As Full-Time Art Critics All But Disappear, What Can We Learn From the Retiring Generation?
ARTnews notes that when Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight retired at the end of 2025, it marked the departure of the last of three highly influential US post-1975 art critics, following Roberta Smith’s 2024 retirement from The New York Times and Peter Schjeldahl’s death in late 2022. The article cites Smith’s estimate on a 2008 Frieze panel that there were about 30 full-time US art-critic jobs, and Deborah Solomon’s estimate that there were fewer than 10 in 2013, warning the number could soon reach zero amid layoffs and restructures. In a personal account, the author describes entering criticism accidentally, writing for the original LA Weekly (circulation over 160,000) and experiencing the toll of low-paid freelance work, while arguing that archives such as the Los Angeles Times—especially critic William Wilson’s writing from 1965 to 1998—remain crucial for documenting ephemeral art histories.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Biennial Fault Lines and Museum Security Scares