Tate Gallery

Tate Gallery, London, originally the National Gallery of British Art. The original building (in Millbank on the former site of Millbank Prison), with a collection of 65 modern British paintings, was given by Sir Henry Tate and was opened in 1897. It was extended by another gift of Tate's in 1899, and in 1910 the Turner wing was completed, the gift of Sir Joseph Duveen. A gallery of modern foreign art was added in 1916, and three new galleries for foreign art and one for the works of John Singer Sargent were opened in 1926. The museum was damaged in World War II but reopened in 1949. In 1987 the Clore Gallery was opened to display the gallery's collection of J. M. W. Turner works, which is the most extensive in the world. Now renamed the Tate Britain, the complex is devoted to British art. The Tate Modern, Britain's first national modern-art museum in 100 years, opened in a large, refurbished power station on the south bank of the Thames in 2000.

Bibliography

See J. K. M. Rothenstein, The Tate Gallery (1958).

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Tate Gallery

Art museum in London housing the national collection of British painting and sculpture and of modern British and European art since c. 1870. It is named after Sir Henry Tate (1819–1899), a sugar refiner and inventor of the sugar cube, who donated his collection of Victorian art to the nation in 1890. The Neoclassical building, designed by Sidney R. J. Smith, opened in 1897. Originally administered by the National Gallery, the museum became completely independent only in 1954. In 1987 the Clore Gallery was built to house the principal collection of J.M.W. Turner's works. In 1988 a branch was opened in Liverpool. The Tate Modern, a converted power plant housing the modern collections, opened in 2000.

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Tate Gallery 

a museum in London housing a collection of paintings and graphic art, including the greatest examples of English art of the 16th to 20th centuries, as well as Western European works, primarily French, of the 19th and 20th centuries. The core of the Tate collection is a group of paintings that belonged to the industrialist H. Tate, who also donated the money to build the first exhibition halls. In 1910 a wing was added to the gallery to house the works of J. M. W. Turner.