The Tate Modern in London has announced that its hotly anticipated £260 million ($401 million) extension, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, will open to the public on June 17, 2016.

The extension and renovation will increase the Tate’s display space by a whopping 60 percent, allowing a much greater portion of the museum’s collection of modern and contemporary art to be shown. To mark the occasion, the new Tate Modern will reopen with a complete re-hang, showing works by over 250 artists from 50 countries.

“Art is one of the most dynamic and engaged forms of human behavior, and when people step into a museum today, they don’t want to step out of their life, they want to get closer to it,” Chris Dercon, director of Tate Modern, said in a statement. “The new Tate Modern will be so much more than a container for art, it will be a platform for human encounters.”

The architects Herzog & de Meuron have designed the Tate’s extension.
Photo: Hayes Davidson via The Guardian

“The new Tate Modern is an instrument that will allow us to offer a rich variety of experiences to visitors and opportunities to artists for different kinds of presentation of their work,” Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, added.

The Tate’s iconic Turbine Hall, which hosted famous large-scale installations such as Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project (2003-2004) and Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds (2010-2011) will remain the museum’s centerpiece.

The existing six-story Boiler House, which housed the bulk of the institution’s collection, will be complemented by the new 10-story Switch House, which is now structurally complete, and will offer the museum greater curatorial flexibility. The new structure also promises to offer visitors highlights such as panoramic views of the London skyline.

The museum has added 60% more hanging space with the expansion.
Photo: Tate

Visitors can look forward to experiencing the Tate’s iconic collection of 20th century art, including works by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Joseph Beuys, and Mark Rothko, in a new context, as well as seeing new acquisitions by artists such as Indian artist Sheela Gowda, Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, and Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

News of the opening date of the extension come hot on the heels of the release of Tate’s annual report, which states that 2014/2015 was the most successful year for the institution, which attracted 5.7 million visitors to the Tate Modern, including the 560,000 visitors who attended the blockbuster exhibition “Henri Matisse: The Cutouts.”

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