Baltic's latest director looks to match the art world's best
· Fourth head for £46m centre since 2002 opening
· Godfrey Worsdale moves to Gateshead from Mima
Mark Brown, arts correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday August 14 2008
Article history

Here to stay ... Baltic, the former flour mill. Photograph: David Sillitoe

Six years is not a long time to establish a curse but there are good grounds to say one exists at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. After the first three directors left the Gateshead venue under various clouds the Guardian can today reveal who is taking over at the beleaguered gallery.

Trustees of the Baltic have poached Godfrey Worsdale from nearby Middlesbrough, where he was the founding director of the town's contemporary art gallery Mima, which opened in January 2007.

Worsdale yesterday met staff at the former flour mill to persuade them he was the man who could restore the centre'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 centre of attention."

The £46m Baltic opened to great fanfare in 2002, riding the wave of the Tate Modern in London's popularity. While it has been popular, it has undoubtedly had problems. The first director, Swede Sune Nordgren, left a year after the Baltic opened. While some saw him as a visionary, he was not a director who particularly cared about the number of people coming through the doors - reflected in the fact that the centre did not have a cloakroom or even an information desk when it first opened. Nor did he concentrate much on the business side of affairs, which prompted the Arts Council to question the Baltic's inadequate financial controls.

His successor, Stephen Snoddy, resigned after just 11 months in the job. He had been suspended while the Metropolitan police investigated an allegation of assault against him and, while no charges arose, he chose not to return.

Then there was Chicago-born Peter Doroshenko, who swept in three years ago, promising to combat what he called the austerity and sterility of the gallery. Doroshenko was more populist than his predecessors and surprised many by staging an exhibition of the comedic artist Beryl Cook's works. The problem, though, was his people skills. Last year many employees signed a document protesting against his "intolerable" management style and there were complaints of a climate of fear. There was also disquiet about the fact he curated the Ukraine pavilion at the Venice Biennale instead of concentrating on the Baltic. Doroshenko left last November.

The trustees considered splitting the artistic and business sides of the job, but only if they could not find someone to do both. Worsdale said: "I hope to bring the artistic side and business side to a successful coincidence." He said access was a critical part of a gallery but it "must provide access to fantastic and excellent art".

When he arrives, after serving his notice period with Mima, one of his key priorities will be to forge more and better partnerships with other galleries nationally and internationally. "It was never going to be easy to leave Mima," he said. "It was massively rewarding but this is a very exciting opportunity. It needed to be something like this to tempt me away." Worsdale, aged 40, began his curatorial career at the British Museum, working in the department of prints and drawings, before moving to Southampton City Art Gallery as curator and then on to becoming the founding director of Mima.
Sir Ian Wrigglesworth, chair of the Baltic, said: "We considered many excellent candidates for the post. Against stiff competition I am thrilled and excited that it is a candidate from our own region that has come through."
Despite its well-documented problems, it appears the Baltic is here to stay. Its visitor figures are steady at 400,000 a year, it is well-liked locally and it is respected in the art world.