The national Gallery of British art is much better known as the Tate - named after its founder, industrialist sir Henry Tate. It was his private collection formed the basis of the future Museum, representing the fine art of great Britain from 1500 to the present day. The gallery was opened to the public in 1897. Currently it houses over 60,000 exhibits - paintings, drawings, prints.

During the second world war, the gallery building was damaged by bombing, but almost all the exhibits were evacuated, and those that take out was impossible - safely hidden and protected. After the war, the gallery was reopened in 1949.

The Museum building was repeatedly extended and rebuilt several times. In 1987 opened the Clore gallery, which showcases the most extensive collection of paintings by Turner. The oldest painting in the Museum - portrait of a man in a black hat (1545) John Betts. Here visitors can see paintings by Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, constable and many other British and European masters.

Part of the group of the Tate galleries is the Tate Modern, representing a collection of European and American art created after 1900. It is housed in a former power station, fully converted into a Museum. In the halls of the gallery are works by Kandinsky, Malevich and Chagall. Interestingly, Tate Modern hosts the paintings are not in chronological order, as is customary in most museums, and groups them by theme: "still life, object, real life", "Landscape and environment", "history painting", "Nude action body".