Blake Gopnik

Blake Gopnik (born 1963 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American art critic who lives in New York City. He is critic-at-large for Artnet News and writes on art and design for a wide range of publications. He previously spent a decade as chief art critic of The Washington Post and before that was an arts editor and critic in Canada. He has a doctorate in art history from Oxford University, and has written on aesthetic topics ranging from Facebook to gastronomy.

Blake Gopnik was born in Philadelphia, in 1963, to Irwin and Myrna Gopnik with whom he moved to Montreal as a small child. He and his five siblings – Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik, writer Adam Gopnik, ocean scientist Morgan Gopnik, archeologist Hilary Gopnik, and Melissa Gopnik, who manages a non-profit – grew up in Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67.

Gopnik is married to the artist Lucy Hogg and has one son, Aaron Gopnik-Ramshaw, who is a private investigator in Toronto.

Gopnik was educated in French at the Académie Michèle-Provost and then trained and practiced as a commercial photographer. He moved on to study at McGill University, where he received an honours B.A. in medieval studies, with a specialization in Vulgate and medieval Latin. In 1994 he completed a doctorate at University of Oxford on realism in Renaissance painting and the philosophy of representation.

After receiving his doctorate, Gopnik returned to Canada where he held minor academic jobs before switching to journalism. In 1995, he became the editor in chief of Insite, a Canadian magazine of architecture and design, before being hired as the fine-arts editor at The Globe and Mail. In 1998, he became the Globe’s art critic. From 2000 to 2010, Gopnik worked at The Washington Post, as chief art critic. He wrote more than 500 articles about a range of art, from China’s terracotta warriors to Andy Warhol’s late works. He also wrote pieces about design, food, fashion and beer. He was a pioneer in web video at the Post and launched The Daily Pic, a picture-a-day blog.

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