The Tate Modern extension is in the centre, the Neo Bankside building is to the left, © Jim Linwood via wikipedia
Since 2016, the millions of tourists who visit London's most popular art museum, Tate Modern, can do something unusual: they can look into the apartments across from the museum as if they were works of art. From a platform built on the 10th floor of the museum to give visitors a wide view of the city, they could look right into dozens of luxury homes, all of which had windows that went from floor to ceiling. Art lovers who were nosy could sometimes see a person living in a million-dollar home making breakfast or reading a newspaper on the weekend. On Wednesday, Britain's highest court said that tourists' use of the viewing platform was "clearly a nuisance," even if they weren't there to look at people's houses.
Lord George Leggatt, the lead judge in the case, said in a fancy London courtroom that "hundreds of thousands of visitors each year" went to the platform and many of them took pictures of the apartments. "It's easy to imagine how oppressive it would be for a normal person to live in such conditions, like being on display in a zoo," he said. His 47-page decision sent the case back to a lower court "to figure out the right solution." He said that if the two sides couldn't come to an agreement, it would be up to the court to decide if access to the platform should be limited, if Tate Modern should pay compensation, or if another idea from the museum could solve the problem. In a statement released on Wednesday, Tate Modern thanked the Supreme Court "for giving this matter careful thought." It also said it couldn't say anything else while the case was still going on.
Two lower court decisions were overturned by the ruling, which had been eagerly awaited since a two-day hearing in December 2021. In 2019, Justice Anthony Mann of the English High Court wrote that the properties in the four-tower development called Neo Bankside were architecturally impressive, but that buying properties with floor-to-ceiling windows came with "a price in terms of privacy." He told the owners that they should put up sheer curtains. Later, the Court of Appeal also threw out the apartment owners' complaint, saying that this was just a case of one property looking out over another and could not be called a nuisance. "The law does not always have a solution for every problem a neighbor has, no matter how big the problem is," it said.
Panoramic view from the balcony of the Tate Modern © Alistair Wettin via Wikipedia
Lord Leggatt and two other judges criticized those decisions in a ruling on Wednesday. They wrote that the lower courts may have been reluctant to say that the private rights of a few wealthy property owners should stop the public from having an unobstructed view of London and stop a major national museum from giving the public access to such a view. It also said that the viewing platform was not a "ordinary and normal" use of the museum's land. And it was wrong to tell the apartment owners to buy sheer curtains, because that put the problem in the hands of the people who were being hurt. "If someone complains about too much noise, you can't tell them to buy earplugs," Lord Leggatt said in court. Residents complained, so the museum tried to stop people from looking at the apartments by shortening the hours of the viewing platform. Gallery workers also started telling people to stop taking pictures of the works.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, museums all over Britain had to close, and so did the viewing platform. It hasn't opened yet because the number of visitors is still far below what it was before the pandemic. Part of Tate Modern's Blavatnik Building, the viewing platform has made headlines all over the world for reasons other than the privacy dispute. In 2019, a British teen was given a life sentence for throwing a 6-year-old child over the edge of the platform and over the guardrails. The boy who was hurt was on vacation with his family in London. His injuries will affect him for the rest of his life. The safety of the platform was not part of the argument. Tuesday, people who went to the museum had different opinions about the case. When Monika Hogova, a tourist from Slovakia, saw that the apartments were only about 100 feet away, she looked at them with horror. She said, "There's no way I'd want to live there." "You could just watch me from where I am!"
The Tate Modern in the center, the Neo Bankside building is on the right © Acabashi via Wikipedia
Other people who were there agreed with the museum. Alan Hopkin, a 76-year-old retired taxi driver, looked at the apartments from a window on the fourth floor of the museum. He thought they were empty until he saw a person walking around a kitchen barefoot. Mr. Hopkin said, "It would be a shame if they closed the platform." He pointed out that the apartment towers faced each other. He said that the people living there didn't mind when their rich neighbors looked at them, but they didn't like it when people from the general public at the Tate did. A school chaplain named Paul Wallington, who is 60 years old, said that he didn't think the residents had a point either. He added, though, that he wouldn't stare at their apartments. "There are other places I could look into people's homes if I wanted to," he said. He also said, "I like to look at the art on the walls in places like Tate Modern."
Jean Dubreil