How Josh Kline Wrote the Essay That the Art World Can’t Stop Talking About
Artist Josh Kline’s essay “New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art,” published by October and made available online for free, has become a widely discussed critique of New York’s art ecosystem, circulating among artists, critics, curators, and dealers. The ARTnews piece situates Kline’s argument alongside Andrea Fraser’s 2011 observation that what benefits the art world can harm society, and notes Kline’s focus on rent inflation, art-market and museum power imbalances, and the constraints facing artist-run spaces. Kline, who had a mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum in 2023, writes that “Contemporary art in twenty-first-century America is sick with problems” and argues that New York City has become “a core problem in American art.” In an email exchange with ARTnews, Kline said he wrote the essay for people within the art world and chose October because of its politics and history and because it would publish the text outside its paywall.
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This story was covered in Restitution Reckonings and Museums on the Brink