Both C-Monster and Tyler Green are right. The LA Times Arts and Culture web page is cocked up. Hey Mr. Times, how hard would it be to make the page look better than it does right now? Currently it resembles little more than a Google search for your recent articles. Big fun there. If I want a Google search for your recent articles, I would have done one myself. It’s not like the arts are a visual thing, either… How hard would it be to throw a picture in that sidebar that right now is showing a very arts-relevant Chevy ad as I glare angrily at it? I’m not coming to your page for the Chevy ads, buddy. If all the Times did was drop in thumbnails next to each article like the entertainment page does it would be a 20% improvement, right away.

By the way, the Times has a short, but tightly written Christopher Knight article on the Micheal Asher show at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, if you can find it…

UPDATE/EDITOR’S NOTE/FURTHER THOUGHTS: Why is this important?  It’s important because the Los Angeles Times is the only newspaper of national and international importance covering the entire Los Angeles Metropolitan region.  If the paper truly wants to serve in that role, and I believe it does, it needs to prioritize (and expand) its arts coverage at a critical time when Los Angeles is widely perceived to be ascendant, both as a center for the exhibition of art, but also as a center for art education and art making.  In the United States, the arts are at a crossroads, with the New York oriented art press increasingly irrelevant and out of touch with a rapidly evolving art culture and the emergence and increasing relevancy of previously overlooked regional cultures and smaller cities.  I would argue that the US no longer has any city that can truly claim to be the nations “art capital” and that we are seeing a multi-polar art industry and culture begin to mature and come into its own, and as Los Angeles is a leading player in that dynamic, it’s time for the LA Times to start treating its arts coverage with the dignity and prominence that it really deserves.

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