Journalism won’t die if you donate. Support Voice of San Diego today!
The Union-Tribune’s former longtime art critic, Robert Pincus, will assume a fundraising and grant-writing post with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego at the end of the month.
Pincus wrote for the U-T for 25 years, and for the Los Angeles Times for a few years before that. The U-T’s decision to lay Pincus off last year prompted an outcry in the arts community and led his supporters to launch a campaign for his reinstatement. A local artist posted a scathing complaint directly to the U-T’s website late last fall, protesting the paper’s solicitation of bloggers to cover local arts after Pincus had been let go. In the public conversations about art journalism in San Diego, U-T editor Jeff Light said the paper was trying to innovate new ways to cover arts while trying to reduce costs.
At a forum on the topic of art and culture in San Diego at La Jolla’s Warwick’s bookstore last summer, a panel of speakers included Pincus, Light and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego chief Hugh Davies. There, some audience members brainstormed aloud an idea to pitch in funds for some kind of roving critic’s chair, which Pincus could potentially hold. But this news appears to take Pincus in a different direction.
I’m the arts editor for VOSD. Please contact me directly at kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0531 and follow me on Twitter: @kellyrbennett.