Roberta Smith September 5, 2005

?Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Art Criticism, Art Theory and the Art Market?

Roberta Smith is a widely acclaimed art critic for the New York Times and a popular lecturer on currents in contemporary art. Smith participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art?s Independent Study Program after graduating from Grinnell College in 1969. She was the art critic for the Village Voice (1981?85), and a senior editor at Art in America (1976?80) before moving to the New York Times in October 1986. She has contributed essays to exhibition catalogues on Donald Judd, Alex Katz, Elizabeth Murray, and Cy Twombly. She received art criticism grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1975 and 1980. In 2003, Smith won the College Art Association?s prestigious Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism.

The Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art, organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, are a forum for engaging the public in the creative experience and a discussion of what American art is today. Each year, the series offers new insights and perspectives by an artist, a critic, and a scholar. This annual series is made possible by the generosity of Clarice Smith. For information, please email [email protected] or visit the museum's Web site, www.AmericanArt.si.edu.

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