Critical Conversations

Those with a ravenous craving for discussions (and occasionally, civil arguments) between critics on the art, purpose, and future of criticism may have met their match with Arts Journal’s Critical Edge blog. The limited-run blog—think of it as a miniseries—has run its three day course, but in that time, nearly every argument about modern criticism, from blogs vs. big media and the wane of criticism to whether or not artists should also be critics, gets covered, and cover, and covered. I still haven’t digested all of it myself (and my apologies for not linking while the debate was going on), but for those who somehow missed it, it’s worth going back and reading through. Despite being engaged in what is essentially a public dialog about the arts, it’s too rare a thing for critics to actually gather—whether physically or virtually—and directly respond to one another. Kudos to AJ for hosting this great discussion.