Rebecca Fons, the director of programming at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago since 2021, is the new head of cinema for London’s multidisciplinary Barbican Centre, effective Sept. 1.
The Barbican will announce the appointment early Tuesday, but word of Fons’ new post made the conversational rounds late Monday at the national Art House Convergence gathering of art-house cinema exhibitors, held once again in Chicago.
Fons, 43, will oversee a team of film programmers at the Barbican, which contains three cinema auditoriums.
“The opportunity at the Barbican is so incredible,” she told the Tribune late Monday. “To be able to program for a new audience, to be part of a team with so much cross-disciplinary opportunity, it’s very exciting.”
Fons and her husband, Chicago-based filmmaker Jack Newell, are leasing a flat in London’s Bloomsbury neighborhood and will maintain their Chicago residence as well. Fons said she has programmed the Siskel Film Center’s calendar through October, with some of the late 2025 and early 2026 programming in place as well.
The Barbican is best known as the Royal Shakespeare Company’s London home base, with a wealth of theater, film, dance, music and other art forms sharing the building that opened in 1982.
Fons’ transition means the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which oversees the activities of the Siskel Film Center, is conducting a search for a film programming head. The Iowa native’s canny array of cinematic offerings brought the Film Center out of the muck of the pandemic. She was hired first on a part-time basis, then went full-time later in 2021. She was the Tribune’s Chicagoan of the Year in film for 2022.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Originally Published: July 28, 2025 at 10:40 PM CDT