Waiting for Go-Dot-Com 5.0

"All this nothing ain't gonna get done itself," grumbled Gogo, impatiently waving his hand out across the vast landscape.

Didi sighed and clicked the refresh button on his smartphone again, prompting the home page of go-dot-com to reload in the browser, only to see the same home page they had seen yesterday and the day before. He re-read aloud the copy announcing the pending release of version 5.0:

The first thing you’ll see when you open go-dot-com 5.0 is a clean, new look. But the features you know and use are still there—along with some new ones that are huge time savers in helping you get more nothing accomplished than ever before. The new go-dot-com 5.0 also works with smartphones, tablets, and in the cloud, even on PCs. So now you can always get nothing done, no matter where you are or what you’re using.

Version 5.0 (to be released soon....surely by tomorrow).

"Pfffftz," spewed Gogo. "Let's hang ourselves instead."

A Conversation with Joel and Zöe Dictrow on the Contemporary Art Collector's "Narrative"

Note: This is the latest in a series of conversations on the shifting narratives of roles within the art industry. Previous posts in the series include:

• A conversation with Elizabeth Dee on the Contemporary Art Gallery Model (Part I and Part II) 
• A Conversation with William Powhida on the Contemporary Artist's "Narrative"
• A Conversation with Tyler Green on the Art Journalist's "Narrative"

Fabulous gallerist and super Twitter user (and a friend of ours) Magda Sawon dubbed this series (t)ED TALKS the other day. Needless to say, I love it. I'll consider that branding (after perhaps a quick chat with my lawyer on whether it's asking for trouble).
_____________________________ 

Before I opened a gallery, like a number of dealers, I had dabbled in collecting. I can't think of any activity I have ever found as addictive. There was a point at which, if I didn't bring home a new work of art at least once a month, I began to go into withdrawal. Eventually, given my very limited wealth, it made more sense to feed my art addiction by presenting art, rather than only acquiring it (although we continue to do that as best we can as well).

My small experience in collecting is virtually non-existent in comparison with New York collectors Joel and Zöe Dictrow, though. Their love affair with contemporary art began over 30 years ago and among all the collectors we know, they stand out among the most tireless investigators of what's new and what's good. They travel the world exploring new galleries, artists' studios, museums, and art fairs. Moreover, they live with their collection in such an elegantly seamless way. Their apartment is positively full of art, and yet you never feel anything but enchanted or exhilarated by the latest, always thoughtful hanging when you visit their home. They kindly invite the art world in each March as part of The Armory Show VIP program (and so rehang annually), and there's not a dealer I know who doesn't adore them. They're charming, smart, very generous, and it's no small compliment from me to say, collecting for all the right reasons. (Here's a photo of Joel [second from left] and Zöe [third from left] participating in a panel discussion last year hosted by APAA and NADA on collecting work by emerging artists.)

Joel and Zöe agreed to talk with me about shifts in the narrative of contemporary art collectors. Full disclosure: Yes, they have purchased work by artists from our gallery, and Murat and I consider them friends as well as clients.
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The traditional narrative for most long-term contemporary art collectors often begins when they become intrigued or sometimes "fall in love" with a work they find somewhat accidentally (while on vacation or visiting galleries with friends). Their first purchase is usually modest in price. They buy it and take it home, not quite sure how it will feel to live with it. Because they like living with it, they venture back out and invest in learning about contemporary art perhaps with an adviser (either a professional consultant or a friend who knows the art scene) or through talking with gallerists. Slowly they begin to gravitate toward a position on collecting (focusing on a medium perhaps, or a geographical area, or a political position, or a group of artists who speak to them), with an eventual decision to collect either broad or deep, and their confidence in making more expensive purchases grows as well. If they fill their home with art but still want to keep collecting, they either invest in storage or begin to sell work from their collection as part of their approach to continue buying. As they become well known as collectors they gain access not only to VIP programs at art fairs or museum boards and events, but also to the best new work of the artists they support. As they spend more time collecting, they become experts on the artists they collect and the general market they're focused on, as well as the inner workings of the art market, developing a keen sense for its rhythms and quirks, often knowing much more than many emerging gallerists do about how things really work. As their collection grows in importance and takes on a life of its own, they begin to consider the options for how to deal with it after they pass away. Options such as whether to donate it to a museum, liquidate it at auction, or even establish their own institution open to the public often involve museum curators, auction houses, galleries and of course their heirs.

