‘Like lipstick on a fabulous gorilla’: the Barbican’s many gaudy glow-ups and the one to top them all

The brutalist arts-and-towers complex, where even great explorers get lost, is showing its age. Let’s hope the 50th anniversary upgrade is better than the ‘pointillist stippling’ tried in the 1990sThe Barbican is aptly named. From the Old French barbacane, it historically means a fortified gateway forming the outer line of defence to a city or castle. London’s Barbican marks the site of a medieval structure that would have defended an important access point. Its architecture was designed to repel

Maria Balshaw to step down as director of Tate after nine years

Maria Balshaw is to step down as the director of Tate in 2026, after a challenging nine-year tenure when she steered the organisation through the Covid-19 pandemic and had to deal with fluctuating attendance figures and financial instability.Balshaw, who joined as director in June 2017 after a celebrated spell as the leader of the Whitworth in Manchester, said it was a privilege to serve as director but now was the time for her to move on.She said: “With a growing and increasingly diverse audience, and with a brilliant forward plan in place, I feel now is the right time to pass on the baton to the next director. My greatest thrill has always been to work closely with artists, and so it is fitting that Tracey Emin’s exhibition will be my final project at Tate.”Balshaw was described as a “trailblazer” by the Tate chair, Roland Rudd, who said she “has never wavered from her core belief – that more people deserve to experience the full richness of art, and more artists deserve to be part of that story”

‘Astonishing’: how Stanley Baxter’s TV extravaganzas reached 20 million

The description “special” is overused in television schedules; Stanley Baxter’s programmes justify it. The comedian is one of the few stars whose reputation rests on a handful of astonishing one-offs – standalone comic extravaganzas screened in the 1970s and 1980s, first by ITV’s London Weekend Television and then the BBC.In both cases, the networks ended their associations with Baxter not because of lack of audience interest – at their peak, the shows reached more than 20 million viewers – but due to the colossal costs demanded by the performer’s vast and perfectionist visual ambition. One of Baxter’s favourite conceits was to re-create, in witty pastiche, scenes from big-budget Hollywood movies that made it look as if his versions had also spent millions of dollars.Cashflow was further stretched by the fact that Baxter played multiple roles – 18 of them in one sketch

Barbican to close its doors for a year for multimillion-pound renovation

The Barbican will close its doors for 12 months from June 2028 as it undergoes a multimillion-pound renovation that its leaders say will secure its future.The arts organisation’s Beech Street cinemas will remain open but its theatre, music venue, conservatory and visual arts galleries are set to shutter as the overhaul of the 43-year-old building begins in the lead-up to its 50th anniversary in 2032.The main Barbican site will close its doors in June 2028 and reopen in June 2029, but some disruption will happen before that as the foyer, lakeside area and internal control room are all renovated.The conservatory, which is open only for a few hours at the weekend and currently has netting to stop falling glass, will close earlier, in 2027.Philippa Simpson, the director of buildings and renewal at the Barbican, said the work could not be completed while the site was open to the public as it would be too dangerous, but that it was essential to secure the site’s future

Seth Meyers to Trump: ‘You can’t convince people the economy is good when they can see the truth’

Late-night hosts recapped Donald Trump’s attempts to reassure Americans on the economy as the private sector sheds jobs and grocery prices keep rising.Seth Meyers devoted his main segment on Wednesday’s Late Night to the US economy, which has seen better days. “Costs of everything, from food to electricity, are soaring while employers are shedding jobs,” he explained. “This is when a president needs to show empathy and demonstrate that he knows the plight of hardworking Americans, and – oh no, as I’m saying this I’m remembering who I’m talking about and realizing that there’s no fucking way he’s going to do that.”Instead the president, in an interview with Politico this week, gave the economy the grade of “A+++++”

The world’s most sublime dinner set – for 2,000 guests! Hyakkō: 100+ Makers from Japan review

Japan House, LondonThe fruit of a two-year odyssey through the workshops of artisans using ancient techniques, this delightful show features rippling chestnut trays, exquisitely turned kettles and vessels crafted from petrified leatherAs a retort to the doom-mongering prognostications of AI’s dominance over human creativity, it is momentarily comforting to tally up the things it cannot do. It cannot throw a pot, blow glass, beat metal, weave bamboo or turn wood. Perhaps, when it has assumed absolute control of human consciousness and the machinery of mass production, it will be able to. But for now, throwing a vessel and weighing its heft in your hand, or carving a tray and sizing up its form with your eye are still the preserve of skilled craftspeople, using techniques their distant ancestors would recognise.On show at London’s Japan House is the work of more than 100 pairs of eyes and hands, constituting an overwhelming profusion of human creativity, corralled into an exhibition of laconic simplicity