"[3] Kramer contended that federal funding of the arts favored political correctness over artistic merit.
He wrote that the biennials "seem to be governed by a positive hostility toward — a really visceral distaste for — anything that might conceivably engage the eye in a significant or pleasurable visual experience.
"[2][3] Hilton Kramer died of heart failure on March 27, 2012, in Harpswell, Maine, two days after his 84th birthday.
The critic sarcastically described an artwork in the show, "It is said to be a great hit with the schoolchildren who are marched through the Whitney for the purposes of cultural enlightenment.
"[11] In a 1979 New York Times exhibition review of a Great Depression Era artist collective Kramer stated "The truth is, a group like the American Abstract Artists no longer has any serious function to perform, and its continued existence is little more than an act of nostalgia...
"[12] Kramer regarded Harold Rosenberg’s essay on action painting, published in ARTnews in December 1952, as “intellectually fraudulent.”[6] When Philip Guston's 1970 Marlborough Gallery exhibit in New York City signified a change from his lyrical abstraction to a rambunctious personal late style, Kramer disapproved calling Guston a "stumblebum.