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.