At a time when the Tate has had a record year for acquisitions, bringing works valued at £63.1m into its collection, the UK's most important art institution is poised to push the power of its brand to new levels of domination.
Nor will it be limiting its reach to dry land. In a three-year deal with P&O, a scheme called Tate Cruises has recently been established, with passengers idling around the Mediterranean or the Baltic being lectured to by Tate experts.
"It is a good opportunity to develop new audiences," said the Tate's director of media, Will Gompertz, adding that the outreach programme was "also financially beneficial to Tate".
While the Guggenheim and the Louvre are building high-profile outposts in Abu Dhabi, the Tate is looking at a different approach to establishing a greater presence overseas and at home, by creating partnerships with existing institutions.
For the moment, though, the focus is national. "Our job is to serve people across the country," said Paul Myners, the Tate's chairman. "Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives are manifestations of that ... over the next years we will see Tate increasingly active outside London and Liverpool. We are a national institution, and sometimes we must go to the customer."
That might mean sending more works out on loan, according to Tate director Nicholas Serota, or working in partnership with galleries such as the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham or Mima in Middlesbrough. The recent gift of 725 works of contemporary art from former art dealer Anthony D'Offay will also tour around the country from 2009.
The Tate's stupendous acquisitions in the past financial year also included the Sainsbury bequest of 18 masterpieces to the National Gallery and Tate. In addition, Damien Hirst gave four works and Louise Bourgeois donated her giant spider sculpture, Maman. There was also a bequest of a Stanley Spencer and a Bacon, Figures in a Garden, from c1936.
The past year has also seen Serota's contract, which was due to have expired in 2009, extended indefinitely - a mark of his successful tenure, the only threat to which is the problem of raising £215m to build the projected Tate Modern extension by 2012 in a shaky economic climate. Only £70m has so far been pledged, and the Tate yesterday refused to commit itself to completing the landmark building, by architects Herzog and De Meuron, in time for the Olympics. But if the project failed to go ahead, said Myners, it would be "a blow to the nation".
Highlights of next year's programme will include a look at two giants of the Russian avant-garde, Alexander Rodchenko and Lybov Popova. It is, perhaps, an auspicious choice when canny eyes in the arts fundraising world turn their attention to the Russian super-rich in search of donations.
In royalist contrast to that revolutionary fervour, Tate Britain is to host a blockbuster exhibition entitled Van Dyck and Britain, from February. The centrepiece will be the artist's huge equestrian portrait of Charles I.
The autumn will also see at Tate Britain a large-scale show devoted to Turner and his rivals - or at least his imagined rivals, since most of them were long dead. Paintings by the great British artist will be set alongside Old Masters by the likes of Rembrandt, Poussin and Claude Lorrain, demonstrating how fervently he attempted to outdo his predecessors.
The autumn will see an exhibition at Tate Modern called Sold Out, examining pop art and its legacy, and looking at the ways in which artists since Warhol have created their own brands and aggressively marketed themselves. Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst will feature strongly.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008
