Born in Dodge City, Kansas, Lance Esplund received his BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Queens College, CUNY. His first published essay, in 1996 in the then British journal Modern Painters, led to a regular column at that magazine, where he served as New York correspondent and on the editorial board.
Currently, Mr. Esplund is a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal. Previously, he was U.S. art critic for Bloomberg News, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, chief art critic for The New York Sun, and senior art critic for CityArts Magazine, which he cofounded. Mr. Esplund has also contributed essays and reviews to Al Jazeera America, Art & Antiques, Art in America, Condé Nast House & Garden, Disegno, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New Criterion, The New Republic, The New York Observer, The Threepenny Review, The Wall Street Journal Book Review, The Weekly Standard, and The Yale Review among others.
Mr. Esplund has authored several book and exhibition catalogue essays, curated and juried exhibitions throughout the U.S., and has lectured at numerous museums, galleries, universities, and art schools. He has served on the faculty of The Parsons School of Design; as the visiting critic in the MFA painting program at The New York Studio School; and as a preferred adjunct associate professor in the departments of fine arts and American studies at Rider University, where he was awarded the Andrew J. Rider Scholars Teaching Excellence Award. Mr. Esplund is the author of The Art of Looking: How to Read Modern and Contemporary Art (Basic Books). He divides his time between Brooklyn, New York and Milton, Pennsylvania, with his wife, the artist Evelyn Twitchell.
