Why is just one candidate tipped for the troubled Tate’s top job?

In the search for the new director of the Tate, one name keeps cropping up: Jessica Morgan. Most agree she is the best woman to run the influential British art institution. The London-born curator is the director of New York’s Dia Art Foundation, where she has made her mark as a bold collector and bankable fundraiser.

So it is all sorted then? Unfortunately not. Although Maria Balshaw, the outgoing director and first woman in the job, steps down this spring, no one seems keen to step into her shoes – Morgan included.

The job of leading Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives comes with a colourful palette of problems, from declining visitor numbers to a huge wage bill and a continuing industrial dispute with lower-wage staff.

The basic salary on offer, at least £125,000 a year before hefty bonuses, is not enticing in comparison with the money paid at similar institutions in the US and Europe. For example, the previous director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), Glenn Lowry, received $2m a year and a rent-free luxury apartment.

As one UK museum director said: “Jessica is great, but she is going to want to afford to live somewhere decent if she is moving her family over. And she will have to deal with all the difficult issues Maria has faced, including another strike looming in April.”

Balshaw has blamed the Tate’s troubles on the hit Brexit delivered to the art world, followed by the tourist slump inflicted by the Covid pandemic. Critics have also detected a lack of showmanship in some of the exhibitions and some have mocked the decision to relabel artwork and put up new displays in the name of cultural sensitivity at Tate Britain.

Further challenges will likely come in the form of the battle for donors and sponsorship now that the National Gallery has torn up an informal agreement not to compete with the Tate by collecting work from the same modern era.

Balshaw took a principled stand on sponsorship, criticising the British Museum for its £50m partnership with BP, but the Tate has a gaping financial hole, in spite of a £51m government subsidy in 2023-24 – the latest available figures.

“It is like the England football manager job now, really,” said Gavin Turk, one of those who rose to fame in the 1990s Young British Artists boom.

“There is a lot of focus on you, which makes running a big organisation really hard. The new director will certainly have to be a ‘people person”, who supports artists and can convince the public with the shows they put on.”

If Morgan does come over, she will probably be preceded by an interim director, according to sources close to Tate, and there may even be provision for a little more pay, as well as the kind of five-figure bonuses that were paid to Balshaw.

Morgan, 56, is described as “charismatic”, and, crucially, has previously worked at the Tate, on top of her experience at Dia, where she has successfully raised funds and staged shows by the late US artists Richard Serra and Dan Flavin. She recently made it down to the final two for the lucrative post of running MoMa and last year curated a well-reviewed exhibition, Minimal, at Bourse de Commerce in Paris.

Aside from magicking money from donors, Morgan gets on with artists, perhaps because of her bohemian credentials. Jeffrey Bernard, the journalist and bon viveur, was a regular fixture in her mother’s London home, and as a young woman, Morgan had a stint wrangling the Groucho Club’s clientele when she worked on reception.

Her sister, Lucy, trained as a circus trapeze artist, so may have some useful tips on handling the Tate job.

The source close to the Tate told The Observer that in early consultations over who should get the job, the recurrence of Morgan’s name became an internal joke. However, the trustees have still not ruled out splitting the job in two because of its wide scope. “There is no real urgency yet,” the source said. “Although it would be nice to get it done soon.”

Well-known Tate trustees include fashion designer Anya Hindmarch, actor and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, the former arts minister Ed Vaizey and television’s June Sarpong. The chair is PR executive Roland Rudd.

Photograph by David Bank/Getty Images, Mike Windle/Getty Images for MOCA