Winkleman: To get started, please first outline for our readers a bit about your collection. Roughly how many artworks are in it and who are a few of the well-known artists you collect?

Dictrows: We started buying art together as a married couple in the late 1970’s. Before we married, each of us had prints by famous artists like Calder and Miro on our walls at home. When we started going to galleries, we knew almost nothing of contemporary art. But we enjoyed going to exhibitions and trying to understand what we were seeing. Now we have many hundreds of artworks by contemporary artists –- way more than we can show in our apartment at one time. Generally speaking, we look at artists for a while before we make a purchase. We tend not to make spontaneous decisions about buying art. We look and discuss and consider. Some well known artists in our collection include Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Sol Lewitt and Bill Viola.

Winkleman: Do you feel that narrative above still applies to collectors of contemporary art? What parts of it are less likely or less realistic today? What changes have you felt in the way people collect now compared with when you began?

Dictrows: The narrative still applies except that everything has sped up. The internet and social media make the difference. The biggest change we’ve seen is that more and more people are buying art for investment than in the past. And collectors come from all over the world as never before. So the number of collectors has increased dramatically since we started collecting. The price of contemporary art has increased dramatically too over the past few years.

Collectors may buy art they love but they rationalize their purchases by saying that it’s a good investment. Still, art is a risky, illiquid investment subject to fashion. Art by a particular artist is variable. Art is not created equal.  That said, it’s exciting to collect contemporary art. It makes us feel like we are part of history to buy the art of our time, to watch young careers develop into mature careers. That’s what happens when artists are well-represented by good galleries.

Winkleman: I've had several conversations with long-time collectors who feel the influx of new collectors and the way that's sped up the decision-making process (as well as the way they've changed the tone of collecting art) has made collecting less enjoyable for them. Charles Saatchi, for example, went so far as to write an op-ed for The Guardian in which he called some of the new collectors "vulgar and depressingly shallow," adding:

Artistic credentials are au courant in the important business of being seen as cultured, elegant and, of course, stupendously rich.

Do any of these people actually enjoy looking at art? Or do they simply enjoy having easily recognised, big-brand name pictures, bought ostentatiously in auction rooms at eye-catching prices, to decorate their several homes, floating and otherwise, in an instant demonstration of drop-dead coolth and wealth. Their pleasure is to be found in having their lovely friends measuring the weight of their baubles, and being awestruck.

Do you sense a similar sense of loss of a perhaps "gentler" time of art collecting, or is your interpretation of how things have evolved different?

Dictrows: Lots of people have a sense of nostalgia for the past. It isn’t surprising to hear people say the art world has changed for the worse. We find contemporary art interesting because it evolves and only looks back for inspiration. The process of collecting contemporary art involves connecting with the world in new ways. There are collectors that limit their buying to a certain few galleries or artists or periods and have difficulty departing with old ways of seeing and doing things.

It seems to us about 50% of the galleries in NYC we now visit didn't exist 10 years ago. The number of galleries we visit has stayed the same but the mix has changed and will continue to change. Collecting is not just about acquiring. It is also about education and understanding. This hasn't changed. What has changed is that the art world has expanded so much that it appears to have become more impersonal.

Winkleman: There's a lot of chatter lately about how the ever-expanding art fair schedule is impacting how much time collectors can devote to visiting galleries. You both still make a huge effort to visit galleries, I know, but I'm wondering how you balance your time these days. Compared with 10 years ago, for example, can you say what percentage of your art viewing time is now spent at fairs rather than in galleries?

Dictrows: When we started collecting art, we spent every Saturday on our day off from work looking at art. Now that we are retired, we spend more time looking at art. There are more galleries and more neighborhoods in New York we have to visit in order to cover what we want to see. So our time is divided differently. We select which fairs to attend using several factors, though reasons vary: We like going to fairs that are situated in appealing locations. Often the fair makes it particularly appealing for us to attend because of their special attention to VIP programs and other benefits. Sometimes we decide to go because our friends are going. We go to more fairs than we used to. But that is partially because with the addition of Frieze NY there are two fairs to attend locally. We go to Basel, though not every year. We went in 2013 because we tied it into going to the Venice Biennale. We went to SP Arte in Brazil during April and tied it in to a visit to Inhotim. We will go to Miami/Basel in December. For the first time we will go to FIAC this year. These are more fairs than we attended last year. I can’t give you a percentage answer about how we split our time between galleries and art fairs. We value both, but we enjoy looking at art in galleries more. Gallery shows are important to us because they give us an opportunity to focus on a whole body of work by an artist in a context that feels less about investing in art and more about art appreciation.

