Please put me on your email list for events. Best regards, Michael

But it might have been more than that…

I heard something really important about the fact of ‘local’ in the conversation, that I think is undeniably essential to the subject, ‘Art Criticsm’, despite the very valid point you raise above about the changing face of the bigger picture of journalism/criticism.

I’d like to suggest that the sense of frustration around being successful in this discipline IN PHILLY validates in an important way the ‘local’ focus of the discussion. Perhaps an awkward Etsy analogy will help here: it seems to me that before Philly (art, artists, crticism, critque, etc.) can even get listed in the ‘marketplace’ (which has that global reach), it needs to have a ‘product’ of some sort to list.

In other words, the focus on the fact of the ‘local’ seems like an attempt to work out just what it is that’s going on here, a search for a way to define THAT so it might be coherent enough to be digested/reacted to by the larger global community. From the histories recounted lastnight it seems as if Philly’s been moving towards THAT, but the lack of *something* to contextualize it all makes us somewhat less viable on the larger scale.

Sure individual publishers have that global reach through the wonders of the interwebs. Libby and Roberta are a shining example to your point here. Additionally, individual artists are putting their work out to the larger global community through the digital realm. However, in this thing called the ‘Art World’, without that special *something* to hold it all together it just doesn’t quite work the same way. And its clear that whatever that *something* might be for Philly, it’s gonna be a whole lot about what’s happening HERE.

So it starts to sound like i’m suggesting that the Art World goes unaffected by this shift you bring up. But that can’t be quite right…

Just some thoughts. Thanks again to P’unk, and special kudos to Rick, for starting this conversation.