Liverpool - Tate Gallery

An acclaimed branch of the Tate Gallery in London has been established in the Albert Dock. As chance would have it the London Tate Gallery, which was founded at the end of the 19th C with a legacy from the sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate, found new accommodation in the warehouses where Tate stored the raw sugar before it was refined. The last connection with the inventor of the sugar cube ended in 1981 with the closure of the Tate & Lyle sugar refineries in Liverpool, a fate, which is only too familiar to this once thriving port.

Restoration was the work of Liverpool architect James Stirling who also extended the Tate Gallery on the bank of the Thames for the Turner Museum. The ground floor of the "Tate of the North" has three exhibition halls (total of 4,000sq.m. floor space), the first floor has three galleries dedicated to contemporary art. On the second floor are works on loan from the London Tate, on the upper floors are offices, lecture halls and artists' studios.