virtual tour tate gallery

Virtual Travel

A Smithsonian magazine special report

Take a Virtual Tour of Tate Modern’s Andy Warhol Exhibition

The show ran for just five days before the London museum closed due to COVID-19

Theresa Machemer

Correspondent

Five days after the opening of its much-anticipated Andy Warhol retrospective, Tate Modern closed its doors indefinitely in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

But museumgoers don’t have to wait for Tate to reopen to appreciate the exhibition. On April 6, the London institution released a collection of online resources related to the show. From a seven-minute video tour led by two Tate curators to a lengthy exhibition guide and a podcast titled “ The Art of Persona ,” art lovers can now fully explore the aptly titled “ Andy Warhol ” from home.

“Curating an Andy Warhol exhibition in the present-day means confronting a world where everyone has a mental projection of the artist and his production,” curators Gregor Muir and Fiontán Moran tell the Guardian ’s Tim Jonze. “Everyone owns Warhol. He is one of those rare artists who transcends the art world, having become widely known as one of America’s most famous artists, if not one of America’s most famous Americans. Over time, Warhol became—and still is—a big brand, which is just how he wanted it.”

The exhibition seeks to look beyond the persona of eccentricity that Warhol built for himself. Immigration forms featured in the show’s first gallery, for instance, document the Pop Art legend’s parents’ arrival in the United States. Andrej and Julia Warhola moved to Pittsburgh from Miková, a village in what is now Slovakia, during the early 1920s; the couple raised their children in the Ruthenian Catholic tradition, introducing an influence that shaped Warhol’s art throughout his career.

As Muir explains in the new video, the exhibition approaches Warhol through the lenses of his immigrant background and queer identity, as well as the themes of death and religion evident in his oeuvre.

“He was an artist who really, despite all of his insecurities, tried to be himself,” says Moran in the video. “And part of that was his gay identity and very often a lot of his works explore same-sex desire. And you see that in a number of the early drawings that he does in the ’50s, which often depict men he knew or men he desired.”

The second gallery in “Andy Warhol” centers on one of the art icon’s early works, a 1963 film comprised of close-up shots of sleeping poet—and, briefly, Warhol’s lover—John Giorno. According to Tate’s exhibition guide , Giorno later said that his lover circumvented the homophobia of the art world “by making the movie Sleep into an abstract painting: the body of a man as a field of light and shadow.”

During the 1960s, Warhol began creating brightly colored artworks with stark black outlines screen-printed on top—a style that came to be known as Pop Art. Today, soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles and celebrities painted in multiples of two, four or more are among the artist’s most well-known works.

“Most of these works were produced in the early part of the 1960s at the artist’s first home on Lexington Avenue,” the curators tell the Guardian , “not the Silver Factory, as people imagine.”

Warhol established the factory—his art studio and social hub—in 1963. Covered in silver paint and foil, the site won fame as the place where the artist and his assistants produced a significant number of paintings and films.

“With a lot of Warhol’s work, you don’t know how involved he actually was, because he had his assistants and the whole idea of the Factory was that there was no single hand,” Hirshhorn Museum curator Evelyn C. Hankins told Smithsonian magazine ’s Megan Gambino in 2012.

This situation changed in 1968, when writer Valerie Solanas shot Warhol after accusing him of stealing her manuscript. The wound nearly killed the artist, and in doing so, led to the demise of the factory’s open-door policy. Warhol’s mental and physical health suffered for the rest of his life.

“Despite the trauma of the event, he agreed to pose for photographer Richard Avedon and once compared the stitches of his chest to a Yves Saint Laurent dress,” writes Tate in the exhibition guide .

During the ’70s, Warhol began painting portraits commissioned by wealthy clients, in addition to series such as Mao , Hamer and Sickle , and Skull . He also funded Interview magazine, a publication still active today.

One of Warhol’s series from the decade, titled Ladies and Gentlemen , features portraits of African American and Latinx drag queens and transgender women. Little was known about the subjects of the paintings when they were first created, but research highlighted in the exhibition is now revealing their stories.

The last artwork in Tate’s retrospectiv is Sixty Last Suppers , a large-scale work based on a cheap reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper . A copy of the mural hung in the kitchen of Warhol’s childhood home.

Sixty Last Suppers was one of the last pieces Warhol created. In 1987, the 58-year-old artist died of cardiac arrest after undergoing gallbladder surgery.

“He could have gotten [the surgery] scheduled and done earlier, had he been more preventative about his health,” Jose Diaz, a curator at the Andy Warhol Museum, told History.com ’s Sarah Pruitt in 2018. “But until the end, he avoided hospitals. He was always nervous about getting sick. I think death always made him nervous, but of course, having almost died once really escalated that.”

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Theresa Machemer | READ MORE

Theresa Machemer is a freelance writer based in Washington DC. Her work has also appeared in National Geographic and SciShow. Website: tkmach.com

Tate Modern London, United Kingdom

Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group (together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives and Tate Online). It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of the London Borough of Southwark. Tate holds the national collection of British art from 1900 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art. Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world. As with the UK's other national galleries and museums, there is no admission charge for access to the collection displays, which take up the majority of the gallery space, while tickets must be purchased for the major temporary exhibitions.