Winkleman: I also know you travel to fairs around the world. What impact, if any, has the globalization of the art market had on how you approach collecting?

Dictrows:We meet more people than ever before. We know about more artists. We are offered more art to buy. It’s overwhelming at times.

Winkleman: You were both kind enough to attend the panel discussion in Basel where Elizabeth Dee, Josh Baer and I discussed "the role of the mid level gallery in the age of the mega-gallery." Afterward, Zöe, you shared with Elizabeth what I consider a much more useful hierarchical structure for truly understanding the gallery system today. Rather than simply emerging, mid level, top tier, and mega, your system has seven levels. Can you summarize those for us?

Dictrows: In New York first level galleries are happy just to get their foot in the door. They are recently established, certainly under 5 years in business, one employee or if partnership, no employees. First level gallery owners have energy to burn and they are excited about travel. Their artists’ prices are less than $15,000…often far less. What they lack in money they make up for in enthusiasm. Back in the 1980’s Gene Schwartz (a well-known collector now deceased) used to describe these young enterprises as “bud” galleries. Gene and Barbara Schwartz taught us a lot about collecting back then. Lots of collectors, including some that can afford to buy artwork for a million dollars enjoy buying and socializing with young galleries and their artists.

Second level galleries have met with some modest success. Volume of sales has increased, not necessarily prices. The need to expand to a larger gallery or ground floor space, exhibit at art fair(s) and employ an assistant is apparent. When their artists are selling and/or getting attention from museum curators, it’s time to grow the gallery. This is when problems erupt left, right and center. Not enough money to cover gallery and art fair expenses, pay artists their share and do anything other than business related activities. Not enough time to appropriately cultivate all constituencies – artists, collectors, curators. The gallery owner needs to have a burning desire to succeed, fantastic energy/work ethic, loyal artists, luck, imagination and vision to make it to the next level.

Third level galleries scrape by better than second level galleries, but not by a wide margin. The gallery has been in business more than 5 years. But it is often undercapitalized. Typically, 3rd level galleries have to worry about losing their top artists to bigger galleries, some of whom are starting to make “real” money for the gallery perhaps commanding $20,000 - $30,000 for an artwork. Without those artists, the gallery wouldn’t be able to cover their expenses. Some galleries can exist at the third level for years because they have established a good reputation with curators and collectors and their artists stay with them.

Some third level galleries are new to the New York market and have owners who established themselves as art professionals at a high level – either as an employee at a large gallery or museum or as a collector or private dealer or had a gallery in a different city before coming to New York. The gallery opened with some serious money and/or mid-career artists or estates of deceased artists on the roster. If the gallery finds a way to sell steadily and cover expenses whether they exhibit at art fairs or not, they may well find their way to the next level.

Fourth level galleries represent a few artists with recognized careers who generally command prices above $30,000. A registrar, an art handler, a gallery director may be needed even if the gallery stays in the same space as when they grew to be a third level gallery. The owner(s) should be able to accumulate some capital now and have a life outside of the gallery. Business expenses are still tight, but the gallery is on fairly solid ground if the owner(s) keeps a tight rein on expenses.

Fifth level galleries represent more than a few artists that sell for over $50,000. They may have a few that sell for over $100,000.

Sixth level galleries are situated in prime locations. Most of the artists have work that sells for more than $100,000 routinely. They still worry about losing their artists to 7th level galleries.

Seventh level galleries are recognized worldwide as top galleries. They may have multiple-city and country locations.  Everyone knows who they are. They have an elite client list and they make lots more money than 6th level galleries, yet not all elite artists are represented by them. Artists with dynamic careers want galleries with a roster of artists they relate to and still make substantial incomes. Sometimes artists go to a 7th level gallery and their careers languish. The artist is given one show and never has another yet they stay on the roster and the artists feel that it wouldn’t look good for them to jump to a “lesser” gallery.

Winkleman: There were no such things as email, jpegs, or online art fairs when you first began collecting. What changes have digital technology and online channels for viewing and/or buying art brought to collecting in your opinion?

