Sights of London

The original Tate Gallery, now known as Tate Britain, was founded in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. It was designed to house the collection of modern British paintings that had been bequeathed to the nation in 1890 by British sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate. The gallery’s original collection also included some British paintings transferred from the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. At first the trustees of the National Gallery controlled the Tate Gallery, but an act of Parliament in 1954 separated the two museums and officially established the Tate as an independent institution.

Although the founders of the Tate Gallery intended the collection to represent only modern British art, the Tate’s collection now encompasses British art from the 16th century to the present as well as international modern art. The collection of historic British art features important works by William Hogarth, William Blake, and John Constable. Highlights of the international collection include works by Spanish artists Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, French artists Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp, and American artists Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko. The Tate’s collection also includes a bequest by 19th-century English artist J. M. W. Turner of his paintings and watercolors. In addition to displaying its own permanent collections, the Tate mounts important exhibitions of British and modern art from collections loaned by other museums and galleries.

In 2000 the Tate opened a new museum, Tate Modern, in a remodeled power plant in London to display its collection of international modern art. The original museum, renamed Tate Britain, gained space to exhibit its collection of historic British art.