1 museum view

What's on.

9 virtual exhibition tours to watch online

By Connie Sjödin

Published on 16 April 2020

Galleries and museums might be closed but you can still see major exhibitions from around the world, while swapping the crowds for a cuppa. We pick some of the best virtual tours and artworks currently available online.

1. Andy Warhol at Tate Modern

London, curator tour In a seven-minute video tour , supplied along with text panels from the exhibition, Tate curators Gregor Muir and Fiontán Moran share their approach to the major Tate Modern exhibition of American pop artist, Andy Warhol . Key works from Warhol’s career tell of his experiences as the son of Eastern European immigrants, member of the LGBTQI community and his brush with death.

2. Raffaello, 1520 – 1483 at the Scuderie del Quirinale

Rome, virtual tour of the largest ever exhibition of Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, or Raphael, arrived in Rome in 1508, at the invitation of the new Pope Julius II. Although we can’t join him there, the Scuderie del Quirinale has brought its vast exhibition of one of the greatest artists of the High Renaissance online. In this 13-minute walk-through , learn about the social context and the crucial role of patronage in Raphael’s career, while gazing at his lavish range of portraits, religious works and architectural designs.

Photo © David Parry/Royal Academy of Arts © Succession Picasso/DACS 2020 Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London and the Cleveland Museum of Art in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris

3. Picasso and Paper at the RA

London, virtual tour We could hardly leave out our own blockbuster, could we? In our 39-minute video tour of the exhibition, Picasso and Paper , you can experience the Spanish artist’s varied, experimental uses of paper over his 80-year career: drawing on, folding, even burning it. As the exhibition features more than 300 works, touring it meditatively from the comfort of your sofa could be an advantage.

And, while you're there – if you like it, you can take a quick spin around our Léon Spilliaert show too, in this 20-minute film .

4. Tom Wudl: The Flowerbank World at L.A Louver

Los Angeles, virtual tour Here is a suitably meditative approach to the work of American artist Tom Wudl. Doing away with added commentary, the six-minute walk-through gives space to Wudl’s intricately detailed paintings, drawings and prints, inspired by the Buddhist text the Avatamsaka Sutra . Visit the LA Louver website for more information on the exhibition and an interview with the artist.

5. Edward Hopper at Fondation Beyeler

Basel, curator introduction Many online commentators have held up 20th-century American artist Edward Hopper as the poster boy for self-isolation. Curator Ulf Küster provides a tantalising insight into the current exhibition at Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, in a four-minute video tour released shortly before its closure. Hopper’s use of framing, windows, and evocation of an unknown landscape beyond the horizon, are all increasingly familiar in a changing world.

6. Jakob Kudsk Steensen: Catharsis from the Serpentine

London, virtual artwork until 31 May Shinrin-yoku , or “forest bathing”, is an ancient Japanese practice to relax and replenish the soul. While long nature excursions are currently off-limits, Serpentine Online is hosting an online equivalent until the end of May: Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s digital simulation of a lush North American forest . The moss, the sunlight, the fish-populated pools and the calming music, provided by sound artist Matt McCorkle, all create an immensely tranquil experience.

7. Eye to I: Self Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, at the Boca Raton Museum of Art

Boca Raton, virtual tour With the term “self-conscious" as its starting point, the exhibition Eye to I is a cherry-picking of self-portraits by major artists in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery . With a wide range of depictions spanning over a century, this thoughtful presentation straddles themes from cultural identity to body positivity. Catch up with it in this six-minute video tour .

8. Tanoa Sasraku: O’ Pierrot from LUX

London, moving image artworks available until 1 May LUX – an agency promoting international artists working with moving image – gifts us two short films by London-based artist Tanoa Sasraku in an online version of her planned exhibition. Set against the backdrop of the English countryside, Sasraku references early cinema and cultural tropes in order to examine the construction of a British identity, from her perspective as a young, mixed-race, LGBTQI woman.

9. Fiona Tan: Time Without Clocks from Frith Street Gallery

London, A Moving Image Programme, until 20 April As part of its digital offering Frith Street Gallery presents a weekly online programme of moving image works, which are usually seen only in exhibitions. This week Amsterdam-based artist Fiona Tan shares three contemplative works that centre on memory and her sense of time. As Tan explains in her introduction, scale and presentation are usually central to the experience of her works, so we recommend a dark room and headphones.

Next week, the gallery will be showcasing Raqs Media Collective's Provisions for Everybody (2018).

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Visitor’s Guide To London’s Tate Britain, The Best Of British Art

Here’s my guide to visiting the magnificent Tate Britain in London. I give you an overview of the museum and 15 masterpieces you can’t miss.

The museum may not be as wildly popular as its sister-museum, the Tate Modern. But if you’re a lover of British art, the Tate Britain is a must visit attraction in London.

Tate Britain features traditional British art from the 1545 to the present day. It’s home to J.M.W. Turner’s watercolors and dreamy Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Some of the most famous paintings in Britain are housed in this museum.

