[12] In the 2007 Artomatic show, Tate's artwork The Rapture disappeared under dramatic circumstances,[13] and later a ransom demand (for Monopoly money) was sent to The Washington Post.
The demands were met and parts of the artwork were returned by the thief, named "The Collector", along with his manifesto about society failing to value its art.
[13] 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.
"[6] In 2011, together with curator, art critic, and author William Warmus, Tate started a Facebook page[16] devoted to "glass secessionism.
[22] 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.
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.