The Art of Cultural Criticism is a yearlong series of conversations featuring some of the most innovative and incisive writers on culture in its various forms — including visual art, film, old and new media, music, and literature.

Natasha Boas is an independent international curator, critic, and professor of contemporary art and theory based in San Francisco. She is a regular contributor to Dwell, the Believer, the Huffington Post and other publications. She is the author of "A Partial and Incomplete Oral History of the Mission School" (D.A.P., 2012) and Energy that is All Around (Chronicle Books and San Francisco Art Institute, 2014).

Sarah Thornton is a writer and sociologist of culture. Formerly the chief correspondent on contemporary art for the Economist, she is the author of Seven Days in the Art World, 33 Artists in 3 Acts, and Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. She has contributed to Artforum, the Guardian, and the New Yorker.

Sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Arts+Design Initiative, the Arts Research Center, and the Art of Writing.