Of special note, there are 8 entire rooms dedicated to Turner, one of Britian’s greatest artists, in the Clore Gallery. The gallery includes some of Turner’s greatest masterpieces — such as  Self Portrait, Peace, Burial at Sea,  and  Norham Castle, Sunrise.

In addition, the Tate Britain is a pristine glistening work of art itself. The museum boasts a domed rotunda, beautiful spiral staircase, terrazzo floors, and Victorian details.

Built in the late 19th century, the Tate Britain underwent an extensive renovation, which was completed in 2013. The result is an ultra pretty museum experience.

History Of The Tate Britain

The Tate Galleries were named after William Tate. He was a Victorian businessman who made his fortune in the sugar trade.

Tate was also one of Britain’s most important art collectors. Among his most important acquisitions were John Everett Millais’ Ophelia and J.W. Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shallot .

In 1889, he offered to donate his collection to the nation on the condition that a gallery be built to showcase it. Tate even ponied up the money to build the museum.

In 1897, the National Gallery of British Art opened. It was founded as a branch of the National Gallery of Art .

The museum was renamed the Tate Gallery in 1932. Today, there are four Tate galleries in Britain, including the Tate Modern, the Tate St. Ives, and the Tate Liverpool. When the Tate Modern opened, the Tate Gallery was renamed Tate Britain.

Other significant patrons include the Duveen family. They funded large extension to the gallery.

What Exactly Is British Art?

The Tate Britain contains a collection of works made by British artists or that were created in Britain. But what makes British art “British?”

British art followed a somewhat different course of development from mainstream European art.

British art is most remarkable for its dominance of the portraiture genre in the 17th through 19th centuries. In the Georgian period, Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough were lionized for their portraits, rendered in an infinite variety of grays and greens.

Britain was also noted for its landscape paintings, especially from the Romantic Age. You’ll find seminal works by luminaries such as Turner, William Blake, and John Constable.

British art also has some unique genres. In Britain, group portraits became known as “conversation pieces.” They were popularized by William Hogarth, Britain’s first native born painter of International stature.

Conversations pieces were informal portraits. They focused on social relationships between friends and family.

The Pre-Raphaelites were also a distinctively British art movement. They wanted to establish a new kind of art in Britain, reviving the methods and ideals of Early Renaissance and Medieval art. 

Taking the idea of “truth to nature,” they sought to invest their red headed subjects with a sense of physical and psychological realism. This British school influenced a wider European Symbolism movement.

Tickets & Tours of Tate Britain

Tate Britain is free to visit. So you don’t need to pre-book a ticket.

But you may want to book a guided tour of the impressive collection.

Click here for a 2.5 hour guided tour of the collection, which I’ve taken and really enjoyed. You can also book a guided tour of both the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern .

Guide To The Tate Britain: What To See

There are scads of masterpieces at the Tate Britain. Here’s my guide to 15 show-stopping highlights. You’ll see them in mostly chronological order.

1. Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia

Ophelia is my favorite painting at the Tate Britain. It’s a classic Pre-Raphaelite work with bright colors, a dreamy visionary quality, and a tragic theme of wasted youth.

The painting depicts the death of Ophelia, a character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . Ophelia is driven mad with grief when Hamlet murders her father. She falls into a stream and drowns.

In the painting, Ophelia holds a variety of flowers. The poppies symbolize death, the daisies represent innocence, and the pansies reflect blighted love.

In its day, Ophelia was regarded as at the most accurate and elaborate study of nature ever made. The model for Ophelia posed in a bathtub.

2. John William Waterhouse,  The Lady of Shalott

Waterhouse’s  The Lady of Shalott is an incredible masterpiece in the Tate Britain. It transports viewers back forty years earlier when the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood dominated the middle of the century.

The subject is a vulnerable young red haired woman in white gown. She’s set adrift in a river setting reminiscent of Ophelia .

The painting has the same mythical beauty as Ophelia . But Waterhouse’s painting has a more impressionistic delicacy.

The subject of the painting comes from Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Arthurian poem of the same name. In the poems, she lives isolated in a castle.

Because of a curse, she is forbidden from looking out her window, upon the pain of death. Instead, she’s relegated to viewing images of the outside world through a mirror.

One day, she sees a reflection of a rather handsome Lancelot. She’s smitten and looks directly at him through the window.

To meet him, she leaves her castle and rides a boat down to Camelot. The tapestry she wove during her confinement is draped over the boat.

But the curse kicks in and she dies before reaching the shore. Here demise is hinted at by a crucifix and three candles in the painting.

3. Henry Wallis, Chatterton

Chatterton is a highly romanticized painting. It created a sensation when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy. It’s an example of the Victorian approach to history painting.

Thomas Chatterton was a poet and melancholy writer of Gothic themes. Despairing of his lack of literary success, he committed suicide at the age of 17 by swallowing arsenic.

Wallis’ painting shows the pale, still body of Chatterton lying on a bed. His head and right arm dangling loosely over the edge, his tattered papers and the poison vial beside him.

