Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern
Morris knows Tate inside out, having joined the gallery as a curator in 1987 and working her way to the top. This year she became the first woman to head Tate Modern since its opening in 2000.
Energetic and enthusiastic, Morris has been deeply impressive in a very short space of time, taking charge as the museum’s £260m Switch House extension opened.
She has promised more diverse displays with more work by women and artists not from western Europe and north America.
Maria Balshaw, director of Manchester city galleries and the Whitworth
Hugely respected and liked, the question often asked about Balshaw is what big job will she go to after a decade in Manchester? She of course would say she already has a big job.
Balshaw became director of the Whitworth in 2006, overseeing a successful £15m redevelopment that helped win it the UK museum of the year prize in 2015, the year in which she also received her CBE and won Apollo magazine personality of the year.
Balshaw took on the extra role of director of Manchester city galleries in 2011.
Iwona Blazwick, director of Whitechapel Art Gallery
There is no template for appointing the new director, but Blazwick would follow the example of Sir Nicholas Serota in that he moved from the top job at the Whitechapel to the top job at Tate.
One of the most important of arts movers and shakers who seems to know everyone, Blazwick has been in east London since 2001, overseeing the gallery’s £13.5m redevelopment that was completed in 2009, doubling its space. She has long been talked about as Serota’s possible successor.
As a young curator, she was also the first person to give Damien Hirst a solo show in a public gallery.
Sheena Wagstaff, head of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Another Tate insider who was chief curator at Tate Modern before, in 2012, being lured to the Met to a new role that has involved the task of creating the Met Breuer, a new outpost (for eight years, at least) for modern and contemporary art in the former Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue.
In one interview she said she had the “best job in the world”. But would London offer an even better one?
Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery
Born in Connecticut and raised in Yorkshire, Cullinan was appointed as only the 12th director in the NPG’s 158-year history in early 2015. He also knows Tate well, having worked as a curator at Tate Modern for six years and co-curating the blockbuster Matisse cutouts exhibition with Serota.
Before the NPG, a place he first worked as front-of-house assistant in his early 20s, he spent two years at the Met in New York.
He is in his late 30s, although he looks younger. Does the Tate job come too soon?
Tim Marlow, artistic director of the Royal Academy of Arts
A superb communicator and regular broadcaster, Marlow joined the RA in 2014 to a job that was once called exhibitions secretary. He joined at a crucial time with the RA linking to and expanding into a building it acquired in 2001, 6 Burlington Gardens.
He quickly made his mark at the RA by announcing a major exhibition by Ai Weiwei. Easygoing and approachable, Marlow was previously in charge of exhibitions at the White Cube commercial galleries.
