Tate St Ives


Tate St Ives is an art gallery in St Ives, Cornwall, England, exhibiting work by modern British artists with links to the St Ives area. The Tate also took over management of another museum in the town, the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, in 1980.
The Tate St Ives was built between 1988 and 1993 on the site of an old gasworks. In 2015, it received funding for an expansion, doubling the size of the gallery, and closed in October 2015 for refurbishment. The gallery re-opened in October 2017.

History

In 1980, Tate group started to manage the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, dedicated to a St Ives artist closely linked with Henry Moore. The group decided to open a museum in the town, to showcase local artists, especially those already held in their collection.
In 1988, the group purchased a former gasworks and commissioned architects Eldred Evans and David Shalev, to design a building for the gallery in a similar style to the gas works. The building began in 1991, funded by the European Regional Development Fund, the Henry Moore Foundation and donations from the public. It included a rotunda at the centre of the gallery, looking over Porthmeor Beach and was completed in 1993. The gallery opened in June 1993, the second of the Tate's regional galleries after Tate Liverpool, receiving more than 120,000 visitors before the end of the year.
In 1999, to celebrate the solar eclipse, Tate St Ives held an exhibition called As Dark as Light, exhibiting work from Garry Fabian Miller, Gia Edzveradze and Yuko Shiraishi alongside art from local schoolchildren.
In January 2015, the Tate St Ives received £3.9 million to build an extension to the existing gallery, with the intention of doubling the available space. The contract was awarded to BAM Construct UK, who would be adding a extension, with the original architect's involvement. The Tate St Ives was closed in October 2015 for these works and remained closed until October 2017.
In July 2018, Tate St. Ives won the Art Fund Museum of the Year Prize, beating the other shortlisted museums to the £100,000 prize. Later that month, the Royal Institute of British Architects announced that the new Tate building had reached the shortlist for the 2018 Stirling Prize. It was beaten by the Bloomburg Building, London, by Foster + Partners.

Exhibitions

Since the refurbishment, Tate St Ives has showcased the following exhibitions: