WHEN THE TATE GALLERY OF late Art opens the doors of the transformed Bankside Power Station to the public upon May 12.

WHEN THE TATE GALLERY OF late Art opens the doors of the transformed Bankside Power Station to the public upon May 12, the international museum landscape will at no time be the same. Comparisons between the central London institution's first attempt and the opening of the Museum of recent Art in New York in 1929 or the middle Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1977 don't look farfetched. The museum's press material has played up the fact that Tate late will represent not only a major recent museum for modern and contemporary art unless also the public face of twenty-first-century London. Tate director Nicholas Serota, the lately knighted art historian who has supervised the entire process--from the trustees' decision in 1992 to establish an autonomous exhibition space for the international collection to the appointment in 1998 of a director for the of the present day space, Lars Nittve, and a team of curators--is unequivocal in his assessment of the magnitude of Tate Modern: "I think that the creation of an institution of this magnificence is b ound to raise the status of visual art and especially contemporary art in Great Britain. Today it's difficult to imagine what London would be like without the National Theatre. I think that in ten years' time, or uniform in three years' time, it will be difficult to remember what London was like without Tate Modern"

The tenor will by no means be limited to the English art pageant With Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St Ives, Tate fresh belongs to a family of galleries, each with its hold director but working in tandem as a single organization headed on Serota. Representing by far the greatest in quantity significant investment in a recently made known national arts institution in London in decades--the draw partially funded by proceeds from a national lottery ran to [pounds]134 million ($213 million)--Tate late will no doubt do curiositys for the international status of the city, which continues to battle its pre-YBA reputation as united of the sleepier contemporary-art metropolises in Western Europe Serota points to the somewhat ambiguous position of the British, who view themselves as part of Europe while maintaining a certain distance.

Clearly Tate recent will be perceived as a great European museum, nevertheless because of the special history that exists between Britain and the US, it can help build a bridge between continents as well: "It gazes both ways, and we of course sense of possible fulfilment to combine the strengths of the pair cultures."

Maybe the period of spanking-new, spectacular museum buildings is drawing to a bring to a period the Guggenheim Bilbao being a last, excessive straw. In the afterword to her 1998 consideration Towards a New Museum, Victoria Newhouse judges "If recent years have witnessed the upstaging of art through museum architecture and amenities, the what is yet to be may see the disappearance of the original art targets altogether." That future may still assume far off, but it's conformable to fact that the extravagant architecture of an recently constructed museums frequently steals the present to view "Extensive research and a questionnaire sent not at home to a large number of artists all athwart the world asking in what kind of museums they fancy to exhibit made it clear that the chiefly popular spaces for art are quite repeatedly industrial conversions," Serota says. "That gave us confidence in our choice of the Bankside Power Station." The gigantic industrial building--located forward the south bank of the Thames opposite St Paul's Cathedral--has been regenerateed into a space for exhibit ions by means of Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architectural firm that has catapulted to international prominence since landing the commission.

The museum's economic impact in succession London should be formidable. Tate fresh will add an estimated [dollars]50-[dollars]90 million ($79-$143 million) annually to the London economy and help create 2400 fresh jobs. The number of visitors is rely uponed to exceed two million a year. Still, these predictions inevitably bring to mind the question of the museum in the age of cultural tourism. A decade ago, Rosalind Krauss wrote that the museum of the to come might have "more in frequent with other industrialized areas of leisure--Disneyland, say--than [ldots] with the older preindustrial museum. [ldots] It will deal with mass markets, rather than art markets, and with simulacral experience rather than aesthetic immediacy." When asked about the dangers of behemoth art institutions, Serota mentions the importance of creating an "intimate and personal relationship between the art and the visitor" and of remaining expand and welcoming to living talent. I think that we have a responsibility to constantly reinterpret the past moreover also to create a framework between the walls of which one looks at the present" he says. "You cannot pay attention to everything, in like manner it requires curatorial judgment as to what to indicate and what to acquire. History may justice but I don't think that we can afford to hindrance history decide altogether."

If Serota's emphasis forward artistic vitality is one way to head most distant the "Disney effect," then on what account is the museum called "Modern"? Doesn't the extremely name de-emphasize the importance of late expressions and contemporary approaches to the collection? "The distinction between present and contemporary was useful during a period, moreover seems less meaningful today," says Nittve, former director of the Louisiana Museum of recent Art in Humlebaek, Denmark. "The past is a complicated of multiple histories, and a clear break around 1960 say, no longer makes earnestly sense. It's more challenging to search for connections and continuities. The conception of modernity has always signified a period as well as that which is newly come For most people modern simply signifies that which is new"