A man died after falling from the Tate Modern building in London on Friday morning, February 2.
In a statement shared with Hyperallergic, the city’s Metropolitan Police said they responded to a call from the scene at 10:45am local time, and that officers, London’s Air Ambulance, and London Ambulance Service were onsite. “Despite the efforts of medics the man sadly died at the scene,” the statement said. The exact site where the fall took place and other details regarding the circumstances of the incident have not been disclosed.
The museum communicated on social media that it was closed for the rest of the day but would be open again tomorrow, February 3. The man’s identity has not been revealed as the police work to inform his family and next of kin. The death is being treated as “unexpected, but is not thought to be suspicious,” according to the police statement.
Tate Modern did not immediately respond to Hyperallergic’s request for comment, but acknowledged the man’s death in an interview with The Times, stating that it had closed the gallery for the rest of the day as “a mark of respect.”
This is the second reported incident of a fall at the Tate Modern in five years. In August 2019, English teenager Jonty Bravery threw a six-year-old French boy unknown to him from the gallery’s 10th-floor viewing platform. The boy landed on the fifth-floor roof and survived, but suffered from a brain bleed and various broken bones. Bravery is serving a life sentence in prison, and the child continues to recover steadily with some permanent impairments as a result of the 98-foot fall.
Last October, the Courtauld Gallery in London closed to the public after a man in his 60s fell “from a height” and subsequently died at the museum.
