Tate has announced that the new director of Tate Modern is Frances Morris, currently Tate’s director of collection for international art. She will take up her new role later this year and replaces outgoing director Chris Dercon.
Morris, 57, is a veteran of the Tate organisation having joined as a curator in 1987. She was head of displays at Tate Modern from 2000-2006 before taking up her current role.
Morris said: “Tate Modern is a truly unique institution and I have been privileged to have been part of the team from the very beginning… I am thrilled and excited to be appointed as director and look forward to taking on this new role at such an exciting time for the museum.”
Tate director Nicholas Serota said that Morris “is an innovative thinker who has shaped and developed Tate’s international collection, firmly establishing Tate Modern as one of the foremost contemporary and modern art galleries in the world”. He added that she will “lead the new Tate Modern into the next era”.
Morris was jointly responsible for the presentation of the collection displays when Tate Modern initially opened in 2000 and is credited by Tate with developing the gallery’s ‘international reach and representation of women artists’.
Morris has curated key exhibitions at Tate Modern including three major retrospectives of women artists: Louise Bourgeois in 2007, Yayoi Kusama in 2012 and Agnes Martin in 2015.
