New Art Examiner - A Brief History

A Brief History

At the time of the New Art Examiner 's launch, in October 1973, Chicago was "an art backwater." Artists who wished to be taken seriously left Chicago for New York City, and apart from a few local phenomena, such as the Hairy Who, little attention was given to Chicago art and artists. For the generations of artists who grew up reading the New Art Examiner, it provided a unique vantage point outside the artistic mainstream.

The New Art Examiner was the only successful art magazine ever to come out of Chicago. It had nearly a three-decade long run, and since its founding in 1974 by Jane Addams Allen and Derek Guthrie, no art periodical published in the Windy City has lasted longer or has achieved the critical mass of readers and admirers that it did. Editor Jane Allen, an art historian who studied under Harold Rosenberg at the University of Chicago, was influential in developing new writers who later became significant on the New York scene and encouraged a writing style that was lively, personal, and honestly critical. It is cited by its creator as the largest art magazine of the time outside of New York.

Called in Art in America "a stalwart of the Chicago scene," the New Art Examiner was conceived to counter this bias and was almost the only art magazine to give any attention to Chicago and midwestern artists (Dialogue magazine, which covered midwestern art exclusively, was founded in Detroit in 1978, but it has also ceased publication).

The critics and artists who wrote for the New Art Examiner, included Devonna Pieszak, Fred Camper, Jan Estep, Ann Wiens, Bill Stamets, Adam Green (cartoonist), Robert Storr, Carol Diehl, Jerry Saltz, Eleanor Heartney, Betty McCasland, Carol Squiers, Janet Koplos, Vince Carducci, and Mark Staff Brandl.