Category: Museum Director
Nationality: British
Last Year: 76
After two years of builders, hardhats and scaffolding, Iwona Blazwick can justifiably be proud of having masterminded the opening in April of the Whitechapel Gallery’s £13 million expansion (which doubled the space of the original gallery), an occasion marked by a cornucopia of new shows and commissions, including German legend Isa Genzken and Turner Prize nominee Goshka Macuga. Indeed, under Blazwick, the gallery’s profile and programme have been significantly expanded in a manner that has propelled the institution to the centre (rather than the slightly-out-of-the-way east-of-centre) of the London artworld: as well as running a series of festivals, events and education programmes, the gallery launched in September the inaugural London Art Book Fair (featuring 80 publishers). It continues to host the MaxMara Art Prize for women artists and, in an age when many similar galleries are courting publicity and popularity, to push an agenda promoting established and emerging female talent (the next round of exhibitions features leading French artist Sophie Calle and the considerably lesser known Inci Eviner). Onetime ICA director of exhibitions, then head of exhibitions and displays at the Tate, Blazwick is a shrewd power operator – she gave Damien Hirst his first major show and once declared that the Tate Modern Turbine Hall ‘was in fact just a rehearsal’ for her plans for the Whitechapel; last year she was appointed chair of the Mayor of London’s cultural strategy group. She also found time to be a juror for this year’s Carnegie Art Award and to lure curator Achim Borchardt-Hume from Tate. Meanwhile, and unsurprisingly, gossips tip her to succeed a previous Whitechapel director for the top job at Tate – when (or if) Sir Nick decides to step down.