Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead has appointed its first female director. Sarah Munro will lead the gallery from November, following the departure of Godfrey Worsdale for the Henry Moore Foundation last month.
Munro joins the institution in northeast England after more than 20 years at the helm of contemporary art programmes in Scotland. As the head of Arts for Glasgow Life since 2012, she was responsible for the international arts centre Tramway; the Gallery of Modern Art; the annual, cross-disciplinary Merchant City Festival and the contemporary art biennial, Glasgow International. Munro also led the bid to present the Turner Prize in Scotland for the first time. The 2015 exhibition opens on 1 October at Tramway, where she was director from 2008 to 2012. The winner will be announced on 7 December.
“It was always going to be have to be something very special to lure me out of Scotland, and Baltic is just that”, Munro said in a statement. The gallery opened in a former flour mill on the River Tyne in 2002. Baltic has no permanent collection but, with 2,600 sq. m of exhibition space, is the largest contemporary art institution in the UK.
