Transgression as Brand: Tate Modern’s Cultural Expressiveness through Space and Language

Abstract

This study takes Tate Modern as a case to explore how the transformation of an abandoned industrial space into a contemporary art museum shapes public perception through spatial narratives and brand language. A total of 500 high-quality user comments were collected from Instagram and Reddit, and the Semantic Brand Score (SBS) method was applied to construct a semantic network of keywords based on three dimensions: Prevalence, Diversity, and Connectivity. The results reveal that public discourse predominantly centers around the themes of “space–experience–curation,” with high-SBS keywords such as “space” and “turbine_hall” occupying core positions in the semantic network. In contrast, official brand terms like “bold,” “inclusive,” and “visionary” appeared in less than 3.5% of comments and scored more than one standard deviation below the mean, failing to enter the Top 20. The study highlights a gap between institutional brand language and public narratives, and proposes strategies to enhance brand communication through spatial storytelling. This research offers valuable insights for museum branding and the cultural communication of industrial heritage sites.