An Investigation of the Architectural, Urban, and Exhibit Designs of the Tate Museums.

Abstract

This dissertation argues that art museums underwent an adjustment of purpose from the close of the nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century with the height of ‘postmodernism’ in the late 1980s marking a critical juncture best examined through a multidisciplinary project that looks at three design scales: the city, the building and the exhibit. Exploring issues in museology, exhibition practices and urban planning and the ways in which they intersect with museum architecture, the project focuses on the Tate institution in England. Selected for its ability to address the critical questions facing the institution of the museum and the city in its architecture, the Tate serves as a case study in a detailed analysis of significant moments from the 1897 foundation of the Gallery to the opening of James Stirling’s Clore Wing and the Liverpool extension in 1987 and 1988. The later Tate museums in St. Ives and Bankside are presented as extensions of the institutional trajectory.

Established during the “golden age” of the nineteenth century museum, the design strategies of the original Tate gallery are contrasted with postmodern enhancements; additions and extensions that coincide with a renewed interest in the signifying power of the past. While the tactics have changed since the nineteenth century, the desire to “uplift” the cityscape had been a recurring theme. The four Tate buildings each reflect a careful consideration of their urban conditions, interpreted as palimpsests. In addition to selecting depraved or post-industrial sites—a penitentiary, a derelict dockyard, a defunct gasworks, and a disused power generating plant—the Tate hired architects and planners dedicated to long-term strategies regarding the viability of the communities in which the museums were situated. The result has been an expansion of the civic function of the museum beyond its nineteenth century role as a cultural monument focused on popular improvement. The twenty-first century Tate combines inspiration, instruction, and entertainment to act as a mechanism for social cohesion and urban healing. This study finds that the postmodern Tates represent a renegotiation of architecture’s role as monument and container, balancing utopia and nostalgia, historically embedded but resolutely contemporary.