Paddy Johnson is a New York-based art critic, blogger,
curator and writer. Johnson is the founder and editor of Art Fag City, which is
an art blog.
Biography
Born in Guelph, Ontario, Johnson was educated at Mount
Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick and continued her education at
Rutgers University. She has slowly gained notoriety as an art critic in the New
York art scene. She is also known for her live coverage of major art fairs such
as the Armory Show, Venice Biennale, Frieze Art Fair, and Art Basel in Miami
and Switzerland.
She lives and works in Brooklyn, and she pens a regular
column for L Magazine in New York. Her work has appeared in numerous
publications, including ArtReview, Art & Australia, Art in America,
artkrush, The Daily Beast, FlashArt, Flavorpill, The Guardian, The Huffington
Post, More Intelligent Life, New York Press, NYFA Current, Print Magazine, The
Reeler, Time Out NY.
She has worked with Location One as a visiting critic and
attended the 2007 iCommons conference in Croatia as a blogger. In 2008, she
served on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowships and
became the first blogger to earn a Creative Capital Arts Writers grant from the
Creative Capital Foundation which is part of the Andy Warhol Foundation. She
has also served on a panel for ArtPrize.
She contributed to the book I like your work: art and
etiquette published by Paper Monument.
In December, 2011, Johnson was named in a federal libel
lawsuit in United States district court for a May, 2011 article she published
in Art Fag City, which suggested an art restorer was a forger and committed
crimes.
Sound of Art
In November 2010 Johnson released an LP called "Sound
of Art," a DJ battle record that compiles mixes based from sounds recorded
in art spaces, galleries, and museums in Manhattan and Brooklyn, pitting the
neighboring boroughs against each other. Johnson raised over $11,000 with a
Kickstarter campaign to fund the project, calling upon sound art lovers and a
cadre of collectors, even offering a dinner with herself and artist William
Powhida, a former art critic, to the highest bidder. Johnson predicts the
project will spawn follow-up records, including East Coast vs. West Coast, and
Canada vs. USA. Johnson told WNYC's Carolina Miranda that the Brooklyn
recordings sound more DIY.