Project for the Facade of the Tate Gallery c. 1893

Curator: This is Sidney Robert James Smith’s “Project for the Facade of the Tate Gallery.” Note the precise detail of the architectural rendering. Editor: It feels almost dreamlike, doesn’t it? So grand and orderly, yet also somehow...unrealized. Curator: Indeed. Consider the context: Smith, born in 1857, was working within a Victorian architectural tradition obsessed with Neoclassical grandeur and order. Editor: The repeated angelic figures feel significant, reinforcing the idea of this space as a temple, or a sacred place, dedicated to the arts. Curator: Absolutely. The proposed design carries the weight of British imperial ambition and cultural projection in this period. But the Tate we know, of course, took a very different form. Editor: Still, Smith’s project captures the aspirations embedded in the gallery's founding: a testament to national identity and artistic legacy. Fascinating. Curator: A compelling counterfactual vision of the Tate’s identity.