Maria Balshaw will step down from her role as Tate boss this year with a sense of mission accomplished, as her reign ends with female artists firmly in the spotlight.
The first woman director in the organisation’s 128-year history, Balshaw has championed women artists since joining in June 2017.
In an interview with Lucie McInerney, host of The Independent’s Like This Love This podcast, she reflected on her near decade-long tenure at Tate, where she helped steer the organisation through choppy waters such as the pandemic, and opened up about her decision to leave.
“Part of the reason that I’m stepping away from Tate at Easter is I feel that the journey I wanted to help shape at the organisation has had a fantastic 10-year episode and it’s ending with a year of women in art, which has been very apparent through all of the time I’ve been at Tate, but has come to, if you like, fruition at this point,” she said.
Balshaw, 55, will leave her post this spring but not before she co-curates Tracey Emin: A Second Life, which opens at Tate Modern in February. “I decided that was my high point – a good point to [end],” she said.
During Balshaw’s spell, Tate has hosted several women-focused exhibitions including 2024’s Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920, which spanned 400 years and 150 works by artists including Mary Beale, Angelica Kauffman, Elizabeth Butler and Laura Knight.
The previous year in 2023, Tate became the first major museum to stage a look back at feminism in the country from 1970 to 1990 with its landmark show Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK.
“It looked at feminist artists who were making art in all sorts of non-elite art spaces,” said Balshaw. “And we brought that together and it was a fantastic exhibition.”
Now on at Tate until 15 February is Lee Miller, an extensive celebration of the 20th century model and surrealist photographer who, according to Balshaw, is responsible for “some of the most searing and powerful images of war that we have ever seen”.
Following her departure, in October Tate will also stage an exhibition about the Nineties curated by ex editor-in-chief of British Vogue Edward Enninful, examining a seminal decade “in which a groundswell of creativity changed the face of British culture”.
Speaking of the exhibition, Balshaw told The Independent: “By the Nineties you start to see that the most exciting images and the most brilliant artists are women as well as men, and artists of colour as well as white artists.
“We are moving towards a period, certainly in the way that we are representing it now, where we understand that every kind of human chooses to make art, chooses to be creative in the way that they wish to. And it was only the forces of history and our institutional hierarchies that meant that the story of women or the story of Black artists were just not seen and heard as loudly as they should be.”
In a statement announcing her exit last month, Tate chair Roland Rudd described Balshaw as a “trailblazer”, noting that she had “diversified” the collection, exhibitions, and audiences.
This includes 2019’s Steve McQueen’s Year 3 in which the artist and director took a “collective school portrait” of 76,000 seven and eight-year-olds from across London.
In 2021 a group show titled Life Between Islands chronicled 70 years of British Caribbean life through art featuring artists such as Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Hew Locke.
The search for a new leader is underway with the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport and the Tate trustees overseeing the process. The new name will be signed off by the prime minister.
Whoever they may be, Balshaw’s successor inherits the organisation at a challenging time. Figures released in March last year showed that Tate Modern and Tate Britain had experienced a 27 per cent decline in attendance since 2019. Notably, however, 2019 was Tate’s most successful year ever for visitor numbers.
Also in their in-tray will be the reverberations of last year’s strike from Tate staff over pay and conditions.
Following her exit, Balshaw plans to focus on writing and collaborations with artists.
Balshaw was appointed director of Tate in 2017 after serving as the leader of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, where she was also the director of culture for city council.
Balshaw was speaking to Lucie McInerney, host of the Independent's Like This Love This podcast. The full episode is available on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
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