TAITMAIL Barbicanoworms?
A host of arts celebs from Salman Rushdie to John Akomfrah have sent an open letter to the Barbican complaining about the departure of the centre’s arts director. Why?
They express “profound disappointment and alarm” at the decision to cut Devyani Saltzman’s tenure short which “raises serious questions about the institution’s commitment to sustaining global majority leadership” their letter says. Whatever “global majority leadership”, it’s a commitment to survival that’s occupying the Barb just now.
There’s something hit and miss about the Barbican’s appointing record, sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn’t. Lately, on the whole, it hasn’t.
Saltzman’s redundancy – she’s not being replaced, at least not yet - is an attempt to correct the latest in a series of mistaken hirings to get the place on the right footing so that it’s still operating by the time of its 50th birthday in 2032.
The news reporting tells us that she started in February 2024 and that she will leave in May. Actually, she was appointed then but didn’t start until July 2024, and she effectively left in December to finish a book, Exiting, due for publication next year. It will be about the experience of arts leaders from minority backgrounds (the Canadian Saltzman’s parents are Jewish and Indian, they separated when she was 11).
Saltzman’s career has been in writing, being involved in arts initiatives and organising literary events, not running multi-disciplinary arts centres; most recently before coming east she was in charge of public programming for the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her CV reads “Senior artistic programmer, multi-disciplinary curator and cultural consultant working with organizations on cultural strategy, multi-disciplinary programming and organizational transformation through a values, community and people-centred practice”. She has a degree from Oxford in human sciences.
From those news reports it looks like she’s been got rid of by the new CEO, Abigail Pogson (pictured), but Poggers didn’t actually start until January. A graduate of the Clore Leadership Programme, for ten years she ran the phenomenally successful Sage Gateshead, now the Glasshouse. She rebranded the place, created a new academy and increased visitor numbers. In her time it’s estimated to have contributed £1bn to the local economy, so programming is not alien to her.
History, as ever, plays a heavy card in all this. In 1995 the Barbican was a basket-case. The residents, the RSC and the LSO, had fallen out seriously with the clueless administration and eventually forced the resignation of the MD. The RSC left for Stratford, the LSO soldiered on gratified by the creation of a new post, director arts, which was filled by a former Radio 3 music producer, Graham Sheffield, poached from the Southbank. His task was to open an art gallery, The Curve, heal the open wound of the missing RSC (with BITE, a series of revealing plays from around the world), serenade the wounded LSO and warm up the relationship with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Then came the arrival shortly afterwards of a new MD, John Tusa (ex-BBC who had never run an arts institution). Luckily they blended immediately, and together they created integrated programming, giving guidance but not instruction to artform heads, welcomed Simon Rattle to the LSO, and tackled the famous orientation nightmare of the centre with a major architectural recast funded by the founder and proprietor, the Corporation of London. They divided the tasks according to what they knew they were good at. When they moved on in 2007 they were succeeded by Nicholas Kenyon, who had been running BBC3 and the Proms, and Louise Jeffreys, head of theatre )and co-progenitor of BITE).
Everything was going smoothly, though ambitions for a new centre for music on the site of the Museum of London, nicknamed Rattle Hall because it was his idea, collapsed when the costs spiralled out of the Corporation’s grasp. But disaster came when, 14 years after he arrived, Kenyon was defenestrated after an outrageously unmerited tranch of Black Lives Matter accusations. He had no stomach for an ideological punch-up and left for the comparative safety of the Daily Telegraph as chief opera critic. Jeffreys also retired and is the new chairman of ENO, wish her luck.
She was replaced by the former BBC arts editor, Will Gompertz, with a new title, director of arts and learning, who had never run anything before and floundered for a couple of years before leaving for the Soane Museum. Kenyon was not replaced immediately, but his post of managing director was changed to chief executive and the Australian Claire Spencer was eventually appointed.
She had a reputation for dealing with diversity issues, but her previous job had been running the Melbourne Arts Centre, hardly a match for the Barbican or the tasks in hand, having been at Sydney Opera House before that. Her two years at the Barbican became notable for her frequent time off, and it was said that she had difficulty coping with her corporation masters. She’s back in Australia running a dance company.
Saltzman replaced Gompertz with another new title, director for arts and participation, and like him had never had any experience of running a multi-arts centre. What she has achieved in her 18 months is difficult to pin down. She came as a programmer, but Barbican programmes are set at least two years in advance and run by the heads of depafrtments. She is not being replaced while the centre girds itself up for a year’s closure in 2028 as the overture to a long-term renewal in which the corp is investing £190m.
What next? Pogson, it seems, has already made herself felt in a positive way, and staffers who had been in despair at the point where Spencer was having prolonged home working session are now in positive mood.
It seems the largest local authority in the country, the Corporation of London, has had too much of a controlling hand on the appointments and been too much aware of the external mood and too little of the internal needs. With Pogson’s arrival following Saltzman’s departure common sense may at last be prevailing. In his farewell speech Kenyon said, “The Barbican now faces firmly outwards to the world”. But that was five years ago. Now it’s looking steadfastly into itself for its next half century.