Tate St Ives is an art gallery

Art gallery

An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...

 in St Ives

St Ives, Cornwall

St Ives is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing. The decline in fishing, however, caused a shift in commercial...

, Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, exhibiting work by modern British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 artists, including work of the St Ives School

St Ives School

The St Ives School refers to a group of artists living and working in the Cornish town of St Ives.-History:The town became a magnet for artists following the extension to West Cornwall of the Great Western Railway in 1877...

. The three storey building, designed by architects Evans and Shalev, lies on the site of an old gas works, overlooking Porthmeor Beach. It was opened in 1993, the second regional gallery in the Tate Gallery

Tate Gallery

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

 network. However, the Tate also manages an earlier property in St Ives, the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden

Barbara Hepworth Museum

The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives, Cornwall preserves the 20th century sculptor Barbara Hepworth's studio and garden much as they were when she lived and worked there.-History:...

 which it opened in 1980.

An extension to the gallery has been proposed in response to the large numbers of visitors the gallery attracts, with the aims of providing better education spaces and accommodating larger works of art. The plans have met with fierce objections from some parts of the local community. On 20th July 2010, Cornwall Council successfully bought the land for the proposed extension from the Penwith Housing Association

Penwith Housing Association

The Penwith Housing Association is a social housing provider based in Cornwall, UK. It was formed in 1994 following the sale of Penwith District Council's housing stock. The housing association is one of the largest providers of housing in Cornwall with the number of residents being counted in the...

which has pledged to use the money to build more homes for elderly people in the town.

Whilst Tate St Ives seeks to preserve the history of twentieth-century art in St Ives, the gallery also exhibits new work from artists working further afield. The gallery's artist residency programme aims to develop the professional practice of artists who live and work in Cornwall.

External links

• Tate St Ives website
• artcornwall.org on-line journal for art and artists in Cornwall