SAINT IVES, Oct 11 — The four-year transformation of the Tate St Ives, which has now doubled its space for showing art and for hosting educational activities, will be inaugurated on October 14. The small Cornish town on the southwest coast of England has a rich artistic history, dating back over two centuries to when JMW Turner and James Whistler were among its early visiting artists.

The new museum was a £20 million (RM111 million) project. Jamie Fobert, director of Jamie Fobert Architects, stated: “The coastal setting and vernacular of St Ives have both influenced my approach to this work,” and he was keen to celebrate "St Ives' particular light."

The architecture firm — also involved in designing exhibitions at Tate Modern and Tate Britain as well as creating spaces for Frieze Art Fair and the Garage Museum of Contemporary Culture in Moscow — integrated the cliff alongside the original building.

Inside, the column-free flexible gallery space is lit by six huge skylights. Outside, there's a rooftop public garden inspired by the Cornish landscape, with coastal planting on its roof.

Architecural duo Eldred Evans and David Shalev initially won the competition to design the Tate St Ives in 1990, and were appointed for its refurbishment in 2012. Their original building now has the addition of a glazed room beneath a new conical roof, offering views out across the sea.

Their existing galleries will now be dedicated to a display exploring modern art in St Ives throughout the 20th century, featuring Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon, Barbara Hepworth, Piet Mondrian, Naum Gabo, Paule Vezelay, and Mark Rothko. Visitors will be able to bridge geographical and chronological boundaries and discover links to the wider story of British art.

Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate — who opened Tate St Ives in 1993, the Tate Modern in 2000, redefined the Millbank building as Tate Britain, and added the Switch House to Tate Modern in 2016 — praised “what a huge difference it would make to the local community.”

Mark Osterfield, executive director of the Tate St Ives, concurred, noting that "The importance of Tate St Ives as a part of the nation's cultural heritage is increasingly apparent." He said it will be “creating a new offer for the 21st century... and generate an additional £105 million in the local economy over the following 10 years.”

The museum will open all year round for the first time. With a quarter of a million visitors each year, the draw will only increase with a new programme of large-scale seasonal shows, beginning with British sculptor Rebecca Warren's first major UK exhibition of clay pieces (Oct 14, 2017-Jan 7 2018). Warren first came to prominence in the 1990s; the show will draw connections between her practice to date and the legacy of St Ives.

In 2018, the space will host an exhibition of women artists inspired by Virginia Woolf, a retrospective of Patrick Heron's vibrant paintings, and a specially-commissioned project by contemporary artists Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer. — AFP-Relaxnews