His white shirt and stockings help to silhouette the figure against the darker background. The vivid purple of Chatterton’s knee breeches and his reddish hair grab the viewer’s attention.

4. Rossetti, Beata Beatrix

This is another Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece at the Tate Britain. The inspiration for the painting was Dante’s Vita Nuova . That work tells the story of Dante’s idealized and unrequited love for Beatrice.

The painting is a portrait of Rossetti’s wife Elizabeth Siddall in the character of Beatrice. In the background, Dante gazes toward his love.

The work has a hazy, transcendental quality. Beatrice is posed in ecstasy. The painting seems like a dream or vision.

The painting is filled with symbolic references. A bird drops a white poppy into her hand, a symbol of death. The dove and the figure of Love are red, the color of passion. The time of Beatrice’s death is seen in the sundial.

5. John Constable’s  Flatford Mill

Along with Turner, Constable revolutionized landscape painting in the 19th century. His paintings had a profound and far-reaching effect on European art, particularly in France.

Constable moved away from the highly idealized landscapes that were the expected norm at the academy. Instead, he favored realistic depictions of the natural world.

Constable was famous for painting the Suffolk countryside and Flatford Mill is no exception. The painting shows men working on the River Stour. It was intended as an expression of the importance and value of rural life.

Flatfoot Mill was Constable’s largest canvas and was mainly painted outside. He called it one of his “six footers.”

6. William Blake Works

William Blake was an artist who developed radical new approaches to painting and printmaking. He explored highly personal interpretations of Christian themes. Rejecting the academy, Blake became the most radical of leftfield artists.

Nowadays, Blake is a revered hero. He’s considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age.

But, in his age, he was considered a visionary oddball. And, indeed, Blake claimed to have visions since childhood.

You can see some of Blake’s visions at the Tate Britain. They include The Ghost of a Flea , Newton , and Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils.

7. Thomas Lawrence, Mrs. Siddons

Lawrence was the most popular English portrait painter of his time. He was famed for portraying the high society ladies in a polished and flattering style. Lawrence became the court painter for King Georg IV.

Lawrence painted many portraits of the actress Sarah Siddons. She was known as the greatest tragic actress of her day.

In this painting, she is shown at one of her dramatic readings. Volumes of plays are next her.

8. Turner Paintings

Turner may be Britain’s most famous and important artist. In the mid 19th century, Turner shocked his colleagues with his loose brush strokes and fiery palette, presaging the later Impressionist movement. 

The Tate Britain’s collection of Turner is the world’s largest collection. It includes all the paintings he had in his possession upon his death.

Turner left it to the nation in his will. There are several hundred oil paintings, watercolors, and sketch books. They are displayed in 8 rooms in the Clore Gallery.

Turner’s works range from highly finished scenes to spontaneous impressions of nature. In the early 19th century, Turner concentrated on British subjects, displaying a patriotic sentimentalism.

9. Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals

Mark Rothko is an American abstract expressionist painter. But he drew inspiration from Turner. As a result of his admiration, he gifted a group of paintings to the Tate Britain. It’s in the Clore Gallery with Turner’s works.

Rothko was originally commissioned by Seagrams to create these murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York. In 1959, Rothko abruptly quit the prestigious gig. Apparently, he didn’t want his art to be mere decoration for wealthy patrons.

Instead, the Seagram Murals took on a darker and more contemplative turn. Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence Italy influenced Rothko’s meditations.

He used a somber palette of red, browns, and blacks. Rothko sought to re-create the library’s claustrophobic and sepulchral atmosphere.

The murals are displayed in dark, dimly lit rooms. At the time, some criticized them as “Apolcalypse Wallpaper.”

10. Henry Moore Sculptures

Henry Moore burst on to the scene in the 1920s. He was a radical and experimental sculptor. He became the leading sculptor of his generation and a pioneer of modern sculpture.

Moore’s enduring subject was the human body. He saw the countryside as the best setting for his sculptures. Some of his forms are shaped like natural objects such as stones or bones.

Moore’s sculptures are displayed in two dedicated rooms at the Tate Britain. The famous sculptures include Reclining Figure , Recumbent Figure , Family Group , and King and Queen .

King and Queen was created about the same time as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Moore portrays the figures as almost divine beings.

11. Francis Bacon, Three Studies For Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion

Francis Bacon is know for his emotionally charged raw imagery of traumatized humanity. Drifting inbetween figuration and abstraction, his figures are set in isolated and geometric cage-like spaces. They have flat non descriptive backgrounds.

Bacon liked to work in series. He would focus on a single subject for a sustained period of time.

Three Studies was a breakthrough painting for Bacon. It caused a sensation and established him as one of the foremost post-war painters.

It’s not really a crucifixion painting. Bacon later said he was inspired by the vengeful furies of Greece mythology.

This work was first exhibit in 1945. Some historians think Bacon’s work reflects the grim world used in by the Holocaust.

READ : Guide To the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

12. Lucian Freud, Girl With a White Dog

Lucian Freud is considered one of the most important figurative painters of the 20th century. He essentially redefined portraiture.

