The Tate

Available for over a year

This year Tate Liverpool celebrated it's 25th birthday. Together with Tate St Ives they represent Tate's attempt to make available to a wider public the national collection of british and international art held at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. When Henry Tate donated his collection of modern art to the nation at the end of the 19th century he could not have envisaged how Tate would grow into multi-million pound institution with almost 7 million visitors a year to its London galleries. But in an age of austerity with public funding of the arts being squeezed, Quentin Letts asks how much does Britain benefit from a national collection of art and who should pay for it? In fact what is the point of Tate? Producer: Amanda Hancox.