Help Desk is where I answer your queries about making, exhibiting, finding, marketing, buying, selling — or any other activity related to contemporary art. Submit your questions anonymously here: http://bit.ly/132VchD. All submissions become the property of Daily Serving. Help Desk is co-sponsored by Daily Serving.
I’m a new arts administrator and I live in [a mid-sized city]. Through four years of art school here and my job I know many artists who live in [this city]. I started writing art reviews last year and all of a sudden I’m feeling pressure to write about my friends’ work. It’s not like they are asking me directly, but hints have been dropped. I have no problem reviewing work that I think is good, but the problem is that there are some people that I like very much but I don’t think their work is that great. How do I get out of reviewing the work that I don’t like, without losing my friends?
This is a sticky situation indeed. You want to write about the artwork that you enjoy, but you also want to support the people you love; unfortunately, sometimes there’s not much overlap between these two groups in the big Venn Diagram of Life. Let’s review some of the ways you can negotiate this minefield without blowing up your friendships.
First, there’s the “it’s out of my hands” tactic, which is my personal favorite because someone else gets to play Bad Cop. If you’re publishing reviews, you ought to see if there’s an editorial policy already in place at the blog/newspaper/magazine(s) with whom you are working. The policy will spell out what you’re allowed to write about and what you’re not, and if you haven’t been presented with one yet, it can’t hurt to ask. Many editorial policies state that a writer cannot review the work of an artist with whom she has a personal relationship. Admittedly, this kind of thing is a double-edged sword: it removes all responsibility for not being able to review friends’ bad exhibitions, but it also eliminates the possibility of reviewing friends’ work that is good. The important thing is that your hands are tied; in either case, all you have to do is shrug and say, “It’s too bad I can’t write about this show.” End of story.