Frances Morris has been appointed the new director of Tate Modern, a few months before the gallery opens a £260m extension. She is currently the director responsible for Tate’s international collection. Morris, who studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art, worked at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol and joined Tate as a curator in 1987. She later became head of displays at Tate Modern and was jointly responsible for the inaugural presentation at its opening in 2000. The most recent exhibition she organised, last summer, was on the American abstract painter Agnes Martin. Morris is a specialist on post-war and contemporary art, and is particularly interested in women artists and museum collecting policies.
Chris Dercon, Tate Modern’s director since 2011, will be leaving later this year after the new extension is opened on 17 June. He is moving to Berlin, where in 2017 he will take over as director of the Volksbühne theatre. Tate’s overall director, Nick Serota, says that Morris “will lead the new Tate Modern into the next era”.
