PHOTOGRAPHER: OLLY CURTIS
EXECUTIVE BEAUTY EDITOR: SHANNON LAWLOR
SENIOR ART EDITOR: ANA OSPINA
Supporting imagery & video: Getty Images & Adobe stock
WORDS: Bakul Patki
My first cultural passions were films and books.
My parents are filmmakers, so I was exposed to them at an early age, and as a young child I absolutely loved reading. I still do. The way you can be drawn into different worlds through imagination is vital to me, both personally and in the work I do – which is all about supporting artists and audiences to experience those same transformative moments.
I believe every experience takes you to where you’re meant to be, even if it’s not what you imagined. I always wanted to be a long-form non-fiction writer and, after graduating, was planning to write for The Guardian. But life took me in a different direction. The opportunity arose to work on a film in India, and that experience became the basis for my first book, Shooting Water. After it came out, I needed to support my writing. The fact I was a published author helped me secure my first programming position – building up the literary strand of Luminato Festival, a multi-arts festival in Toronto that was just about to launch. The festival is now one of Canada’s most important cultural events; I’m grateful to founding CEO Janice Price and artistic director Chris Lorway for making me part of the original team.
After Luminato, I became director of literature at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity – a leading global incubator – and later took on the position of director of public programming at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Writing was my passion, but at AGO I was able to explore my interest in other art forms. I oversaw a team that worked across cinema, talks, community programmes and supported the founding of the museum’s performance and commissioning platform, AGO Live. It was wonderful to work in multiple contexts. All these experiences brought me to my position at the Barbican, and they continue to inform my work there.
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W
I’m really looking forward to our spring season, which will have a strong focus on contemporary women artists from Colombia. It includes the first UK retrospective of painter Beatriz González and a new sculpture commission from Delcy Morelos. Both women explore land and lineages through their work. We’ll also be presenting experimental musician Lucrecia Dalt and the La Linea music festival. Over summer, the focus across the whole centre will be pan-Africanism, building on our main gallery presentation Project a Black Planet – a major exhibition that’s travelling to us from The Art Institute of Chicago and MACBA in Barcelona.
I’m truly excited about what tech and digital can offer the art world, but I am wary of AI. The Barbican has a long history in experimental programming, and we’ve produced some incredible works that tour internationally. Our summer 2025 exhibition Feel the Sound was a huge hit, and this year it travels to Tokyo’s newest museum, MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives. I’m proud to be expanding our immersive department, and our reach with it – this is the area where we see our youngest and newest audiences. However, I’m circumspect when it comes to AI, especially with regards to intellectual property and the reproduction of artists’ work. It’s key that there is sound policy to ensure we protect human creation and authorship.
My first official season launched in autumn 2025, with a focus on sustainability. We’ve had Lucy Raven in the Curve and a powerful series on land cinema in our theatres. Ongoing until March, we have an incredible programme of concerts, entitled Fragile Earth, that explores our relationship with the planet. And for visual arts, I’m very proud to have reintroduced fashion and design to the Barbican, with Dirty Looks: Fashion and Decay. These areas have been part of our DNA for years, but we hadn’t had a fashion exhibition since 2017, so it’s been great to have this in our main gallery, and to see the response.
I’m always inspired by how rich and diverse the UK’s cultural output is, and there’s much to recommend in 2026. Firstly, don’t miss Peter Doig’s House of Music at the Serpentine, which I loved and which finishes in early February. I had the pleasure of meeting Laurence Passera, whose vintage sound system sits in dialogue with Peter’s paintings and is key to the exhibition. We sat in his storage facility in East London, surrounded by speakers he’d salvaged from cinemas across Britain, for a four-hour listening session. It was magical. And that magic translates to the programme at the Serpentine.
I’d also recommend seeing Bullyache’s A Good Man is Hard to Find at Sadlers Wells East in May. It’s a dance production that dissects the mythology of power, drawing inspiration from the 2008 financial crash, and the Cremation of Care – an annual ritual ceremony, which takes place in California, that the global elite use to banish their guilt. And I am very excited for Hold to this Earth, Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s collaboration with Tia Collection this summer showcasing contemporary Indigenous art. It will bring together more than 30 artists whose practices are rooted in deep relationships to land, cultural memory and community.
