

In April 1994, the Tate Gallery announced that Bankside would be the home for the new Tate Modern.
The £134million conversion started in June 1995, with the removal of the remaining redundant plant.

The conversion work was carried out by Carillion and completed in January 2000.

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No evidence of owning enslaved people

Neither Henry Tate nor Abram Lyle was born when the British slave trade was abolished in 1807.

Henry Tate was 14 years old when the Act for the abolition of slavery was passed in 1833; Abram Lyle was 12.

So neither was a slave owner. Nor is there any evidence of their families or partners owning enslaved people.

The firms founded by the two men, which later combined as Tate & Lyle in 1921, do connect to slavery.

Without slavery, the British sugar industry would not have existed in the form and on the scale they did.

Researchers who looked into the history of the company concluded: “We do not know whether either sourced raw sugar from the slave states of Cuba and Brazil which, after the equalisation of sugar-duties beginning in 1846, had become competitive suppliers to the British market and which remained slave economies.”