Dictrows: These innovations have made it easier to see what artists are up to. Just being able to see an exhibition of a new body of work being exhibited in London, let’s say, makes you less dependent on a single gallery. So now it is easier to buy art from galleries located in different cities and countries with jpeg images. Often we will reserve an artwork based on a jpeg and will make a decision after we have seen it in person at the gallery or at an art fair.  

It’s exciting and sometimes overwhelming to be able to choose from so many galleries and keep track of many more artists than before these technologies were available.

Announcing Details for The 2013 Moving Image Award

Moving Image is very pleased to announce details on the second annual Moving Image Award to be presented October 17, 2013, the opening day of the London version of the fair. This year, the Moving Image Award will fund the acquisition of an artwork from the fair for the permanent collection of 53 Art Museum in Guangzhou, China. The award is sponsored by Qiongbo Li, founder of Guangdong Wanpin Culture & Art Development Co., Ltd, in Guangzhou, China.

Established in 2012 to help incorporate video and film into the permanent collections of art institutions, the inaugural Moving Image Award honored San Francisco collectors Pamela and Richard Kramlich, who have supported contemporary artists working in video, film, and new media through their private collection and through the New Art Trust, a non-profit organization they founded to advance the collection, preservation, exhibition, and understanding of technology-based art forms. The Kramlich’s dedication has inspired Moving Image to reach out to similarly-minded supporters to expand the inclusion of video, film and new media in museum collections globally.

Recipient of the Moving Image Award in 2012: Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck in collaboration with Media Farzin. Chronoscope, 1951, 11pm; 2011 (gallery view) Single channel HD video installation, 24:49 min, B & W, stereo sound. Presented at Moving Image London by Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE.

Moving Image co-founder Murat Orozobekov explained, “We are delighted to announce the establishment of a new ongoing fund generously sponsored by Qiongbo Li, founder of Guangdong Wanpin Culture & Art Development Co., Ltd. The mission of Moving Image has always been to bring our visitors an international selection of the best contemporary video and experimental film.  With Mr. Li’s generous sponsorship, the Moving Image Award helps us expand the global opportunities for participating artists as well.”

The Moving Image Award grants $10,000 toward an acquisition for the permanent collection of 53 Art Museum, the first non-profit private contemporary art museum in the major Chinese city of Guangzhou. 53 Art Museum’s building was designed from repurposed China rail hangars, resulting in a unique environment that echoes history and contemporary trends in architecture. Under the slogan of “Standing in Guangdong, with eyes on the world”, 53 Art Museum devotes itself to promoting contemporary art, especially video art.

Qiongbo Li, is the founder of Guangdong Wanpin Culture & Art Development Co.,Ltd, as well as Director of 53 Art Museum and Executive Chief Editor of Gallery Magazine. Mr. Li has been an active promoter and publisher in contemporary art in China since for many years. “We are living in a time of new media,” said Mr. Li of his sponsorship of the Moving Image Award. “Video art can be regarded as one of the most important ways for artist to record their history as well as express themselves.  Personally, I am very interested in video art and have expectations of its bright future. I am grateful that the Moving Image Award offers me the chance to provide video artists from all over the world  with opportunities to exchange with each other, especially  in bringing creative ideas to artists both at home and abroad.”

53 Art Museum curator James Hu added, “We are very grateful for Mr. Qiongbo Li’s generous devotion to the permanent collection of video art in 53 Art Museum. Video art, as a matter of fact, has been a key focus of the Museum, for which we have made a series of exhibitions concerning the development of video art at home and abroad, trying to construct an international platform for dialogue and communication between artists with different backgrounds, delineating the position, sphere of influence and future trajectory of Chinese video art within the global context.”

Moving Image
October 17-20, 2013

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Extended: Leslie Thornton's " Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Fold (1985–2013)," through July 22 at MoMAPS1

Thirty years in the making, the final cut of Leslie Thornton's "Peggy and Fred in Hell" is now on view at MoMAPS1 for just another week. This marvelous installation is the culmination of one of the most thorough and thoughtful analyses of our relationship to technology and media in the history of experimental film and video. But even if you think you know the story of "Peggy and Fred," you owe it to see it now with the recently completed "final" episode (which sent shivers down my spine when I realized its significance to the entire project).

