The Tate Modern is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and the most visited 'Modern Art' gallery in the world. They have wonderful exhibitions there and they change all the time. It is a place where you could go time and again without getting bored. The iconic building is an old power station. It was commissioned during the post war years of power shortages and began generating power in 1952. However, the building was not finished until 1961 when all the power generating capacity came online. But things move fast in the world of power generation. By the mid-1980s the building was standing empty and deteriorating. For more than 10 years it was wrangled over by developers. Then, just as the buildings fate was sealed in 1993 a number of august bodies, and prominent people put in impassioned pleas for it to be saved. Suddenly its fortunes changed and in April 1994 the Tate revealed it was to open the building as a modern art gallery. Following an extensive conversion costing £134 million the new Tate Gallery opened in 2000. Today it receives 4.7 million visitors a year.
The building is huge as befitting a power-station. The single chimney seen in the picture towers to 99 Meters (325ft) and the building is over 200 meters long.
To the right of the building is a temporary outdoor concert tent as part of the Thames Festival.
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Nice shot! Looks a lot better now than it did when I drove past it every day on my way to work. It was Bankside Power Station then. How time flies! Can it really have been 30 years ago?
@dulciknit@hown - I did not have time to go into the building this time so did not see any of the exhibits. However, inside has been gutted and various different galleries constructed. So little of the original has been preserved. However, the old turbine hall is pretty impressive in size and height and many of the other galleries look out onto it. So it is a pretty impressive building inside and out.
I've never been there - how much of the interior have they preserved?
your really good at finding the perfect angle of any subject of yours ... =)
so great !!