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The Baltic centre opens at last. Can an "art factory" revive Britain’s post-industrial North-East?
(© Hugh Pearman. Published in The Sunday Times, 30th June 2002) For anyone who knew Gateshead and Newcastle, twin gatekeepers of the Tyne, in the days when they were industrial rather than post-industrial cities, the picture they present today is an extraordinary transformation. Most impressive of all is Baltic, which at £46m is the biggest contemporary art centre outside London. Back in the 1970s, they'd have hit you if you'd suggested anything so fancy would ever appear on the quayside. Now, cultural regeneration is the order of the day. Anthony Gormley's titanic sculpture, the Angel of the North, was erected on the site of miners' pithead baths in Gateshead, neatly summarizing the zeitgeist. Baltic similarly replaces industry with art. It's a big old grain store, the last reminder of a time when - not so long ago - real working ships moored up close to the centre of the metropolis to do real dockside things.
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