Contributor

Lita Barrie

Art critic: journalist, blogger and essayist

"As an art critic Lita Barrie writes art. Her essays are prose-poems" - Martin Nakell, poet ( winner of the Gertrude Stein Poetry Award,)  Professor of Creative Writing, Chapman University. Lita Barrie is an internationally published art critic, based in Los Angeles. Born and educated in New Zealand, where the National Library, Te Puna Matauranga O Aotearoa, keeps an archive of her art publications, Barrie's significance as an art critic and feminist theorist, is discussed in the New Zealand Encyclopaedia. "Lita Barrie was one of the few New Zealand intellectuals to engage with post-structural thought, especially French feminist writing…..It is good to see that her efforts have been recognized in a New Zealand Government Encyclopaedia article that otherwise dismisses as “opaque” or ignores as unimportant the important new tendency to which she belongs." - Tony Green, author, Professor Emeritus, former Head of Art History, Auckland University,New Zealand. Barrie was trained as a professional journalist after gaining her post-graduate degrees in philosophy ( specializing in aesthetics.) Her art essays are published in museum monographs,( including the New Zealand National Art Gallery's Barbara Kruger exhibition catalog)art gallery art catalogues, and university press essay collections. In New Zealand she was awarded four Queen Elizabeth 11 Arts Council Grants and a Harkness Grant for her art criticism. In the 1980s she was a weekly newspaper art columnist for the New Zealand National Business Review. She also contributed to The Listener, Art New Zealand, Landfall, AGMANZ, ANTIC and Sites. Barrie re-located to Los Angeles in 1990 - soon after spending six months in Europe viewing art museums on a travel grant. She became a contributing editor to Artweek, Los Angeles correspondent for Artspace and also contributed to Art Issues, Visions and Vernacular. Barrie taught aesthetic philosophy at Art Center College of Design, Claremont Graduate University, Otis School of Art and Design and writing at Scripps University and California State University Los Angeles. Her art criticism currently appears in Hyperallergic (Weekend Issue), Huffington Post, Painter's Table, art agenda, Artweek.la and art ltd. Barrie is currently working a book of collected essays and interviews on Space Exploration in Southern Californian Art and Culture. Website: http://www.litabarrie.com