One of the substantial changes in the arts environment that has happened with astonishing speed is that arts criticism has become a participatory activity rather than a spectator sport.
Every artist, producer or arts organization used to wait for a handful of reviews to determine the critical response to a particular project. And while very few critics for a small set of news outlets still wield great power to make or break a project (usually a for-profit theater project which runs longer and therefore needs to sell far more tickets than any other arts project), a larger portion of arts projects have become somewhat immune to the opinions of any one journalist.
This has happened for three reasons.
First, far fewer people are getting their news from print media. There is a reason the newspaper industry is in trouble. Advertisers are spending less in print media because fewer people are reading hard copy newspapers. And for those arts projects aimed at younger audiences, hard copy newspapers are no longer a central element of a marketing strategy. Younger people get virtually all of their information online, through news web sites, social media and chat rooms. And older people are increasingly getting their information online as well.
Second, because serious arts coverage has been deemed an unnecessary expense by many news media outlets looking to pare costs, there are fewer critics and less space devoted to serious arts criticism. Even the New York Times' arts section is dominated now by features and reviews of popular entertainment -- television, movies and pop music -- rather than serious opera, dance, music or theater.
And third, the growing influence of blogs, chat rooms and message boards devoted to the arts has given the local professional critic a slew of competitors. In theater circles alone one can visit talkingbroadway.com, broadwayworld.com, theatermania.com, playbill.com and numerous other sites. Many arts institutions even allow their audience members to write their own critiques on the organizational website.
This is a scary trend.
While I have had my differences with one critic or another, I have great respect for the field as a whole. Most serious arts critics know a great deal about the field they cover and can evaluate a given work or production based on many years of serious study and experience. These critics have been vetted by their employers.
Anyone can write a blog or leave a review in a chat room. The fact that someone writes about theater or ballet or music does not mean they have expert judgment.
But it is difficult to distinguish the professional critic from the amateur as one reads on-line reviews and critiques.
No one critic should be deemed the arbiter of good taste in any market and it is wonderful that people now have an opportunity to express their feelings about a work of art. But great art must not be measured by a popularity contest. Otherwise the art that appeals to the lowest common denominator will always be deemed the best.
G. Roger Denson: Courbet's Origin Of The World Still Too Scandalous For Media-Savvy Facebook!
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Is There a Future for Arts Criticism? - NYTimes.com
Home: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
MediaShift . 5Across: Arts Criticism in the Digital Age | PBS
There is nothing in Ben Brantley's NY Times Bio that says he has worked in the theater world under ANY capacity. It just lists which magazines he has previously wrote for (Women's Wear Daily, New Yorker, Elle etc.)
I am curious. According to Mr. Kaiser's quote - what are his qualifications to be the chief drama critic at one of the nation's most powerful newspaper?
There is nothing in Ben Brantley's NY Times Bio that says he has worked in the theater world under ANY capacity. It just lists which magazines he has previously wrote for (Women's Wear Daily, New Yorker, Elle etc.)
I am curious. According to Mr. Kaiser's quote - what are his qualifications to be the chief drama critic at one of the nation's most powerful newspaper?
I enjoy theater chat rooms and comment myself from time to time, but I certainly don't take other people's comments as authoritative or even reliable. I take them with a grain of salt. The immature rants I don't take at all. It's shocking to me that theater professionals consider chat comments a problem.
Besides, anyone who wants to read snarky, snotty, vitriolic condemnations of shows would be as likely to find them in columns written by certain erudite professional theater critics as they would from some hit-and-run blog commenter. People will find criticism they respect and that's who will have influence. If it's a blogger, so be it. He or she must be doing something right.
But now we have reached the point where the financially beleaguered newspapers are not even filling the vacancy, they are dropping the position altogether. Very often there is no one even vestigially qualified as an expert and what little opinion we get is from "cost effective" freelancers or a gaggle of blog posts. The notion of "authority" is either unaffordable, or worse, in the noisy, all-opinions-are-equal cacophony of response, undemocratic, even suspect. Why should your opinion be any better than mine? I am reminded of S. J. Perlman's pithy remark, "I don't know much about medicine but I know what I like."
