Today, June 16th, marks the first year since we launched HuffPost Arts. What a long way we've come. At the time, I was grateful to finally have a forum for artists and writers to share their work and ideas about contemporary art; to provide a platform that receives a firehose of traffic to artists everywhere while simultaneously keeping it smart. Now, I'm grateful to have an even larger audience to share our ideas with as a result of our merger with AOL. The great news is that the new paradigm has wholeheartedly embraced our vision of engaging artists, scholars, critics and enthusiasts alike in a fusion of art, editorial, news of which we can all be proud.
We launched with an emphasis on the visual arts, simply because as a painter this is the planet from which I hail. We immediately expanded to include all arts -- painters, filmmakers, sculptors, printmakers, ballerinas, designers, entertainers, architects. You can also see a round up of many of our features here. Bi-weekly features such as Design Thursdays, where we splatter the page with everything design-related, and "Haiku Reviews," where reviewers from around world write quick reviews on everything from art to theater to music albums continue to add a pulse to our monthly rhythm of information. Our outstanding monthly feature writers who add to that beat include: film critics Leonard Maltin and George Heymont, contemporary music critic Jeff Pollack and classical music critic Laurence Vittes; Constantine Bjerke of Crane.TV; vivid studio visits and stories about the contemporary art scene from Dorothy Spears, Amir Fallah of Beautiful Decay,Edward Goldman, Peter Frank, Roger Denson, Marina Cashdan, Kisa Lala of SpreadArtCulture.com and Professor John Seed; Steve Harrington and Jaime Rojo of Brooklyn Street Art; dance writer Debra Levine; theater and art critic James Scarborough; Brett Baker from Painters-Table.com, Steven Zevitasof New American Paintings, Bruce Helander of The Art Economist; and everything poetry from poet Patrick Pressl. To titillate, educate and hopefully infuriate, we offer Mat Gleason and Guess The Artist.
In addition to our bloggers, I thank my editorial team, Melinda Brocka and Travis Korte, for excellent arts reporting here, here, here, here, here and here.
I view our page as an ever-evolving salon/dinner party. I *treasure* the arts blogger contributions, as do our readers. I was a blogger before I launched this section, and I wrote over eighty essays about other artists and my own evolution as one. The freedom to shine a light on whatever I was passionate about remains priceless to me. I think our arts bloggers feel the same way. Unlike a traditional editor/curator who keeps a tight leash on what gets covered, as HuffPost Arts' editor, every day is a walk through a magical idea forest where I delight daily in discovering strange new creatures to gently lead into the clearing for everyone to see. Thank you to all of the bloggers who have made this party a blast, and to all the readers who have lent us your eyes, minds and comments. Happy Anniversary. Onward and upward.
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It's been great spreading the word beyond the usual art trade journal crowd. Also, regarding the teapot tempest about not getting paid, I have to say this has been a great platform for selling books. Many weeks my book net has been 2 to 3 times what I got paid for a cover feature. That plus having the opportunity to write feature-length posts without the restriction of writing only on artists who count among the top blue chip sellers has made this an ideal forum for disseminating ideas that won't get much play in trade journals while allowing considerable continuity with the crucial political issues of the day. I'm looking forward to many more years here if you can stand my ramblings.
My only complaint (if you can call it that) is that art has been subsumed under the Style umbrella. If anything, I wish Arts had its own category and Style would be secondary (in my life style runs second to art!), but otherwise Happy Anniversary and congratulations, Kimberly!
HuffPost provides an invaluable service in helping to spread the word about smaller arts organizations that do wonderful work but can't always attract the attention of today's print media and -- oh, whoops, WHAT PRINT MEDIA?????
The only jab at my offerings that seems to have staying power is the oft-mentioned observation about opinion contributors here not receiving compensation.
So readers, PLEASE understand that we contributors here do NOT give the HuffPo content for free.
We barter our writing in exchange for having our brand extended to hundreds of thousands of readers. I have written for plenty of little art magazines that pay thirty bucks for a review, keep the copyright and never really get read outside of a few dozen people, a hundred tops. Keep your chump change fellas. The new paradigm offers writers an equity in their own name that you'll never be able to build.