IMAGES: Danika Magdalena
Devyani Saltzman’s current and upcoming
must-see’s on the UK’s cultural scene
I’ve learned that strong and clear boundaries are essential. I care deeply about my work and in earlier years prioritised that at the expense of my personal and family life. But life beyond work is important, so protect your time and space. Be passionate but know your red lines.
As a woman of the sandwich generation, my personal boundaries relate specifically to children and my parents. My career path so far hasn’t allowed the time needed to have children while also caring for my parents now they’re older. I’m not alone – our jobs often don’t make space for that – and policy shifts are needed in employment law, especially for women in midlife, if institutions want to remain progressive and retain people. I froze my eggs at 36 and I’m 46 now. I knew going into my role at the Barbican that I would need time for IVF, so I stipulated that in my contract negotiations. I consider time for elder care to be equally important. The Barbican and City of London have stood by their values in these areas, but that support is still rare.
Nurturing relationships is really important to me. Personally, I’m proud to be someone who shows up for family and friends. Professionally, I’m proud to have brought The Barbican’s six different creative departments together to build a new artistic vision for the organisation in a way that’s not been done there before. At the heart of this is the idea of sensemaking in a chaotic world. Of creating coherence. With this in mind, we’ve introduced a new framework – programming across creative disciplines on one broad seasonal theme. It also still includes the continued discipline-specific programmes, from our regular contemporary and classical music seasons through our cinema and theatre, and visual arts programmes.So much of this vision is about teams talking and thinking together, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the support, enthusiasm and expertise of each department head – or the relationships we’ve built.
Dirty Looks, Installation view, Barbican Art Gallery,
Thu 25 Sep 2025—Sun 25 Jan 2026 © David Parry Barbican Art Gallery
Beatriz González . Los papagayos (The Parrots), 1987. Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Pérez © Beatriz González. Courtesy Pérez Art Museum Miami.png
Save the date
Sadlers Wells East,
7–9 May
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 13 Jun–18 Apr 2027
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Credit missing xxxxxxxxx
2
Hold to this Earth: Works by Contemporary Indigenous North American Artists from Tia Collection
3
Credit missing xxxxxxxxx
In this edition of our series showcasing inspiring women in the arts, Devyani Saltzman – the Barbican Centre’s director for arts and participation – talks cross-cultural pollination,AI’s impact on the creative sector and what her experience as one of the sandwich generation
cohesive theme. It’s the kind of big-picture approach the Canadian writer, curator and multidisciplinary cultural programmer has built her career on. It also perhaps explains how Saltzman’s relatively modest early ambition to become a writer (realised in 2005, with the publication of her acclaimed cross-cultural memoir Shooting Water), swiftly evolved to one that operated on a much bigger stage.
Before joining the Barbican, Saltzman held senior positions in three of Canada’s leading cultural institutions, including the Art Gallery of Ontario – North America’s fourth largest museum. A fierce advocate for fostering creativity and community right across the arts, her passion for cultural cohesion is driven, she says, by the idea of “sensemaking in a chaotic world”. Here, Saltzman reveals her inspirations, the pros and cons of AI-enabled technology on the creative arts, and why it’s increasingly important for women of her generation to establish “red lines” between work and home.
hen Devyani Saltzman was appointed as director for arts and participation at London’s Barbican Centre in July 2024, she set out to draw its diverse creative departments together by programming seasons that are united by a single broad,
‘
My greatest challenge has been finding ways to stay an authentic, human and creative leader within systems that are not often set up for that”
Barbican. Picture by Max Colson
Shooting Water by Devyani Saltzman
Fragile Earth - Julia Wolfe unEarth
‘
We’ve mechanised culture to the degree of risking not fostering creativity. We need to change that”
Marie Claire Frieze Dinner at the Broadwick Soho october 2025.
