The new grass roots: in which five bloggers, based in Seattle, Philadelphia, Portland, Washington, D.C., and New York, provide an inside look at the growing presence of art writing online

Art in America, Nov, 2007 by Peter Plagens

Roberta Fallon/Libby Rosof: We had noticed that art production and art quality were up in Philadelphia, but reviews were few and far between. The most visible art reviewer in town had conservative, academic, fuddy-duddy taste and could not deal with a lot of what he was seeing. So our mission was to write about everything and especially to highlight those under-covered areas such as young art, minority art, edgy art. As populists, we saw the blog as art activism. Writing the blog is a political act--an end run around the print powers that be. We're philanthropists, dedicating our labor to a worthy cause: the need of young artists

to get reviews, feedback, and put them on the map. Edward Winkleman: It's a marketing tool for the gallery.

What are the boundaries of your blog?

Green: I stick pretty close to art. I figure more people care about Matisse than care about me. I mostly write about 1880 forward, but sometimes I'll write about older art if it is shown in a context that has something to do with contemporary art-world events.

Jahn: PORT focuses on visual art and some architecture, with a particular emphasis on critical reviews. We also have news and interviews (Terry Winters, Elliot Erwitt, etc.). We don't do investigative journalism, though we do break stories when we come across them.

Hackett: The subject has to relate in some way to art. I do a lot of different kinds of stories on my beat (profiles, news, interviews), but reviews are my idea of the heart of the enterprise. That's where my voice is, where I can explore what I know. So far, the Post-Intelligencer doesn't want me slamming anything other P-I critics write. That could change.

Fallon/Rosof: We mainly stick to culture and especially art. But we include diaristic posts, travel posts and just anything we think our readers will be interested in. We take positions on local political art issues, such as being against the the sale of Eakins's The Gross Clinic, and school-district art cutbacks, and being for the moving of the Barnes collection into Philadelphia.

Tyler has cited Joy Garnett's NewsGrist blog as doing a great job of "placing art within a socio-cultural and political context." What I see on NewsGrist is a magazinelike interspersing of short profiles, exhibition reviews, op-ed pieces on how other people are covering things, and Village-Voice-like political takes. Bat what does Tyler's comment mean to you, and why are blogs in general better positioned than print to do what he describes?

Fallon/Rosof: Christopher Knight used his big voice in the Los Angeles Times to do what could be considered art activism when he campaigned in print against Barry Munitz's reign at the Getty Foundation and Andrea Rich's administration of the LA. County Museum of Art. Newspapers have a history of this kind of activism. Newspapers enjoy institutionalized power and art blogs do not. That said, Tyler has also been a player in raising issues and getting institutions to respond.

Hackett: Blogs aren't necessarily better positioned than print to expand the context. That's just bloggers going on about themselves. Good art critics place art within a wide context all the time. Bloggers do tend to go on about themselves, even Tyler, who makes a point of saying he doesn't. Yes, he does, in every sentence.