The Director: Jessica Morgan takes on Tate turnaround

Jessica Morgan has been appointed the next director of Tate, returning to the institution where she spent more than a decade as a curator at a pivotal moment for Britain's largest museum network.

Currently director of New York's Dia Art Foundation, Morgan will take up the post on 1 January 2027, succeeding Maria Balshaw as the tenth director in Tate's history. Her appointment, which has been heavily trailed and rumoured for months, was among the final decisions approved by outgoing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Morgan assumes leadership of Tate at a time when Britain's flagship museum of modern and contemporary art is navigating a markedly different landscape from the one she left in 2014. Although major exhibitions have continued to draw large crowds, overall visitor numbers across Tate's four galleries remain below their pre-pandemic peak.

At the same time, the organisation has faced rising operating costs, increasing reliance on philanthropic fundraising and periods of restructuring against a backdrop of sustained pressure on public funding. With Tate Liverpool due to reopen in 2027 following a major redevelopment, Morgan will inherit an institution looking not only to maintain its international standing but also to rebuild audiences and chart a financially sustainable future.

The Dia Record

Against that backdrop, Morgan's eleven years at Dia Art Foundation help explain why Tate's trustees turned to her. Since joining the New York-based organisation in 2015, she has overseen a period of institutional expansion that has combined ambitious artistic programming with long-term organisational development. During her tenure, Dia reopened its Chelsea galleries following an extensive redevelopment, expanded public access through increased free admission, strengthened its stewardship of landmark site-specific works and grew its endowment to almost $200 million. She also broadened the foundation's permanent collection through acquisitions spanning a wider range of international artists while maintaining its long-standing commitment to large-scale commissions by figures including Steve McQueen, Delcy Morelos, Camille Norment and Lucy Raven.

Morgan's curatorial programme has remained active alongside those institutional responsibilities. Recent projects have included Minimal at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, a Lee Ufan retrospective in Venice and Dan Flavin: Light, Color, and Space at MALBA in Buenos Aires, extending Dia's collection through an increasingly collaborative international touring strategy.

A Return

Her appointment also marks a return to Tate. Between 2002 and 2014 she worked first as Curator and later as The Daskalopoulos Curator, International Art at Tate Modern, organising exhibitions including Gabriel Orozco, John Baldessari, Martin Kippenberger, Saloua Raouda Choucair and The World Goes Pop. She also commissioned several Turbine Hall installations and played an important role in expanding Tate's collection of post-war and contemporary art from North America, the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, reflecting the institution's wider effort during that period to develop a more global understanding of modern art.

Beyond Tate and Dia, Morgan has maintained an international curatorial practice, serving as artistic director of the 10th Gwangju Biennale in 2014, curating recent exhibitions across Europe and South America, and advising institutions including Haus der Kunst in Munich, MACBA in Barcelona and the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai.

Beyond Curatorial

Morgan's appointment also reflects the changing demands placed on museum directors. Curatorial expertise remains central to the role, but leadership increasingly requires experience of fundraising, capital development, international partnerships and managing complex organisations through prolonged financial uncertainty. Her record at Dia suggests those broader institutional skills were as significant to Tate's trustees as her exhibition-making credentials.

She will also accept a substantial reduction in salary to return to Britain. Tate chairman Roland Rudd said Morgan had taken a "very big pay cut" to leave Dia, where her remuneration was considerably higher than the package available at the publicly funded institution. The contrast underlines the widening gap between the financial resources available to leading American philanthropic museums and those of Britain's national collections.

For Tate, however, the more significant question lies ahead. Morgan arrives with experience of balancing artistic ambition alongside organisational transformation at a time when museums are expected to broaden access, diversify funding and remain internationally competitive despite tighter financial constraints. Whether that combination of curatorial and executive leadership can help rebuild audiences while sustaining Tate's position as one of the world's leading museum groups will become one of the defining tests of her directorship.