@JAMES MASON PHOTOGRAPHY
My family has been a great inspiration, professionally and personally. As well as my parents, my aunt and cousins – who work in design and fashion – really inspired me to forge a career in the arts. My grandmother, who passed away last year aged 98, was also a great inspiration. She lived with grace and kindness her whole life, and I will forever be grateful for her influence and our time together.
My greatest challenge has been finding ways to stay an authentic, human and creative leader within systems that are not often set up for that. We’ve mechanised culture to the degree of risking not fostering creativity. We need to change that, but in trying to do so we can and often become ground down. It’s so important to maintain energy and wellbeing while working to make change.
the
SCENT
The aroma of tomorrow
Bibbi Year 2059
WORDS: Bakul Patki
As part of our series - In The Frame - showcasing inspiring women shaping the arts, Devyani Saltzman, the Barbican Centre’s Director for Arts and Participation – talks ambition, AI’s impact on the creative industries and balancing work and family
My first cultural passions were films and books. My parents were filmmakers, to I was exposed to films from an early age, and as a young child I absolutely loved reading. I still do. The way you can be drawn into different worlds through imagination is vital to me, both personally and in the work I do – which is all about supporting artists and audiences to experience those same transformative moments.
I believe every experience takes you to where you’re meant to be, even if it’s not what you imagined.
I always wanted to be a long-form non-fiction writer and, after graduating, was planning to write for The Guardian. But life took me in a different direction. The opportunity arose to work on a film in India, and that experience became the basis for my first book, Shooting Water. After it came out, I needed to support my writing. The fact I was a published author helped me secure my first programming position – building up the literary strand of Luminato Festival, a multi-arts festival in Toronto that was just about to launch. The festival is now one of Canada’s most important cultural events; I’m grateful to founding CEO Janice Price and artistic director Chris Lorway for making me part of the original team.
After Luminato, I became Director of Literature at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity – a leading global incubator – and later took on the position of Director of Public Programming at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Writing was my passion, but at AGO I was able to explore my interest in other art forms. I oversaw a team that worked across cinema, talks, community programmes and supported the founding of the museum’s performance and commissioning platform, AGO Live. It was wonderful to work in multiple contexts. All these experiences brought me to my position at the Barbican, and they continue to inform my work there.
SHARE THIS STORY
W
I’m really looking forward to our spring season, which will have a strong focus on contemporary women artists from Colombia. It includes the first UK retrospective of painter Beatriz González and a new sculpture commission from Delcy Morelos. Both women explore land and lineages through their work. We’ll also be presenting experimental musician Lucrecia Dalt and the La Linea music festival. Over summer, the focus across the whole centre will be pan-Africanism, building on our main gallery presentation Project a Black Planet – a major exhibition that’s travelling to us from The Art Institute of Chicago and MACBA in Barcelona.
I’m truly excited about what tech and digital can offer the art world, but I am wary of AI. The Barbican has a long history in experimental programming, and we’ve produced some incredible works that tour internationally. Our summer 2025 exhibition Feel the Sound was a huge hit, and this year it travels to Tokyo’s newest museum, MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives. I’m proud to be expanding our immersive department, and our reach with it – this is the area where we see our youngest and newest audiences. However, I’m circumspect when it comes to AI, especially with regards to intellectual property and the reproduction of artists’ work. It’s key that there is sound policy to ensure we protect human creation and authorship.
My first official season launched in autumn 2025, with a focus on sustainability. We’ve had Lucy Raven in the Curve and a powerful series on land cinema in our theatres. Ongoing until March, we have an incredible programme of concerts, entitled Fragile Earth, that explores our relationship with the planet. And for visual arts, I’m very proud to have reintroduced fashion and design to the Barbican, with Dirty Looks: Fashion and Decay. These areas have been part of our DNA for years, but we hadn’t had a fashion exhibition since 2017, so it’s been great to have this in our main gallery, and to see the response.
I’m always inspired by how rich and diverse the UK’s cultural output is, and there’s much to recommend in 2026. Firstly, don’t miss Peter Doig’s ‘House of Music’ at the Serpentine, which I loved and which finishes this weekend. I had the pleasure of meeting Laurence Passera, whose vintage sound system sits in dialogue with Peter’s paintings and is key to the exhibition. We sat in his storage facility in East London, surrounded by speakers he’d salvaged from cinemas across Britian, for a four-hour listening session. It was magical. And that magic translates to the programme at the Serpentine.
