Roberta Smith

Roberta Smith
Smith in 2014
Born1948 (age 77–78)
New York City, New York, US
EducationGrinnell College
OccupationArt critic
Spouse
​
(m. 1992)​
Writing career
Period1970s–2024

Roberta Smith (born 1948) is the former co-chief art critic of The New York Times and a lecturer on contemporary art who retired in 2024. She was the first woman to hold that position at the Times.

Early life and education

Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, Smith studied at Grinnell College in Iowa. In the summer of 1968, she was an undergraduate intern at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Career

In 1968–1969, she participated in the Art History/Museum Studies track of the Whitney Independent Study Program (ISP), where she met Donald Judd and became interested in minimalism. After graduation, she returned to New York City in 1971 to take a secretarial job at the Museum of Modern Art, followed by part-time assistant jobs to Judd in the early 1970s and to Paula Cooper for the first three years of the Paula Cooper Gallery, beginning in 1972.

While at the Paula Cooper Gallery, Smith wrote exhibition reviews for Artforum, and subsequently for Art in America, the Village Voice and other publications. She has written and spoken about Judd on many occasions throughout her career, and upon his death in 1995, penned his New York Times obituary.

Smith began writing for The New York Times in 1986, and became the newspaper's co-chief art critic in 2011. She has written many essays for catalogues and monographs on contemporary artists, and wrote the featured essay in the 1975 Judd catalogue raisonné published by the National Gallery of Canada. She writes not only about contemporary art but about the visual arts in general, including decorative arts, popular and outsider art, design, and architecture.

Smith is a longtime advocate for museums to be free and open to the public. In 2012, she received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2017, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago awarded Smith her second honorary doctorate.

Awards and honors

Personal life

Smith married Jerry Saltz, senior art critic for New York magazine, in 1992. The couple live in an apartment in Greenwich Village.

References

  1. 1 2 "Roberta Smith". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 Bollen, Christopher (December 9, 2013). "Roberta Smith & Jerry Saltz". Interview Magazine. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  3. 1 2 Russeth, Andrew (September 14, 2011). "Roberta Smith and Holland Cotter Named Co-Chief Art Critics of The New York Times". Observer. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
  4. 1 2 "Roberta Smith with Irving Sandler". The Brooklyn Rail. August 20, 2024. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  5. ↑ Independent study program: 40 years: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968-2008 (1st ed.). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. 2008. ISBN 978-0-87427-158-4.
  6. ↑ "Local History: Donald Judd Design Objects". Judd Foundation. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  7. ↑ Smith, Roberta (April 24, 2006). "Christie's Presale Show: Light and Space Enough to Really See Judd". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
  8. ↑ Smith, Roberta (February 26, 1995). "ART; The World According to Judd". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
  9. ↑ "Roberta Smith with Jarrett Earnest". The Brooklyn Rail. March 2017. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
  10. ↑ Pilat, Kasia (February 28, 2018). "From 'Vicious' to Celebratory: The Times's Reviews of Judy Chicago's 'The Dinner Party'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
  11. ↑ Cotter, Holland; Smith, Roberta (January 4, 2018). "The Met Should Be Open to All. The New Pay Policy Is a Mistake". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
  12. ↑ Russeth, Andrew (May 2, 2012). "Roberta Smith to Accept Honorary Doctorate, Holland Cotter at Work on Book". Observer. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
  13. ↑ "Roberta Smith Reviews Gallery Series Featuring Karl Wirsum". School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  14. ↑ "Frank Jewett Mather Award". CAA. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  15. ↑ "Roberta Smith Criticism A Life Sentence". The Vera List Center for Arts and Politics. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
  16. ↑ "Roberta Smith - American Academy". American Academy. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
  17. ↑ Schachter, Kenny (December 9, 2016). "Jerry Saltz and the Future of the Critic-Artist". Artnet News. Retrieved March 18, 2018.