Maria Balshaw, the director of London’s Tate, has announced that she will step down from her role in spring 2026.

She joined the museum in 2017 after directing the Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery. Her predecessor was Nicholas Serota, who led Tate for almost 30 years.

“It has been an absolute privilege to serve as director of Tate over this last decade and to work with such talented colleagues and artists,” Balshaw said in a statement. “With a growing and increasingly diverse audience, and with a brilliant forward plan in place, I feel now is the right time to pass on the baton to a next director who will take the organization into its next decade of innovation and artistic leadership.”

During her tenure, she oversaw a wide-ranging program, including blockbuster exhibitions such as “The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain” in 2019, as well as a Yoko Ono retrospective and “Sargent and Fashion,” both staged last year. Her final project will be co-curating the largest-ever survey of Tracey Emin at Tate Modern, slated to run from February 27 to August 31 next year.

Tate praised Balshaw’s efforts to diversify the museum’s collection, improve gender balance, and broaden its geographic scope, noting that membership reached 150,000 people—the largest arts program of its ...