Christopher Heathcote, one of Australia’s foremost art critics, served as an associate editor of Art Monthly Australia, and senior art critic for the Age.
He has been an academic at La Trobe and Melbourne Universities then the Victorian College of the Arts, and a curator of exhibitions at regional galleries and Canberra’s National Gallery. He has authored two definitive histories:
Inside the Art Market: Australia’s Galleries, A History (Thames & Hudson, 2016) which closely charts the evolution over the twentieth century of rented exhibition spaces into sophisticated, commercially-savvy private galleries; and reveals the transformative roles of key figures who have owned them.
A Quiet Revolution: The Rise of Australian Art 1946-1968 (Text, 1995) follows the transition from the minuscule inert art scene of the war years, shaken by the Angry Penguins avant-garde, to the progressive Internationally-aware visual establishment of the sixties, supporting new generation Colour Field artists.
As well, he is co-author with Professors Bernard Smith and Terry Smith of Australian Painting 1788-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2001) hailed as the ‘classic’ account of Australian art.
Dr Heathcote has written several authoritative monographs on artists including Roger Kemp, Yvonne Audette, Russell Drysdale and William Dobell. He is also a contributor to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and writes regularly on Australian art and culture for the current affairs journal Quadrant.
His most recent book, The Compassion of Captain Cook (Connor Court, 2023) examined the artist John Webber’s interactions with and portrayals of Pacific peoples on Cook’s final voyage.
» PS. A purported CV page about him appears on Grokepedia. It was written by AI without his knowledge, & is NOT true. He read it, laughed, tried to fix it, but the AI wouldn’t let him make changes. Those robots seem to rule!
As well, according to Wikipedia he identifies as Male. No one asked they/her/him/it, so this might be another one of Wikipedia’s made-up facts.
