Jessica Morgan succeeds Maria Balshaw CBE from 1 January 2027, taking role after eleven years leading Dia Art Foundation.
British curator Jessica Morgan has been appointed Director of Tate, taking up the role from 2027.
Morgan is currently director of New York-based Dia Art Foundation, a nonprofit contemporary arts organisation which commissions artist projects, organises exhibitions and installations, alongside collecting the work of artists from the 1960s and 70s.
Morgan previously worked at Tate Modern as the Daskalopoulos Curator, International Art, from 2010 to 2014, in a post funded by the D. Daskalopoulos Collection, in Greece.
Prior to that, she was curator at Tate from 2002 to 2010. At Tate, she curated major exhibitions and organised new commissions for its Turbine Hall. Before Tate, Morgan served as chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Massachusetts and a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
This year, Morgan curated a retrospective of Lee Ufan at the San Marco Art Centre in Venice , and the group show Minimal at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris from 2025.
She was the artistic director of the 10th Gwangju Biennale in 2014. Morgan also serves on several international advisory boards, including the Sounding Board for Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Advisory Committee for the Collection at MACBA in Barcelona, the Advisory Committee for Khao Yai Foundation in Thailand, and the Advisory Board for the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai.
Morgan earned a BA and MA in Art History from Cambridge University, an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and held fellowships at Yale and Harvard universities.
Roland Rudd, Chairman of Tate, described Morgan as “an exceptional leader and a deeply respected figure across the sector. Her visionary revitalisation of Dia Art Foundation, as well as her prior experience at Tate and her many years working with artists and institutions around the world, make her the ideal person to lead Tate into a new era.”
On her appointment, Morgan said: “My time as a curator at Tate deeply informed my work in the last eleven years steering Dia Art Foundation, with artists and our public always at the centre of what we do. I look forward to this pivotal next stage at Tate, and most importantly, continuing and advancing the incredible work of Tate’s committed and talented team in the years to come.”
She will take up her new role on 1 January 2027, succeeding Maria Balshaw CBE, who announced plans to step down in late 2025. Until then, Tate’s deputy director, and director of Tate Modern Karin Hindsbo is serving as Interim Director.
The appointment was approved by the outgoing Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer MP. Morgan will become the tenth Director in Tate’s history, taking up her new role on 1 January 2027.
