Maria Balshaw appointed new director of Tate
Maria Balshaw, the director of Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester city galleries, has been officially announced as the successor to Sir Nicholas Serota at Tate.
An early favourite in the race for the directorship, Balshaw has now been approved by the prime minister as the ninth Tate director. The first woman to be appointed to the role, she will take over in June from Serota, who is about to become the Arts Council chair after three decades at Tate.
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Balshaw is widely credited for Manchester's cultural renaissance, having overseen the £15 million redevelopment of the city's Whitworth Art Gallery, which won the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2015. As well as being director of the Whitworth, a position she has held since 2006, Balshaw has been at the helm of Manchester city galleries since 2011 and, in 2014, became the strategic lead for culture at the city council. She was also awarded a CBE for services to the arts in June 2015.
Harper's Bazaar named Balshaw among the top 25 most extraordinary women in art in its 2015 Bazaar Art power list, predicting at the time that she was a prime candidate for the Tate directorship.
Balshaw said of her appointment: "Under Nicholas Serota's leadership, Tate has changed forever how we all think about art and artists, and has made visual art a central part of a vibrant cultural life in the UK. […] I look forward to developing Tate's reputation as the most artistically adventurous and culturally inclusive gallery in the world."
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