It was founded in 1898 by the Tate family with money earned from their sugar plantations. It was initially a collection of British art, concentrating on the works of modern - that is Victorian - painters. It later expanded its collection to include foreign art, and so in the twentieth century became principally a gallery devoted to Modernism.
Since 2000 the 'British' and 'Modern' aspects of the collection have been housed in separate buildings. The original gallery is now called Tate Britain to distinguish it from several other "Tate Galleries" in England and is a national gallery for British art from 1500 to the present day.
Each year the museum organizes the Turner Prize, given to a British artist under 50.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump