Jon Lackman is a PhD student at NYU. His dissertation (in progress) is “Invective in Mid-1800s French Art Criticism.” He has written for Slate, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. He sometimes tweets.
Lackman's Posts:
6 October 2009 | Museums
From the
30 September 2009 | Photography
Thomas Morton recently wrote for Vice: … Detroit is being descended on by a plague of reporters … The interest in coverage is legitimate … [but they all] write the same story as everyone else. The photographers are the worst. Basically the only thing they’re interested in shooting is ruin porn. On The Media‘s Bob [...]
30 September 2009 | Uncategorized
Artsjournal.com blogger Tyler Green has taken aim at an ongoing contest sponsored by the National Arts Journalism Program, a contest being co-directed by Artsjournal.com founder and editor Douglas McLennan (Green hasn’t mentioned the connection): Several weeks ago, the National Arts Journalism Program launched a contest hoping to find new models for arts journalism. I questioned [...]
26 September 2009 | Contemporary
From The Prague Post: Galerie Václav Špála’s current exhibition features seven contemporary Czech artists who were invited to collaborate with other artists – their predecessors as well as their contemporaries – from Czech and Western art history. As a result, art history is not only referred to in this show but is also stolen, changed [...]
25 September 2009 | Conferences
The Visual and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Rochester is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a conference this Thurs-Fri (Oct 1-2). Participants include Douglas Crimp, Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, Constance Penley, Kaja Silverman, Janet Wolff, Jonathan Flatley, Julia Bryan Wilson, Darby English, Jennifer Gonzalez, Alex Galloway, Brian Goldfarb, Kimberly Christen, Aaron Glass, [...]
24 September 2009 | Awards, Teaching
From a Pasadena Community College press release: Art History Professor Sandy Haynes, who developed an online version of Art Fundamentals … is being honored with a top award by the international, learning management company Blackboard … her course was one of only eight submitted by faculty and course designers from around the world that was [...]
23 September 2009 | Conferences, Contemporary
This November brings the 1st Former West Congress in Utrecht, “the first major public program of the long-term, multifaceted international research, education, publishing, and exhibition project” that “is an attempt to rethink the West and its art out of their hegemonic self-narration and to propose another, speculative view of the history of western art after [...]
21 September 2009 | Museums
We belatedly catch up with former Met director Thomas Hoving, who finished serializing his memoir at Artnet over the summer: If I could do it over what would I do differently? I would not have gotten my Ph.D. in art history and archaeology nor would I have become a museum curator. I would have taken [...]
17 September 2009 | Architecture, Teaching
From the Yale Daily News: After more than 60 years teaching art history and architecture at Yale, Sterling professor emeritus Vincent Scully is stepping away from the lectern and turning his attention to writing and research. At the age of 89, Scully — a New Haven native who over the years has been called Yale’s [...]
15 September 2009 | Uncategorized
With this quote from Morelli — “. . . [the] art historian will gradually disappear, no great loss either, you will admit” — the Dictionary of Art Historians injects welcome notes of modesty and humor into what could otherwise come off as a po-faced celebration of largely trivial figures. We’ve often linked to the Dictionary, [...]
10 September 2009 | Museums
In a recent essay for caa.reviews, Carleton College Director of Exhibitions and Curator of the College Art Collection Laurel Bradley considers the fate of the university art museum, a topic on many minds following the recent Rose Art Museum debacle: Between 1942 and 2008 campus art museums increased dramatically in number … A new funding [...]
9 September 2009 | Modern, Museums
Hamburg is hosting an exhibition on Rosa Schapire, the art historian, feminist and champion of Die Bruecke (she arranged Karl Schmidt-Rottluff‘s first solo show). She battled sexism and anti-Semitism to become a significant scholar and collector, without the help of an inheritance or a rich husband.
8 September 2009 | Uncategorized
We return from hiatus to continuing controversy over the Muhammad cartoons, this time triggered by the decision Yale University Press made to remove them from Jytte Klausen’s new book, “The Cartoons that Shook the World.” In other news, Harvard has recently tenured one East Asian art scholar and two American art scholars: Former Associate Professor [...]
1 June 2009 | Uncategorized
We’ll return Tuesday, September 8, 2009.
28 May 2009 | Books
Thames & Hudson managing director Jamie Camplin writes in The Art Newspaper: Is there a crisis in art book publishing? … The challenges are real and substantial, but they are only obliquely connected with the economic downturn … The first is the obvious one of reaching consumers. The growth in public interest in art during [...]
28 May 2009 | Books, Contemporary, Photography
In caa.reviews, Matthew Biro considers a new book by Michael Fried: Two related projects are combined in Michael Fried’s well-observed, conceptually ambitious, and beautifully written new book, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. First, the text presents a formal and theoretical justification of tableau photography since the late 1970s … Second, Fried puts [...]
27 May 2009 | Books, Renaissance
In caa.reviews, Susan Donahue Kuretsky considers Christopher S. Wood’s Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art: Wood’s study attempts in part to redress limitations in traditional formulations of the Renaissance (familiarly defined in relationship to Italy) as a myth of rebirth, repetition, and revival of classical antiquity in art following a dark period of [...]
26 May 2009 | Uncategorized
From the Wall Street Journal: The Obamas are sending ripples through the art world as they put the call out to museums, galleries and private collectors that they’d like to borrow modern art by African-American, Asian, Hispanic and female artists for the White House. In a sharp departure from the 19th-century still lifes, pastorals and [...]
21 May 2009 | Museums
In the June 2009 ARTnews, executive editor Robin Cembalest writes that although museum attendance remains good for now, numerous directors are focusing greater energies on luring visitors, be it with esthetic coat checks, Facebook pages, yoga, or belly-dancing demonstrations: … some have begun reaching out to scientists, futurists, game designers, and other specialists outside the [...]
21 May 2009 | Baroque/Neoclassical
In caa.reviews, David Wilkins considers Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni, by Pamela M. Jones: Who wouldn’t want to be an art historian? We spend our days looking at and thinking about beautiful and interesting things, confronting the past and present through works made by individuals, groups, [...]
