Will Gompertz is an author, journalist, broadcaster, critic, and Artistic Director of the Barbican Arts Centre in London, a role he began in the summer 2021.
Immediately before joining the Barbican, Will was the BBC’s first ever Arts Editor, a senior journalistic and broadcasting role he started in 2009. Will reported extensively on the arts across the globe, interviewed countless artists, actors, writers, musicians, and directors. He also wrote and presented documentaries for BBC One and BBC Two, and hosted shows on Radio 2, Radio 4, and BBC 5-Live. Prior to joining the BBC, Will spent 7 years as a Director of the Tate Galleries where he was responsible for its BAFTA-winning website, creative direction, and the launching of the UK’s first Performance Art festival.
Will has written two internationally best-selling non-fiction books (published by Penguin in the UK). What Are You Looking At? (2012) – a history of modern art, and Think Like an Artist (2015) about creativity. Both books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Will’s third book See What You’re Missing, on how artists can teach us to look at the world in a different way, was published in March this year. Will was voted one of the World’s Top 50 Creative Thinkers by New York’s Creativity magazine and is a Supernumerary Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford University.
