Independent scholar and critic Michelle Marder Kamhi is co-editor of Aristos, an online review of the arts, and the author of Who Says That’s Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts (2014). One of her main interests is art education.
Kamhi previously co-authored What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand (Open Court, 2000)—which dealt with all the major arts and was praised by the American Library Association’s Choice magazine for its “well-documented . . . debunking of twentieth-century art . . . and art theory.” The Art Book (published by the British Association of Art Historians) called What Art Is a “balanced critical assessment of Rand’s idiosyncratic arguments.” The book was also lauded for its “breadth and depth” by the eminent cultural historian Jacques Barzun, who deemed it “a splendid piece of work.”
After graduating from Barnard College, Kamhi earned an M.A. in Art History at Hunter College. Before joining Aristos in 1984, she had been an editor at Columbia University Press, where she worked on titles in its distinguished Records of Civilization series. She was also active as a freelance writer and editor. Among her independent projects was Books Our Children Read, a film documenting a constructive approach to resolving communal conflict over controversial literature in public school classrooms and libraries.
Kamhi is a member of the American Society for Aesthetics, the National Art Education Association, the National Association of Scholars, and AICA-USA (the International Association of Art Critics – United States).
Articles by her have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Art Education, Arts Education Policy Review, and the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, among other publications. Following the publication of Who Says That’s Art?, she launched her blog, For Piero’s Sake.
She lives in New York City with her husband and colleague, Louis Torres.
Photo copyright © 2014 by Helene Glanzberg