Tate Britain's Permanent Collection will Undergo A Complete Rehang

The rehang will open to the public on May 23, and offer a refreshed curation of British art featuring some 800 works which will be a mix of much-loved favourites, new commissions and new discoveries. 

Director of Tate Britain Alex Farquharson said that the new display would "explore 500 years of revolutionary changes in art, culture and society" and culminate in "new work by some of Britain's most exciting contemporary artists". 

READ MORE: Centre Dedicated To East London Art Icons Opens In Spitalfields This Spring

He added: "We will celebrate the very best of British art and show how it speaks to us, challenges us, and inspires us."

David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967 (Image: David Hockney)

Women artists will be better represented following the rehang, with half of the displayed contemporary artists being women, so visitors can feast on the works of Bridget Riley, Tracy Emin, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami and Lydia Ourahmane. 

The rehang will also showcases women artists from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, may who have never been shown at Tate before. This includes a full-length portrait from 1650-5 by Joan Carlile, thought to be the first woman in Britain to work as a professional oil painter, a selection of watercolours by Emily Sargent made on her travels in North Africa, and the atmospheric painting A Fisher Girl’s Light 1899 by Marianne Stokes.

More than 200 works acquired by the museum after the millennium will also go on display, including 70 works which joined the collection's fold in the past five years, such as grand Tudor portraits and Georgian battle scenes, to modern paintings and sculptures by Derek Jarman, Gluck, Takis, Kim Lim and Donald Locke.

Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851–2 (Image: Tate (Seraphina Neville))

Visitors will still be able to see the most iconic works from the world's greatest British art collection, including John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, William Hogarth’s The Painter and his Pug and David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash. 

There will be a career-spanning display of more than 100 works by JMW Turner, as well as rooms devoted to key figures in art history like William Blake, John Constable, the Pre-Raphaelites and Henry Moore. 

A series of regularly changing solo displays will explore other ground-breaking artists, including Annie Swynnerton, Richard Hamilton, Aubrey Williams and Zineb Sedira.

Rachel Jones, lick your teeth, they so clutch, 2021 (Image: Rachel Jones)

Want the latest features and reviews straight into your inbox? Sign up for The Resident's weekly email newsletter here.

Visitors will also find works by a new generation of young artists who are joining the national collection for the first time, such as a kaleidoscopic canvas by Rachel Jones and a series of photographs capturing 21st century British life by Rene Matić.

Polly Staple, Tate’s Director of Collection, British Art, said: “Tate Britain’s new displays will embody our commitment to expanding the canon and diversifying British art history. In recent years we have brought so many incredible works into Tate’s collection and visitors will soon be able to see these new acquisitions hung alongside more familiar and much-loved classics.”

Address: Millbank, SW1P 4RG

Website: tate.org.uk