Crisis? What Crisis? Or, What can the philosophy of art criticism contribute to art criticism? About 45 years ago I developed a strong interest in contemporary art in the San Francisco Bay Area. A major expression of this interest was of course going to lots of shows of recent art in galleries. For the most part museums did not show contemporary art, although the old San Francisco Museum of Modern Art regularly had exhibitions of living artists; it was there that I saw for example the last show of Philip Guston that opened when he was alive. The Berkeley Art Museum’s so -called Matrix shows likewise presented contemporary art, and focused not on venerable figures like Guston but on up-and-comers; so it was there that I first saw works by a great many contemporary artists including Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Additionally an interest in contemporary art expressed itself in reading a great deal of art criticism, that is, reviews of temporary exhibitions of works by (for the most part) living artists. At first I read a California publication called Artweek, and then expanded to the national publications Art in America, Artforum, and Arts magazine (this last one struck me as superior to the other three, although a particular critic might publish in more than one).