Tate Liverpool may only have been built in 1980s, but the idea was being floated way back in 1968.

It was part of a larger project, “Tate of the North." (The North remembers.) At the time, the modern art scene in England got off at Heathrow airport and made no attempt to leave London. The Tate organization was clearly troubled by the lack of access. The English people had the right to know what rich people spent their money on. The Tate wanted to give the common man a chance to lust after the same things.

Alan Bowness was the director of Tate in the '80s. The project finally took off under his leadership. In 1981, they found the Albert Dock in Liverpool. The '80s was a tough decade for the city. Factories and businesses were shut down, and a lot of people were out of jobs. There were riots in the streets, and the city was ablaze. During this dark time in Liverpool’s history, Lord Heseltine arrived to get the situation in check.

Tory Grandee Heseltine was flustered by the riots. He believed he had a responsibility towards his people. I’m not sure why he thought setting up an art gallery would be the solution, but there you go. He explained, “Coming from the Left, my idea of economic regeneration was to do with factories and shipyards - the idea that art could be an economic driver didn't figure for me. But, looking back, that was out of date." Heseltine was instrumental in the setting up of Meyerside Development Corporation, which in turn provided support to the Tate Liverpool project.

By going where no art gallery had been before, Tate Liverpool opened its doors to an entirely new audience. The gallery shared artifacts and resources with other museums in the Tate group: Tate Britain, Tate Modern, and Tate St. Ives. So, Tate Liverpool didn’t really need to buy paintings to line its sparkling new gallery walls. But, in 1988, the year that this Tate was opened, a mysterious English man in New York, a legal alien, donated 6.5 million dollars to the organization, with a direction that the money was supposed to be spent on acquisitions of American art.