Jessica Morgan has been confirmed as the new director of Tate, returning to the arts organisation where she previously spent more than a decade as a curator, at a critical time in its history. She replaces Maria Balshaw, who departed this spring after nine years in charge, and moves from her current role leading New York's Dia Art Foundation, taking what Tate's chair Roland Rudd described as a "very big pay cut" to accept the position. Her appointment matters because she inherits an institution grappling with financial pressures, low staff morale and fluctuating visitor numbers, following a difficult period marked by pandemic-driven redundancies and restructuring.

Morgan, 57, studied art history at Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute and built a reputation for developing international talent, having led Dia since 2015. Balshaw earned between £220,000 and £225,000 at Tate, notably less than Morgan's reported Dia salary, underscoring the scale of her pay cut. Rudd praised her as "an agent of change" who nonetheless "carries people with her", while former Tate Modern director Frances Morris called her "hugely hardworking" with "a very strong sense of what's right". Morgan takes up the post in January, tasked with building on recent successes such as the Tracey Emin retrospective and record-breaking Frida Kahlo exhibition while addressing Tate's financial exposure across its four sites.