Trained as an art historian in London, Godfrey Worsdale’s career began in the early 1990s at the British Museum, where he worked in the Department of Prints and Drawings. In 1994 he established Cultural Instructions; an exhibition space in London dedicated to contemporary projects. He joined Southampton City Art Gallery as a curator in 1995 and became its Director three years later.

In 2002 he moved to the North East to establish MIMA - Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. This was followed in 2008 by seven years as Director of BALTIC in Gateshead, where he also founded BALTIC 39; a new space dedicated to research and experimentation, developed in partnership with Northumbria University.

Worsdale has served as a judge and selector for the 2011 Turner Prize and the 54th and 57th Venice Biennales. In 2015 he became the Director of the Henry Moore Foundation, dividing his time between Perry Green in Hertfordshire where Moore lived and worked, and the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. In 2016 Worsdale was awarded an OBE for services to the visual arts.