Knight Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts are seeking ideas from individuals and organizations for the development of new, sustainable models for arts journalism. Applications for the Community Arts Journalism Challenge must be received by midnight Thursday, Aug 18 - apply now. The following blog about the importance of arts criticism is crossposted from Art Works, the official blog of the National Endowment for the Arts: By Abraham Ritchie Abraham Ritchie. Photo by Anna Wolak Like a ship heading towards open ocean, progressive art is constantly moving away from us. Culture does not slow down or stop when visual art is cut from school curricula or when art critics are fired from major newspapers. Rather it is the community that suffers, as the public becomes distanced from its own culture. Unaware of the innovations that are going on and why, the community can become alienated from art. The artists can also suffer, though they are still fundamentally connected to culture in ways that the public is not. Without critics, artists can pursue unproductive or backwards paths. The art critic is crucial to both the public and to artists. The art critic must connect new art to the public, providing a platform for understanding and appreciation. Logically, the critic must also give critical feedback to the artists who are focused on innovation in their work. This allows the artist to improve their practice or reject the critic’s assessment. Rather than invalidating the critic’s point, this will build complexity into the conception of an artwork. After all, once a point has been made it cannot be forgotten, though it can be ignored. Increasingly, however, mainstream art criticism is merely being used as a public relations outlet for the arts industry. This is the real danger to art and to culture; that it is used as a tourist attraction rather than understood as meaningful culture. This is damaging to artists and the public alike as both are given a superficial understanding of culture. Artists are...
