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Four Score: A Chronology

My mother Frances gave birth to me at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in New York City on December 19, 1943, and brought me home to our rented house on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village. […]

Duane Michals: National Arts Club (2000)

[This is the fourth in a series of decade-by-decade posts of material from my archives. For the third, click here.

By 2000 I had left the New York Observer, relinquishing — though not without a fight — the column I had run there from 1988-97 when they demanded ownership of copyright to my articles. The […]

John Szarkowski: “Photography Until Now” at MoMA (1990)

What we’re offered instead is merely a set of pictures John Szarkowski likes — a comparative bagatelle … Such a misuse of power, prestige and influence is an effective if lamentable indication of why the Modern’s credibility and influence on the medium have waned so dramatically during the last decade of his tenure. […]

Birthday Musings 12/19/17

According to the stats provided by my gym, over these past two years I have lifted more than 600,000 pounds, which equates to 76 elephants. This year I’m taking those pachyderms as symbolic of the Republic Party’s crushing weight on democracy; so, to quote Allen Ginsberg, “America, I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.” […]

PRC Founder’s Talk (2)

I’ve spent some time in recent years pondering the word citizenship. This began when a good friend pressed me to define the public function of criticism more precisely. To my considerable surprise, I heard myself explain, “It’s the activity of responsible citizenship within a given community.” Though I’ve worked as a professional critic for close to thirty years, I hadn’t known I believed that. […]