LONDON.- On the last Thursday of every month Tate Liverpool opens late for special events, music, food, drink and the best modern and contemporary art. This month’s Late at Tate, Thursday 26 June (18.00 – 21.00), is themed around Tate Liverpool’s current exhibition Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900.

“To Art its Freedom” was the rallying cry of the Viennese Secession, a group co-founded by Klimt who championed individual art sensibilities over more traditional bourgeois values in late 1900s Austria. Join us for a musical and talkative night of challenge, contradiction and oppostition that considers the period just prior to Klimt’s critical acclaim as an artist. Take a tour by Dr.Christoph Grunenberg, Director of Tate Liverpool and co-curator of Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900, sit in on a lively salon led by Ralf Bock on a Viennese movement that rivalled the Secession, and at the end of the evening kick back and enjoy the lush, tender and walzy sounds of singer-songwriter Anna Silvera. Throughout the evening visitors will also be treated to chance encounters with musicians and the Mellowtone DJs who will be playing contemporary records with a classical twist.

Turn of the century Austrian salons consisted of a small gathering of people, brought together by an inspiring host or hostess to increase knowledge on a particular subject through conversational exchange and reading, but also to provide amusement. Tate Liverpool’s series of salons linked to Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900 look at the interdisciplinary links in Klimt’s life and work. Each session is moderated by experts in the field, who start by giving an illustrated presentation on a given theme, followed by an open discussion. Author and curator Ralf Bock leads the first salon, in a talk entitled Between Ornament and Crime: Loos V Hoffmann. Josef Hoffmann, working closely with Klimt, founded the Viennese Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte, based on philosophical ideas of the total work of art and the integration of art and design. A group made up of Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos and Arnold Schönberg founded another opposing movement, with the ambition of championing the strict separation of art and design, leading to radical new forms in each discipline. Ralf Bock discusses the two opposing movements in Vienna at the turn of the last century that challenged each other to achieve the status of the new modern movement. The salon runs from 18.00 – 19.30 and tickets cost £7, £5.50 (concessions), £4 (members). To book contact the Tate Liverpool Box Office on 0151 702 7400.

The exhibition Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900 will continue to inspire Late at Tate events in July and August. July’s Late at Tate, entitled Attention to Detail, analyses and critiques Klimt’s collaboration with the Wiener Werkstätte. In August Late at Tate will be hosting a Night of Bling that focuses on Klimt’s golden period. To find out more about future Late at Tate events visit www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/late.

18.00 – 19.30: Between Ornament and Crime: Loos V Hoffman

19.30 – 20.30: Exhibition Tour: Dr. Christoph Grunenberg

18.00 – 20.00: Mellowtone DJs

20.00 – 21.00: Anna Silvera