I’d also recommend seeing Bullyache’s A Good Man is Hard to Find at Sadlers Wells East in May. It’s a dance production that dissects the mythology of power, drawing inspiration from the 2008 financial crash, and the Cremation of Care – an annual ritual ceremony, which takes place in California, that the global elite use to banish their guilt. And I am very excited for Hold to this Earth, Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s collaboration with Tia Collection this summer showcasing contemporary Indigenous art. It will bring together more than 30 artists whose practices are rooted in deep relationships to land, cultural memory and community.
Devyani Saltzman’s current and upcoming
must-see’s on the UK’s cultural scene
I’ve learned that strong and clear boundaries are essential. I care deeply about my work and in earlier years prioritised that at the expense of my personal and family life. But life beyond work is important, so protect your time and space. Be passionate but know your red lines.
As a woman of the sandwich generation, my personal boundaries relate specifically to children and my parents. My career path so far hasn’t allowed the time needed to have children while also caring for my parents now they’re older. I’m not alone – our jobs often don’t make space for that – and policy shifts are needed in employment law, especially for women in midlife, if institutions want to remain progressive and retain people. I froze my eggs at 36 and I’m 46 now. I knew going into my role at the Barbican that I would need time for IVF, so I stipulated that in my contract negotiations. I consider time for elder care to be equally important. The Barbican and City of London have stood by their values in these areas, but that support is still rare.
Nurturing relationships is really important to me. Personally, I’m proud to be someone who shows up for family and friends. Professionally, I’m proud to have brought The Barbican’s six different creative departments together to build a new artistic vision for the organisation in a way that’s not been done there before. At the heart of this is the idea of sensemaking in a chaotic world. Of creating coherence. With this in mind, we’ve introduced a new framework – programming across creative disciplines on one broad seasonal theme. It also still includes the continued discipline-specific programmes, from our regular contemporary and classical music seasons through our cinema and theatre, and visual arts programmes. So much of this vision is about teams talking and thinking together, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the support, enthusiasm and expertise of each department head – or the relationships we’ve built.
Dirty Looks, Installation view, Barbican Art Gallery, © David Parry Barbican Art Gallery
Devyani Saltzmann, Director for Arts & Participation,
Barbican Centre. @Credit Ejatu Shaw
Beatriz González . Los papagayos (The Parrots), 1987. Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Pérez © Beatriz González. Courtesy Pérez Art Museum Miami
Save the date
Beatriz González
Barbican Art Gallery
Sadlers Wells East,
7–9 May
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 13 Jun–18 Apr 2027
1
Beatriz González .
©Beatriz González. Courtesy the artist.
Photo - Juan Camilo Segura
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Bullyache, A Good Man is Hard to Find.
Image: Andrea Avezzù
2
Hold to this Earth: Works by Contemporary Indigenous North American Artists from Tia Collection
3
Rose B. Simpson, Tonantzin, 2021.
© Rose B. Simpson. Tia Collection. Image courtesy of Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art. Photo by Addison Doty
‘
I knew going into the role as director for arts at the Barbican that I would need time for IVF, so I stipulated that in my contract negotiations”
cohesive theme. It’s the kind of big-picture approach the Canadian writer, curator and multidisciplinary cultural programmer has built her career on. It also perhaps explains how Saltzman’s early ambition to become a writer (realised in 2005, with the publication of her acclaimed cross-cultural memoir Shooting Water), swiftly evolved to one that operated on a much bigger stage.
