Jessica Morgan will take up her position as the new director of the Tate on January 1, 2027. She succeeds Maria Balshaw, whose resignation announced in December 2025 took effect last spring. Karin Hindsbo, who is acting as interim manager, will pass the torch to him next year.
At 57, Jessica Morgan has reached the pinnacle of a rich career. Since 2015, she has directed the Dia Art Foundation in New York, specializing in conceptual and minimal art from the 1960s and 1970s, which exhibits artists like Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. Its most recent project, an off-site exhibition by South Korean Lee Ufan, is on view in Venice until November. She also curated the “Minimal” exhibition at the Bourse du Commerce in Paris, which ended last January.
But before exporting his talent across the Atlantic, Morgan cut his teeth at the Tate Modern for 12 years, as an exhibition curator. She has organized notable exhibitions there, such as the monographs of Martin Kippenberger in 2006 and John Baldessari in 2009. She is also associated with Carsten Höller’s Test Site, this gigantic metal slide installed in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in 2006. In 2010, she was promoted to “Daskalopoulos curator” in the International Art department. It then contributes greatly to the development of collections beyond the Western world, by opening up to under-represented geographical areas and cultures – North Africa, South Asia, Eastern Europe, etc.
“My time as a curator at Tate has profoundly influenced my work over the past 11 years at Dia Art (…) I look forward to this next step at Tate” said Jessica Morgan. For the board of directors of the museum network, she is appointed at an “exciting moment” for the institution, marked by the upcoming reopening of the Tate Liverpool, closed since 2023 for renovations. Its president Roland Rudd reported that the choice of trustees was oriented towards Jessica Morgan because of her experience in New York and at the Tate, where she was able to leave an innovative mark.
Home to the national collection of British art as well as a major collection of international modern and contemporary art, the Tate is one of the world’s leading arts institutions. The institution opened in Millbank in 1897 under the name of the National Gallery of British Art and officially took the name of the Tate Gallery in 1932. The network then extended to Liverpool in 1988, to St Ives in 1993, then to Bankside with the inauguration of the Tate Modern in 2000. The historic site of Millbank then took the name of Tate Britain. Despite the post-covid financial difficulties which marked Maria Balshaw’s mandate and precipitated her departure, she remains one of the major centers of the international artistic scene.
