Jerry Saltz

Jerry Saltz
Photo from the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood.
Born	(1951-02-19) February 19, 1951 (age 66) Oak Park, Illinois, USA
Occupation	Journalist, Author, Art critic
Nationality	United States
Period	1990s–
Notable works	Seeing Out Loud: The Village Voice Art Columns, 1998–2003, Seeing Out Louder

Jerry Saltz (born February 19, 1951) is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for New York magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for The Village Voice, he has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism three times. He has also contributed to Art in America, Flash Art International, Frieze, Modern Painters, among various other art publications.[1] Saltz served as a visiting critic at The School of Visual Arts, Columbia University, Yale University, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the New York Studio Residency Program, and was the sole advisor for the 1995 Whitney Biennial. He lives in New York City with his wife Roberta Smith, senior art critic for the New York Times.

Saltz was born in Chicago and attended art school for a few years before dropping out. Before moving to New York at 26, he founded an artist-run gallery in Chicago.

In an article in Artnet magazine, Saltz codified his outlook: "All great contemporary artists, schooled or not, are essentially self-taught and are de-skilling like crazy. I don't look for skill in art...Skill has nothing to do with technical proficiency... I'm interested in people who rethink skill, who redefine or reimagine it: an engineer, say, who builds rockets from rocks." In a 2008 Saltz explained, "I'm looking for what the artist is trying to say and what he or she is actually saying, what the work reveals about society and the timeless conditions of being alive".