'Tate Modern has exploded the canon of art history, and transformed the public’s relationship with contemporary art'

Anyone who remembers the opening of the Tate Modern in London 25 years ago will undoubtedly recall peering up at a 30ft-tall spider, which greeted the first visitors in the 500ft-long Turbine Hall.

Louise Bourgeois’s stainless-steel Maman (the others in the edition, at institutions around the world, are all bronze) was commissioned for the opening and acquired by the gallery in 2008; it will scuttle back into the Turbine Hall in time for a Birthday Weekender, May 9–12 — a far cry from its countless arachnid cousins that no doubt inhabited the site during its period of dereliction.

Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott — of Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral and red telephone-box fame — Bankside Power Station, on the site of a former power station that had existed since 1891, was built in two stages between 1947 and 1963 and became redundant in 1981.

Selected as the ideal site for Tate’s new modern and contemporary art gallery in 1994, its landmark £134 million conversion was overseen by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. It opened to acclaim on May 11, 2000, providing scribbling journalists with a different kind of fuel than it had 100 years previously, when the station had channelled electricity to the printing presses of Fleet Street. Some 5.7 million annual visitors were flocking to the attraction, more than double the amount the building had been designed to accommodate, so the same architects were enlisted to add a controversial £260 million extension in the form of a twisting, 10-storey, brick ziggurat, which opened in 2016, expanding internal space by 60%.

This was much to the chagrin of luxury flat owners in the glass-walled buildings that had sprung up in the gallery’s environs as Southbank-adjacent property prices soared. Country Life’s former office, the Blue Fin Building, was in one such, with a front-row seat to the works in the early 2010s.

Other 25th-anniversary celebrations, apart from the Bourgeois, include a trail of 25 key works installed around the building, such as Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych, Mark Rothko’s ‘Seagram’ murals, Dorothea Tanning’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (returning from a major Surrealism show in Paris) and Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. ‘The selection showcases how art—and Tate Modern itself—has always pushed the boundaries and challenged norms, ultimately letting us all see the world through new eyes,’ explains director of programme Catherine Wood.

Two new exhibitions, ‘A year in Art: 2050’ and ‘Gathering Ground’ (the latter including recent additions to the collection by artists such as Outi Pieski, Edgar Calel and Nalini Malani, plus a specially commissioned participatory installation by Abbas Zahedi), will both be open in time for the Birthday Weekender.

Created in partnership with clothing brand UNIQLO, the event will also include free talks, tours, family workshops, live music and special food and drink offerings. Between May 5 and September 16, UNIQLO will run a personalised-embroidery T-shirt station, featuring artwork by the likes of Bourgeois and Dalí.

Birthday Weekender artwork

‘Tate Modern has made an incredible impact in only 25 years. It has exploded the canon of art history, transformed the public’s relationship with contemporary art, and rewritten the rules for what an art museum can be,’ says gallery director Karin Hindsbo. ‘Our birthday weekend will be a wonderful chance to see what we do best and get a taste of where we’re going next.’

Since 2000, more than 40 million people have visited Tate Modern. It is one of the UK’s top three tourist attractions and generates some £100 million for London’s economy annually.

Tate Modern's Birthday Weekender will run from May 9-12. Tickets are free and will be released online on May 6.