The Tate Liverpool will close on October 16 ahead of the planned £29.7million ($35.1million) restoration of its Royal Albert Dock home. The refurbishment of the converted warehouse is being partially funded by the UK Government’s Leveling Up Fund, which will cover around a third of the planned costs. The money is half the amount won by the museum in a joint £20million bid with National Museums Liverpool. The joint works should be completed in 2026; The Tate Liverpool will host off-site events and projects in the meantime; Emblematic of this effort is the institution’s recent inauguration of a mobile art gallery: a truck transporting works from the museum’s collection that criss-crossed the city.
“Since the Tate Liverpool opened thirty-five years ago, the experiences our audiences want to have and the kind of work artists want to do have both changed dramatically,” said museum director Helen Legg. , noting that it was “time for us to reinvent the gallery for the 21st century.
A museum spokesperson told the BBC that the renovation aims to produce “a flexible and inviting environment capable of accommodating people, art and ideas in equal measure”.
Tate Liverpool opened in 1989, seven years after the Toxteth Riots which pitted local black citizens against Merseyside police forces: its opening was part of a program to revitalize the area, following the Scarman Report , which recognized the economic impact and social deprivation that led to the uprising, as part of the 1981 widespread riots in England. Since its launch, the museum has hosted the infamous YBA Tracey Emin My bed from 1998; The Minimalist Giant Carl Andre’s 1966 Equivalent VIIIWho drew ridicule in the press to consist of nothing more than two layers of superimposed bricks; and major exhibitions of works ranging from Leonora Carrington to JMW Turner to Andy Warhol.