The grandson of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Freud became famous for his unflinching observations of anatomy and the unsettling intensity of his nude portraits.

Freud used an anti-romantic, confrontational style of portraiture that stripped bare the sitter’s social facade. His images were intensely realized and almost intentionally uglified. Some critics considered Freud the painter of fat people who own their fat.

Freud used loose brushwork and richly applied color. His portraits of lovers, friends, family, and celebrities are fleshy, honest, tender, and complex.

Girl With a White Dog is an early portrait of his pregnant first wife. The absence of a title emphasizes the artist’s preoccupation with observation.

The painting depicts a pale woman in a dressing gown clutching a white dog. The longer you look at it, the more uncomfortable the image becomes. 

The woman looks calm, but also a little crazy. The dog is a bull terrier.

The blunt muzzle is terrifyingly close to the woman’s exposed breast. Will the dog bite the woman? Will the woman strangle the dog?

13. David Hockney, A Bigger Splash

Hockney is one of the most recognizable and popular British artists of our time. His main interest is the challenge of representation, trying to capture an object in two dimension.

A Bigger Splash is an iconic work of Pop Art. It was created in the late 1960s when Hockney had moved to California.

It was a post-war period of optimism and Hockney’s depiction of a California swimming pool reflects this.

The painting evokes a glamorous life of sun and leisure. In many of his paintings, Hockney added male figures. But, in this one, the splash is all the suggests a human presence.

14. Allen Jones, Chair

Allen Jones is a pop artist best known for his figurative paintings and sculpture. His controversial “women as furniture” series sparked outrage for its objectification of the female body.

Chair is a life-size, hyper-realistic female mannequin squeezed into bondage gear. The artist has a fascination with fakery and fetish.

On International Women’s Day in 1986, a demonstrator poured paint stripper over  Chair  in an attempt to literally deface it.

The sculpture still has the ability to shock today. Some claim it symbolizes female oppression. Others view it as an important object in the canon of art history, a response to the then prevailing Minimalism.

15. Chris Ofili, No Woman, No Cry 1998

This enormous painting and densely layered painting is a tribute to the mother of Stephen Lawrence. He was murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993. It won Ofili the Turner Prize five years later.

Doreen Lawrence’s profile is set against a collaged backdrop of abstract diamonds shaped forms. Each of her light blue tears contains an image of her son. The words RIP are discernible under the paint.

The canvas is perched on two large pieces of elephant dung, a material Olifi liked to use. It exudes a feeling of universal melancholy and grief.

Tours Of The Tate Britain

The Tate Britain is free as I mentioned. But the signage isn’t very good at all.

Because there are so many masterpieces, you may want to book a guided tour.

You can take this 3 hour guided tour or a 3 hour guided tour that includes both the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern .

Practical Information and Tips For Visiting The Tate Britain

Here’s some must know information on how to visit the Tate Britain:

Address : Millbank, Westminster, London SW1P 4RG

Entrances :

There are three different Tate Britain entrances:

• The Manton Entrance (on Atterbury Street), which has direct access to the lower floor of the gallery, the Linbury Galleries, and the Hyman Kreitman Reading Rooms.
• The Millbank Entrance, which has access to the upper floor and main gallery areas via 20 steps.
• The North Entrance (on John Islip Street), the most ideal entrance for those parking on John Islip Street via the North Gat

Hours : Open daily 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

The Tate has a Bloomberg Connects app to enable visitors to lead their own journey around the galleries on their smartphones.

The app provides a more bespoke, behind-the-scenes, experience than a traditional museum audio guide. It can be downloaded in advance of a visit or in the museum on the Tate’s free Wi-Fi. 

Entry : Free. In high season, you may need to book a timed entry reservation.

Tube stations : Pimlicco, Victoria, Westminster 

The museum has a cafe on the lower floor, Djanogly Cafe . It’s a pretty place with vaulted and frescoed ceilings.

You can get a wide variety of sandwiches, salads, tea, and other drinks. The cafe even has a a Hogarth inspired beer.

Pro tip : You can take a  virtual tour  of the Tate Britain on Google Arts & Culture. On the Tate Britain website , you can also listen to curators talk about key art works in the museum.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my guide to the Tate Britain. You may enjoy these other England travel guides and resources:

• 5 Days in London Itinerary
• Guide To Free Museums in London
• Guide To the National Gallery of Art
• Harry Potter places in London
• Guide To the Churchill War Rooms
• Guide To The Wallace Collection
• Tourist Traps To Avoid in London
• Guide To the Tower of London
• Guide To Hampton Court Palace
• Guide To Hatfield House
• Guide To The Henry VII Chapel

If you’d like to visit the Tate Britain, pin it for later.

2 thoughts on “Visitor’s Guide To London’s Tate Britain, The Best Of British Art”

Hi. I visited 31st August 2022 – and none of the Pre Raphaelites are on display at the moment. Thanks for a great article

Oh, I’m sorry, that’s such a bummer! They must be gone as part of a traveling exhibit. I was there in March and they were all on display.

