Seattle’s The Stranger magazine gets a new art critic and he’s a bit put off by his reception in local galleries. “There is a mentality and an attitude about art–perhaps stemming from a protectiveness toward it, since it can be so easily dismissed–whose core conceit is exclusion: You don’t have the tools to understand this; you shouldn’t be here. Elitism has driven me away from the art world several times over the years–in Chicago, in New York, and, yes, in Seattle. (Curiously, in London of all places, I never encountered such starchiness.) And this has been true for many of my friends–smart, credentialed people. It’s the real crisis–more than funding, more than education–that plagues contemporary American art.”