The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is the Dean of the critics in Seattle. From her perch at the PI, she has constantly scooped the print media on major stories. She broke the story on the Bellevue Art Museum closing and the Use Tax Scandal within the last two years. Her writing is associative, she links different artists with various themes which at times works and other times does not. Longevity has given her an unique perspective on the comings and goings in the Seattle metropolitan area. She is a one woman force that any artist in Seattle has to deal with.

Matthew Kangas, freelancer for Seattle Times, Sculpture, and Art in America, suffers from Clement Greenberg disease. The level of pomposity in his writing reflects a basic contempt for the reader and the viewer. Intellectually he is burdened by Greenbergian formalism. His Art History knowledge is spotty at best and he does not seem to understand the materials and processes which go into making a work of art. As an Independent Curator, he is more successful in staging interesting and edgy exhibitions.

Andrew Engelson is a freelancer for The Seattle Weekly who has the unfortunate lot to labor under the iron thumb of editor Knute "Skip" Berger. When left to his own devices, he turns in consistently competent copy that shows insight and imagination into the artist's process. The problem is not with the critic at this publication but with the suburban myopia of the Weekly editorial staff.

Internet and Radio

Gary Fagin reviews art exhibitions for KUOW's The Beat and for the ARTDISH blog. As a founder of the Seattle Academy of Fine Art, he does not seem to have the intellectual capacity to understand conceptual art, a big problem in Contemporary Art. As an artist, he relies heavily on formal description as a replacement for critical analysis. He simply describes what he sees and leaves it at that. His musings are more editorial and less like criticism.

Jim Demetre is the editor of ArtDish. He is a prolific writer who has graced the pages of many Seattle publications. In taking over the editorship of ARTDISH from Victoria Josslin, he has maintained her standards. His opinions are pretty straight forward but he encourages differing points of view in the forums section of the web site.

Television and Cable
The local TV stations and Comcast do not care to cover the Visual Arts unless you buy chunks of ad space. Comcast is very lame about anything local so it is not just the Visual Arts which are being ignored. KCTS [Seattle's local PBS station] is a financially strapped institution with the lamest local programming in the USA. The folks over at Bates Technical College [KBTC] do a better job with less.

This overview is by no means a complete survey of the Visual Art Critics in Seattle. Some publications like The Seattle Gay News and Tablet are just so poorly written that they do not rate a mention unless the word mediocre is invoked. The Visual Arts in Seattle make a vital contribution to the quality of life in the city. The lack of editorial imagination by all the media seems to be the reason why we do not hear about it.

"Wire-service stories....can’t replace a chorus of strong and independent local voices, the voices that the greater Seattle readership trusts when making decisions about whether to go to this movie or that art exhibit...The reviews of local plays, classical-music concerts, gallery openings, dance events, and rock and jazz concerts form a collective arts water cooler, around which local opinion and discussion gather. They are part of the intellectual life of a community."
Melinda Bargreen, classical-music critic for, The Seattle Times.