Tate Modern and Hyundai form historic sponsorship partnership

Associated media

Tate Modern announces a major new corporate sponsorship deal with the South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai Motor that will secure Turbine Hall installations until 2025.

Alette Rye Scales reports

At a press conference on 20 January, Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, called the gallery’s new agreement with Hyundai a landmark partnership, the longest in the gallery’s history, which would not only secure funding for the Turbine Hall commissions but also enable growth in other areas.  The Rt Hon Maria Miller MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who was also present, said that ‘private sector support for the arts was vital’ and ‘few have done more than the Tate to get this right’.

When the Bankside Power Station opened as Tate Modern in 2000, its vast, central turbine hall had been retained by architects Herzog & de Meuron and transformed into gallery entrance, public space and exhibition area for new, especially commissioned art works on an unprecedented scale.   

The annual commissions, sponsored by Unilever for the gallery’s first ten years, have become among  the most important and exciting events in contemporary art, enabling the creation and exhibition of installations on a huge scale.  At the press conference, Tate Modern’s director, Chris Deacon, talked about the way the commissions have been reflecting major steps, transformations and disruptions in the history of contemporary art.   The first of the installations: Louise Bourgeois’ enormous bronze spider, entitled I do, I Undo, and I Redo, (2000) set a high benchmark.  Later installations such as Olafur Elisasson’s The Weather Project, (2003–4), which every day had hundreds of visitors lying on the floor mesmerized by beautiful artificial sunlight, Carsten Höller’s Test Site (2006–7) with its helter-skelter slidesand, more recently, Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds, (2010–11) are among a list of groundbreaking, innovatory and often interactive commissions that have made this huge hall – it measures 35 metres in height and is 152 metres long – one of the most extraordinary contemporary art spaces in the world.

Last year, there was no new commission because of building work, but the partnership with Hyundai will ensure its re-commencement in the form of the Hyundai Commission.  The first of these will be announced in 2015.  Chris Deacon said that ‘artists will be free to do whatever they want’, adding that contemporary art is evolving in different ways, not just in terms of materials and methods, while Sir Nicholas Serota stressed that ‘there is no sense in which exhibitions will be dictated by sponsorship, ever’.

The 11-year-sponsorship deal, believed to be worth more than £5million, is the largest and longest commitment from a corporate sponsor in the gallery’s history.  Furthermore, Hyundai has linked up with Tate’s Asia Pacific Acquisitions Committee to support the purchase of nine works by the acclaimed South Korean artist, Nam June Paik (1932–2006).  Paik, who some consider the founder of video art, explored the ever-changing human interaction with technology.  His work can be seen as a precursor of that of the Fluxus movement in the 1960s. A major retrospective of his work was mounted at Tate Liverpool in 2010 but the nine works, which span 40 years of his career, will be the first of his works to enter Tate Modern’s permanent collection and they will make up a significant addition to the gallery’s holdings of art from Asia.

The announcement of the sponsorship deal coincided with the completion of a newly built bridge across the turbine hall, linking the existing galleries on level 4 with the large new extension to the south, which is being developed by architects Herzog & de Meuron and due to be completed by 2016 at the latest.  Although the bridge was still to some extent covered with scaffolding, there was an opportunity at the press conference to walk across it.  As it is built on a slight downward incline towards the new building, one feels slowly propelled into the large, welcoming space that leads to the lift shafts in the new building; these face a grid of inclining windows that let in bright daylight.  

The turbine hall was frequently referred to as the heart of Tate Modern.  When the new extension is opened in 2016, ‘the turbine hall – hitherto the symbolic heart of Tate Modern – will become its literal heart’ said Sir Nicholas Serota.  The bridge across the hall, linking the new extension to the older building, offers dramatic views down on the turbine hall.  It is to be hoped that visitors will come up to the fourth floor to enjoy new and different visual experiences of the installations down below in the hall and, furthermore, one may wonder in which ways this new aspect will affect artists’ choices in future commissions.