LONGFORM: Roberta Smith on Painter Elizabeth Murray

Anderson Collection at Stanford University

03.16.2019

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While we have certainly placed our share of attention on our friend Jerry Saltz here at Daily Plinth, we would be grossly negligent if we did not also draw attention to his (and we are certain he would agree with this attribution) smarter, more accomplished, and generally better half, art critic Roberta Smith. We are sure there is a larger metaphor in here somewhere, but you’re going to have to take a little more time, and pay a little closer attention to this video with Roberta, as compared to last week’s video with Jerry. You will be rewarded.

After participating in the Whitney Independent Study Program in the late 1960s, Smith got her career off to an auspicious start in New York in the 1970s with a variety of gigs at the Museum of Modern Art, Paula Cooper Gallery, and Donald Judd’s studio, as well as writing for the Village Voice. In 1986, she began writing for The New York Times, joining them full-time in 1991, and then becoming the paper’s co-chief art critic – with Holland Cotter – in 2011. In 2003 she received the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism.

In this video, Smith is in conversation with curator and writer Jason Andrew, for the Burt and Deedee McMurtry Lecture series at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University on February 6, 2019. Coinciding with the Anderson Collection’s exhibition Spotlight on Elizabeth Murray (through March 25, 2019) the conversation centers on artist Elizabeth Murray – whom Smith has championed for decades – and her influence on other contemporary artists.