Introduction

Tate Modern was a century in the making. The narrative of events began in 1917 when the founding organisation of the National Gallery of British Art was awarded a modern foreign collection, the Hugh Lane Bequest, to curate. Evidently, Tate Modern has a long antecedent. Tate Modern opened three years into Tony Blair's Labour government. The vision for the kind of institution that Tate Modern became began earlier, during the Conservative administration of Margaret Thatcher. The Civil Service Commission oversaw the appointment of the post for the Tate's Gallery's director in 1987. While London was casting off the vestiges of heavy industry, it lurched towards a service-based city, with public museums and galleries becoming part of that sector. Cultural policy as a branch of public policy developed in a somewhat extemporaneous way. Within the area relating to museums and galleries, there was even greater ambiguity.