John Rockwell is the chief dance critic of The New York Times. He was raised in San Francisco and attended Harvard College (B.A.) and the University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.). Before joining The Times in 1972, he was a classical music and dance critic for the Oakland Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. From 1972 until 1991 he was a classical music critic for The New York Times, and from 1974 to 1980 he was also chief rock critic. Between 1992 and 1994 he was based in Paris as European cultural correspondent. From 1994-1998 he directed the Lincoln Center Festival, rejoining The Times in 1998 and serving until 2002 as editor of the Sunday Arts and Leisure section. He returned to writing in March 2002 as senior cultural correspondent and arts columnist, and became chief dance critic in January 2005. His three books are "All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century," "Sinatra: An American Classic," and "The Idiots," a monograph on Lars von Trier's film for the British Film Institute. "Outsider: John Rockwell on the Arts, 1967-2006" will be published in the fall of 2006.

I think the board's task is to explore the options. Obviously, it all depends on money. In the absence of a major long-term grant like Pew's original, or of an endowment, or of some university willing to take us on and provide funding (as opposed to welcoming us if we come for free), I suspect our approach will have to be more piecemeal. Abore all, we should be an advocacy organization; the confabs of leading editors seemed very productive. Then we can issue reports or welcome fellows as funding permits. Trouble is, to organize all that takes a lot of work, the kind Andras did in the post-Janeway era. Can we afford such a staff coordinator? So my own feeling is that first of all, the new board has to sort out the future, based on inspirational vision and all that, but also on financial realities. The danger is to let the various tails (individual funders with their own agendas) wag our dog.
P.S.: For voters: Remember, I am not an NAJP alum. I was on the old board, but if you want an alumni-driven organization, I'm not your guy. Unless you choose to think of me as a board alum.

Back to the voting page