Tate Modern Finds Its New Director in Norway

Karin Hindsbo, the director of Norway’s just lately opened National Museum, was on Friday named the brand new director of Tate Modern in London, one of many world’s hottest museums.

Hindsbo, a Danish-born artwork historian, will tackle the position in September, changing Frances Morris, who has led Tate Modern since 2016. Last October, Morris introduced she was leaving to deal with curatorial tasks, and to work on addressing the artwork world’s local weather impacts.

In a news launch, Hindsbo, 49, mentioned she was “beyond excited” to make the transfer, including that “some of my greatest experiences encountering art” occurred on the museum, housed in a former energy station on the financial institution of the River Thames.

The directorship of Tate Modern is likely one of the European artwork world’s highest-profile roles, with the museum anticipated to usually stage blockbuster exhibitions of up to date and fashionable artwork. Under Morris’s management, it’s hosted acclaimed reveals together with a sold-out Cézanne retrospective, a career-spanning exhibition of the British artist Steve McQueen’s video items and an exploration of labor by African American artists throughout the civil rights period.

Some 4.4 million folks visited Tate Modern up to now 12 months, a spokesman mentioned. Only the Louvre, the Vatican Museums and the British Museum attracted extra vacationers in 2022, based on a survey by The Art Newspaper.

A educated artwork historian, Hindsbo ran artwork museums throughout Scandinavia, together with Kode in Bergen, Norway, earlier than turning into the director of the nation’s new National Museum in 2017, with a remit to supervise its opening. The museum has a set of over 400,000 objects together with essentially the most well-known model of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” works by Indigenous Sami artists and medieval tapestries.

While the National Museum was below building, Hindsbo was criticized in Norwegian newspapers for her managerial fashion, her buying selections and delays to the constructing’s opening. In an interview with The New York Times final 12 months, Hindsbo mentioned that, given her Danish identification, the pushback round her “could have been much worse.” The museum opened final June to constructive critiques, and has since attracted over 1.3 million guests.

Maria Balshaw, the director of Tate, the British museum group that features Tate Modern, mentioned within the news launch that Hindsbo’s profitable steering of the advanced challenge was “testament to her skill as a leader.”

“I know Karin will bring vision, creativity and a spirit of artistic ambition that will enable us to continue reaching new heights,” Balshaw mentioned.

The change of management comes at a probably difficult second for Tate Modern. Its customer numbers are nonetheless far under these achieved earlier than the coronavirus pandemic (virtually 6 million artwork lovers visited in 2018), whereas Britain’s authorities — which subsidizes Tate Modern — has been reducing funding for a few of London’s main arts our bodies.

The new director will even have to deal with the fallout of a current authorized case. In February, Britain’s Supreme Court dominated that Tate Modern’s top-floor viewing platform, a preferred vacationer attraction, was a “a clear case of nuisance” because it allowed guests to stare into neighboring luxurious flats. Tate might must pay the residents compensation, or shutter a part of the platform, to resolve the dispute, the court docket mentioned.