Fall 2026 Norma U. Lifton Lecture with Jori Finkel
Art History
The Art History Department is pleased to present this year's Norma U. Lifton Lecture with Jori Finkel.
The Treachery of Biography: The Pitfalls of Writing Artist Profiles and Obituaries
Over the last two decades, Jori Finkel has written numerous profiles and obituaries of artists for the New York Times among other outlets. In almost every case, she has to make tricky decisions about how much of their "personal" life to include. Do you mention the children who interrupt studio visits, exposing an artist's other job as caregiver? What about long career gaps that successful artists aren’t supposed to have, or signs of dementia affecting older artists? These details are particularly fraught for women, LGBTQ artists and artists of color, who are at risk of being further marginalized when coverage strays from their work. Here, for the first time, Finkel will discuss how she grapples with the pitfalls of biography in her ongoing effort to counter and complicate the classic great-white-male genius narratives that still dominate today.
Jori Finkel is a cultural journalist based in Los Angeles who won the 2023 Rabkin Prize for excellence in the field. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and the West Coast contributing editor of The Art Newspaper, covering artists and the art world with particular attention to gender issues. Previously, she was a senior editor of Art+Auction magazine in New York. She developed and co-produced the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary Artist and Mother, attempting to flip the script that devalues art made by mothers. She is also author of the book It Speaks to Me: Art that Inspires Artists, called “an argument for why art museums matter” by New York magazine. She teaches "popular art writing" and does public speaking as part of her larger project of making contemporary art more accessible.