Critical Condition

Blogger Tyler Green had a depressing posting today as part of a three part interview he's been running with Christian Viveros-Faune, the art critic of New York's erstwhile alternative weekly The Village Voice, now owned by a Phoenix-based chain. The depressing part is that it emerged from the interview that even while serving as a critic, Viveros-Faune is also the organizer or director of two commercial art fairs, Volta in New York and Next in Chicago.

Green lays out all the reasons why this represents a plain conflict of interest. For starters, Viveros-Faune can use his column to promote artists and galleries he will include in his fairs or punish them if they don't choose to sign up. So long as Volta and Next are commercial operations, this isn't even a gray area — you can't be directly involved with the profit-making end of the artworld and also pretend to write about it from a disinterested perspective. And the response of the Voice that Viveros-Faune's outside undertakings are "curatorial" utterly misses the distinction between organizing a show for a non-profit museum and for a profit making operation.

I'm not at all clear as to what Viveros-Faune means when he says "there is no interest in the art world without a conflict of interest". But I'll look on the bright side and take it as a first sign that he recognizes at least that there is a conflict of interest here. The next step would be to take it seriously.

I'll be taking a three day weekend for the birthday of Martin Luther King. Back on Tuesday.