Tate Britain stands on a prison site and has had three names
London's Tate Britain was built on the site of Millbank Prison and opened in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. Almost everyone called it the Tate Gallery anyway, after its founder, Sir Henry Tate, and the name became official in 1932.
Its current title dates from March 2000, when the modern collection moved downriver to the new Tate Modern and the Millbank building became devoted to British art from 1500 to today, the most comprehensive collection of its kind anywhere. Its greatest treasure is J. M. W. Turner's work, bequeathed by the painter to the nation and housed since 1987 in the Clore Gallery. That wing, designed by James Stirling and paid for mainly by Charles Clore and his daughter Vivien Duffield, is admired as postmodern architecture, each stretch of its facade borrowing materials and details from whichever building stands next to it.
The gallery has weathered floods from the Thames and wartime bombing. Anticipating danger, staff quietly sent more than 700 artworks to Muncaster Castle in Cumbria on 24 August 1939. A £45 million renovation completed in 2013, led by architects Caruso St John, added nine galleries with floors strong enough for heavy sculpture, reopened the river entrance and restored a domed balcony closed since the 1920s. A river bus painted with Damien Hirst-style spots links it to Tate Modern.
Controversy is part of the furniture. Tate Britain hosts the Turner Prize exhibition every other year, picketed annually by the Stuckist artists since 2000. Its former restaurant was closed after complaints about Rex Whistler's 1927 mural, which included enslaved Black children and caricatures of Chinese people; the room now pairs the mural with a film installation by Keith Piper. BP walked away from a sponsorship that began in 1990, denying that climate protesters had anything to do with it.
Even a statue caused a fuss: a director once called the figure of the painter Millais positively harmful and tried to swap it for a Rodin. It was eventually moved round the back in 2000.
Source: Tate Britain
