Places 城鄉歲月 What Time is This Place?: Serpentine Sackler Gallery designed by Zaha Hadid now open

Serpentine Sackler Gallery designed by Zaha Hadid now open

The Serpentine Sackler Gallery, designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate Zaha Hadid, opened to the public on Saturday 28 September 2013.

The Serpentine Sackler Gallery gives new life to The Magazine, a former 1805 gunpowder store, located five minutes walk from the Serpentine Gallery on the north side of the Serpentine Bridge. With 900 square metres of new gallery, restaurant and social space, the Serpentine's second space in Kensington Gardens is a new cultural destination in the heart of London. From this autumn, the Serpentine presents its unrivalled programme of exhibitions and events across both Galleries and into the Park.

The new Gallery is named after Dr Mortimer and Dame Theresa Sackler, whose Foundation has made the project possible through the largest single gift received by the Serpentine Gallery in its 43-year history. Major funding has also been awarded by Bloomberg, long term supporters of the Serpentine as well as sponsors of the opening exhibition.

In 2010 the Serpentine Gallery won the tender from The Royal Parks to bring the Grade II* listed building into public use for the first time in its 208-year history. The Serpentine Gallery has restored the building to an excellent standard, in partnership with The Royal Parks, renovating and extending it to designs by Zaha Hadid. A light and transparent extension complements rather than competes with the neo-classical architecture of the original building. It is the Zaha Hadid Architects' first permanent structure in central London and continues a relationship between the Gallery and the architect, which began with the inaugural Serpentine Gallery Pavilion Commission in 2000. The landscape around the new building will be designed and planted by the world-renowned landscape artist Arabella Lennox-Boyd.

The opening exhibition in the Serpentine Sackler Gallery is the first UK exhibition by the young Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas, who is on the brink of gaining international renown for his dramatic, large-scale sculptural works. At the same time, in the Serpentine Gallery, there will be a major retrospective by Italian sculptor Marisa Merz, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 Venice Biennale. A redesigned website will feature the inaugural Digital Commission, while the first annual Bridge Commission explores the route between the two galleries with a series of short stories by twelve internationally acclaimed writers. Each story is timed to last as long as it takes to walk from the Serpentine Gallery to the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. The Serpentine's expanded presence in Kensington Gardens will be illustrated by a specially commissioned map by the artist Michael Craig-Martin.

Responding to its unique location in The Royal Park of Kensington Gardens, an expanded programme of eight exhibitions will now follow the seasons with different shows in each gallery four times a year. The seasonal theme carries through to the wider programme with the Pavilion commission signalling the start of London's summer and the multidisciplinary Marathon, a fixture of Frieze week in the autumn. The Serpentine's programme of outdoor sculpture with The Royal Parks continues with Fischli/Weiss's monumental Rock on Top of Another Rock, which remains in place until March 2014.

The Magazine bar will be serving a small selection of snack items for visitors to the gallery from Saturday 28th September. The Magazine restaurant, with Oliver "Ollysan" Lange at the helm, will open for lunch and dinner on 1st November.

The opening of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery marks a new beginning for the internationally acclaimed arts organisation, which has championed new ideas in contemporary arts since it opened in 1970. The Serpentine Gallery has presented pioneering exhibitions of 1,600 artists over 43 years, from the work of emerging practitioners to the most internationally recognised artists and architects of our time such as Louise Bourgeois, Frank Gehry, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei.

The expansion of the Serpentine is made possible through the incredible generosity and support of:

PRINCIPAL DONOR
The Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation

FOUNDING PATRONS
Bloomberg Philanthropies
LUMA Foundation
The David Ross Foundation
Lars and Tatiana Windhorst
The Wolfson Foundation

FOUNDING BENEFACTORS
Jenifer Evans
Nicoletta Fiorucci
Stephen and Yana Peel
Catherine Petitgas

FOUNDING ARTIST PATRONS
Artists for the Serpentine Gallery Auction 2011, Sotheby's, London Ron Arad • Richard Artschwager • John Baldessari • Phyllida Barlow Matthew Barney • Louise Bourgeois • Cecily Brown • Glenn Brown • Anthony Caro • John Currin • Thomas Demand • Olafur Eliasson • Fischli/Weiss • Yang Fudong • Gilbert & George • Felix Gonzalez-Torres • Douglas Gordon • Antony Gormley • Subodh Gupta • Andreas Gursky • Richard Hamilton • N.S. Harsha Susan Hefuna • Damien Hirst • M.F. Husain • Jitish Kallat • Anish Kapoor Ellsworth Kelly • Bharti Kher • Karen Kilimnik • Jeff Koons • Yayoi Kusama Maria Lassnig • Annie Leibovitz • Takashi Murakami • Shirin Neshat • Chris Oli • Gabriel Orozco • Richard Prince • Paula Rego • Gerhard Richter • Ed Ruscha • Cindy Sherman • Hiroshi Sugimoto • Do-Ho Suh • Wolfgang Tillmans Rirkrit Tiravanija • Rebecca Warren • Gillian Wearing • Rachel Whiteread

And those donors who wish to remain anonymous

Serpentine Sackler Gallery Design Circle

Amina Technologies
Arabella Lennox-Boyd Landscape Design
Artemide
Burmatex
Dornbracht
Dyson Airblade
Fenwick Elliott
Isometrix Lighting + Design
Rise
Roca
Stage One
Whitco Catering Equipment Ltd

Serpentine Sackler Gallery Project Team and Advisors

Architect
Zaha Hadid Architects
Zaha Hadid, with Patrick Schumacher

Architectural Design Team
Fabian Hecker, Project Architect,
with Torsten Broeder, Anat Stern, Melodie Leung, Marcela Spadaro and Charles Walker, Zaha Hadid Architects

Structural Engineering
Ed Clark, with Jolyon Smith and Chris Neighbour, ARUP

Project Directors
Julia Peyton-Jones,
with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Galleries

Project Leader
Julie Burnell,
with Amy Brown, Serpentine Galleries

Project Managers
Ian Eggers, Gareth Stapleton, Bob White, Peter George, Wayne Glaze, Pat Walsh, Jim Ledger, Rise

Lighting Designer
Arnold Chan, Isometrix Lighting + Design

Landscape Designer
Arabella Lennox-Boyd, Arabella Lennox-Boyd Landscape Design

Westminster City Council
Hassan Lashkariani, Building Control, Westminster City Council District Surveyor's Office
Jenny Wilson, Licensing Surveyor, Westminster City Council
Harriet Whitehorn, Planning Officer, Westminster City Council
Kate Green, Planning Officer, Westminster City Council
Barbara Milne, Senior Arboricultural Officer, Westminster City Council
Dave Nevitt, Environmental Health Officer, Westminster City Council
David Doyle, Fire Safety Inspecting Officer, Westminster City Council

English Heritage
William Reading, Inspector of Historic Buildings and Areas, Heritage Protection and Planning

Construction
Mike Bridges, with Simon Frawley and Eugene McCormick, Galliford Try Construction

Consultants
Barnaby Collins and James Penfold, DP9
Anthony Fowler and Peter Mundy, Gleeds
Gareth Sefton, Sefton Horn Winch

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