The Washington Post eliminated his weekly In the galleries Art column with immediate effect, as first reported in BmoreArt and confirmed by Hyperallergic.
In an email sent to several art exhibition spaces in the Washington, DC area on Monday, August 19, columnist and critic Mark Jenkins announced that the series would be discontinued after the final installment in this Sunday’s print edition.
Jenkins, a freelance critic, wrote the column for 13 years and it appeared online every Friday.
Jenkins’ In the galleries The series focused its criticism on the DC area and provided readers with consistent local art criticism. In a statement to HyperallergicA Washington Post A spokesman said the newspaper “remains committed to covering local art, including galleries and museums, across all platforms.” Jenkins declined to comment.
Some say the decision is a blow to the newspaper’s coverage of local arts issues.
“Removing his column would mean destroying an invaluable support for local galleries, arts agencies and artists alike, which would have significant ripple effects on the arts economy in Washington, DC,” said Timothy Brown, director of the nonprofit International Arts and Artists at Hillyer in Dupont Circle. Hyperallergic. The organization’s recent solo exhibition of works by Andrea Sherrill Evans was featured in last week’s column.
Other rooms that can be reached by Hyperallergicincluding the BlackRock Center for the Arts and the Zenith Gallery, said They were saddened by the loss. Some speculated that the Jeff Bezos-owned publication was trying to appeal to a more international audience.
“Covering a city’s arts will never get as many online clicks as a national story, especially when it revolves around politics and outrage,” wrote Cara Ober and Michael Anthony Farley in BmoreArt. (Ober also contributed Hyperallergic.)
“The readers of regional cultural reviews, however, are much more engaged than the average reader,” Ober and Farley continued. “These are the readers who come to events. These are the readers who eat at the restaurants on the way to the theater. These are the readers who buy the art.”
The Washington PostThe decision to cut Jenkins’ weekly art column is a sign of an increasingly thin art critic workforce. In 2018 New York MagazineJerry Saltz, chief art critic at the University of California, called members of this industry a “dying species.”
A 2017 survey of over 300 cultural journalists conducted by Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab found that a third of respondents “write in a way that regularly touches on political issues,” underscoring their role in important societal conversations. The survey also revealed tremendous job insecurity in the industry, with more than half of respondents reporting annual incomes of $20,000 or less.
Jenkins also writes features and individual reviews for the Washington PostIn the email he sent to galleries, reviewed by Hyperallergic, Jenkins said he expected the newspaper to continue to publish “some” individual reviews of local gallery exhibitions.
