Tate desperately needs a radical overhaul – but will its new director really be an agent of change?

From over-hyped shows to the woeful Turner prize, this huge institution has been beset by problems – yet new boss Jessica Morgan seems too much like a safe pair of hands to shake things up
• Jessica Morgan named new Tate director

Even Tate knows it needs to change. This top-heavy montage of four museums really needs to scrutinise itself and ask hard questions about its aims and how it works – including why it often doesn’t. Apparently aware of the crisis, it hails its new director Jessica Morgan as “an agent of change”. Well that’s a relief. But is she really?

Morgan is a highly rated curator of contemporary art, recently leading the Dia Art Foundation in the US to great acclaim and with an earlier track record at Tate Modern itself. Yet these very strengths suggest she will stay within a groove that Tate is all too comfortable with. It’s unlikely she’s going to rush to put on a show about art and the Reformation, for instance.
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