Ken Johnson (born 1953 in Montclair, New Jersey) is an American artist and art critic who lives in New York City.
He is currently a painter, and exhibited a series of well-received paintings in April 2022 at Kerry Schluss Gallery in Manhattan.
[5] In November 2012, Johnson's review of the Now Dig This exhibition at PS1 for the New York Times caused considerable controversy.
It was considered to be charged with racist biases, consistent with his apparent dismissiveness of women and artists of color in numerous past reviews.
In response, an online petition was launched, demanding that the paper acknowledge their editorial lapse in allowing such a text to be published in its current form, and to address the larger issues of race in contemporary art.