Leslie talked with The Observer about this particular installation:

"We’ve filled the cinema with sputtering old TVs, precariously stacked and nestled in and around the audience,” Ms. Thornton told The Observer by e-mail. “It’s a jungle of technological waste forming a physical and metaphorical frame around the film. Over 27 years I’ve presented this project in different episodes and variations, and for the first time the same debris that taught the two child ‘stars’ Peggy and Fred how to talk, think and be—television—invades the audience’s own physical space.”

MoMAPS1's site lists today, July 15 as the final day for the installation, but it's just been extended through July 22. Seriously, don't miss this historic presentation. It's one for the ages.

Art Must Be a Cat (or Perhaps a Zombie)

You'd be forgiven for thinking an event in a Chelsea gallery yesterday (you couldn't miss it if you have a Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Vine account) involved the four horsemen of the apocalypse, rather than a music mogul, the way some folks were discussing it online. Some of the responses went so far as to declare it the "death of art" as we know it. I didn't get to see the event, and some of what I've read about it made it sound worthwhile (perhaps...who knows?), but I'm not as interested today in the event as I am the response to it. In particular, this obviously hyperbolic notion that it symbolized the death of anything. 

Last night our gallery's savvy assistant Alex Torres posted the following on her FB pages:

RIP Art for the eighth time, it only feels like yesterday when James Franco killed it!

To which her brother Hector responded:

That's funny, art must be a cat.

Which made me chuckle. But it also made me recall a passage in Ann Fensterstock's fantastic forthcoming book about the history (and in particular, the migratory nature) of New York's art communities. Titled "Art on the Block," it publishes in September 2013 (pre-order your copy now!), and in amazing detail (chock full of interviews with artists and dealers and critics and collectors) it recounts the birth, heyday, and eventual death of art scenes in neighborhoods across the city over the past half century or so. 

But it wasn't any talk on the "death of art" in Ann's book that the frothy response to yesterday's event reminded me of, but rather a description of a time in New York's history when disgust with the state of things seemed to reach such a crescendo it must have been difficult for anyone to imagine "art" ever recovering. 

The time was the late 1980s, but you wouldn't know that if you only read the critique. For pages, Ann recounts how giants like Hughes, Lippard, Brenson, Schwartzman, and Danto derided much of the art of the age, but what's really amazing is how much of the actual text reads just like the dialog of today. Here's a sample:

In one of the East Village's own publications, Michael Kohn called the work uninteresting and shallow and cautioned that media attention does not equal critical attention. Even Nicholas Moufarrege, who did so much to support the work at the outset, despaired at times. He challenged the now local ruling that no art is unshowable and complained that volume output had done nothing for the meaningful, the powerful or the beautiful. "The boys and girls are gone hog wild with liberty," he wailed, "and the effect is not of shock but of something more dangerous: tedium." 

To some extent, the demographics of the era played as much of a role as matters of taste when it came to the quality of the art. The glut of fresh-baked graduates that had been tumbling out of art schools over the past two decades meant that of the nation's one million self-titled artists, some 90,000 were living in New York City. The education was expensive, and while parents were happy to fund a first year or two, a career somewhere in the $2 billion New York art market was now in order.

 Here's another excerpt:

By January 1986 Michael Brenson was sounding the alert to his New York Times readership when he lamented, "With prominent artists of all kinds having one and sometimes two shows a year, in one, two and even three galleries simultaneously; with museum shows for 30-year-old artists now commonplace; with ceaseless critical and curatorial attention; with the marketing methods of art dealers now material for television business programs; with artists puffed up like rock starts, courted like princes and displayed in the pages of trendy magazines like Hollywood prima donnas, there has been a wide spread feeling of 'enough!'"

Maybe art isn't a cat...maybe it's a zombie. Long dead, but still ambling around, sneaking up on people, popping up when you least expect it. 

Or maybe, simply, it's all part of a very complex and often messy vetting process involving many people who are willing to defend their choices for what should serve and be preserved as the visual representations of what it meant to be alive today. And maybe, sometimes, that free-for-all gets out of hand.

It ain't all that serious.

A Conversation with Tyler Green on the Art Journalist's "Narrative"

Note: This is the latest in a series of conversations on the shifting narratives of roles within the art industry. Previous posts in the series include:

• A conversation with Elizabeth Dee on the Contemporary Art Gallery Model (Part I and Part II) 
• A Conversation with William Powhida on the Contemporary Artist's "Narrative"

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Art journalism has undergone a radical shift over the past 20 years in my opinion, but then perhaps so has journalism in general. A revolution brought about via technologies that bring tremendous pressure for nearly immediate publication, often even as the described events are taking place (with the previous practices of reflection and in-depth investigation or analysis suffering in its wake) has also led to a decentralization of control over how we view the world (i.e., over "the message"), which has its up sides as well, but comes coupled with an odd sense that something is old "news" before we even understand what it was that happened. In a world as rich with complex ideas as the art world is at its best, that's not necessarily an innovation that makes things better for understanding.

