Tate

Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art museums, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

The institution today has four art galleries and one art museum and garden:

• Tate Britain, the original Tate Gallery;
• Tate Modern
• Tate St Ives
• Tate Liverpool
• The Barbara Hepworth Museum, St Ives

The name "Tate" is a brand name established when the institution expanded from its original gallery: the corporate body, which was established by the Museums and Galleries Act 1992, is known formally as "The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery".

The gallery was founded in 1897, as the National Gallery of British Art. When its role was changed to include the national collection of modern art as well as the national collection of British art, in 1932, it was renamed the Tate Gallery after sugar magnate Henry Tate of Tate & Lyle, who had laid the foundations for the collection. The Tate Gallery was housed in the current building occupied by Tate Britain, which is situated in Millbank, Westminster. In 2000, the Tate Gallery transformed itself into the current-day Tate, which consists of a network of four art galleries / museums: Tate Britain in Westminster, which displays the collection of British art from 1500 to the present day; Tate Modern, in [{Southwark]], which houses the Tate's collection of British and international modern and contemporary art from 1900 to the present day; Tate Liverpool in Liverpool (founded in 1988), which has the same purpose as Tate Modern but on a smaller scale; and Tate St Ives in St Ives, Cornwall (founded in 1993), which displays modern and contemporary art by artists who have connections with the area. All four museums share the Tate Collection. One of the Tate's most publicised art events is the awarding of the annual Turner Prize, which takes place at Tate Britain.

History and development

The original Tate Gallery, now "Tate Britain"

The original Tate was called the National Gallery of British Art, situated on Millbank, Pimlico, Middlesex at the site of the former Millbank Prison. The idea of a National Gallery of British Art was first proposed in the 1820s by Sir John Leicester, Baron de Tabley. It took a step nearer when Robert Vernon gave his collection to the National Gallery in 1847. A decade later John Sheepshanks gave his collection to the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria & Albert Museum), known for years as the National Gallery of Art (the same title as the Tate Gallery had). Forty years later, Sir Henry Tate who was a sugar magnate and a major collector of Victorian art, offered to fund the building of the gallery to house British Art on the condition that the State pay for the site and revenue costs. Henry Tate also donated his own collection to the gallery. It was initially a collection solely of modern British art, concentrating on the works of modern (which is to say Victorian-era) painters. It was controlled by the National Gallery until 1954.

In 1915, Sir Hugh Lane bequeathed his collection of European modern art to Dublin, but controversially this went to the Tate Gallery, which expanded its collection to include foreign art and continued to acquire contemporary art. In 1926 and 1937, the art dealer and patron Joseph Duveen paid for two major expansions of the gallery building. His father had earlier paid for an extension to house the major part of the Turner Bequest, which in 1987 was transferred to a wing paid for by Sir Charles Clore. Henry Courtauld also endowed Tate with a purchase fund. By the mid 20th century, it was fulfilling a dual function of showing the history of British art as well as international modern art. In 1954, the Tate Gallery was finally separated from the National Gallery.

Tate Liverpool, opened in 1988

During the 1950s and 1960s, the visual arts department of the Arts Council of Great Britain funded and organised temporary exhibitions at the Tate Gallery including, in 1966, a retrospective of Marcel Duchamp. Later, the Tate began organising its own temporary exhibition programme. In 1979 with funding from a Japanese bank a large modern extension was opened that would also house larger income generating exhibitions. In 1987, the Clore Wing opened to house the major part of the Turner bequest and also provided a 200-seat auditorium. (The "Centenary Development," in 2001, provided improved access and public amenities)

Tate St Ives, opened in 1993.

In 1988, an outpost in Lancashire opened as Tate Liverpool. This shows various works of modern art from the Tate collection as well as mounting its own temporary exhibitions. In 2007, Tate Liverpool hosted the Turner Prize, the first time this has been held outside London. This was an overture to Liverpool's being the European Capital of Culture 2008.

