Pulitzer Prize–WinningLA TimesArt Critic Christopher Knight Retires
52Dec. 2, 2025
Los Angeles Timesart criticChristopher Knightretired on November 28 after serving thirty-six years in the role. A three-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Knightwon the honor in 2020for his watchdog coverage of the contentious redesign of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which drew criticism over its spiraling cost and for diminishing the institution’s footprint. Also in 2020, he was presented with the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to art journalism, becoming the second honoree to win the $50,000 prize, after Roberta Smith of theNew York Times. Smith, whoretired in 2024, and Knight were among the few remaining full-time art critics working at US dailies.
“It’s impossible to overstate the loss Knight’s departure represents for the paper and Los Angeles, or what a tireless, generous, inspiring colleague he is,” wrote colleague Jessica Gelt in acolumnannouncing Knight’s departure. “He possesses a quiet, encyclopedic knowledge of art, and in column after column he connected the dots of culture, history, folklore, civics, and psychology in razor-sharp assessments of what a piece of art really means, or how a particular exhibition is poised to change the narrative around a longstanding or misguided idea. In short, he is everything a truly excellent critic should be.”
Among Knight’s accomplishments are the publication of the anthology Last Chance for Eden: Selected Art Criticism, 1979–1994, and Art of the Sixties and Seventies: The Panza Collection. He was a regular presence on CNN and on shows including CBS’s 60 Minutes, PBS’s NewsHour, and NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Knight won the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism in 1997, becoming the first journalist to take the prize in a quarter century.
“Art is a mysterious experience, with an object or event as its catalyst,” wrote Knight in his December 1 farewell post. “And because art is experience, it’s essential to be willing to change your mind as your experience unfolds. Art criticism is about writing, a fundamental way to process that mystery, aiming to discover something at least temporarily intelligible. The job of writing for a newspaper is to find ways to invite a reader, whether specialist or generalist, into that process of discovery—all while knowing that somewhere, out in the vast invisible readership, is someone who knows a hell of a lot more about the subject than I do.”