Michael Kaiser - president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and a turnaround expert who has helped to bail out a number of arts institutions including the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Kansas City Ballet - wrote in Monday's Huffington Post that the profession of arts criticism is deathly ill.
He's not the first to note the trend. But Kaiser blames it not merely on the usual suspects (the decline of newspaper readership; the slashing of local fine arts criticism by media companies that don't see the need), but on another culprit: bloggers.
In an online world without gatekeepers, he notes, everyone's a critic. "This is a scary trend," he writes (in a blog post).
"While I have had my differences with one critic or another," he says, "I have great respect for the field as a whole. Most serious arts critics know a great deal about the field they cover and can evaluate a given work or production based on many years of serious study and experience. These critics have been vetted by their employers."
People are also reading…
He adds, "Anyone can write a blog or leave a review in a chat room. The fact that someone writes about theater or ballet or music does not mean they have expert judgment."
Many of us have encountered critics, on one beat or another, who have obvious prejudices, agendas, or areas of ignorance; many bloggers have valuable knowledge and valid insights.
I think Kaiser's most significant point here is the fact that professional critics have been vetted - and are, in fact, continously vetted while being held to professional and ethical standards. Most bloggers are not.
Everyone's a critic, but not everyone has to support their opinions in the way that professionals do. Until some better, more complete means to judge amateur bloggers emerges, the arts will still need dedicated professional critics.