In 1993, another offshoot opened, Tate St Ives in Cornwall. It exhibits work by modern British artists, particularly those of the St Ives School. Additionally the Tate also manages the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, which opened in 1980.

Tate Modern opened in 2000.

Neither of these two new Tates had a significant effect on the functioning of the original London Tate Gallery, whose size was increasingly proving a constraint as the collection grew. It was a logical step to separate the "British" and "Modern" aspects of the collection, and they are now housed in separate buildings in London. The original gallery is now called Tate Britain and is the national gallery for British art from 1500 to the present day, as well as some modern British art. Tate Modern, in the Bankside Power Station on the south side of the Thames, opened in 2000 and now exhibits the national collection of modern art from 1900 to the present day, including some modern British art. In its first year, the Tate Modern was the most popular museum in the world, with 5,250,000 visitors.

In the late 2000s, the Tate announced a new development project to the south of the existing building. According to the museum this new development would "transform Tate Modern. An iconic new building will be added at the south of the existing gallery. It will create more spaces for displaying the collection, performance and installation art and learning, all allowing visitors to engage more deeply with art, as well as creating more social spaces for visitors to unwind and relax in the gallery." Arts philanthropist John Studzinski donated more than £6 million to the project. The extension to Tate Modern opened in 2016 as The Switch House and, in 2017, was renamed the Blavatnik Building after Anglo-Ukrainian billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik, who contributed a "substantial" amount of its £260m cost.

Tate Online

Tate Online is the Tate's website. Since its launch in 1998, the site has provided information on all four physical Tate galleries (Tate Britain, Tate St Ives, Tate Liverpool and Tate Modern) under the same domain. Tate Online helps visitors prepare and extend visits to the physical sites but also acts as a destination in its own right. Other resources include illustrated information on all works in Tate's Collection of British and Modern international art, structured and informal e-learning opportunities for all visitors, over 600 hours of archived webcast events, all articles from the magazine Tate Etc., and a series of bespoke net art commissions. BT was the primary sponsor of Tate Online from 2001 to 2009.

In addition to providing information about the galleries and organisation, Tate Online has been used as a platform for Internet art exhibits, termed Net Art, which are organised as part of Tate's Intermedia Art initiative covering new media art. So far, 13 net art exhibitions have been shown since the initiative started in 2000 including Tate in Space (2002) which was nominated in the Interactive Art category for the 2003 BAFTA Interactive awards.

The Tate Online Shop sits under the main Tate site and offers a wide range of books, prints and products that reflect and support the primary goal of Tate: to promote the knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of art. Profits from the online shop help to support the work of the galleries.

Other ventures

Other aspects of the institution's work are expressed in:

• Tate Etc., an art magazine
• The Turner Prize
• Tate Publishing Ltd, a publisher of art books associated with the Tate Gallery
• Tate Images, the picture library of Tate which licenses images of artwork from Tate's collection

Pictures

• 

  J. M. W. Turner's Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) – The Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis]], 1843: Tate Britain

• 

  Edward Burne-Jones's King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, 1884: Tate Britain

• 

  Robert Delaunay's Windows Open Simultaneously (First Part, Third Motif), 1912: Tate Modern

• 

  Paul Klee's A Young Lady's Adventure, 1921: Tate Modern

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Tate)

• Tate Online 65,000 works from the Tate Collection online, information on Tate's exhibitions and events programmes, and online learning resources
• Tate etc. Magazine
• Tate online shop Classic, modern and contemporary design products for adults and children, including items produced exclusively by Tate and items represented in its collection.
• Turner Worldwide - an ongoing online cataloguing of J.M.W. Turner's work around the world
• Turner Collection Online The online catalogue of Tate's collection of nearly 300 oil paintings and 30,000 works on paper by J.M.W. Turner
• Tate Public Records Tate's own historical records
• Tate Podcasts Audio and video podcasts from Tate
• Tate in Space
• Turner Museum
• Tate Channel Filmed artist talks and interviews, studio visits, and exhibitions