Your week has been dominated by the AICA congress in London. The International Association of Art Critics first came to your attention only when you were nominated to join it a couple of years ago. Soon after you found yourself at the AICA congress in Seoul, acting as a moderator for a day of debates and then writing up an overview of the Seoul 2014 congress for the AICA website. Meanwhile you began learning about AICA’s amazingly rich and noble history, its changing identity and its aim or ‘spirit.’

In Seoul you were enlightened by a grand parade of international perspectives concerning just what an art critic or art writer might be today and in the future and might have been in the past. In London’s heavily marketised art world (you were recently informed it corners 76% of the European art market) the role of the critic seems relatively…