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Last Updated on July 7, 2023 by Leslie Livingston

Take A (Virtual) Tour Of The Tate's Andy Warhol Exhibition, With Its Curators

The gallery might be shut, but you can still enjoy the Tate's landmark show with insight from the experts

The galleries are shut, the museums are closed. But worry not, art fans. We've tapped some of the art world's leading curators, collectors and experts to talk us through the exhibitions none of us can attend in person. Here Gregor Muir, the director of Tate's International Collection, and Fiontán Moran, assistant curator at Tate Modern, talk us through the gallery's blockbuster Andy Warhol show.

To date, a great many Andy Warhol exhibitions have taken a familiar path, with Pop Art representing the bulk of the artist's career. However, Warhol's influence extends far beyond the Sixties, with Pop Art accounting for only three years of his production. In fact, it's the period after the Sixties that often contributes to our understanding of Warhol as an artist who champions new forms of celebrity, and business art, while investing himself in new areas of popular culture, to include music, magazines and TV.

In contrast to received notions, we wanted to locate the artist in a humanistic setting. Who was Warhol? Where did he come from, and how did his lived experience inform his work? We wanted to strip away the hype and the myth, often put out by Warhol himself as a means of shrouding his true identity. We wanted to look at Warhol for who he was, taking into account his family's journey to America from Eastern Europe, his queer identity, and the way in which his work would ultimately be informed by death and religion. With this in mind, we wanted to look at Warhol afresh. Here are some of our exhibition highlights.

Charles Lisanby

Throughout the Fiftes, Warhol exhibited his drawings in various New York venues, including a set grouped around the title Studies for a Boy Book . While the publication was never produced and we don’t know exactly which drawings were included, this portrait of the production designer Charles Lisanby is a perfect example of the intimate way Warhol approached art making and his elegant drawing style. Lisanby was one of Warhol’s first crushes, who he tried to charm by buying a stuffed peacock that they had both admired on their first walk home together.

Round Marilyn

Marilyn Diptych is one of the most popular works in the Tate Collection, so we were very excited to be able to show this alongside the other diptych, Marilyn Monroe’s Lips ( on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum) as well this work, Round Marilyn , on loan from Museum Brandhorst. All three works were created in 1962, the year that Monroe died, and have been interpreted as a contemplation on the life of the actor, who at the time was one of the most famous women in the world. The tondo is particularly interesting for the way it turns the image of Marilyn into a modern-day saint. By placing her image against a gold background, Warhol appears to have been referencing the tradition of Byzantine icon painting, which he would have known from museums and his own religious upbringing.

Sleep (1963)

For most of the Sixties, Warhol dedicated his time to filmmaking, which was being used by many artists in new and exciting ways. Sleep was his first major work in the medium, and opens our exhibition. The silent five-hour film consists of a series of short clips, edited together, that document the poet John Giorno – who was briefly Warhol’s lover – sleeping. Warhol was fascinated by the ability of his friends to stay up for days on end while using drugs and wondered whether sleep would soon become obsolete. Featuring no dramatic narrative, Warhol created a film that could be contemplated like an abstract painting. In 2004, Sam Taylor-Johnson made her own version of the film when she filmed David Beckham sleeping.

Screen Tests

Alongside his more experimental movies, from 1964 to 1966 Warhol created short film portraits that came to be known as the ‘Screen Tests’. The set up was simple. A person was asked to look directly at the camera for the three-minute duration of the film reel, ideally without moving or blinking. As the camera was often left running with no one behind it, the works became a test of the subject’s patience. Once projected, they become a test for the viewer too. The series documents a number of Warhol’s so-called ‘superstars’, such as Edie Sedgwick and the drag queen Mario Montez, but also other notable figures who passed through the Factory including Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag and Bob Dylan.

Silver Clouds

In 1965, at the height of his fame as an artist, Warhol announced his retirement from painting in favour of filmmaking. He staged his farewell with an installation in a New York gallery the following year. One room consisted of nothing but wallpaper featuring a fluorescent pink cow. In the other, metallic silver balloons filled with helium floated through the gallery space and could be interacted with by the viewer. Titled Silver Clouds , Warhol described them as ‘paintings that float’, but they can also be seen to queer conventional thinking about sculpture, specifically the dominance of minimalist art in the New York scene at the time. This was an art based on order, mathematical precision and industrial materials. Instead, Warhol’s installation emphasised fluidity, movement and participation.

Vacuum Cleaning

In 1972, Warhol was asked, along with a number of other artists, to create works for the exhibition ‘Art in Process’ at the Finch College Museum of Art, New York. Warhol’s response was to purchase a vacuum cleaner, which he used to clean the carpet in the gallery. The gallery displayed the signed dust bag and vacuum on a plinth along with photographs documenting the process. It’s a fantastic example of Warhol’s interest in performance and the everyday actions that we take for granted.

Ladies and Gentlemen (Marsha P. Johnson)

A room of the exhibition is dedicated to Warhol’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ paintings, which is one of his biggest series, yet little known. It depicts Black and Latinx drag queens and trans women who were chosen from bars in New York. The series showcases Warhol’s painting technique in the Seventies, where he would use expressive brushmarks and even use his fingers to animate the dynamic poses of the models, and then screenprint their photograph on top.

