Maria Balshaw, the director of London’s Tate, has announced that she will step down from her role in spring 2026.
She joined the museum in 2017 after directing the Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery. Her predecessor was Nicholas Serota, who led Tate for almost 30 years.
“It has been an absolute privilege to serve as director of Tate over this last decade and to work with such talented colleagues and artists,” Balshaw said in a statement. “With a growing and increasingly diverse audience, and with a brilliant forward plan in place, I feel now is the right time to pass on the baton to a next director who will take the organization into its next decade of innovation and artistic leadership.”
During her tenure, she oversaw a wide-ranging program, including blockbuster exhibitions such as “The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain” in 2019, as well as a Yoko Ono retrospective and “Sargent and Fashion,” both staged last year. Her final project will be co-curating the largest-ever survey of Tracey Emin at Tate Modern, slated to run from February 27 to August 31 next year.
Tate praised Balshaw’s efforts to diversify the museum’s collection, improve gender balance, and broaden its geographic scope, noting that membership reached 150,000 people—the largest arts program of its kind in the world, according to the museum network. Tate’s chair, Roland Rudd, called Balshaw a “trailblazer” committed to widening access to art.
“She has never wavered from her core belief—that more people deserve to experience the full richness of art, and more artists deserve to be part of that story,” he said in a statement. “As the home of British art and of international modern and contemporary art, Tate today reflects the audiences we serve and the artists who make up our nation. We engage a wider public than ever before through our own galleries, our digital channels, and our projects in other venues across the UK and the world. Maria has my heartfelt thanks for those achievements and for all her work over the past decade.”
Balshaw’s departure comes amid a challenging period for Tate. Earlier this year, the institution cut around 40 roles, roughly 7 percent of its workforce, through freezes, restructures, and voluntary exits, as it faced a deficit budget for 2024–25. Staff also staged walkouts over pay and working conditions. Additionally, visitor numbers remain below pre-pandemic levels, with Tate Modern down 25 percent, Tate Britain 32 percent, and Tate St Ives 37 percent.
Boosting visitor numbers will be one of the top priorities for whoever steps into Balshaw’s shoes. Securing funding will be another challenge for the new boss. However, the pressure has been lifted by Tate launching an endowment fund in June aimed at securing the institution’s long-term financial stability, drawing inspiration in part from models used by US museums. The fund, named the Tate Future Fund, has already raised at least £50 million.
