Current Keynote Speaker

Santa Fe Presents is pleased to welcome Roberta Smith, Senior Art Critic for the New York Times, as the keynote speaker at this year’s ART Santa Fe. Roberta Smith brings to this year’s ART Santa Fe Presents lecture series over forty years of experience working within and writing about the complexities and nuances of the contemporary art world.

Roberta Smith began writing for the New York Times in 1986 and has established a substantial collection of art criticism and observation not only from the highlights and vanguards of the art world, but from its nooks and percolating corners as well. A quick survey of contemporary books about art and artists immediately shows just how much influence Smith has had as a critic—she is quoted with almost unparalleled frequency.

Smith recently ignited a buzz of controversy in New York and the art world at large with her February 2010 article criticizing the large contemporary art museums (e.g., MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim) for playing it “safe” by presenting, “example after example of squeaky-clean, well-made, intellectually decorous takes on … art that is most associated with the label Post-Minimalism.” Smith called on curators to “…be more ecumenical, to do things that seem to come from left field…. They need to think outside the hive-mind…” Unsurprisingly this clarion call has stirred up quite a mix of reaction and debate.

Smith is often lauded for her clear and accessible writing style. Perhaps the popularity and long-running success of Smith’s voice results, at least in part, from her early decision not to rigidify her likes and dislikes but to maintain an openness to the new and the different. “I wanted to stay open and avoid the hardening of the visual arteries …where you lose your ability to see new art.” Her job, as she says, is looking. “I learn from everything I look at, good, bad, or indifferent.” Her lecture at ART Santa Fe Presents this summer promises to be not only edifying but inspiring and challenging.

Born in New York, Smith grew up in Lawrence, Kansas where her father was a professor. Her mother’s love of art, and time abroad in Europe during her father’s Fulbright year, gave Smith an early interest in art. During her undergraduate years at Grinnell College, Smith was a summer intern at the prestigious Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. She followed that with an independent study program at the Whitney Museum where she met Donald Judd. These early experiences were fundamental and she resolved to pursue a career in the art world, although she had not then thought about becoming a critic. After graduating she worked at the MoMA as well as for Donald Judd, immersing herself in his works and writings. Her work with Judd was the inspiration for her first critical piece: a letter-to-the-editor response to a critique of Judd in Artforum.

Soon afterward Smith quit her job at the MoMA to focus on developing her career writing about art. She began to write articles for Art in America and the Village Voice! among other publications. Her work is wide-ranging, encompassing not only contemporary fine art and artists but also the decorative arts, Outsider Art, design, and architecture. In addition to writing for the New York Times, she has written numerous monographs for artists and a featured essay in the 1975 Donald Judd catalogue raissoné. She was recognized with the prestigious Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism in 2003.

Roberta Smith’s keynote lecture is just one of the many events that will make this summer’s edition of ART Santa Fe an all-inclusive arts and culture experience. The art fair, running from July 15 to 18 at the Santa Fe Convention Center in the heart of downtown, will bring together galleries, artists, and collectors from all over the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

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