The following excerpted from Justin Ruckmin.  This well sums up the arrogance of the gallery/museum culture and the democratization of art and culture.  Thanks again to the Internet.

At the beginning of 2006 Barry Neuman, art dealer, remarked to Artnet Magazine:

I think it’s a safe bet that there will be 50 to 60 new and bona fide (i.e., seriously authored by qualified people) art world blogs by the end of the year.

… to which Kriston Capps, writer for the Smithsonian’s Eye Level blog responded:

“Seriously authored by qualified people,” [is] a sentiment totally contrary to the esprit de corps of the blogosphere. What’s in fact great about most blogs is that they are nonseriously authored by nonqualified people. By the best count I’ve read, there are around 400–500 art blogs in the nation. Assuming even half of those are updated regularly, that amounts to a virtual library of information about artists, trends, and institutions. Even if not all these blogs are of the highest quality, the cream rises—and distributes the best information from the lesser-known blogs. To a certain extent, blogs survive by this network. (…)

(…) Artists, professionals, and enthusiasts writing about art are in fact part of the “actual, hands-on, real-world art scene.”

It is true that art blogs are becoming more diverse, with institutions joining the ranks of the citizen journalist. (…) But even to the extent that museoblogs bring some unique expertise to bear on the subject, the blog model is still fundamentally one that the layman can do as well or better. In other words, I wouldn’t wait for the pros to come ’round on blogs before I started paying attention to them.

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