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When the Whitechapel Gallery in East London reopens to the public on April 5 after a 13.5 million pound ($19.3 million) redevelopment, it will be twice its previous size. So far, so unsurprising: in recent years art institutions and museums have expanded inexorably throughout the world. The Whitechapel, though, is special. It was founded in 1901 as a beacon of culture in one of London’s poorest areas. Just to the north was the notorious slum prowled by Jack the Ripper. Whitechapel was the heart of the old East End, and for centuries first home to immigrant populations.
That may account for its radical tendencies. In 1939, the gallery was the venue for a display of Picasso’s “Guernica” to raise support for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War, the only occasion that picture has been seen in Britain.
A tapestry copy of the picture, which normally hangs in the United Nations building in New York, will be shown as part of an exhibition — a Bloomberg Commission — about the history of Picasso’s masterpiece by the artist Goshka Macuga (from April 5). After the war, the gallery presented pioneering shows by stars of the avant-garde such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg and David Hockney. (Bloomberg)
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