Jim Regan -- Site Reviews
The Tate Galleries
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May 12th marked the opening of a new art gallery in London. The Tate Modern is located in a former electric power plant across the Thames from St. Paul's Cathedral – the product of a $200 million renovation, and referred to by one journalist as "the Millennium Dome for the educated class." On a much smaller economic scale, the Web site for the Tate has also undergone significant renovation, though unlike the architectural version, tate.org.uk is growing larger every day.
The Tate galleries (there are four locations) house Britain's national collections of British and international Modern Art, ranging from Blake, Sargent and Turner to Picasso, Warhol and Pollock. At time of writing, the site's database contained listings for almost 25,000 works – 8000 accompanied by illustrations. By the time you read this, both these numbers will have grown significantly, as the Tate plans to add 500 new images to the site every week. It wants to have the entire collection of over 50,000 images online by the end of 2001.
Of course, to get to the art, you have to get into the site. The visitor's first encounter with the Tate online is a quickly loading Shockwave splash screen (with a background color that changes with each visit) that presents a sample of the galleries' offerings in a series of horizontal wipes – a simple but distinctive effect that reappears within the site, serving as a subtle reminder of where you are. (The site's "new look" is also being used on the galleries' signage and printed material.)
The home page is clean, logical, and best suited to an 800x600 browser. With a brief "current events" note in the center of the page, the left column offers access to the site's "Search Facility" and introductions to the Tate's four locations, the Britain (the original Tate Gallery, founded in 1897) the Modern, the Liverpool, and the St. Ives. The navigation bar on the right, which appears on every page, repeats the Search and Museum links, and adds context-specific menus with links relevant to each page.
Although specific works are most easily found through the "Search Facility's" keyword or alphabetical explorations, the closest approximations to a virtual visit are the Collection Displays on the Tate Britain and Tate Modern pages. Rather than arrange artworks by date or movement, the Tate (both virtual and physical versions) has decided to group pieces thematically, under such headings as "Landscape/Matter/Environment," or "History/Memory/Society." Choose a theme, and you're presented with a list of rooms dedicated to that topic. Choose a room, and the Tate offers a brief introduction, and a list of displayed art – with links to take the visitor to information about the artist and the work, and when available, an online reproduction. This method of thematic categorization is unusual, but not unique, and while a chronological system is the more obvious choice, it wouldn't easily accommodate such exhibits as the "Painters in Focus" room, where visitors can easily compare a 1941 portrait of Lucian Freud to a 1753 self-portrait by Joshua Reynolds.
An online shop offers a variety of books and souvenirs, as well as reproductions in the forms of postcards, posters, slides, and prints. Details are sparse, but hopefully this is a reflection of the continuing construction underway at the site. Naturally, tate.org.uk also provides such information as admission prices and hours of operation, for those of us able to visit the galleries in person. Despite technological advances, a physical tour is still preferable to an online version – but since most of us won't be visiting London in the near future, the Tate online makes for a welcome substitute.
The Tate Galleries can be found at http://www.tate.org.uk.
Jim Regan provides 'Today's Links' to the e--Monitor. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.