Lori Waxman

Art critic Lori Waxman guarantees brief, serious reviews to all visual artists on a first-come, first-served basis in a performance about art criticism.  Stavanger Art Museum and Sølvberget Cultural Centre, in collaboration with Stavanger Aftenblad, have invited Waxman to Stavanger.

Over the course of three days, Monday 16–Wednesday 18 March, art critic Lori Waxman will receive artists in need of reviews as part of her project “60 wrd/min art critic”. She will write critiques in 25-minute sessions on Monday 16, Tuesday 17, and Wednesday 18 March between 12:00 and 18:00 at Sølvberget Cultural Centre.

Reviews will be signed, published and ready for pick-up within the time frame of the performance. Artist, artwork, critic, and review will all exist in the same space simultaneously, thereby helping to demystify the art review process. The reviews will be posted at the performance site and will remain on view for one week. In addition, the reviews will be published by Stavanger Aftenblad following the performance.

Appointments for reviews can be requested by emailing critic@60wrdmin.org . Please include any date and time preferences. In the event that requests for reviews exceed capacity, selections will be made by computer lottery. Participants will be notified via email about appointments and the details of the performance process. 

The 60 wrd/min art critic is many things: an exploration of short-form art writing, a work of performance art in and of itself, an experiment in role shifting between artist and critic, a democratic gesture, and a circumvention of the art review process. At a time when newspaper and magazine art columns are disappearing, the “60 wrd/min art critic” aims to get a community thinking about where the responsibility for art criticism resides.

To date Waxman has focused her nearly two-decades-long project on regional arts communities in a wide variety of locations across America, including Lexington KY, Portland MN, and Indianapolis IN. In the summer of 2012, a 100-day version was included in dOCUMENTA (13), the major survey of international art held every five years in Kassel, Germany. An artist book of those reviews was later published by Onestar Press, Paris. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she wrote one review a day for 163 days, specifically for artists whose shows had been cancelled or delayed by lockdown.