About Look-Listen

About Look/Listen

We launched this blog on August 27, 2008, with an interview with author Chris Adrian. Since then, we’ve written on the closure of Illinois historic sites; interviewed local band Magnolia Summer; reviewed New Line Theatre’s production of Hair; attended several of the Saint Louis Symphony’s “Blogger’s Nights”; weighed in on poet Elizabeth Alexander’s reading for President Obama’s inauguration; followed the sale of KFUO (as well as Sarah Bryan Miller’s coverage of same); and alerted you to cool stuff like Record Store Day, Drinks & Mortar, and the Found Footage Festival…and we’ve done it all in-house. But for quite some time, we’ve dreamed about delivering more specialized arts coverage.

So we are happy to report that as part of the relaunch of stlmag.com, Look/Listen has assembled a team of 13 arts writers (see their bios right here) to pen reviews and report on architecture, books, visual arts, music, theater, dance, film, and television. You’ll still see posts from our staff—but those will tend towards newsy items, book reviews and event previews.

Why are we doing this? That’s a good question. For starters, we saw an opportunity in light of the current trend for newspapers to retire specialized arts writers in favor of general arts and entertainment coverage. Second of all, arts are a huge economic engine in St. Louis: In 2007, the Regional Arts Commission published a study, St. Louis Arts and Economic Prosperity, which revealed that the arts contributed 8,809 jobs and $561 million dollars to the local economy during the previous year. Art and artists have also been the central force behind the recovery of several city neighborhoods; Cherokee may be the most profound example of that.

But we are anything but crass materialists. Though the economic factors are important, we are also concerned with art’s ability to help us find meaning within our own lives. We want to see more conversations like the ones that took place around the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts’ Gordon Matta-Clark/ Urban Alchemy, where the museum’s “Transformations” programming allowed visitors ask big questions about race, class, ecology, food and the built environment in St. Louis. We want to examine, in fine detail, Washington University’s new landscape architecture program. We want to provide informed, up-to-the-minute coverage on the Arch expansion. We want to keep you apprised of the theater and dance productions you don’t want to miss, and help you settle into your seat as an informed audience member; tell you about new (and old) local bands; unpack hidden St. Louis connections with Treme; and provide lots of thoughtful coverage on events like the St. Louis International Film Festival. And though we’re embracing the old school model of specialized arts criticism, we want to take advantage of the digital medium. In the future, we’ll be offering not just blog entries, but some carefully chosen cross-posts, sound clips and video. We also want to embrace the open source nature of this medium, and invite you to talk back to us, whether by email or through the comments section.

In the past 10 years, St. Louis has seen some exciting things—Grand Center’s taking off, interesting artists are moving here from other places, little arts districts are blossoming organically—and we think the next decade will be even more interesting. We’re looking forward to bringing you the details, one post at a time.