The Tate Britain museum opened to visitors in 1897. In 1889, industrialist Henry Tate, known as the creator of refined sugar and cotton candy, offered to donate his collection of 19th-century artworks to the state and financed the construction of the first Tate gallery. The museum building, designed in neoclassical style, was created by Sidney Smith.

Since then, the museum has expanded with six extensions, the latest being the Clore Gallery, opened in 1987 to house the famous collection of works by J. M. W. Turner. In 2000, the Tate Gallery was renamed 'Tate Britain', and since then, it has exclusively exhibited masterpieces of British art from 1500 to the present day.

In December 1992, the museum's board of trustees announced plans to create a separate gallery for international modern art in London called 'Tate Modern'. The former power station on Bankside was chosen for the new gallery, which was restored and redesigned by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The power station's equipment was dismantled, and the building's brickwork was restored. The turbine hall became an impressive entrance and exhibition space, while the boiler room was converted into galleries.

The total holdings of the Tate gallery complex amount to 65,000 works of art, predominantly foreign art from the 20th and early 21st centuries. The collection also includes Russian paintings, featuring works by Wassily Kandinsky ('Cossacks', 'Oscillations'), Natalia Goncharova ('Gardening', 'Three Young Women'), Kazimir Malevich ('Dynamic Suprematism'), and Marc Chagall ('The Poet's Rest', 'Bouquet with Flying Lovers').

Additionally, the museum houses a collection of works by Soviet constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo, who emigrated to Europe in the 1920s.