ARTTate Gallery Plans: In what is seen...

ART

Tate Gallery Plans: In what is seen as Britain’s most important cultural commission in years, two Swiss modernist architects on Tuesday were selected to turn an unused London power station into the Tate Gallery of Modern Art, an annex to Britain’s esteemed Tate Gallery. The architects, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, beat out five other bidders, including a British group, despite being little known outside their own country. They intend to leave intact the exterior of the stark, brick-built Bankside power station, an example of 1950s utilitarian architecture designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (who also styled the country’s traditional red telephone boxes). A giant turbine hall, stripped of its machinery, and the building’s chimney will also be left untouched. The galleries will be fitted into the turbine hall and in oil tanks buried in the grounds. The Tate says the $160-million project, across the River Thames from St. Paul’s Cathedral, will be the first national gallery to be built in Britain since the 19th Century. “It will be a building on the scale of (Paris’) Pompidou Centre that we can grow into, making it one of the largest galleries of modern art in the world,” Tate director Nicholas Serota said. The new gallery is expected to open by the year 2000.

TELEVISION

Danny’s Back: Danny Bonaduce, the former “Partridge Family” child star who now hosts a popular Chicago talk radio program, will return to television with “Danny!,” an upcoming hourlong weekday talk show described as combining “humor, intimacy and honesty with Bonaduce’s outrageous personality.” The syndicated program, from Buena Vista Television, will air locally on KCOP Channel 13. Said Buena Vista Television President Mort Marcus: “Danny Bonaduce has seen and done it all. . . . Having survived the consequences of childhood stardom and having hit bottom in the ‘80s, he’s managed to retain an incredible and contagious sense of humor. You’d look far and wide to find someone with as much energy, enthusiasm, honesty as he has.”

*

Change in Plans: CBS has hastily canceled February sweeps plans to broadcast the feature film “Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear,” featuring O.J. Simpson, after station affiliates expressed concern about airing it while Simpson is standing trial for murder. Station managers met with CBS executives in a closed-door session over the weekend at a TV convention in Las Vegas. “When we scheduled it, it was an honest mistake,” a CBS spokeswoman said. “People thought in terms of (stars) Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley, forgetting that O.J. was the fifth lead.” CBS has not yet announced a program to fill the empty time slot on Feb. 8.

KUDOS

GLAAD Honors: The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has selected network TV series “Friends,” “Roseanne,” “Frasier” and “My So-Called Life”; MTV’s documentary series “The Real World III--San Francisco”; a three-part NBC Nightly News series on “Gay in America”; and the Armistead Maupin PBS miniseries “Tales of the City” among those to receive 1995 GLAAD Media Awards, to be presented by March 12 and 16 in ceremonies in Century City and New York, respectively. Other winners of the awards, which recognize “fair, accurate and inclusive” media representations of lesbians and gay men, include the feature film “Go Fish,” the documentary “Coming Out Under Fire” and the Melissa Etheridge music video “I’m the Only One.”

POP/ROCK

Asking for Fans’ Help: Led Zeppelin fans are being sought to loan Zeppelin memorabilia for a traveling exhibition planned in conjunction with the Jimmy Page and Robert Plant 1995 North American Tour. The memorabilia will be housed in the MGD Rock ‘n’ Roll Memorabilia Truck as part of a Led Zeppelin tribute. Anyone interested in lending items is asked to contact tour sponsor Miller Genuine Draft via e-mail at mgdtaproommgdtaproom.com or to write the MGD Tap Room c/o Ketchum Public Relations at 142 East Ontario, Chicago, Ill. 60611. All accepted memorabilia will be insured and bonded, and returned at the end of the concert tour.

*

Girls With Guitars: Musician Bonnie Raitt and Fender Guitars raised more than $80,000 at the National Assn. of Music Merchants trade show in Anaheim over the weekend through a silent auction and benefit concert kicking off the “Bonnie Raitt Guitar Project,” a charity program designed to help inner-city girls learn to play the guitar. Several Fender guitars--autographed by the likes of Eric Clapton, the Eagles, Buddy Guy and Reba McEntire--were sold during the event, which also included the unveiling of the first Bonnie Raitt Signature Series Stratocaster, a new $1,500 Fender guitar that will be sold to raise money for the project. Said Raitt: “I’d like to encourage people who can’t afford guitars--and girls who wouldn’t even think about playing a guitar.”

QUICK TAKES

ABC will bring back the comedy “Thunder Alley,” starring Edward Asner as a retired stock-car driver, on March 7 at 8:30 p.m. The show will replace the Tuesday night comedy “Me and the Boys,” which completes its 19-episode season on Feb. 28. “Thunder Alley” fared poorly in the ratings in its previous Wednesday night time slot, ranking 58th for the season. . . . “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” broke its own record for highest weekly gross at the Doolittle Theatre last week, bringing in $317,108 during the final week of its run.