Edward Rothstein

Critic at Large for the Wall Street Journal. Writer and high profile cultural critic, he served in a similar post at The New York Times, where he worked for over 25 years. In his current post, Rothstein reviews museums and exhibitions about history, politics, science and culture. He has a warrant to write broadly on literature, music, intellectual issues and technology. In his work on museums for the Journal and the Times, he has been developing a unique discipline in the journalistic world, bringing to bear the highest critical standards in his assessment of non-art exhibitions and institutions, including history museums, natural history museums, zoos, botanical gardens, science museums and web exhibitions. In his work as a music critic, he has explored the ways in which music expresses meanings, and the way those meanings connect music with broader themes in social and intellectual life. He explored these ideas in his book Emblems of Mind (1995, 2006), just as he did earlier in his career as music critic for The New Republic and as chief music critic for The New York Times. He is now teaching an introduction to music criticism at Mannes College at The New School, called "Speaking of Music." One of his recurring themes has been the temptations offered by a dream of a perfect world -  a longing for utopia with which he took issue in an important 2001 New York Public Library lecture, "Utopia and Its Discontents." Two-time recipient of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Music Criticism, he was also a Guggenheim Fellow.