Jori Finkel

Background

Finkel graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Columbia University in New York and earned her M.A. in English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She studied the history of the avant-gardes through a doctoral program at Stanford but apparently did not complete the Ph.D.

She married Michael Benjamin Lubic on Sept. 14, 2008 on a sailboat in the Santa Monica Bay.

She told an interviewer from Zocalo Public Square that her introduction to the art world occurred in college when she worked for the Columbia Bartending Agency in New York—she bartended for Julian Schnabel parties at the Mary Boone gallery.

Editing

From 1998 to 2004 she was senior editor at Art+Auction magazine in New York. She published a memory of Bruce Wolmer, the longtime Art+Auction editor, when he died in 2010.

Teaching

Finkel developed a course for Otis College of Art and Design in 2007 called Popular Art Writing.

The New York Times

From 2005 to 2009 and again since 2013, she has covered visual art for The New York Times on a freelance basis. She has written Arts & Leisure features on numerous California artists, including Robert Irwin, John Baldessari, Karl Benjamin, Doug Aitken, Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge, Enrique Martinez Celaya, Lynn Hershman, Andrea Zittel and David Hockney.

She broke news about the hard-sell strategies for unauthenticated Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso prints taking place through cruise ship auctions. This article led to additional class-action lawsuits and major lines such as Disney and Royal Caribbean cancelling contracts with the auction house.

She also wrote an early report on the questionable ethics of museums soliciting financial donations from galleries for museum exhibitions featuring gallery artists. This article had little lasting impact: a report nine years later in The New York Times showed the problem to be much more extensive.

Los Angeles Times

As staff art reporter at the L.A. Times from 2010 through 2013, Finkel wrote a mix of feature articles and news stories. Her investigation into the finances of the nonprofit Watts House Project prompted the resignation of its founding director, Edgar Arceneaux.

Controversy

Finkel’s job as the art reporter of the L.A. Times was eliminated in July 2013 in a round of layoffs, one of several during a period when the newspaper was up for sale.

In response, 15 California museum directors sent a letter to the editor of the L.A. Times calling for her reinstatement and calling her the "go-to source here for art-world news and analysis, with articles that are consistently insightful and accessible and a byline that is read around the world."

The letter's lead authors were Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum; Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and James Cuno, director of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Artists John Baldessari, Judy Chicago, Catherine Opie, Marina Abramovic, Robert Gober, Doug Wheeler, Doug Aitken and Lynn Hershman were among those who added their names when the letter was posted online as a change.org petition. Baldessari wrote: "It’s a gigantic loss."

The Hollywood Reporter noted, "It’s not often a newspaper writer makes the news rounds."

L.A. Times editor Davan Maharaj responded with a letter, also posted on multiple news sites, identifying other staff reporters who cover arts and entertainment. He stated "our commitment to intelligent and illuminating reporting of the visual arts in Southern California is in no way diminished."

Finkel’s job was not reinstated.

Identity theft

After writing a New York Times article on Lynn Hershman’s double life as Roberta Breitmore, Finkel organized an exhibition for the Santa Monica Museum of Art to present this work for the first time in its entirety: "Identity Theft: Lynn Hershman, Eleanor Antin, Suzy Lake: 1974-78."

Hershman developed the Roberta Breitmore persona over several years in the 1970s, going out on the town in a particular outfit and "ultimately securing, among other things, a driver's license, an apartment, a shrink and a succession of dates."

"Identity Theft" put the Roberta project into the larger context of feminist artworks of the 1970s by exhibiting it alongside other examples of women artists fashioning alter egos or making themselves over. These role-playing projects anticipated Cindy Sherman's celebrated Untitled Film Stills of 1978.

Art in America critic Sarah Valdez said "Antin’s, Hershman’s and Lake’s challenging agenda and high-quality work make their status as lesser-known feminist pioneers bewildering."

Curator Ali Subotnick in Artforum put "Identity Theft" on her top ten list for 2007 shows and called the projects "radical works ahead of their time and all relevant today."

The exhibition coincided with a much larger survey of feminist art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution."

Public appearances

Finkel is a regular lecturer at museums and art fairs and a repeat guest on Casey Jane Ellison’s web series "Touching the Art."