Here at the NEA we are trying to do something about this. In partnership with the Knight Foundation, whose domain is both journalism and the arts, we have made grants in our new Knight/NEA Community Arts Journalism Challenge. Each of the winning grantees (in Charlotte, Miami, Detroit, Philadelphia and San Jose) has presented a sustainable business model for a new way of delivering arts criticism. It is, of course, too early to know whether any of these will successfully fill a now alarming vacuum, but too much is at stake not to try.
The future of the arts cannot be left only to the forces of the marketplace and the burgeoning blogosphere. I know what I don't like.
- Rocco Landesman
“The future of the arts cannot be left only to the forces of the marketplace and the burgeoning blogosphere. I know what I don’t like.” Apparently it is to be left to the NEA and other large institutions. I’m wondering if this wouldn’t also lead to the same kind of academic/institutional complex — the echo of “military/industrial complex” is intentional — that now drives new play writing, development, and production, but this time for the criticism of that work itself. Anyway, its us bloggers who can’t be trusted — why, we’re nearly as bad as the forces of the marketplace. It's almost as if I would slag off all arts administrators and bureaucrats as [insert your own negative characterization here]. It's an unworthy dismissal of many voices in the blogosphere who are just as knowledgeable as theatre as Brustein desires. And, obviously, employment by a newspaper is no guarantee of knowledgeability, as both you and Kaiser admit -- that vetting process Kaiser mentions is a bit of an illusion, if what you say about restaurant critics is true.
Michael's post is a must read for everyone who is serious about the future of the arts in this country. Since the time of Plato, informed, expert criticism has paralleled the developing history of every art form. We turn to those, who by virtue of their knowledge, taste and quality of mind, can put our experience of a work of art into context. Whether we agree or disagree with a particular judgment, it is often a critic who makes the case for new work, even new forms, or questions long held received wisdom about the traditional canon.
Before I became the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and before my career as a Broadway producer, I was trained in a doctoral program in dramatic literature and criticism that was started at the Yale School of Drama by its then dean, Robert Brustein. Bob's quaint notion was that a critic should have knowledge of the field in which he or she opined. A drama cirtic, for example, should know, and know well, the whole history of dramatic literature. Instead of the common practice of assigning the restaurant critic to the drama beat when that job becomes vacant, a newspaper editor might actually hire someone who knows the subject.
- Rocco Landesman
That's the equivalent of a blind taste test. If you can't tell the difference, perhaps the difference is negligible-to-none.
God, I hope someone from "American Idol" reads this.
http://culturebot.net/2011/11/11716/why-arent-audiences-stupid-andy-version/
my co-editor also wrote a response
http://culturebot.net/2011/11/11697/why-arent-audiences-stupid/
HuffPo writers keep their copyright. Most publications give your chump change and own your words. Get paid $60 to never be able to say something again? No way...
What I think the web offers writers is more models. People still read the critics that can make or break shows - I'm thinking of the major press outlets like The Times, Washington Post and Guardian in the UK. They just read them online. And those writers are respected differently than are people writing a review on, say, Yelp, their blog, or Broadwayworld.com. I think there is room for all of it.
But you're identifying a predicament that I don't think HuffPo really solves - the plight of the freelance writer. I think the original column is conflating that with the rise of online access and citizen journalism. Sure you get the rights to your work, but HuffPo can sell it's business model without ever having to compensate the writers who make it run.
Theater, like all art, is inherently subjective; a useful critic will explain clearly what she liked and why she liked it, but no more, and any clear-thinking person with good expressive abilities can do the job. He need not have the imprimatur of a large publishing company behind him. When Jayne Blanchard, a superb theater critic for the Washington Times, began to criticize for DC Theatre Scene instead, she did not suddenly become unqualified.
I recommend that Mr. Kaiser rely on the free market to assure quality, in criticism as in everything else. On-line critics who are not up to snuff will draw no readers or advertisers, and so soon will be talking to themselves. On-line critics who meet their readers’ needs will find more readers, and will grow and prosper, just like…oh, and isn’t this a little ironic? Just like the Huffington Post.
Tim Treanor, Senior Reviewer
DC Theatre Scene
Sanford @Parterre Box
Having said that, the blog also contains very interesting and useful information. As with some other blogs, however, you often have to wade through muck to get to it.