Reinventing Visibility

By Daniel Grant

Walk into any prominent art gallery, and you’ll see a notebook on the front desk, inside of which are copies of reviews, notices and feature articles on the artists whose work is on display. Some gallery visitors flip through the pages, but few do much more than scan the headlines to see where the artists have been written up. Perhaps those visitors are seeking a better understanding of what they’re seeing on the gallery walls but, more likely, they’re probably hoping to get a sense of the artists’ standing in the art field.

The number of artist write-ups has been declining in recent years, however. This is largely the result of daily newspapers shrinking their editorial departments, which includes art critics. The most recent example is the firing of Sebastian Smee, art critic for The Washington Post, who lost his job—along with 300 other journalists—in early February. 

Newspapers that used to have full-time critics—such as The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal, among others—no longer do, and the jobs of writers who were originally hired as critics have morphed into general assignment feature writers who may get to do an occasional review. 

Reviews don’t sell newspapers, staff journalists are told, and that’s probably true. For artists, however—not just fine artists but authors and performers, too—the departure of a critic creates an existential loss. Most artist CVs include a “Publications” section that lists where they’ve been written up, and private foundations and governmental arts agencies regularly require that artists include these write-ups when applying for grants or fellowships. 

Regardless of what’s said in these reviews and feature articles, they exist as a form of endorsement. “An artist told me, ‘I don’t care if the review is good or bad, I just want a review, because it’s a record that I existed,’” says George Hemphill, owner of an art gallery in Washington, D.C.  

The decline in the number of newspaper critics has generated a considerable amount of anguish on the part of artists. “Sounds like just another door slamming,” says New York painter Tom Christopher. 

According to Fabio J. Fernandez, executive director of the National Sculpture Society, the cost is, in fact, much greater. “When creative thinkers, writers and makers aren’t given forums to present their work, our entire society and culture suffers as a result,” he says.

The New Gatekeepers

Perhaps the story isn’t all doom and gloom, however, if artists are able to pivot to other ways of promoting themselves—particularly with social media. “I don’t think we’re seeing the end of critical validation, but we are in the midst of an evolution,” says Andy Cushman, account director in charge of visual arts at Blue Medium, a New York-based public relations company serving the visual arts, architecture and design communities. “Social media is an incredible engine for visibility, and for a certain demographic of artists, it has already replaced the critic as the primary driver of attention to their work.”

Too many artists wait to be discovered, or they assume that an art dealer or critic will promote their work to great heights. “I advise artists to focus on what they can control,” says Cushman. “Use the commonplace technologies available to you to improve your core communication, an area I consistently see neglected. As banal as it sounds, email is at the core of every successful venture. Build a list of people you actually know and respect. Send seasonal updates. Use the ‘off-season’ to foster genuine one-on-one dialogues that begin with an email and culminate on Zoom. If the legacy critics aren’t there to bridge the gap between the work and the institution, the artist has to be the one to do it through direct, sustained professional engagement. In the absence of a gatekeeper, artists must be their own advocates.”

Promotional Pivot

“Of course, not every artist has the skills or interest in doing that kind of work,” says Shannon Wilkinson, founder and chief executive officer of Reputation Communications, which works with corporations and business executives. “First and foremost, every artist should have a website.” 

For artists who don’t have a website, there are multiple platforms that will make the building easy. Wilkinson recommends Squarespace. “It has several ready-to-go, predesigned templates,” she says. “You just upload your art to the site, and you’re off.”

Another site that can be useful is the online platform Substack, where, according to Wilkinson, “some well- known art critics and historians are publishing memoir-style reflections and long-form essays on art.” 

Substack is paid for monthly, and users upload their writings, as well as their email lists, to develop a readership. Many Substack users ask their readers to pay a subscription to support their commentaries. (Substack takes a percentage of those earnings.)

Substack has been appealing to many art critics, as it offers subscription income and independence from editorial constraints, which some critics see as a way to escape shrinking or censorious legacy media structures. 

Some artists are also producing podcasts, YouTube and TikTok videos, as well as Instagram and Facebook reels. “All of this requires artists to develop or hone skills that are perhaps foreign to them,” says Wilkinson. “Not everyone is comfortable being videoed, and not everyone is a good writer—but everyone is on online platforms these days.”

About the Artist

Daniel Grant is the author of The Business of Being an Artist.