In response to a recent piece criticizing architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, Places Journal Editor Nancy Levinson extends the criticism to the entire field, questioning whether its global scope is realistic.
Levinson argues that the realm of architecture is global, and expecting any critic to have a global knowledge is simply asking too much.
"I'd like to spotlight an issue that's gotten less attention and which seems to me to underlie the contemporary critical dilemma. This is the rise of the global critic, the critic with the world beat, beaming copy from Beijing, Dubai, Rome, Basel, or wherever the newest icon or latest star is being born. In a sense this might seem a natural progression in the portfolio of the critic - a nimble adaptation to a discipline that's gone planetary. Yet the accelerating globalization of architecture culture has created for architecture criticism an unintentional conundrum, which is that it's practically impossible to produce good criticism on a global scale."
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