Jerry Saltz at SAAM

. . . You must exhaust everything you can do before you end

up doing what you must do, what you're driven to do. . . .

~ Jerry Saltz

In October, Jerry Saltz, senior art critic for New York magazine, presented a talk as part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's annual Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art, an annual speaker series. The lecture, originally streamed live, is below. Titled "A Year in the Life of an Art Critic: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Bad", the hour-and-a-half talk ranges from Saltz's perspectives on his job, to what other artists teach us about art, to "essential rules" for artists, which include Saltz's admonition to "not ever be defined by rejection or failure, ever."

Saltz, formerly senior art critic for Village Voice, has published two volumes of criticism (Seeing Out Loud: The Voice Art Columns Fall 1998 - Winter 2003 and Seeing Out Louder: Art Criticism 2003-2009) and twice was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. Winner in 2007 of the Frank Jewett Mather Award in Art Critcism (College Art Association), Saltz lectures throughout the United States and has taught at a number of educational institutions, including Yale and Columbia and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The other 2014 SAAM speakers were artist Eric Fischl (September) and Kathleen Foster (November). Fischl's talk is titled "On and Off the Canvas"; Foster's is titled "They're Saved! They're Saved! Winslow Homer and the Life Line."