While the original commission asked that the identities of the sitters be anonymous, in recent years there has been more interest in the series as a portrait of a community that was rarely depicted in painting. One of models was Marsha P Johnson, who was at the Stonewall uprising of 1969 that ushered in the gay and trans rights movements. Johnson was a remarkable figure who was a fixture of the West Village scene, performed in drag shows, and set up a home for homeless LGBTQ+ youth, so it’s special to be able to foreground her in the exhibition.

Oxidation Painting (1978)

The ‘Oxidation’ series of paintings was created by Warhol and his assistant Ronnie Cutrone either pissing or pouring urine onto a canvas primed with copper-based paint. The chemical reaction, or oxidation, created ‘blooms’ of colour. Warhol was especially excited by the change of colour that was created as a result of his Cutrone’s vitamin B supplements. The works have been interpreted as a parody of abstract expressionist painting and are an important example of Warhol’s collaborative, playful and experimental approach to painting.

Wigs / fright wig Self-Portrait

Despite his desire for fame, Warhol was incredibly insecure about his appearance. He started wearing a wig in the late Fifties to cover up his premature balding, which came to be an integral part of his carefully created persona. In the exhibition we have three of Warhol’s own wigs from the Eighties, borrowed from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. By this point his wigs had become more exaggerated, which culminated in his so-called ‘fright wig’ self-portraits of 1986, which were first exhibited in London and show his head floating against a dark backdrop.

Sixty Last Suppers (1986)

The final work in our exhibition is 'Sixty Last Suppers', which depicts a late copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s 'Last Supper' mural, screen-printed sixty times across a ten-metre long canvas. It’s a moving and dramatic work that references his religious upbringing and plays on the authenticity of the original mural. It was also created at a time when Warhol was increasingly surrounded by death as the AIDS epidemic swept through New York and took the lives of many of his friends, including his former partner, Jon Gould. While Warhol was not a queer activist, 'Sixty Last Suppers' could be seen as a moving portrayal of endless loss, reminiscent of the wall graves found in many cemeteries. 'Sixty Last Suppers' would turn out to be one of Warhol’s final works. Soon after the first exhibition of the series in Milan, he had surgery on his gallbladder and died shortly after, at the age of 58.

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The Switch House – Tate Modern

I was commissioned to shoot a 360 degree virtual reality tour of the new Switch House extension at the Tate Modern Art Gallery in London. The imagery was to feature in Dezeen, the world’s most influential architecture, interiors and design magazine. This was to be the first time that Dezeen had ever published 360 imagery, and they asked to interview me about this pionering technology, and why it’s so apposite to the architecture and interior design industries.

360 degree online and VR headset tours really are the perfect medium to showcase, share and experience all types of architectural and interior design projects. Whilst traditional stills and video do have their uses, they also have their limitations. Stills and video techniques focus upon isolated elements and only record a small part of the scene. However, 360 degree imagery captures the entire 360 degree view, and this perspective places the product in context with its environment. Apart from a personal visit, there really is no better way to convey and impart the atmosphere, the feeling of light and the sense of space at a location.

You can read my interview with Dezeen here :

Herzog & De Meuron’s Switch House extension at the Tate Modern has forever changed the London skyline, and become something of an icon of its time. My 360 degree virtual tour of this outstanding building has generated a great deal of interest in both the UK and worldwide. Its also been published and featured in Arch Daily and Archi.ru , Russia’s leading architecture and design magazine.

If you can understand Russian (or use Google Translate), you can read my interview with Archi.ru here .

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You can do virtual tours of almost every major London museum and gallery

Life without art and museums is just a whole lot of Netflix and cheap lager, that’s what self-isolation has taught me. Good heavens, I miss museums. The smell, the light, the people, the ART. I really miss art. But it’s good to know that way before everything went crazy last year, most of London’s museums digitised their collections and even created virtual tours of their spaces. If you miss those places as much as I do, especially now that we're deep into yet another lockdown, then this might just be the balm your restless soul needs. From Tate Modern through to the Natural History Museum, here are our favourite virtual tours of our most beloved London cultural institutions.

Tate Modern

Photograph: Facebook/Tate

The Tate’s collection is staggering: Monet, Picasso, Rothko, all the big names. In this tour, Tate Modern’s director Frances Morris takes you on a tour of one of the Tate’s new buildings, showing you works by Louise Bourgeois, Carl Andre and plenty of others. For some reason, Nick Grimshaw’s there too. I don’t know why. I don’t like it.

The Courtauld Gallery of Art

Photograph: Courtauld

This is a virtual tour of a museum that was shut even before the current crisis. The Courtauld’s been closed for refurbishment for ages, but cleverly created this digital tour for posterity’s sake. It’s room by room, so start at the beginning with Cranach the Elder’s ‘Adam and Eve’, scoot through the portraits of old dead people in room four and then head straight for the Impressionist and modernist delights of rooms six and seven. Van Gogh, Manet, Kandinsky? Yes please!