There's a significant additional difference with art journalism, though, as Tyler Green points out in the conversation below, that corresponds to how the art market, rather than art itself, has increasingly (almost entirely) become the story in the US. Yes, I'm guilty of that leaning here myself, but this is in part a self-declared marketing tool for a commercial contemporary art gallery, so....

Moreover, I suspect there is now a widespread editorial-level conclusion that Americans simply don't care about fine art. I mean, just ask yourself whether this

seems even remotely likely to happen in the US today (hint: it was a feature article in a self-declared "humor and general interest magazine" on an important living painter that discussed his actual process). Then again, perhaps it's more a "chicken or egg" thing. If mainstream magazines don't discuss developments in contemporary art, how are the general public going to know they're interested in it?

It's against this set of assumptions on my part that I asked Tyler Green whether he would have a conversation about the "narrative" of the art journalist today. For those of you not familiar with him, Tyler Green remains perhaps the most stubbornly committed art journalist I know. He has regularly spoken truth to power (and yes, even upsetting me from time to time with his insistent [but always defensible] call that we all seek to consistently put our best, most professional foots forward). Moreover, he has always done so with the public's best interest at the center of his appeals. In other words, he's a true member of the Fourth Estate. 

Here's his biography (from his blog, Modern Art Notes):

Tyler Green is a Washington-based art journalist. He edits and writes Modern Art Notes and is the U.S. columnist for Modern Painters magazine. Green’s newest venture is The Modern Art Notes Podcast, a weekly program which he independently produces and hosts. It is distributed each Thursday via MAN, iTunes, RSS feed and on MANPodcast.com.

Green and MAN have been featured in The New York Times, Time, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, the Detroit Free Press, the Boston Globe, the Houston Chronicle, the Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News, the Kansas City Star, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Slate, Contemporary, Art & Auction, Black Book, Art in America, and on many NPR affiliates. The Wall Street Journal has called MAN “the most influential of all visual arts blogs.” Later the WSJ said, “You won’t find a better-informed art writer than Tyler Green.” The Washington Post has named Tyler Green one of Washington’s 14 “young and influential” cultural figures.

Away from MAN, Green has written for Fortune, Conde Nast Portfolio, Smithsonian, Washingtonian, the New York Observer, LA Weekly, Black Book magazine and has contributed op-eds to newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer and to the Wall Street Journal’s arts op-ed column, “In the Fray.”

  _______________________

The narrative for most art journalists (that is, a writer whose publisher/editors discovered they had, in addition to strong journalistic instincts, a knack for the complex task of translating the visual language of fine art into words) like any journalist, used to be they would find or be assigned a particular beat and cover it consistently for a specific publication or media outlet (i.e., TV or radio network) that had a budget to cover travel expenses (e.g., to send them to the Venice Biennial or Documenta or to interview an artist or museum director half way across the country) and a decent full-time salary with benefits. If they were notably successful, they might be hired away by a bigger publication/network or an arts-specific publication, often becoming a semi-celebrity within the art world, getting lecturing gigs or panel discussion invitations, possibly becoming the editor of a major arts publication/network, and hopefully eventually publishing their collected works in a book or two or launching their own TV series.

Winkleman: Does that narrative still apply or seem realistic? What components of it are less likely now or less desirable now?

Green: I don't know if any of it still applies. There are a few of those jobs, but more and more covering art means covering the market. (Which isn't covering art, it's covering business.) There are many more art-related business reporters in New York than there are art reporters.

The old model is gone. We should all stop bitching about it, myself included.

Sad, simple truth: There are very, very few established art-focused media outlets any self-respecting writer/reporter/critic should want to work for, even on a freelance basis. You're better off building and owning your own thing. (Exceptions, with the caveat that writers taking under about $1.50-$2 a word are wasting their own time: ARTnews is quite good. The Art Newspaper is often super-smart but is understaffed in the US. The magazine for which I'm a columnist, Modern Painters, is on a strong run of late.) Away from art-focused magazines, there's really only The New Yorker. Calvin Tomkins was a great profile writer, but like his magazine's art critic, he's lost his fastball. [Tomkins in 2010, on Julie Mehretu: "In her junior year of high school, she 'came out,' as she put it. (For a ridiculous moment, I thought she was talking about a white-gown debut.)"] Sadly, the estimable New York Review of Books ignores contemporary art. 

