Joan Acocella, Dance and Book Critic, Staff Writer, The New Yorker 

Why write about art? And why read art criticism?

The Arts Critics in Residence series has brought leading arts critics to Stanford campus to engage with these questions—and to answer them through the example of their own work.

The series features brief residencies by internationally renowned critics specializing in different art forms. The critics each give a lecture about the craft of art criticism—how they practice it, how it works, and what it does. They discuss their work with Stanford faculty and students and members of the local community. And they offer a hands-on writing workshop for Stanford students who want to write about art. Students review an artwork chosen by the critic and participate in an intensive session of discussing and improving their reviews. The program has given students the opportunity to review works at the San Francisco Ballet, the Cantor Arts Center, and the San Francisco Symphony.

The series offers a unique opportunity for students and faculty to interact with people who write about art in a non-academic context. It has been a great success, with packed audiences in Levinthal Hall for the lectures and enthusiastic participation in the discussion sessions and student workshops. Over the course of the series, more than fifty students will have had the opportunity for personal and professional interaction with a major arts critic. As one workshop participant said, “This was a wonderful experience -- just the kind of thing that makes Stanford such a special place!”

Critics in the Series:

David Thomson, Film Critic Author, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Frequent contributor: The New York Times, Film Comment, Salon.com November 14-15, 2007

Joan Acocella, Dance and Book Critic Staff Writer, The New Yorker February 6-7, 2008

Anthony Tommasini, Music Critic Chief Classical Music Critic, The New York Times May 14-15, 2008

Julian Bell, Painter and Critic Author, Mirror of the World. Frequent contributor: The Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, and The New York Review of Books March 5-6, 2009

Adam Gopnik, Book and Art Critic Author and New Yorker writer May 13-14, 2009

The lectures by Joan Acocella, Anthony Tommasini, and Julian Bell are being made available on Stanford iTunes.

Click here to listen and watch the lectures on Stanford on iTunesU.

This series is made possible by a grant from the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts and funds from the Stanford Humanities Center, with additional support from the School of Humanities and Sciences, the Drama Department, and the Film Studies Program. Janice Ross, director of the Dance Division in the Drama Department, was instrumental to its conception and success.