Frances Morris CBE | |
|---|---|
 Morris in 2018 | |
| Born | January 1959 (age 65) London, England |
| Alma mater | |
| Title | Director Emerita, Tate Modern |
| Predecessor | Chris Dercon |
| Successor | Karin Hindsbo |
| Spouse | Martin Caiger-Smith |
| Children | 3 |
Frances Mary Morris CBE (born January 1959 [1] ) was the director of the Tate Modern from January 2016 to February 2023. She had succeeded Chris Dercon, and is succeeded by Karin Hindsbo. She remains the director emerita. [2]
Frances Morris was born in London. [3] She attended a state school, Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, at the time a direct grant grammar, in New Cross, London. At University, she studied history of art, receiving a bachelor's degree from King's College, Cambridge, in 1978. She later went on to gain a master's degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art. [4] Her master's thesis deals with French painter Jean Hélion. [5]
After working at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, Morris joined the Tate Gallery as a curator in the Modern Collection in 1987, became Head of Displays at Tate Modern when it opened in 2000, and Director of Collections (International Art) in 2006. [6] [7] In January 2016, she was appointed director of the Tate Modern. [4] As Director, Morris oversees one of the world's most popular art museums, with an attendance of over 5.8 million visitors annually; she is also credited with elevating Tate Modern's profile globally. [8] [9] [10] She is the gallery's first British and first woman director. [11]
Morris, along with her colleague Iwona Blazwick, was responsible with the initial presentation in 2000 of the Tate Modern's opening collection displays, organised thematically and in a non-chronological manner with mixing of contemporary artworks with those of Monet, Matisse, and Picasso. While the non-chronological style was controversial with art critics, it is now regularly used world-wide by museums and galleries; Tate Modern continues to display its collection in this way. [12] [13]
In her career, Morris has particularly focused on the work of women artists, and worked to extend the canon of art history to include work from outside Europe; since 2006 she has spearheaded Tate's global acquisitions strategy. [7] [14] She has curated several large-scale international collaborative exhibitions including, most recently, major retrospectives for Louise Bourgeois in 2007, [15] [16] Yayoi Kusama in 2012, [17] Agnes Martin in 2015, and Alberto Giacometti in 2017. [18] [7]
In 2018, Morris was part of the selection committee that nominated Ruangrupa as artistic director of Documenta fifteen. [19]
Morris was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to the arts. [22] She also holds Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Essex, Edinburgh and York, from the Royal College of Art London and UAL.
Morris is married to Martin Caiger-Smith, [23] Head of the MA Curating the Art Museum programme at the Courtauld Institute of Art. [24] They have three children. [11]
Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, defined as from after 1900, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is located in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of the London Borough of Southwark.
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
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The Courtauld Institute of Art, commonly referred to as the Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist colleges for the study of the history of art in the world and is known for the disproportionate number of directors of major museums drawn from its small body of alumni.
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Maman (1999) is a bronze, stainless steel, and marble sculpture in several locations by the artist Louise Bourgeois. The sculpture, which depicts a spider, is among the world's largest, measuring over 30 ft high and over 33 ft wide (927 x 891 x 1024 cm). It includes a sac containing 32 marble eggs and its abdomen and thorax are made of rubbed bronze.
Gregor Muir is Director of Collection, International Art, at Tate, having previously been the Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from 2011 until 2016. He was the director of Hauser & Wirth, London, at 196a Piccadilly, from 2004 - 2011. He is also the author of a 2009 memoir in which he recounts his direct experience of the YBA art scene in 1990s London.
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Lynn Zelevansky is an American art historian and curator. Formerly Henry Heinz II Director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, she is currently based in New York City. Zelevansky curated "Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama" (1998) and "Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form" (2004) for Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1995 to 2009. While working at MoMA (1987–1995), she curated “Sense and Sensibility: Women Artists and Minimalism in the Nineties” (1994), that institution's first all-female exhibition. AICA awarded it "Best Emerging Art Exhibition New York."
Suhanya Raffel is an art historian who has been serving as the museum director of the M+ Museum for Visual Culture in Hong Kong. She joined the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority in November 2016 as executive director, M+, before being appointed Museum Director, M+, in January 2019. She succeeded Lars Nittve, who led the museum from 2011-2016.
Kusama: Infinity is a 2018 American biographical documentary film that chronicles the life and art of Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama, now one of the best-selling artists in the world, who overcame sexism, racism, and a stigma of mental illness to achieve international recognition relatively late in her career. Magnolia Pictures released the film on September 7, 2018.
Mária Bartuszová (1936–1996) was a Slovakian sculptor known for her abstract white plaster sculptures. Her work is included in the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava and the Tate in London. Her artwork is part of curated selection of Venice Biennale titled "Milk of Dreams", Arsenale Area
Some Living American Women Artists, also referred to as Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper, is a collage by American artist Mary Beth Edelson created during the second wave feminist movement. The central portion is an image based on Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th-century mural Last Supper. Edelson replaced the faces of Christ's disciples with cut-out photographs of American women artists. She surrounded the central image with additional photographs of American women artists. The work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
