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Holland Cotter is still learning

The New York Times art editor and writer discusses life, learning, and the “memory museum.”

By Arts & Culture, Featured

Illustration by Bei Lin.

Even after 30 years at the New York Times, and many more of writing about art, Holland Cotter is still figuring things out. Cotter, the co-chief art critic and a senior writer at the Times, will tell you he is still learning about art every day. Recently, Cotter spoke to SAIC students, staff, and faculty at the Art Institute Tuesday, Oct. 18 as part of the Visiting Artist Program, offering a biographical lecture that chronicled his upbringing and circuitous path to art criticism. The next day, Cotter spoke to F Newsmagazine about the lecture, life, interests, and his career. The following are excerpts from his conversation with Pablo Nukaya-Petralia (MAAH 2023), the managing editor of F.

This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity. The complete conversation can be heard in podcast form on the F Newsmagazine website.

Q: Thank you so much for joining us today, Holland. It was a pleasure to hear you last night speaking at the Art Institute. I just wanted to start by asking how your visit to Chicago has been.

It has been terrific. Apart from the blustery weather, which actually is fine, I’m from New England. So I’m used to this kind of thing. It’s just a little earlier than I expected. I love this city. I really do. It’s a great walking city. And so I’m very glad to be here, always.

Q: I really liked how you opened the lecture with the statement of being a student yourself and a lifelong learner; I was hoping you could speak a little bit more about that philosophy.

Well, I do feel I’m a learner. I didn’t go to school to be an art critic. I had no plans to be an art critic myself, it sort of happened in my life through various routes. And so a lot of my education for a long time was self-education, and learning from older colleagues, and just by going to museums on my own. And so I feel that that process continues today, it had not changed [sic], although I’ve now gone to graduate school and [studied] in a specific area. But you know, every day out is new learning experiences — art changes fast, the art world changes fast. It’s changed remarkably since I first got in to it in the 1970s. And that change continues. So that’s why I identify with the learning process and the being-in-school process. 

And I love being in school. I really do. I went back to school when I was 41-years-old, when I went back to graduate school. And it was the most wonderful experience to do that. At that point, I was really ready to dig in and learn new things, and I was, and I continue to feel, that way too. I don’t think of myself as an expert in any field.

Q: I liked how you opened with this discussion of [Henry David] Thoreau and “Walden,” and moving on to James Baldwin and the other influences and interests you had growing up; almost like self-guided liberal arts education.

I was very lucky with my parents. They were young postwar parents. My dad had been in World War II, been a prisoner of war, escaped, came back to the States. And it was a lot for a 19 -year-old to go through. And they came back in with a very loosened-up idea of what parenting could be, I would say, and they took us everywhere, me and my sister, wherever they went. And they were very interested in helping us become independent thinkers, independent people, and sharing their interests with us, which was the important thing, and their interests were literary and art. And they just packed us along with them.

The times were also right for that. Because, you know, in those days, museums were free. They’re almost empty. And so I could just be there by myself and wander around. And nobody bothered me. And I was learning, I was absorbing all this information. So I lucked out in timing, and I lucked out in family.

Q: You talked about the periods in your life when travel has played what seems like a major part of your upbringing.

Well, the most influential trip was when I was 17 years old, and I was in high school. A friend had been sent away from my parents’ hometown to Austin, Texas, to reform school there. He had been rightfully accused of committing petty crimes in my hometown, which is breaking into houses, but strictly with the intent of being clever enough to break in and leave; he never sold a thing.

I took a bus trip down to Texas one summer to visit him and give him some moral support. And I saw the United States for the first time — it was a trip through the South. It was the summer of 1964. It was Freedom Summer, it was in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, and it was an eye-opener for me. I came from this little suburb outside of Boston, and just to see the rest of America, and a racially divided America. I wasn’t even conscious of that in Boston, and suddenly there it was in front of me. And I met some wonderful people.

Q: One concept you brought up that resonated with me, and I think a lot of folks who I talked with during and after the lecture, was this idea of the “memory museum” that you mentioned. I was wondering how you came to that concept of this personal collection of works that really resonates with you.

I’m working on a book right now. I was contracted to do a book of collective writing from the Times, which is what I’m doing. But I thought that I didn’t want to just reprint stuff I’d written before. And I thought, well, “How can I give this some sort of a shape that would be of interest to me to read?” And I realized that the best way to go about that was probably to give it an autobiographical framework, which is what I’m working on.

I did the [VAP] lecture a little bit as a dry run for the strict structure of this thing. But I kept thinking in terms of the “memory museum” and all this to line up the work I’ve done as an adult now, with how those different interests entered my life as a child and a young adult. I’ve written a lot about Chinese art at the Times, but that interest came to me when I was a very little kid, [I was] 9 or 10 years old, so I thought “Well, I could slide that into that.” Explain why my interest developed when it did and make that the framework of the book.

Anyway, [I] lineup the book in terms of how these different interests entered my life. And how I’ve retained this interest over the years, by the experience I’ve had of art, which have been memorable. I have a terrible memory for some things, but I have a very good memory for images for some reason. So I don’t even have to take notes when I go to a museum to review a show — the visual stuff stays in my brain.

So that’s sort of where the memory museum idea came from.

Q: Another comment I really liked from last night was about reserving your most critical judgments for institutions, and not necessarily artists.

I was making a broad statement. But within that, institutions are very powerful. And they dictate what we see and how we think about things. And they also are meant to attract a broad audience. So I feel that they really should be the focus of serious criticism. And, I mean, they’re the ones who dictate what aren’t we looking at [sic] … and what we consider valuable, and what we don’t consider valuable. So the Museum of Modern Art and so forth, I feel should be carefully monitored. A lot of the art I’ve written about — because of my interests — is most primarily, has always been, in non-Western material. 

I felt like my job has always been to introduce this material … I’m writing about Indian artists and African artists, who are not household names by any means in this country. So my first job has always been to just say, “These people are here, and this is what they do.” And just by saying that I’m recommending them, and saying you should pay attention to them. So that’s what I meant by saying that what I write about is important, what I put the spotlight on, that people should care about.

Q: I’m curious what advice you might give to an undergraduate student or a graduate student who’s still kind of figuring out their path.

I mean, my career was totally unplanned. I never had a plan … There was no goal I had set that I didn’t reach, because I didn’t have any goals. I just went along, and my best advice I can give is to just keep your mind open. Look at everything. Just that, and be generous toward the world. And be generous toward yourself. Just stay open. That’s the main advice I have.

Special thanks to SAIC Free Radio and the Visiting Artist Program for helping to make the interview possible.

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