By Nick Miller
One of Melbourne’s most respected and influential arts leaders, Melbourne Arts Centre chief executive Claire Spencer, is quitting to run London’s Barbican which is emerging from a racism scandal and planning a major renewal.
The Barbican Centre is among the biggest and most prestigious performing arts centres in the world, with more than a million visitors each year and thousands of artists and performers in dance, film, music, theatre and visual arts.
Claire Spencer, chief executive of Melbourne Arts Centre, at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
“I’m thrilled,” Spencer said of the appointment. “I had some of my earliest experiences of theatre at the Barbican growing up in London and to think that they would like me to go and be the chief executive was just overwhelming, but thrilling and exciting and terrifying, in equal measure.”
Last September, the Barbican’s managing director Sir Nicholas Kenyon stepped down after public claims the Barbican was “institutionally racist”, though he said he had planned the move – for some time.
In June, current and former employees had published a book, Barbican Stories, a collection of first hand and witnessed accounts of discrimination and racism at the Barbican Centre.
Spencer said she had read the book and “you can’t read it and not be shocked – it’s raw lived experiences that have been conveyed in an articulate way”.
It was alleged that senior staff openly used racist language, and racist incidents were not investigated. A subsequent independent review heard claims that some staff members believed “all black artists smoke weed”, there was “belittling of women of colour’s achievements” – and there was a lack of diversity among senior executives who were predominantly “British, male, white [and often] Oxbridge educated”.
In November, the Barbican announced it would introduce compulsory anti-racism training. The City of London Corporation, which founded and funds the Barbican, said it wanted an ambitious and dynamic chief executive and one of Spencer’s roles would be to “drive the work already underway to embed equity, diversity and inclusion across the Barbican Centre’s operations”.
Spencer was sure there would be more to do on this at the Centre, “this kind of work doesn’t happen quickly... it’s deep work, you can’t rush it” (the Arts Centre itself has just advertised for a First Nations executive). But she was confident the Barbican board and organisation had committed to a new agenda of zero tolerance towards discrimination.
Spencer will leave the Arts Centre in April after more than seven years there, having shepherded it through the pandemic and spearheaded a mental health initiative that provided vital support for arts sector workers as livelihoods collapsed due to lockdowns and cancellations.
Among her achievements in the role she cited the Wellbeing Collective, the Australian Music Vault at the centre, the post-pandemic Live at the Bowl series, and the Asia TOPA festival.
She has also been closely involved with multi-billion dollar plans to reshape the city’s arts precinct, including a $241 million renovation for the Centre itself.
She included this as “unfinished business”, saying “the reimagining of Arts Centre Melbourne will be a work in progress for a decade”, even though it had consumed much of her last seven years as well. She will use some of that experience to oversee an upcoming £150m ($285m) renewal project for the 40 year-old Barbican.
Spencer, a former chartered accountant with a Masters in Theology, also worked at the Sydney Opera House in roles including chief operating officer.
Chair of the City of London Corporation’s Barbican Centre Board, Tom Sleigh, said Spencer brought a “brilliant reputation as an arts venue administrator” and her “leadership on equity, diversity and inclusion issues in previous roles was a significant additional factor in the recruitment panel’s clear endorsement”.
Victorian arts minister Danny Pearson said Spencer had led Arts Centre Melbourne with “great passion and determination [and] with an unwavering support for artists during times of unprecedented challenge”. There will be a global search for her replacement.
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