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Thank you all for listening.

Well friends, this is my last segment as KMUW’s arts commentator. Over the past 5 years, it’s been my immense pleasure to take in an incredible array of art exhibitions and meet some of the finest artists I’ve ever known.

When I stepped into this role, I had some very serious questions to ponder. What type of critic was I going to be? What were my ethics? On a scale from Bob Ross to Gordon Ramsey, how mean was I going to be? I like to think I charted a course somewhere in the middle, but I always strived to be informative while also delivering an opinion.

Conveying an opinion, for me, is at the heart of the contract between an art critic and their audience. Otherwise, without opinion, you’re writing journalism or art history or something else entirely.

It’s an intimidating thing to share one’s words and thoughts publicly, but I’ve worked hard to craft an informed opinion that, I hoped, would spark conversation. If my words got people talking, then I considered my work a success. I really believe that critical dialogue is the only way to continue to elevate the quality of art we display in this city.

Walt Whitman said, “To have great poets there must be great audiences too.” The same is true for art. We need to be a great audience for art. We cannot afford to get lazy in our pleasantries. We must keep critical, constructive dialogue at the heart of our art scene.

And I am confident that we will as artist Curt Clonts takes over as arts commentator. I am so glad that he will be keeping this rare critical space for art alive on KMUW. Thank you Curt for stepping up. Thanks to KMUW for this incredible run. And thank you all for listening.