ABSTRACT
My concern in this chapter is the meaning of the industrial gallery space.
This art exhibition aesthetic has origins in the art scene of 1950s’ New York,
and its apotheosis can be said to have been reached at the opening in 2000
of Tate Modern, London, the largest gallery of modern art in the world.1 In
between these historical points, the industrial gallery space has proliferated all
over the developed world. Examples include the numerous galleries of SoHo,
New York City, which flourished in the 1970s to the 1990s; the Hallen für
Neue Kunst, Schaffhausen, Switzerland, a former textile mill converted as a
Kunsthalle in 1984; the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), a converted factory complex in Williamstown (1986); the Liverpool
branch of the Tate Gallery, in a mid-Victorian dock warehouse (1988);
the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, another warehouse (1989); the Tramway,
Glasgow, an Edwardian tram depot in use as a multi-purpose arts venue since
1989; the SoHo branch of the Guggenheim Museum, a downtown warehouse
in New York City (1992); the Andy Warhol Museum, in a former Pittsburgh
warehouse (1994); Baltic, Gateshead (England), a converted 1930s’ flour mill
(2002). Indeed its proliferation in the Anglophone world is such that the
industrial gallery space now provides the dominant aesthetic for museums of
modern art. As the architecture critic Deyan Sudjic has stated, ‘The tidied-up
industrial space has become as much the conventional gallery form as the
Greek temple used to be.’2