Aside: This is a horrid moment for artist-profile writing: That match of format and subject seems on the way out. 

This is not to say that there are not good writers around: We should not equate the lack of opportunity for upward mobility (and larger audiences) with the lack of quality. Christopher Knight is still at the top of his game. Andrew Russeth and Maika Pollock at the Observer are both generous and a pleasure to read. (In fact they're both so generous that I wish that I could trade them about 20 percent of my over-cynicism for 10 percent of their generosity.) Carolina Miranda has helped make ARTnews fresher and must-read again. I wish Katy Siegel had one of the Big NYC or LA critic jobs because I like reading what she thinks, and I don't see her around enough. Ben Davis is oft interesting and thoughtful, but he seems to save his best thinking for the art world rather than art. That's fine, and I can understand it's a meaningful contribution, especially in New York. Phong Bui's Q&As in The Brooklyn Rail are terrific. Unfortunately, too few of these writers know or care there's an America west of the Hudson. You can be a good New York writer without leaving New York, but you can't mature as a thinker and a writer without leaving, and leaving often. But that's another issue.

Winkleman: What changes in the art world in general (as opposed to the publishing world), if any, have led to changes in the field of art journalism?

Green: I am the wrong person to ask about the art world because it does not much interest me. Art: I like. The art world I'm happy to leave to New York, LA, and to the art fair circuit.

Let's also be clear about this: Art journalism is all but dead. It's being replaced by art media, which reports less (often not at all), cares little about accuracy (when did you last see a correction on your favorite art media website?) but which is less constrained by tired tropes.  

Winkleman: Most of the art journalists I know came to their profession almost by accident. Indeed, the first arts master program at an accredited school to teach journalists to write about arts and culture was founded in 2005 (the Goldring Arts Journalism Program at Syracuse University), making arts journalism as a profession that one studied for specifically at the graduate level a fairly recent occurrence. What changes to the profession does the introduction of masters level programs for arts journalism foretell in your opinion, if any?

Green: I cannot understand, for the life of me, why anyone would go to graduate school to prepare for a job or career that no longer exists. I don't understand why any of these programs exist or how they're useful. 

Winkleman: Journalists from many fields who used to work for publications have found themselves free agents due to changes in the industry. Many formerly employed arts journalists (some might say too many) have side-stepped into public relations. I don't necessarily see this as a good thing (mostly because there are so many now that my blog receives probably a dozen appeals a day to write about events entirely unrelated to its topic). Other free agents have responded with innovations on the arts journalism model. You're top among the journalists I think of when I see necessity being the mother of invention in this regard. Your blog, Modern Art Notes (MAN) is widely considered not only a pioneer of the medium, but has been called  “the most influential of all visual arts blogs,” by The Wall Street Journal. Your relatively recently launched weekly MAN Podcasts are a growing treasure trove of interviews that I believe are historically important. What other changes (good or bad) do you see in the field, either specifically in response to publications cutting staff or in response to new opportunities somewhat independent of that?

Green: Thanks for the kind words on The MAN Podcast. I'm really thrilled that people seem to be enjoying the program. These days depth interests me a lot more than drive-bys, and folks who listen to The MAN Podcast provide me with the opportunity to explore that a bit.

As is typical when an industry collapses, the massive decline of art journalism has created opportunities for entrepreneurialism. Philanthropy has massively failed to respond to the decline of art journalism and to encourage new models of art-related reporting, and because reporting is expensive, reporting on art and artists will not come back in a meaningful way until philanthropy wakes up. 

That's not to say that there aren't interesting art media out there (just that they don't do a lot of reporting): Hyperallergic has matured and helped motivate me toward my own entrepreneurialist turn. Art Practical is almost always interesting. Creative Time's Artists Report project/publication started slowly but has become a must-read. Rhizome often zips right by me (I'm old!), but it quite often introduces me to things I feel like I should have known about. Aperture's newly re-designed online presence is a big improvement. (Speaking of projects-within-institutions: I'd still like to see the Walker Art Center build on Paul Schmelzer's excellent work by commissioning more original content.) Conscientious Photography Magazine is beautiful. I'm enjoying the heck out of Andrew Berardini and Sarah Williams' The Art Book Review. I don't really know what Little Brown Mushroom (aka Alec Soth and Brad Zellar) is -- I guess it exists at the intersection of media and an artists-project? -- but I love it and I wish I was doing something that wonderful and smart and catchy. I'm sure there's plenty out there about which I know not enough, too.

