The New Criterion

The New Criterion was founded in 1982 by The New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer. He cited his reasons for leaving the paper to start The New Criterion as "the disgusting and deleterious doctrines with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages", as well as "the dishonesties and hypocrisies and disfiguring ideologies that nowadays afflict the criticism of the arts, [which] are deeply rooted in both our commercial and our academic culture". "It is therefore all the more urgent", he went on to say, "that a dissenting critical voice be heard, and it is for the purpose of providing such a voice that The New Criterion has been created."[5]

Kramer's decision to leave The New York Times, where he had been the newspaper's chief art critic, and to start a magazine devoted to ideas and the arts "surprised a lot of people and was a statement in itself", according to Erich Eichmann.[6]

Contributors to the journal include Mark Steyn, as well as articles by Roger Scruton, David Pryce-Jones, Theodore Dalrymple, and Jay Nordlinger.

In its first issue, dated September 1982, the magazine set out "to speak plainly and vigorously about the problems that beset the life of the artists and the life of the mind in our society" while resisting "a more general cultural drift" that had in many cases, "condemned true seriousness to a fugitive existence".

According to the conservative publication The New York Sun, for a quarter of a century The New Criterion "has helped its readers distinguish achievement from failure in painting, music, dance, literature, theater, and other arts. The magazine, whose circulation is 6,500, has taken a leading role in the culture wars, publishing articles whose titles are an intellectual call to arms."[6]

Since the magazine's founding, many writers, poets, academics, commentators, and politicians - mostly drawn from the conservative end of the political spectrum - have written for it. Contributors include:

Hilton Kramer Fellowship

Since its inauguration in 2013, The New Criterion’s reader-funded[8] Hilton Kramer Fellowship has been awarded to promising writers with an interest in developing careers as critics.

Edmund Burke Annual Gala

First awarded in 2012, The New Criterion’s Edmund Burke Award for Service to Culture and Society is given annually to individuals “who have made conspicuous contributions to the defense of civilization.”[9]

The publication hosts an annual gala honoring recipients of the award. Edmund Burke Award recipients include:[10]

• Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State
• Donald Kagan, historian and classicist
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author and activist
• Charles Murray, political scientist
• Philippe de Montebello, former museum director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
• Victor Davis Hanson, military historian, author, and classicist

• Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts, edited by Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer; Ivan R. Dee, 512 pages, (2007). ISBN 1-56663-706-6 ISBN 978-1566637060
• Against the Grain: The New Criterion on Art and Intellect at the End of the 20th Century, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball; Ivan R. Dee, 477 pages (1995). ISBN 1-56663-069-X ISBN 978-1566630696
• The New Criterion Reader: The First Five Years, edited by Hilton Kramer; Free Press, 429 pages (1988). ISBN 0-02-917641-7 ISBN 978-0029176412

• Lengthened Shadows: America and Its Institutions in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer; Encounter Books, 266 pages (2004). ISBN 1-59403-054-5 ISBN 978-1594030543
• The Survival of Culture: Permanent Values in a Virtual Age, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball; Ivan R. Dee, 256 pages (2002). ISBN 1-56663-466-0, ISBN 978-1-56663-466-3
• The Betrayal of Liberalism: How the Disciples of Freedom and Equality Helped Foster the Illiberal Politics of Coercion and Control edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball; Ivan R. Dee, 256 pages (1999). ISBN 1-56663-257-9, ISBN 978-1-56663-257-7
• The Future of the European Past edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball; Ivan R. Dee, 251 pages (1997). ISBN 1-56663-178-5, ISBN 978-1-56663-178-5

Since 2000 the magazine has been awarding its poetry prize to a poet for "a book-length manuscript of poems that pay close attention to form."[11]

The following poets have won the prize[12] and all have been published by Ivan R. Dee of Chicago:

• 2018 Nicholas Friedman for Petty Theft
• 2017 Moira Egan for Synæsthesium
• 2016: John Foy for Night Vision; Judges: Adam Kirsch, Roger Kimball & David Yezzi
• 2015: Michael Spence for Umbilical
• 2014: John Poch for Fix Quiet
• 2013: Dick Allen for This Shadowy Place;[13] Judges: Debora Greger, The New Criterion Editor and Publisher, Roger Kimball, and The New Criterion Executive Editor and Poet David Yezzi
• 2012: George Green for Lord Byron's Foot[14]
• 2011: D. H. Tracy for Janet's Cottage[14]
• 2010: Ashley Anna McHugh, Into These Knots (ISBN 156663878X)[11]
• 2009: William Virgil Davis, Landscape and Journey (ISBN 1566638399)[11]
• 2008: Daniel Brown, Taking the Occasion (ISBN 1566638011)[14]
• 2007: J. Allyn Rosser, Foiled Again (ISBN 1566638089); Judges: David Barber, Roger Kimball, Hilton Kramer, Rachel Hadas, and David Yezzi[11]
• 2006: Bill Coyle, The God of this World to His Prophet (ISBN 1566637104)[11]
• 2005: Geoffrey Brock, Weighing Light (ISBN 1566636671); Judges: W. S. Di Piero, Roger Kimball, Hilton Kramer, Rachel Wetzsteon, and David Yezzi[11]
• 2003: Deborah Warren, Zero Meridian (ISBN 1566635969)[11]
• 2002: Charles Tomlinson, Skywriting and other poems (ISBN 1566635411)[11]
• 2001: Adam Kirsch, The Thousand Wells (ISBN 1566634512)[11]
• 2000: Donald Petersen, Early and Late: Selected poems (ISBN 1566633974)[11]

• Official website
• Dispatch, The New Criterion blog