Times Art Critic Knight Receives Mather Award

Times art critic Christopher Knight has won the College Art Assn.’s 1997 Frank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in art criticism. Among the nation’s highest honors in the field, the award was presented Friday at the association’s annual meeting at the New York Hilton.

In a formal citation, Knight was lauded for writing about a wide range of subjects “with intelligence, style and integrity” and for bringing “an incisive point of view” to a vast audience. “At a moment when serious daily newspapers constitute something of an endangered species and their pages include very little informed, well-reasoned, engaging art criticism, the [Mather] committee is particularly pleased to present this award to a critic who not only is up to the challenge of grueling deadlines but raises journalism’s standards,” the citation stated.

Knight joined The Times in 1989 after the closing of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, where he spent nine years as art critic. He also served for three years as curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Knight received his master’s degree in modern art history from the State University of New York in 1976 and his bachelor’s degree in literary and visual art from Hartwick College in 1972.

A five-time winner of the Chemical Bank Award for Distinguished Newspaper Art Criticism, Knight was a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in criticism. He is the author of two books, “Last Chance for Eden: Selected Art Criticism, 1979-1994” and “Art of the Sixties and Seventies: The Panza Collection.”