Worst Barometer of Art in Houston

The Houston Chronicle fired its entire Art Staff in late November including thirty year veteran Patricia Johnson. The Hearst-owned paper will be pulling art stories from the waiver wire in the future, providing Chronicle readers with no information about anything going on in town besides celebuslut Shelby Hodge’s notes from the aristocratic parties of oil barons and plastic surgeons.

Johnson had been writing since Houston galleries were struggling to sell abstract paintings to collectors in the 70s, she documented the founding of every major alternative space in town including the Lawndale Art Center and Diverseworks and grew into a powerful position in the 90s when marketing companies monopolized her attention and marginalized the little guys. With a send-off mention of the Artcrawl Johnson broke the trend and stuck up for the little guy for once- it was great to see that many people had cut out the map from the paper and were trudging through the warehouse district enjoying the best art festival in Houston.

The good news is that bloggers are picking up the slack with their own priorities; besides, no one reads the Chronicle- their consistent trend is to reprint New York Times articles from the day before, editing out any controversial sentences. Remind me, how much is yesterday’s news worth?

via "Worst of Houston" Houston Free Press January 2008




update- looks like Britt is the new guy at the Chron!