How we all learned to stop sneering and embrace modern art

Tate Modern’s latest spectacular show in the Turbine Hall coincides with the Frieze fair and a proliferation of gallery displays. Is this conclusive proof that Britons are no longer scared of art?


Olafur Eliasson with his installation ‘The Weather Project’ in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern. Photograph: Dan Chung

Dust off your glad rags, culcha bunnies, and stiffen your Resolve, because this week is the biggest in the UK’s art calendar. The Frieze fair of international contemporary art, open to the public from 15 to 18 October, will be accompanied by a dizzying array of museum-based exhibitions.

Tate Modern’s 10th Turbine Hall commission, unveiled on Tuesday, is by Miroslaw Balka; the institution’s John Baldessori retrospective opens on the same day. The Modern’s near neighbour, the Hayward Gallery, will from Wednesday be presenting Ed Ruscha: Twenty Years of Painting. The Serpentine is already showing Gustav Metzger, and next weekend hosts a special two-day poetry marathon in its Pavilion, with Brian Eno, Gilbert and George, Nick Laird, James Fenton, Tracey Emin and Alasdair Gray among the performers. The Whitechapel is opening Sophie Calle on Friday, to accompany its Jeremy Dellar and Alan Kane-curated selection from the British Council Collection and Goshka Macuga’s response to the gallery’s Guernica tapestry. Oh, and there’s the small matters of Turner and the Turner Prize, both at Tate Britain.

Not to mention Zoo 2009, the fringe art fair turned East End event, which brings together 50-plus smaller arts organisations and practitioners; the Museum of Everything, for non-mainstream art; plus all the commercial galleries, busily lining up their big boys: Anselm Kilmer at White Cube, Grayson Perry at Victoria Miro, Anish Kapoor at Lisson, chiming with his lauded Royal Academy show.

GCO

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