The National Portrait Gallery

Photograph: National Portrait Gallery

Ah, London’s museum Marmite. The NPG is filled with stuff you either love or despise with a hatred so intense it’s all-consuming. ‘The Cholmondeley Ladies’ painting? Amazing, love it. The portrait of Ed Sheeran? I’d rather stab my eyes out with a pair of tweezers. But don’t listen to me, take the tour and decide for yourself.

The National Gallery

Photograph: National Gallery

This one’s done in collaboration with Google Street View, so you get all the thrills of scouring your local streets to see if they caught you picking your nose, but with paintings instead. The National Gallery’s collection has some of the greatest artists who ever lived – Renaissance masters, Baroque painters and Impressionist adventurers – and there is nowhere better to lose yourself for an afternoon in London. Plus, you get to stand in exactly the right spot to see the skull straighten out in Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’. And online, there are no Italian schoolkids with giant backpacks getting between you and the Raphael. Heaven.

The British Museum

Photograph: British Museum

Woo, things were hotting up for a while there with Brexit. As Britain formally withdrew from the European Union, bills were being drafted in Brussels that would basically force the British Museum to give the Parthenon Marbles back to Greece. The CV crisis has put the kibosh on all that for now, so there are probably some very relieved people at the BM. But in the meantime, let’s all enjoy it online while we can (and the mummies, obviously: everyone loves the mummies).

Want more virtual art exhibitions? Have a look at this heartbreaking show we’ve part-hosted  here .

Then check out more   virtual tours of museums around the world .

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

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You can now take a virtual tour of Andy Warhol’s Tate Modern exhibition

Get your culture on during the coronavirus lockdown...

Fans of Andy Warhol can now take a virtual tour of the pop art icon’s new Tate Modern exhibition, after London and the rest of the UK went into lockdown last month due to coronavirus.

The cultural giant, known for his work for artists such as The Velvet Underground, is the subject of a new retrospective at the London gallery.

It features iconic images of Marilyn Monroe, Campbell’s soup cans and lesser known works from the late artist’s Ladies and Gentlemen  series which haven’t been displayed in 30 years.

Art lovers can now access the gallery for the first time in a seven-minute YouTube video, which sees gallery curators Gregor Muir and Fiontan Moran leading an in-depth tour across 12 rooms.

As well as showcasing the works within the gallery, the commentary also provides an invaluable insight into the life of one of modern art’s most enduring figures.

“Curating an Andy Warhol exhibition in the present-day means confronting a world where everyone has a mental projection of the artist and his production,” said Muir and Moran.

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“Everyone owns Warhol. He is one of those rare artists who transcends the art world, having become widely known as one of America’s most famous artists, if not one of America’s most famous Americans.

“Over time, Warhol became—and still is—a big brand, which is just how he wanted it.”

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Virtual tours

Wherever you are in the world, take a tour of the National Gallery.

Our virtual tours allow you to step inside the Gallery and explore one of the greatest collections of paintings, from the comfort of your home.

Experience the Gallery in virtual reality through your desktop, phone or VR headset.

The Director's Choice virtual exhibition

Visit a virtual space showing a selection of paintings chosen and narrated by our Director, Dr Gabriele Finaldi.

Take the Director's tour

Fit for a Queen virtual exhibition

Visit our virtual gallery of 28 paintings which celebrates Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

Find out more about 'Fit for a Queen'

Fruits of the Spirit virtual exhibition

Visit our virtual exhibition that juxtaposes nine works of art from the National Gallery’s collection with nine works of art from partner institutions across the UK.

Find out more about 'Fruits of the Spirit'

'Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s ‘Adoration’, mobile edition'

Immerse yourself in the world of Gossaert’s masterpiece and its awe-inspiring intricate detail.

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Take a tour of some of our Renaissance masterpieces with Google

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Tate Britain Free Guided Tours

Learn about the art in Tate Britain with a guided tour around part of the gallery

Each tour is different and packed with fascinating insights, information and stories. Our Guides come from a wide range of backgrounds and their tours reflect their passions and interests.

All tours last around 45 minutes and start at the meeting point at the top of the Rotunda stairs and entrance to the Duveens.

Our tours are delivered by volunteers and are sometimes subject to cancellation and change, please call the ticket desk on the day for confirmation of our daily tour times.

Accessibility

Tate Britain's Manton Entrance is on Atterbury Street. It has automatic sliding doors and there is a ramp down to the entrance with central handrails.

Accessible and standard toilets are located on the lower floor. Changing Places toilets are currently not available at Tate Britain.

To help plan your visit to Tate Britain, have a look at our visual story . It includes photographs and information of what you can expect from a visit to the gallery.

Download Tate Britain map PDF [739.73 Kb]

For more information before your visit:

Email [email protected]

Call +44 (0)20 7887 8888 – option 1 (daily 10.00–17.00)

Tate Britain

Meet at the top of the Rotunda Staircase, Main Floor

Tours run most days at 12.00, 13.00 and 14.00

Check if tours are running on the day:

• Call us on +44 (0)20 7887 8888, option 1: 10.00–17.00 daily
• Check signage in the galleries

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