The slide in this picture isn’t in a theme park (unless your idea of a thrill ride is watching Un Chien Andalou), it’s in the massive entry hall of the Tate Modern in London. The Tate Modern was once Bankside Power Station, and after removing the turbines, curators were left with a five-story gallery capable of dwarfing even the most grandiose installations. Carsten Höller’s twisting steel-and-plastic slides are the seventh installation underwritten by the Unilever Corp. to utilize all that space. The tallest of several slides drops 182 feet to the gallery floor, reducing cool and collected museum-goers to giggling idiots in the space of a few seconds. Höller, of course, dresses this up for the art world with statements like: “The funfair experience is completely underrated, I don’t know why we don’t take it more seriously philosophically and artistically.” I’m sure the 600,000 people who’ve queued up for the slides since they debuted were considering the philosophical implications as they plummeted towards the gallery floor. A piece from this weekend’s Washington Post travel section has all the details on how you can visit before the exhibit ends on April 15.

– “Doing the Electric Slide in London” (Washington Post)
– “Catch the tube at the Tate – it’s worth the ride” (Guardian)
– Tate Modern (official site)
– Tagged: Art

(Image via austinraustin’s photostream)