Tate Modern extension welcomes millionth visitor since opening

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Tate Modern welcomes 1 million visitors in a month | Tate Modern has announced that its new ‘Switch House’ extension has attracted over 1 million visitors since it opened a month ago. According to a release from the museum, the millionth visitor crossed the threshold of the new extension on Tuesday 19 July, and an average of 39,000 people have attended the gallery each Saturday since it opened to the public. Yet while the extension has evidently been a hit with the public, the critics have been divided; while the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones thinks it has made the Tate Modern ‘one of the world’s greatest art museums’, the Sunday Times’s Waldemar Januszczak has likened it to a ‘gigantic corporate headquarters for the huge multinational concern that is contemporary art’.

New report suggests Garden Bridge funding plan ‘optimistic at best’ | A study conducted by Dan Anderson of Fourth Street consultancy has warned that the running costs of London’s planned Garden Bridge could end up dependent on public funding. Anderson, a critic of the Thomas Heatherwick designed project who was not commissioned to write the report, has described the scheme’s business model is ‘obviously weak’ and its targets ‘optimistic at best’. The report comes after London Mayor Sadiq Khan offered his support for the bridge on condition that no more public money was spent on it. ‘I’ve never seen [a business plan] that is so obviously weak,’ Anderson told the Guardian.

New non-profit organisation to carry out technical analysis of Modigliani works | A group of Modigliani experts formed by scholar Kenneth Wayne have formed a new non profit organisation to conduct research into the Italian artist’s frequently disputed oeuvre, reports The Art Newspaper. The Modigliani Project will examine the artist’s works using scientific analysis in an attempt to clarify his technique. Modigliani’s work commands stellar prices at auction, but attribution can be controversial and it is believed that a large number of fakes are in circulation. TAN also reports that the Paris based Institut Restellini has announced a new Modigliani catalogue raisonné of the paintings for the end of this year, with drawings to follow.

Artangel launches Oscar Wilde inspired art project at Reading Prison | Artangel has announced a new project at Reading Prison, where the writer Oscar Wilde was imprisoned between 1895 and 1897. The programme will consist of a number of performances and new works by artists, writers and other cultural figures, including Ai Weiwei, Roni Horn and Marlene Dumas, and will mark the first time the prison has ever been opened to the (non-incarcerated) public. The events will take place between 4 September and 30 October.