Tim Marlow to Direct Design Museum

Deyan Sudjic was appointed director of the now-30-year-old Design Museum in 2006, one year before Alice Black joined the London institution as deputy director. More than 90 exhibitions and installations were mounted at the museum since Sudjic succeeded Alice Rawsthorn. In 2007, Deyan initiated the Designs of the Year Award, "an annual exploration of the most significant new designs in the world" in architecture, fashion, and other categories. The 2019 winners are set to be announced in mid-November. 

Black was named co-director in 2016, coinciding with the Design Museum's move into its new home in Kensington, a move led by Black starting in 2007. Designed by OMA with Allies and Morrison, and with interior architecture by John Pawson, the renovation of the 1962 Commonwealth Institute into the new Design Museum cost £82 million and tripled the size of the museum. A statement from the Design Museum boasts that 1.9 million people visited the museum in the three years since it opened.

Tim Marlow, best known as a critic and broadcaster, comes to the Design Museum after five years at the venerable Royal Academy of Arts and ten years before that as director of exhibitions at White Cube, a contemporary art gallery also in London. Just as the tenure of Black and Sudjic involved physical expansion, the Royal Academy of Art saw the completion of a major expansion (by David Chipperfield) under Marlow, just in time for the RA's 250th anniversary in 2018. That same year, Marlow and the RA launched two architecture awards: the Royal Academy Architecture Prize and the RA Dorfman Award.

Marlow will take the helm of the Design Museum in January 2020, when Sudjic will become director emeritus and Black will be, in her words, "ready for a new challenge."