Visiting the Tate Museum of Modern Art with a teen
After we finished visiting the galleries of the first and second floors of the Tate Modern art museum, Symone, my teen daughter, paused and asked, “Now what exactly is ‘modern’? Because I really like it!”
I had a suspicion that Symone would like the Tate but hadn’t set my hopes too high.
I mustered up an explanation that I knew she would connect to and be mostly accurate, “The modern movement was a rejection of painting pleasing fruit and fat ladies. Artist wanted to press the bounds of what aren’t meant and often tried to use their art to evoke feelings and thoughts that challenged the viewer to alter the way they perceived the world. Sometimes the art could be very confrontational”
She spent a lot of time looking and talking about the pieces she saw. She grokked it. She was super curious why certain pieces ‘worked’. We talked about how words were employed in odd ways to evoke feelings, we talked about size, repetition and pattern being used to create awe, and we talked about performance artists being confrontational and breaking social rules.
She was really struck with one piece that was a tower of audio devices that started with a base of old radios and ended a the top with bluetooth speakers. As she walked away she said, “..it kind of freaks me out when I look at it, but I like it.”
The museum itself was a huge austere place perfect to house such a collection.
Tips for visiting the Tate Museum of Modern Art:
Even if you are not modern art lovers the Tate is an interesting and engaging place to visit. The permanent collection and temporary installations are odd, interesting, and sometimes confrontational. Even if you speed-date the museum you will walk away with something to talk about.
There are exhibits that address grim and confrontational issues of gender, genocide, masogyny, and other pressing social topics. Be ready for the questions. Your teen will want to talk about all of it.
The museum is not that huge - a slow room to room amble of the whole museum may take 2-3 hours.
You can purchase tickets on a walk-up basis.
The museum building itself is austere and interesting. It was a former power plant converted to the museum in 2000.
