In this year’s AICA Lecture one of the United-States’ best-known art critics, Roberta Smith, talks about her work. She discusses becoming and remaining a working art critic; the role, obligations, rituals and grind of the journalistic subgenre; and the changes wrought over four decades by the growth of the art world, by increasingly porous definitions of art and the onset of the digital age.
Roberta Smith is co-Chief Art Critic for the New York Times for which she has written since 1986, as well as for many other publications including Art Forum, Art in America and the Village Voice. She is one of America’s best known critics, publishing many essays and reviews on contemporary art, and on the visual arts in general including the applied arts, design and architecture. In 2003 Roberta Smith was awarded the College Art Association Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism.