TATE GALLERY

art museum in London that houses the national collection of British painting and sculpture from the 16th century to the present, as well as a gallery of modern British and European art. It is located on the Millbank in the borough of Westminster. The Tate Gallery resulted from the benefaction of sugar tycoon Sir Henry Tate (181999), who gave both the building and his art collection to the nation. The Neoclassical building was designed by Sidney Smith and was opened to the public in 1897; it has received six extensions, the last of which, the Clore Gallery, opened in 1987 to house the world's finest collection of works by the British painter J.M.W. Turner. There are branches of the Tate Gallery at Liverpool and at the Barbara Hepworth Museum in St. Ives, Cornwall. The British collection at the Tate Gallery commences with Elizabethan and Jacobean examples. The 18th and 19th centuries are exceptionally well represented, including works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Stubbs, Constable, Blake, and the Pre-Raphaelites. The modern European collection houses fine French Impressionist and Postimpressionist works. The Tate Gallery has maintained its modern collection through a well-defined acquisition policy, with all significant movements accounted for: Cubism, Futurism, Abstract Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, and Pop art. There are notable works by Picasso and Braque as well as British sculptors such as Hepworth and Moore.