«I LIKE EVERYBODY'S ART»

LONDON — The Tate Modern celebrates its tenth birthday on Wednesday having firmly won a place among the must-see attractions of London.When it was opened by the Queen on May 12, 2000 in a gargantuan former power station on the banks of the River Thames, few would have predicted the museum would attract more than 45 million visitors in its first decade.
The museum has hosted 52 temporary exhibitions featuring the work of the biggest names in modern art, including Edward Hopper, Frida Kahlo, Matisse, Picasso, Mark Rothko, Salvador Dali and Arshile Gorky.Tate Modern filled a gap -- before it opened London was the only major European city without a top-quality museum of modern art, perhaps because the British public was still suspicious of the genre. Michael Craig Martin, a former Tate trustee and a conceptual artist, said people immediately took a liking to the openness of the enormous space."It's hard not to remember just how much suspicion and unease there was about contemporary art before, whereas now it's everywhere -- it has become a part of the cultural life of the country in a way that was unimaginable 20 years ago, and the Tate has played a very big part in that," he told the Daily Telegraph.