Tuesday links, Jerry Saltz edition

I want the old Jerry Saltz back.

You remember Jerry 1.0, the essential Village Voice critic who brought ten exciting ideas (and the ability to present them while turning a phrase!) to each write-up? This piece has none of the verve nor the mental acuity of the old Jerry. It's cheerleading, the cloaking-of-self in the New York art-flag the way Republicans cloak themselves in the stars-and-stripes: Lots of The Right Sentiment and little argument. It's putting familiar old-reliables into Dia director Philippe Vergne's head and typing it as mind-reading rather than making a case for change. It's fatherly encouragement -- which is fine -- but it's also Saltz being so busy explaining that the spaces in his write-up are important and full of potential that he never says why they matter beyond the Threadless set. Instead, he assumes we'll agree that they're good because they're artsy. That's art-ghetto group-think at its most insider.

If Saltz thinks something is important, I'm strongly inclined to pay attention. As much as I respect Jerry's eyes, I'm jealous of the way Saltz loaded up every passage in Seeing Out Loud: Saltz wrote sentences so intense that they read like they'd been reduced by a Michelin three-star chef. That is, Old Jerry did more than show up and look. He explained why something was important; he built a case that could convert the unsure, the art-agnostic. Old Jerry delivered the urgency of art like almost no one else. He explained why creation and invention was an artistic imperative and he did so in a way that made the recognition of such a broad societal responsibility. That's a hugely important role for a critic to play.

Sure, some of it is the venue: Saltz left the Village Voice for the US Weekly of New York City, a magazine as encouraging of thoughtful discourse as a Yankee Stadium beer line. It's hard to make that radical a shift in outlet, and Saltz reads like he's struggled with it a bit. (Plus: I'm sure New York editors want different things from Saltz than his Voice editors did.)

During the Voice years few critics were as able as Saltz to explain why art -- both specific work and the reason to engage with art in general -- is important. Be it by blog or whatever, the return of Jerry 1.0 would be good for art and it would be great for New York.

• In the Freep, Mark Stryker examines the just-remodeled University of Michigan art museum. I love the intro quote from director James Steward.
• I love this story of children engaging with Franz West at LACMA. 
• This is a right-idea: St. Louis Art Map, a city-wide blog of what's-going-on arts-wise. Created by a number of St. Louis arts organizations, the idea is to create a centralized www-place where people can follow and engage about the arts in St. Louis. That's important... but if it merely acts as an 'up-with-us!' PR front for contributing institutions it won't work. If it critically examines and if it engages diverse points of view, then maybe...