Jori Finkel is a journalist who covers art from the West Coast for The New York Times and The Art Newspaper. Her writing has also been published in W magazine, Art in America, ARTnews, and Art+Auction magazine, where she was previously a senior editor in New York. She lectures regularly at museums and art fairs and also appears on NPR, PBS and CNN broadcasts as part of her larger project of making contemporary art more accessible. In 2018 she developed and co-produced for KCET the Emmy-nominated documentary Artist and Mother. Her book It Speaks to Me: Art that Inspires Artists (Prestel) was called “fascinating” by Publishers Weekly and “an argument for why art museums matter” by New York magazine.
Sebastian Smee is an art critic for the Washington Post and the author of “The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art.” He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2011 while at the Boston Globe and teaches non-fiction writing at Wellesley College. He has written books on Lucian Freud and Mark Bradford, and is currently writing a book about Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet during the siege of Paris and the Paris Commune, 1870-71.
Siddhartha Mitter writes about art, creative communities, and their social context. His writing includes artist profiles, scene stories and reported essays, and criticism. His stories have engaged particularly with art and culture work in the urban United States, in the American South, and in multiple locations in Africa, from where he was reporting frequently prior to the pandemic. Currently, Siddhartha writes mostly for the New York Times. He has also contributed recently to W Magazine, National Geographic, and others. He was a regular contributor to the Village Voice prior to its closure in 2018; previously he wrote for the Boston Globe (on music) and was the culture reporter at WNYC New York Public Radio from 2006-09. Siddhartha has also contributed to Artforum, Art in America and others.