Tim Tate

Tim Tate (born 1960) is an American artist and the co-founder Tate was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1989 and was told that he had a year left to live. Over a decade ago, Tate began incorporating video and embedded electronics into his glass sculptures, thus becoming one of the first artists to migrate and integrate the relatively new form of video art into sculptural works. In 2019 he was selected to represent the United States at the sixth edition of the Glasstress exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

Tate was born and currently lives in Washington, D.C. The Washington Times art critic Joanna Shaw-Eagle noted that visitors to the show "may not know exactly what draws them to Mr. Tate's art, but they'll find it mesmerizing. The more they examine it, the more they'll get back." In reviewing that same show, The Washington Post'''s art critic Michael O'Sullivan observed that Tate's symbolic vocabulary, at least to O'Sullivan, suggested the iconography of martyrdom. In the 2007 Artomatic show, Tate's artwork The Rapture disappeared under dramatic circumstances,

Four years later, the Philadelphia Free Press was one of the first to try to categorize his work as "steampunk", and they also affirmed that Tate was a sculptor, a videographer, and a glass artist. In discussing his ground-breaking incorporation of video to traditional glass art, The Washington City Paper documented in 2008 that Tate hoped that his incorporation of new media, running on computer-processing power, would yield a new approach to glass blowing.

In 2009, the National Public Radio program All Things Considered put similar observations about his work in the context that the work occupied a "strange place between Old World art and New World technology." devoted to "glass secessionism." "In a controversial move, the secessionists posited that a new generation was moving beyond the technical and aesthetic ideals of the 20th-century postwar studio glass movement."

By 2013, American University, even while describing his growing artistic presence as "Washington, DC’s best known contemporary glass artist", also noted that the video component of his work was being recognized independently of the glass genre.

In 2019, The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, in discussing one of Tate's works, postulated that "As a result of Tate's modern interpretation, Degas representation of an "Opera Rat" is incorporated into the modern feminist narrative."

In 2021, Tate was part of the U.S. premiere of 'Glasstress', an international exhibition assembled by the Boca Raton Museum of Art. The exhibition presented 34 new works that "explore some of today’s pressing subjects, including human rights, climate change, racial justice, gender issues and politics", and included artists such as Ai Weiwei, Ugo Rondinone, Vik Muniz, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Thomas Schütte, and others. Also in 2021, Tate's work in The Phillips Collection exhibition Inside Outside, Upside Down was described by The Washington City Paper'' as an "homage to the plague during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian, embodied through a gray 'mirror' filled with pained faces, suggesting Auguste Rodin’s 'The Gates of Hell' sculpture. Writing about the same work, The Washington Post art critic noted that:"One of the most striking artworks in the Phillips Collection’s “Inside Outside, Upside Down” — a juried group exhibition of works by area artists — is a sort of mirror into history. Tim Tate’s “Justinian’s Oculus,” made of glasslike plastic, sets an ornate frame around a tightly packed cluster of 3-D faces and skulls, evoking the victims of a plague that wracked the Byzantine Empire. That was in the 6th century, but this sculpture — and the show that contains it — wouldn’t exist without the events of 2020."

Awards

In 2003 Tate was selected as the Washington, DC Outstanding Emerging Artist as part of the annual Mayor's Arts Awards. In 2008 Tate was awarded the Niche Award for Blown glass. In 2008 Tate was announced as the winner for the competition to design the International AIDS Monument in New Orleans, LA. In 2009 Tate was awarded the $35,000 Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award. Also in 2009, he received an award from the Museum of American Glass in New Jersey as one of the "Rising Stars of the 21st Century." In 2012 Tate was granted a Fulbright scholar Award and subsequently taught at the University of Sunderland in England in 2012. In 2017 Tate was the runner-up for the London Contemporary Art Prize. Multiple grants, fellowships and awards from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, most recently in 2018.

Collections Tate's artwork is in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including the Smithsonian's American Art Museum the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA, The American University Katzen Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Vanderbilt University, University of Richmond Art Museum, and the University of Virginia Art Museum.

Major public art commissions

Library of Congress – Historic Glass Doors Safeway – Large-scale architectural glass wall, Bethesda, Maryland Vanderbilt University – Glass Wall in Nursing Station, Memphis, Tennessee Prince George's County Courthouse, Cuppola Project, Upper Marlboro, Maryland Food And Friends Donor Wall – Washington, DC District Government Project – Wilson Building Public Art, Washington, DC Liberty Park at Liberty Center, Outdoor Sculpture Commission, Arlington, Virginia The Adele, Outdoor Sculpture Commission Silver Spring, Maryland US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Ariel Rios Building Courtyard, Outdoor Sculpture Commission, Washington, DC National Institute of Health (NIH) Sculpture Commission, Hatfield Clinic, Bethesda, Maryland Upper Marlboro Courthouse, Sculpture Commission, Prince George's County, Maryland American Physical Society / Baltimore Science Center, Sculpture Commission, Baltimore, Maryland The Residences of Rosedale, Outdoor Sculpture Commission, Bethesda, Maryland Holy Cross Hospital, Sculpture for Oncology Ward, Silver Spring, Maryland The Carmen Group, Sculpture Commission, Washington, DC New Orleans AIDS Monument, New Orleans, Louisiana