“By now, I’m kind of an opinion machine,” says Roberta Smith, co-chief art critic for The New York Times in this special podcast recording with our host Charlotte Burns.

“I would say all art that’s middling-to-great is a strike for freedom; is an expression of liberty,” Smith says. “It’s somebody asserting themselves in a new way. And that kind of newness, you can hear it in jazz, you can see it in painting. Most of us have the potential for newness.”

Smith, who says she once “really thought about becoming a dealer”, talks about art today and her writing. She discusses the ways in which criticism and the media have changed—though her role (“I want to help people see art and have a new appreciation of what they’re seeing”) has remained essentially the same. Since she began writing in 1972, the readers have been, she says, “the engine in my work”.

“Whatever gripes you have with the art world—and we all have them—it’s the most open it’s ever been,” she says. “I can't imagine writing in any other time than this, when there's this kind of explosion.”

For this and much more, tune in today.

Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-roberta-smith/

“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.