I'm surprised how little of the new things that interest me are from the Midwest or the West. Especially Los Angeles.

Winkleman: In an offline exchange, I asserted that the globalization of the art market has had an impact on art journalism, but you noted you're not sure how. I suspect that comes from a vantage point of separating out market/business journalism from journalism about art. And yet, with museums seeking international trustees, the proliferation of international biennials, and an expectation that (because the world is shrinking) those artists who are speaking to an international audience will garner more attention, I still think globalization must impact arts journalism in some ways. Or am I still missing something?

Green: Only what, three or four or five US museums have a significant international trustee presence on their board? All artists are speaking to an international audience, they just don't all receive one. I just don't see how globalism is impacting art journalism/media at all. (Or really how it might/would.)

Winkleman: One of the topics that keeps coming up throughout this series of conversations is the shift at museums from a focus on programming around art objects to one on programming around "art experiences." On the face of it, that wouldn't necessarily seem to impact art journalism, per se, but perhaps it has. Your response?

Green: I guess we're talking about corporate-sponsored carnivals like the recent Guggenheim and PS1 things? I'm not sure what the heck those are, except for development opportunities. (And when I hear museum directors discuss them, they sound even more like planned development opportunities.) I don't go to them because, well, they don't sound very interesting.

Winkleman: There's a sense in the US that journalism in general (well beyond arts journalism) has been co-opted by corporate interests and that the Obama administration, reportedly in the interest of national security, is systematically cowering the remaining writers willing to speak truth to power. Beyond the type of philanthropy that might "respond to the decline of art journalism and to encourage new models of art-related reporting," do you have any opinions on how journalism itself can recover from the current widespread sense that it's been reduced to mostly stenography?

Green: Too much journalism is go-along-to-get-along, and art journalism is no different. (Carol Vogel is an able stenographer.) If there are rewards for enterprise work -- be it reporting, think-pieces, whatever -- then enterprise will thrive. Alas, I don't see a lot of rewards for enterprise in the current art journalism/media landscape.

Winkleman: Some would argue that arts media outlets are giving their readers what they want (I recall an artnet.com magazine declaration that their most widely read column, by far, was the monthly horoscope, for example). While I myself have complained about the quantity of celebrity gossip on some arts media sites, I have to believe they have access to fairly detailed analytics on who's reading what and that that dictates to a large degree what they publish. Beyond some smart and well-meaning philanthropist helping fund a high-quality publication dedicated to art journalism, do you think there's a readership issue to be solved here?

Green: Ah, this is a very good question and I'm glad you asked it.

TMZ is more read than the New York Review of Books, so should the NYRB not exist? Just because many readers like to be entertained by crap should we all be doomed to Charlie Finch? Of course not.

Fortunately, there is no direct correlation between import and audience: At its peak, 15,000 people subscribed to The Partisan Review, and a mere fraction of that total was on board in 1939 when Clement Greenberg wrote his first important essay for the publication. Any idea that a mass audience is necessary or imperative to justify the production of quality work (or its ability to have lasting import) is poppycock.  

No, art is not as popular as wine or celebrity gossip. The economics are not there. That's why for there to be a NYRB-level publication about art, one that is probative, one the features enterprise-driven reporting and independent criticism, it will have to be philanthropy-supported. There's nothing wrong with that -- it is the same model on which art museums and private universities work.

But I think it's also worth nothing that there is at least some evidence that people will consume content that is at least marginally closer to the NYRB than to Charlie Finch: Apparently enough people read Ben Davis that he often cuts loose on Artinfo. I'd like to think that The Modern Art Notes Podcast demonstrates that listeners will turn out in enough numbers to support art-intensive content, both in terms of product and the business that enables it. (If you haven't heard our show, it's entirely, 100 percent about art. Not business, not gossip, just art.) Still, I know that producing a podcast, even 52 of them a year featuring 90 or so guests per year, is inexpensive. Producing reporting and independent criticism is not.