London news: the East End's most prominent gallery is expanding, Samson Spanier visits the site, a library that once served David Bomberg and Jacob Epstein

Apollo, Feb, 2005 by Samson Spanier

The Whitechapel Art Gallery in east London has always prided itself on its history and social milieu. Founded in 1901 to serve the poor immigrant community outside the City, a task it can claim to carry out to this day, it was also the first British institution to exhibit Picasso--notably his Guernica in the 1930s--and Rothko. The gallery is continuing in its traditional spirit of service to the local community with an avant-garde twist, by rescuing and expanding into the public library next door, which the council has decided to relocate.

The building is the Passmore Edwards Library, established in 1893. Its 'Jacobethan' red-brick and sandstone facade, with unusually large windows on the second floor, is in marked contrast to the 1901 Art Nouveau gallery, famous for its decorously swooping arch and minimal windows. The library's interior is currently home to less-than-inspiring convection heaters on the walls and a general 1950s dinginess. The Whitechapel, however, has good reasons to unite the buildings. It is not only a matter of almost doubling exhibition space, well-served by the library's large windows and skylight that were designed originally with the intention of the building shining as a 'beacon' to passers-by.

For the library is intimately connected to the gallery. Both were founded, eight years apart, by the Canon Samuel Barnet for charitable education, and they had a shared purpose. The library was much patronised by the East End's Jewish community, including David Bomberg and Jacob Epstein. The Whitechapel sees an opportunity both to emphasise and save the community's history. 'As soon as the library moves out, the building will be at risk,' say Iwona Blazwick, the Whitechapel's director.

It is in this spirit that much of the new exhibition space will be put to making accessible the gallery's archive. Dating back to the Whitechapel's inception, it contains photographs of Picasso lecturing and correspondence with Rothko on how to exhibit his works. The conversion by Belgian architects Robbrecht en Daem is also respectful of the past. Kristoffel Boghaert of the firm hopes that the conversion, despite connecting walkways and so on, 'will be a bit invisible'.

The project is set to cost 10 million [pounds sterling], of which the Heritage Lottery Fund--clearly impressed by the Whitechapel's continued educative spirit--is contributing a third. 5m [pounds sterling] still remains to be raised, but where there's an HLF blessing, there's a way; 'We'll get there,' says Blazwick.

Blazwick, however, does not just want to create an ever-so-slightly larger side-kick to Tate, her former employer, even if she is being embraced by the establishment. Reacting against the 'cultural landscape of Tate', she wants 'to do something different'. The sense of place that is emphasised by the archive will form a template for other shows. Blazwick envisages 'guest archives' lent from other museums, to be exhibited with relevant works of art.

There may be, nevertheless, a whiff of competition with Tate. Would Guernica be exhibited better at the Whitechapel, as a historical reconstruction, or at Tate, contextualised richly with the permanent collection? The institutions have until 2007, when the library is converted, to patch things over.

Tate is rather more likely, in fact, to be feeling competition with the Saatchi Gallery. Tate Britain and the private but prominent gallery of advertising mogul Charles Saatchi have both just opened their spring blockbusters, and with dual-like timing chose the same day, 26 January.

Tate Britain is showing a retrospective of Anthony Caro (to be reviewed in next month's APOLLO), the British sculptor who turned eighty last year, noted for his welded steel constructions. The Saatchi Gallery is showing 'The triumph of painting'. Three consecutive shows cover the whole year, with part one concentrating on German and north European painters who have been active since the 1970s and are now seen as increasingly influential, such as Martin Kippenberger (1953-97) and Luc Tuymans (b. 1958). Part two is of British painters of the past twenty years, and the finale is of up-and-coming artists.

The two galleries have been in competion ever since Saatchi cornered the market in Damien Hirsts and other 'Young British Artists' in the early 1990s, and a spat erupted in the newspapers last December over whether Tate had refused an offer of art from Saatchi. The Saatchi Gallery certainly puts its aims for the new show in adversarial terms: 'The Gallery believes that throughout a period when photography, video and installation art has been at the forefront of museum attention, painting continues to be the most relevant and vital way that artists choose to communicate.' Saatchi wants to steal the initiative, but from which museums? Tate Modern exhibited Luc Tuymans last year.

For art world groupies, however, the main contest is already over, namely whether it was possible to attend on one night both the swanky opening parties.