LA Times Art Critic Christopher Knight Wins the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for His Blistering Appraisal of LACMA’s $750 Million Expansion

Christopher Knight, the art critic for the Los Angeles
Times, has won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, the most
prestigious award in the field. He earned the distinction for his
columns analyzing—and criticizing—the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art’s controversial Peter Zumthor-designed renovation and the
effects it would have on the museum’s mission and display of its
collection.

Knight is a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (1991,
2001, and 2007), but this year marks his first win. He beat
out Justin Davidson of New York magazine, nominated
in part for his writing on the Hudson Yards development in New
York, and Soraya Nadia McDonald of The
Undefeated, honored for her work exploring the intersection of
film, theater, and race.

The jury said Knight’s work demonstrated “extraordinary
community service by a critic” through the application of “his
expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the
L.A. County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s
mission.”

Knight’s columns explore the shortcomings of LACMA’s renovation
plan from the inside out, including an exploration of the
practical challenges presented by Zumthor’s proposed concrete
walls and a thorough analysis of
reduced size of the exhibition space in the new building.
Non-LACMA-related columns in the winning body of work
include reviews of MOCA’s “Pattern and
Decoration” exhibition and “Book of Beasts,” a show on
medieval bestiaries at the Getty.

This has been a big year for the veteran art critic: Knight also
received a $50,000 Lifetime Achievement Award in Art Journalism
from the Rabkin Foundation. Over his long career, he has done much
to chronicle and hold to account the art institutions of Los
Angeles. Knight is as known as much for his encyclopedic knowledge
of Los Angeles’s art history as for his harsh critiques of the
uncomfortable intersections of the commercial and nonprofit
worlds.

Historically, art critics have seldom won the Pulitzer, but
Knight is the second art critic in a row to earn the honor. Last
year, the award for criticism went to New
York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz.

Knight has a master’s degree in art history from the State
University of New York and a bachelor’s degree from Hartwick
College in visual art and literature. Before he became an art
critic, he worked as a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in
San Diego.

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2020 Pulitzer Prize for His Blistering Appraisal of LACMA’s $750
Million Expansion appeared first on artnet News.