Tate Britain

Tate Britain
Middlesex
Tate Britain
Type:	Art gallery
Location
Grid reference:	TQ30127854
Location:	51°29’27"N, 0°7’38"W
Town:	Westminster
History
Address:	Millbank, London SW1
	Built 1897
	Art gallery
	Classical and post-modern
Information
Website:	tate.org.uk/britain

Tate Britain is a major London art gallery standing by the River Thames in the City of Westminster, Middlesex. The institution was known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery. Thereafter, with the division of the collection and the establishment of a daughter gallery known as 'Tate Modern', the original building became 'Tate Britain'.

The gallery functions as an art museum. It is today part of a network of galleries known collectively as 'Tate', the others being Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. This though is the original gallery of the network, having opened in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the art of the United Kingdom since Tudor times, and in particular has large holdings of the works of J. M. W. Turner, who bequeathed all his own collection to the nation. It is one of the largest museums in the country.

History

The gallery is situated on Millbank in Westminster, on the site of the former Millbank Prison. Construction, undertaken by Higgs and Hill, began in 1893, and the gallery opened on 21 July 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. However, from the start it was commonly known as the Tate Gallery, after its founder Sir Henry Tate, and in 1932 the gallery officially adopted that name. Before 2000, the gallery housed and displayed both British and modern collections, but the launch of Tate Modern saw Tate's modern collections move there, while the old Millbank gallery became dedicated to the display of historical and contemporary British art. As a consequence, it was renamed 'Tate Britain' in March 2000.

The front part of the building was designed by Sidney R. J. Smith with a classical portico and dome behind, and the central sculpture gallery was designed by John Russell Pope. Tate Britain includes the Clore Gallery of 1987, designed by James Stirling, which houses work by J. M. W. Turner. The Clore Gallery has been regarded as an important example of Postmodern architecture, especially in the use of contextual irony: each section of the external facade quotes liberally from the building next to it in regard to materials and detailing.

Crises during its existence include flood damage to work from the River Thames, and bomb damage during Second World War. However, most of the collection was in safe storage elsewhere during the war, and a large Stanley Spencer painting, deemed too big to move, had a protective brick wall built in front of it.

In 1970, the building was given Grade II* listed status.

In 2012, Tate Britain announced that it had raised the £45 million required to complete a major renovation, largely thanks to a £4.9 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £1 million given by Tate Members. The museum stayed open throughout the three phases of renovation. Completed in 2013, the newly designed sections were conceived by the architects Caruso St John and included a total of nine new galleries, with reinforced flooring to accommodate heavy sculptures. A second part was unveiled later that year, the centrepiece being the reopening of the building's Thames-facing entrance as well as a new spiral staircase beneath its rotunda. The circular balcony of the rotunda's domed atrium, closed to visitors since the 1920s, was reopened. The gallery also now has a dedicated schools' entrance and reception beneath its entrance steps on Millbank and a new archive gallery for the presentation of temporary displays.

Facilities

Millbank Millennium Pier outside Tate Britain

The front entrance is accessible by steps. A side entrance at a lower level has a ramp for wheelchair access. The gallery provides a restaurant and a café, as well as a Friends room, open only to members of the Tate. This membership is open to the public on payment of an annual subscription. As well as administration offices the building complex houses the Prints and Drawings Rooms (in the Clore galleries), as well as the Library and Archive in the Hyman Kreitman Reading Rooms. The restaurant features a mural by Rex Whistler.

Tate Britain and Tate Modern are now connected by a high speed boat along the River Thames, which runs from Millbank Millennium Pier immediately outside Tate Britain. The boat is decorated with spots, based on paintings of similar appearance by Damien Hirst. The lighting artwork incorporated in the pier's structure is by Angela Bulloch.

Displays

The main display spaces show the permanent collection of historic British art, as well as contemporary work. It has rooms dedicated to works by one artist, such as: Tracey Emin, John Latham, Douglas Gordon, Sam Taylor-Wood, Tacita Dean, Marcus Gheeraerts II, though these, like the rest of the collection, are subject to rotation.

The gallery also organises career retrospectives of British artists and temporary major exhibitions of British Art. Every three years the gallery stages a Triennial exhibition in which a guest curator provides an overview of contemporary British Art. The 2003 Tate Triennial was called Days Like These. Art Now is a small changing show of a contemporary artist's work in a dedicated room.

Tate Britain is the home of the annual and usually controversial Turner Prize exhibition, featuring four artists selected by a jury chaired by the director of Tate Britain. This is spread out over the year with the four nominees announced in May, the show of their work opened in October and the prize itself given in December. Each stage of the prize generates media coverage, and there have also been a number of demonstrations against the prize, notably since 2000 an annual picket by Stuckist artists. In recent years the exhibition and award ceremony have taken place at locations other than in Tate Britain: for example in Liverpool (2007), Derry-Londonderry (2013), Glasgow (2015) and Hull (2017).

Permanent collection

Tate Britain is the national gallery of British art from 1500 to the present day. As such, it is the most comprehensive collection of its kind in the world (only the Yale Center for British Art can claim similar expansiveness, but with less depth). More recent artists include David Hockney, Peter Blake and Francis Bacon. Works in the permanent Tate collection, which may be on display at Tate Britain include:

John Constable, Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River) John Constable, Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River)   William Blake, Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils William Blake, Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils   J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth   Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia   Anna Lea Merritt, Love Locked Out Anna Lea Merritt, Love Locked Out   James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge

• Unknown 17th-century artist: The Cholmondeley Ladies
• Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Sketch for the Banqueting House Ceiling
• William Hogarth: The Painter and his Pug
• Sir Joshua Reynolds: Three Ladies Adorning a Term of hymen
• George Stubbs: Horse Attacked by a Lion
• Thomas Gainsborough: Giovanna Baccelli
• William Blake: Newton
• J. M. W. Turner: The Golden Bough, Norham Castle, Sunrise
• John Constable: Flatford Mill
• John Martin: The Great Day of His Wrath
• William Dyce: Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of 5 October 1858
• Augustus Egg: Past and Present
• Richard Dadd, The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke
• William Holman Hunt: The Awakening Conscience
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Ecce Ancilla Domini, Beata Beatrix
• Sir John Everett Millais: Ophelia
• Henry Wallis: The Death of Chatterton
• James Abbott McNeill Whistler: Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl, Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge
• John William Waterhouse: The Lady of Shalott
• John Singer Sargent, Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth
• Henry Scott Tuke: August Blue
• Herbert James Draper: The Lament for Icarus
• David Bomberg: The Mud Bath
• Mark Gertler: Merry-Go-Round
• Stanley Spencer: The Resurrection, Cookham
• Henry Moore: Recumbent Figure 1938
• Francis Bacon: Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion

Statue of Millais

Statue of John Everett Millais by Thomas Brock at Tate Britain

When the Pre-Raphaelite painter and President of the Royal Academy, John Everett Millais, died in 1896, the Prince of Wales (later to become King Edward VII) chaired a memorial committee, which commissioned a statue of the artist. This was installed at the front of the gallery in the garden on the east side in 1905. On 23 November that year, The Pall Mall Gazette called it "a breezy statue, representing the man in the characteristic attitude in which we all knew him".

In 1953, Tate Director, Sir Norman Reid, attempted to have it replaced by Rodin's John the Baptist, and in 1962 again proposed its removal, calling its presence "positively harmful". His efforts were frustrated by the statue's owner, the Ministry of Works. Ownership was transferred from the Ministry to English Heritage in 1996, and by them in turn to the Tate. In 2000 the statue was removed to the rear of the building.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Tate Britain)

• Tate Britain