Maria Balshaw quits as Tate Director after 9 years
- maxwell museums
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Maria Balshaw is to step down as Director of Tate after nine years, the gallery has announced.
Balshaw has been Tate’s Director since 2017, and will leave in the Spring of 2026. Her final project will be curating Tate Modern’s blockbuster Tracey Emin retrospective exhibition which opens in February.
The announcement of her departure comes just days after Tate staff went on strike over an “insulting pay offer” and working conditions. It also follows a year of turmoil at Tate that saw 7% of its workforce cut to plug a hole in the finances, and visitor figures continue to struggle post-pandemic unlike many other institutions.
In a statement, Tate praised Balshaw’s successes, highlighting her work to diversify Tate’s collection to bring greater gender balance and geographical breadth to new acquisitions.
The gallery also said that under her leadership, Tate has built the largest arts membership in the world — they now boast 150,000 Tate Members and 180,000 16- to 25-year-olds in Tate Collective, an initiative she launched in 2018 to help engage a new generation of art lovers and creatives.
But they say her most important legacy is the establishment of an endowment fund for Tate’s long-term financial security, which has secured over £50 million of donations to date since its launch in summer 2025.
Commenting on her departure, Balshaw said “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. 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 organisation into its next decade of innovation and artistic leadership.”
She added that her “greatest thrill has always been to work closely with artists, and so it is fitting that Tracey Emin’s exhibition at Tate Modern will be my final project at Tate.”
Roland Rudd, Chair of Tate, said: “Maria has been a trailblazer at Tate. 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.
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"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”.
The search and speculation will now be on for who succeeds Balshaw for one of the global art world’s most prestigious jobs.
