NEW DIRECTOR FOR THE BALTIC CENTER OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Trustees of the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art have chosen Godfrey Worsdale to be the next director, reports Mark Brown in The Guardian. The founding director of the contemporary art gallery Mima, which opened in January 2007, Worsdale will now be the fourth director seen by the Baltic since its opening in 2002. Worsdale yesterday met staff at the former flour mill to persuade them he was the man who could restore the center’s battered reputation. He claimed many of the gallery’s impressive achievements had been overshadowed by negative headlines. “The Baltic has the potential to be one of the great art institutions in the world and has done many wonderful things,” he said. “It needs to keep doing these things and its work deserves to be the center of attention.” At the cost of eighty-six million dollars, the Baltic opened to great fanfare six years ago, riding the wave of the Tate Modern’s popularity. While it has been popular, it has undoubtedly faced criticism under the tenures of the three previous directors, Sune Nordgren, Stephen Snoddy, and Peter Doroshenko.