Before joining the Barbican, Saltzman held senior positions in three of Canada’s leading cultural institutions, including the Art Gallery of Ontario – North America’s fourth largest museum. A fierce advocate for fostering creativity and community right across the arts, her passion for cultural cohesion is driven, she says, by the idea of “sensemaking in a chaotic world”. Here, Saltzman reveals her inspirations, the pros and cons of AI-enabled technology on the creative arts, and why it’s increasingly important for women of her generation to establish “red lines” between work and home.
hen Devyani Saltzman was appointed as Director for Arts and Participation at London’s Barbican Centre in July 2024, she set out to draw its diverse creative departments together by programming seasons that are united by a single broad,
My family has been a great inspiration, professionally and personally. As well as my parents, my aunt and cousins – who work in design and fashion – really inspired me to forge a career in the arts. My grandmother, who passed away last year aged 98, was also a great inspiration. She lived with grace and kindness her whole life, and I will forever be grateful for her influence and our time together.
My greatest challenge has been finding ways to stay an authentic, human and creative leader within systems that are not often set up for that. We’ve mechanised culture to the degree of risking not fostering creativity. We need to change that, but in trying to do so we can and often become ground down. It’s so important to maintain energy and wellbeing while working to make change.
‘
My greatest challenge has been finding ways to stay an authentic, human and creative leader within systems that are not often set up for that”
‘
Life beyond work is important,
so protect your time and space.
Be passionate but know your red lines”
Barbican. Picture by Max Colson
Shooting Water by Devyani Saltzman
Fragile Earth - Julia Wolfe unEarth
‘
We’ve mechanised culture to the degree of risking not fostering creativity. We need to change that”
Marie Claire Frieze Dinner at the Broadwick Soho October 2025.
@James Mason Photography
Beatriz González . Empalizada (Palisade), 2001. Collection of Andrés Matute, Ignacio Goñi, Fernando Goñi © Beatriz González. Courtesy the artist
Noah Davis, Isis, 2009 © The Estate of Noah Davis, Courtesy The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner
From left to right: Lakeside Terrace, Barbican Centre, Photo by Dion Barrett, Barbican Conservatory, Photo by Max Colson, Noah Davis Installation view Barbican Art Gallery 2025
My first cultural passions were films and books.
My parents are filmmakers, so I was exposed to them at an early age, and as a young child I absolutely loved reading. I still do. The way you can be drawn into different worlds through imagination is vital to me, both personally and in the work I do – which is all about supporting artists and audiences to experience those same transformative moments.
I believe every experience takes you to where you’re meant to be, even if it’s not what you imagined. I always wanted to be a long-form non-fiction writer and, after graduating, was planning to write for The Guardian. But life took me in a different direction. The opportunity arose to work on a film in India, and that experience became the basis for my first book, Shooting Water. After it came out, I needed to support my writing. The fact I was a published author helped me secure my first programming position – building up the literary strand of Luminato Festival, a multi-arts festival in Toronto that was just about to launch. The festival is now one of Canada’s most important cultural events; I’m grateful to founding CEO Janice Price and artistic director Chris Lorway for making me part of the original team.
After Luminato, I became director of literature at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity – a leading global incubator – and later took on the position of director of public programming at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Writing was my passion, but at AGO I was able to explore my interest in other art forms. I oversaw a team that worked across cinema, talks, community programmes and supported the founding of the museum’s performance and commissioning platform, AGO Live. It was wonderful to work in multiple contexts. All these experiences brought me to my position at the Barbican, and they continue to inform my work there.
‘
My greatest challenge has been finding ways to stay an authentic, human and creative leader within systems that are not often set
up for that”
‘
Life beyond work is important, so protect your time and space.
Be passionate but know your red lines”
Noah Davis, Isis, 2009 © The Estate of Noah Davis, Courtesy
The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner
Abdias Nascimento Simbiose Africana nº 3, 1973
Museu de Arte Negra @ IPEAFRO Collection
Film still from After the End (2024)
by Liam Young. Image courtesy of the artist
‘
Life beyond work is important, so protect your time and space.
Be passionate but know your red lines”
‘
I knew going into the role as director for arts at the Barbican that I would need time for IVF, so I stipulated that in my contract negotiations”
‘
I believe every experience takes you to where you’re meant to be, even if it’s not what you imagined.”
‘
My greatest challenge has been finding ways to stay an authentic, human and creative leader within systems that are not often set
up for that”
Feb 25 - May 10 2026