Tate Modern Occupied By Anti Capitalist Protesters

Occupy London moves from St Paul’s site to Tate Modern First Photo

A number of OLSX protesters have set up a small camp on the green in front of Tate Modern, on the South Bank. The splinter site was set up at 3:00 am this morning and consists of around eleven protesters. One arrest has been made. The protesters have stated that they have the legal right to camp and this is a civil matter which must go through the proper court channels, in order to secure an eviction notice. The green area between Tate Modern is jointly owned by Southwark Council and Tate and is considered a thoroughfare. No one from the Tate was available for comment and the museum which opens at 10:00-am are expected to release a statement later today. Tate Modern is one of London’s most popular tourist attractions.
The Anti-capitalist protesters are expected to be presented with a 48 hour eviction notice to vacate the Occupy London protest at St Paul’s Cathedral today or face legal action and forceable eviction. The City of London Corporation is to hand them a letter warning that High Court action will be taken unless the campsite is cleared within 48 hours.The situation has divided the church, with another senior resignation creating havoc among the ranks. The camp and tents will have to move and the Tate site is just accross the milenium bridge on the otherside of the river Thames.

Yesterday, St Paul’s Dean, Graeme Knowles resigned over the protests. The Rt Rev Graeme Knowles said, “The past fortnight had been a testing time”. It follows weeks of protests outside the cathedral by anti-capitalist protesters, which led to the church being closed for several days. The news comes as the City of London authorities prepare to order protesters outside St Paul’s to remove their tents and equipment within 48 hours.

Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London. It is Britain’s national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group (together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives). It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year. It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Southwark area of Central London.

When the gallery opened in 2000, the collections were not displayed in chronological order but were rather arranged thematically into four broad groups: ‘History/Memory/Society’; ‘Nude/Action/Body’; ‘Landscape/Matter/Environment’; and ‘Still Life/Object/Real Life’. This was ostensibly because a chronological survey of the story of modern art along the lines of the Museum of Modern Art in New York would expose the large gaps in the collections, the result of the Tate’s conservative acquisitions policy for the first half of the 20th century. The first rehang at Tate Modern opened in May 2006. It eschewed the thematic groupings in favour of focusing on pivotal moments of twentieth-century art, with further spaces allocated on levels 3 and 5 for shorter exhibitions. Photo: shows a protester being arrested by police earlier this morning. Text © ArtLyst 2011

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