By Dan Thompson
Turner Contemporary has unveiled a new brand alongside their next exhibition, and it seems the gallery is now just called Turner – so it’s worth asking – what’s in a name?
What would become Turner was first proposed in 1994. John Crofts was born in Margate, and after serving in the Second World War, he became an electrical engineer. By 1994, he was chair of the Margate Civic Society. Faced with the town’s decline and a growing number of empty buildings, he proposed a Turner Centre, focused on the works of painter JMW Turner and his relationship to Margate. Crofts imagined a gallery in one of Margate’s historic buildings – the Sea Bathing Hospital was a favourite – and even went to London to negotiate the loan of paintings from Tate.
The idea for The Turner Centre gained momentum, and in 1999, the organisation Kent Artists put forward a formal proposal, and architect Terry Farrell developed a masterplan for Margate Waterfront in 2000 that included the new gallery on the Rendezvous site. The idea was officially adopted by Kent County Council.
An open competition was launched in 2001, with a £7 million budget. The Turner Centre would be on the Rendezvous site, the exact spot where Turner had lived in a house owned by his lover Sophia Booth. Thanet District Council had purchased the harbour and the Harbour Arm (then known as the Stone Pier), and were drawing up new regeneration plans for the Old Town. The gallery would sit between the two. The building was planned to open in 2004.
Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell announced Snohetta & Spence as the winner in November 2001. The company was a partnership of Norwegian architecture firm Snohetta and the UK-based Stephen Spence. They proposed a large fin built not on the Rendezvous site, but in the sea on the outside of the Harbour Arm. John Crofts, whose idea the gallery had been, said, “It’s remarkable, isn’t it? They’ve turned it into a sculpture – and like all forms of art it will receive all sorts of criticism.”
The Turner Centre appointed its first director, Victoria Pomery, in 2002, and it would be her job to bring this challenging plan to fruition. Formerly a curator at Tate Liverpool, Pomery would go on as director until 2021 when she stepped down from the position after 19 years.
Ahead of construction, the harbourside Droit House was refurbished and extended, with a circular building by postmodernist Terry Farrell added, to act as Turner’s first gallery space. It was Farrell’s Margate Waterfront masterplan that had suggested a site for the gallery – the Rendezvous, visible from the railway station across the bay.
His refurbished Droit House and the Drum behind it, adjacent to the proposed site, opened during Architecture Week 2002. The superstar architect and his bold vision soon attracted national attention, with newspaper and magazine articles bringing a new wave of Londoners to the town.
Under Pomery’s leadership the idea behind The Turner Centre would evolve, It became more focused on contemporary art, with the idea that changing exhibitions (which bring more visitors than a static museum) would be inspired by Turner’s philosophy, and the way he worked. In 2004, Pomery and her small team announced their new vision and a name change – The Turner Centre would become Turner Contemporary. A mid-2000s industrial typeface. No ‘the’, and the emphasis firmly on ‘contemporary’.
The final building – by architect David Chippefield, and back on the Rendezvous site – opened in 2011. Turner Contemporary was here. The gallery has since attracted millions of visitors, encouraged people to move to the town, been the cornerstone of a flourihing creative industries sector, and – perhaps most importantly – it’s given people a different view of the town. It has brought a hope and optimism back to Margate.
It has given locals a new pride in their town – even if often grudgingly – and everyone can quote Turner’s line to Ruskin, about Thanet having the finest skies in Europe, more or less. Turner Contemporary hasn’t put Margate on the map: it was already there. But it has been a good reminder of what made Margate so appealing in the first place. People know where Margate is again, and why it’s special.
Locals have never quite forgotten the original name, though – and many still call it The Turner Centre today. John Crofts, though, was happy with the change. He died on 7th March 2009 at the age of 87, before the gallery opened but with work well underway, and with his vision central to the town’s regeneration.
Would Crofts like the new name, Turner? Almost certainly – because it makes the painter synonymous with the town, and has an authority that embeds the artist and the gallery as the foundation of Margate’s growing success – and that’s quite a legacy for a local electrical engineer. And it might be an easier name for locals to remember, too.
The official Turner rebranding launch is expected to take place in April.
Based on the pamphlet Turner Contemporary – A History by Dan and Edward Thompson 2023 https://danthompsonstudio.substack.com/about
Turner = free tax payers money
I wonder how much the rebranding will cost the tax payers?
i was just thinking the same thing Gerard , they are brilliant at spending other peoples money , its just a shame the exhibits are not as good .this place – whatever they want to call it right now , has been the biggest con trick ever pulled in thanet , and thats saying something !
“…has been the biggest con trick ever pulled in thanet ….”
You really don’t know what you’re talking about. As usual.
Former curator Victoria Pomeroy and her chums would get into a fearful tizzy if anyone called their playthingThe Turner Centre after it was renamed The Turner Gallery. And now it’s to be just Turner! But don’t worry, within a few years an edict will declare it must be known simply as T. And the Dan Thompsons of this world will drool over such an inclusive, inspiring and simply fabulously brave decision.
Just stop wasting money, there wasn’t anything wrong with the original name.
Turder.
Turner. No “d”.
Turned.
Thank you Mr Crofts-for the idea for this monstorosity & the resulting lack of funding outside the old town for the last 15 years. You effectively polished off the high street, seafront & Northdown Road-the opposite of your original idea, but of course you went along with it.
Just like your idea for the Turner to be full of his artwork, yeet it took a long time for any of it to appear & it played second fiddle to the pile up junk on the floor & stick it to the walls nonsense.
Of course most here will be called philistines & not understanding the so called art-well the reviews on Trip Advisor from those that actually travelled here to see it are overwhelmingly negartive-total rubbish on display, overpriced food & drink, a white elephant, underwhelming, pretentious, area not used properly, pompous, disappointing etc.
Dropping a word from your name is not a rebrand, it is total nonsense. Like the mammoth companies that ‘redesign’ their logos at huge cost & yet nobody can even see any difference.
It is purely another gimmick-as pretentious, empty & hollow as the rubbish inside of the building itself.
What year did Dan Thompson move to Margate? He always seems convinced that prior to the Turner Centre, Margate was a desolute wasteground with crumbling buildings and no shops, when others recall how lively and thriving it still was (at least prior to Westwood Cross opening in 2005). It is so much worse now than even 10 years ago.
Does he think there was a Margate before he moved here?