Friday, January 07, 2005
Those Wacky Print People
New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman pays a visit to MoMA today to profile chief curator of prints Deborah Wye and her new print galleries. In the process, Kimmelman manages to piss off print enthusiasts, collectors, and curators by calling those who care about the medium "art's endearing equivalents of train spotters."
But he doesn't stop there. Kimmelman closes the piece by playing the cocktail party "what would you grab first in a fire" game with Wye. She ignores the bait and gives the diplomatic answer. She would try to take it all.
Kimmelman's piece has given me a whole new respect for the Times. Before today I thought that only bloggers were able to get away with publishing snarky comments reflecting personal opinion and closing interview pieces with dumb-ass questions. I guess the Times arts desk's infrastructure of editors, copy editors, and fact checkers missed one this week.
No, actually, they've missed two (Iles, not Isles).
So what's going on? Has the Times's visual arts coverage gone blogger since the new year? Is the Times letting its staff writers send their work straight to press using Movable Type, doing a complete end-around on any sort of editorial function?
Interested train spotters want to know.
Related: Are you an more of an etching or a lithograph person?
