Museums in the UK

Tate Liverpool

The Tate Liverpool is an art museum, part of the Tate

network, housed in a former warehouse located in the Albert
Dock historical site on Liverpool’s waterfront.
• Opened to the public in May 1988, with over 600,000 yearly visitors in
2017* the Tate Liverpool is the most visited art museum in Northern
England.
• Liverpool is currently one of the most lively cities in the UK for modern and
contemporary art and the Tate, together with the Liverpool Biennial and the
Bluecoat art center, has been one of the driving forces of such renaissance.

• The gallery was conceived in the 1980s as a ‘Tate of the North’ with a view
to helping rejuvenate Liverpool, once a leading industrial center but facing a
dramatic decline since the mid-1970s, as part of the redevelopment plan of
the city’s disused dockyard on the River Mersey’s waterfront.
• The project of the museum’s home was developed by British architect James
Stirling who left the iron-and-brick facades and structure of the historical
building, designed by Jesse Hartley and Philip Hardwick in 1846,
substantially untouched while he created new flexible spaces suitable for
different types of artwork and exhibition layouts inside.
 The Tate Liverpool
features both a semi-
permanent exhibition
presenting pieces from the
Tate national collection of
British and international
modern and contemporary
art, and a dynamic program
of special exhibitions.
Tate St. Ives
• St Ives, a small Cornish
town on the southwest
coast of England,
perhaps seems an
unlikely site for a major
art gallery. However, its
artistic connections date
back to Victorian times
when numerous artists
came to St Ives to paint,
attracted by its special
quality of light.
• Tate had formed a close link with St Ives when it took over the management
of the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1980. By the
middle of the decade it was decided a gallery should be built there to show
works by artists who had lived or worked in St Ives, loaned from the
collection.

• In 1988, a building was chosen on the site of a former gasworks overlooking

Porthmeor Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. The architects Eldred Evans and
David Shalev were selected for designs that echoed the shapes of the former
gasworks, including the rotunda that forms the heart of the gallery.

• Building work began in 1991, funded by donations from the local

community, the Henry Moore Foundation and the European Regional
Development Fund. The Tate Gallery, St Ives opened in June 1993 and in
just six months welcomed over 120,000 visitors – 50,000 more than the
original target for the entire year. Since then, the gallery has been an
outstanding success with an average of 240,000 visitors per year.
TATE MODERN
• In December 1992 the Tate Trustees announced their intention to create a
separate gallery for international modern and contemporary art in London.
• The former Bankside Power Station was selected as the new gallery site in
1994. The following year, Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron were
appointed to convert the building into a gallery. That their proposal retained
much of the original character of the building was a key factor in this decision.
• In 1996 the design plans were unveiled and, following a £12 million grant from
the English Partnerships regeneration agency, the site was purchased and work
began. The huge machinery was removed and the building was stripped back
to its original steel structure and brickwork. The turbine hall became a
dramatic entrance and display area and the boiler house became the galleries.
• Since it opened in May 2000, more than 40 million people have
visited Tate Modern. It is one of the UK’s top three tourist attractions
and generates an estimated £100 million in economic benefits to
London annually.
 Tate Online
• Tate Online serves a huge range of functions and caters for numerous
diverse
• audiences. There is no shortage of ideas on how to develop the site
better to serve these
• audiences, but limited resources available to do so. As a result it is
essential that the
• opportunities afforded are prioritised. The key objectives are crucial
in informing the
• priorities for Tate Online and are therefore worth looking at a little
closer.