What role does ARTNews play in the art world?

Question: What role does ARTNews play in the art world?

Robin Cembalest: ARTnews is the news magazine of the Art world. It has the larger circulation of any the art magazines and the audience is composed of people in the Art world that people also (Let’s start again). The audience of ARTnews is composed of people who are in the Art world, Art world professionals, but it also people who are outside the Art world who have a general interesting culture, and it’s written in way that it can be accessible to the people in the Art world and to the general broad audience.

Question: How do you write about art?

Robin Cembalest: Well, the process is journalistic process. It is the same as any kind of journal. Well in ARTnews we have two kinds of writing. We have the feature well, which is the journalism, which is reporting, which are the profiles, the trend stories, the investigator reporting that might be an art restitution of works that were eluded during the holocaust or antiquities or something like that and then we have the critical section of reviews. The writing is slightly different, because in the review section, you are talking about giving a value judgment of whether or not the show was good or bad.

Question: Do you view ARTnews as a tastemaker?

Robin Cembalest: I think that the role of ARTnews is kind of painting a boarder of picture of all the people, the intuitions, the places that are shaping the world of art. So, I think it’s less may be in terms of shaping taste as on reporting all the different things that are going on out there.

Question: Why is ARTnews still important?

Robin Cembalest: Because, I think that the writing is excellent. I think the writing is accessible. The way that we write about ART isn’t based on theory. I mean it’s not through the lens of postmodernism, post – structuralism, different theory it’s write certainly know about those things, but the writing itself is clear and accessible and in at another case even in the criticism what we try and be as accessible to the insider as to the general audience.

Recorded: 1/14/08