Joel Weinstein
http://rworld.thenextfewhours.com/

Can you say, “Conflict of interest?” Many people can pronounce the words, but can they actually do it? Are you willing to flip your golden prose for groovy and, one day perhaps, valuable art works? Would you ever demand sexual favors in exchange for a good review, hissing all the while, “I'm going to make your career”? It happens all the time, at least according to Puerto Rican legend.

Maybe and maybe not. Even if so, what do these two seemingly odious behaviors really mean? In the case of art-for-endorsement, a Seattle writer has exhaustively covered the case of Matthew Kangas, long-time freelance art writer, critic, and self-proclaimed kingmaker. Jen Graves, writing in the alternative weekly, The Stranger, spends page after exhausting page looking into Kangas’s pecadillos, only to conclude that of the many artists Kangas has blithely importuned over the years, almost none felt any pressure or even resentment towards Kangas as a result. The policies of many papers, including the canonic and mighty New York Times, are far more murky than you might expect. One Seattle newspaper asked the writer to choose between curating and writing about art—he opted for the former—but in other respects it appears that his writing career has not slackened a bit.

We suggest that if you want to bandy the concept about, you should read every word of Critical Mess, Graves’s exemplary report, which is available online here. As for what goes on here on the island, we’re all ears. Can anyone actually prove to us—that means at least two sources with first-hand knowledge of the incidents (and come on, in the case of sexual advances, that would mean both the propositioner and the propositioned)—that a writer asked for and received artwork for doing a review or otherwise got favors from an artist he or she was covering? We'd love to hear these delicious rumors confirmed, and given the supposedly rampant nature of the corruption, it should not be too hard. Come forth, deep throats. We can think of nothing we’d rather expose. Real scandals only!