Tate That - A Hirst for Art

Damien Hirst gives something back

Anyone else think that the proposed extension to the Tate Modern resembles nothing more than the final stages in a game of Jenga? After the universal acclaim architects Herzohg and Meuron received for their subtle sympathetic conversion of the Bankside Power Station into one of the world’s great galleries, the Swiss architects have reverted to behaving like Modern Architects should, and decided to add a massive children’s plaything to a dignified and graceful building.

The extra space is going to be used for restaurants (fair enough – with no entry fee, they need to find other ways to raise money), spaces for performance art (shudder), and ‘extra space for the gallery’s expanding collection.’ This also seemed like a pretty silly idea, given that, as much as we love the Tate, it is one of the most enormous man-made spaces we’ve ever encountered. However, this week’s news that Damien Hirst is to donate four new works to the gallery (with Tate director Nicholas Serota smugly hinting at more to come from his contemporaries) puts a new spin on it.

A cynic might point out that at Hirst’s age he probably didn’t really fancy having a huge formaldehyde tank containing a sliced and pickled cow in his living room, nor a canvas made from fly corpses over the mantelpiece. Still, it’s a generous gesture by any standard: even with a personal fortune thought to hover around the £200 million mark, £4 million of art is not to be sneezed at.

As Saatchi’s energy has declined – almost certainly a result of the enormous meals Nigella keeps feeding him – the artists in his stable seem to be rejoining the world of publicly-owned galleries. If we are to have a whole new batch of Lucasses, Chapmans and Whitereads, it seems entirely apt to put them in a flashy, self-indulgent and hyperbolically modern building. And maybe, like Hirst and his contemporaries, the Young British Artists who scandalised the tabloids with ‘Sensation’, it will come to be as comforting and as soothing a part of our national artistic landscape as the National Gallery.

Climb Every... Office Block

As Christmas consumerism reached its peak, a mystery climber scaled 20 storeys of a 27-storey retail and office centre in Victoria Street, Westminster, without the aid of ropes or safety equipment. Amazed shoppers and workers looked on as the human Spiderman mounted the summit and turned to wave at crowds below.

It’s Hammer Time at Hotel

Collectors are gearing up to grab a piece of history as London’s Savoy closes its doors and auctions off its fixtures and fittings to clear the decks for a £100 million refurbishment. The 3,000 items – from an oak dance floor and a 24-light chandelier that illuminated notables such as Noel Coward and Anna Pavlova, to the entire contents of the Monet suite where celebrities from Harry S Truman to Charlie Chaplin stayed– are expected to raise up to £1 million.

Whacko JackO2

Rumour has it that 2008 will see Michael Jackson moonwalk it over to London to perform a series of shows in the city’s mammoth 20,000-seater, O2 arena. If speculation is to be believed, the pint-sized celeb will hot-foot it to the capital to follow in the equally as nimble footsteps of purple-prancer Prince who performed a 21-day residency at the recently revitalised venue last summer.

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