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).