Tate Britain has rehung its art collection: What can we learn?

Tate’s galleries are still laid out chronologically, from the 1500s to the present day. But the works are now linked to great moments in Britain’s social and political history (wars, urbanisation, migration, revolution). We learn in an early room called Court Versus Parliament 1640-1720 that the artists on show were thriving at a time of huge turbulence: civil war, the execution of Charles I and the birth of party politics.