With a world in crisis and an art market spinning out of control, ace art-world consultants Chen & Lampert deliver a quiz full of hard choices for Art in America readers from far and wide.
Fall is traditionally a time to reflect, so we hereby offer up this Hard Choices quiz as a chance for you to evaluate the advice we’ve been offering Art in America readers since 2019. Have we helped? How have we hurt? Are things better today than they were before you considered our counsel? Answer the following questions to let us know how we’re doing and where we can improve. Please send your responses to hardtruths@artinamericamag.com or share them with us on social media.
1. Reading Chen & Lampert makes me feel:
a) Seen
b) Peeped
c) Stalked
2. The best description of Hard Truths is:
a) Satirical but earnest advice column
b) Ethical North Star
c) Art world snitch sheet
3. My favorite part of taking the Hard Choices quiz is always:
a) Tallying the score
b) Learning new words
c) Renewing my pledge to “never do this again”
4. Following Chen & Lampert’s advice has made me into:
a) A stronger artist and all-around better person
b) An incurable troll
c) A GOD
5. Reading Chen & Lampert over the years has convinced me to:
a) Pursue my master’s degree
b) Finish my PhD
c) Flee the art world to become a therapist who treats artists who become therapists
6. Chen & Lampert have proven to me that:
a) Others wrestle with similar professional and personal dilemmas
b) I am completely alone in this world
c) Art problems are for coastal elites
7. The thing I like least about reading Chen & Lampert is:
a) Their snide tone
b) Their mercy for sinners
c) The rest of the magazine
8. If Art in America stopped publishing Hard Choices and Hard Truths, I would:
a) Immediately unsubscribe
b) Initiate a boycott
c) Finally be free of the mind goblins they gave me
9. Another Penske Media publication I would like to see Chen & Lampert write for is:
a) Robb Report
b) Women’s Wear Daily
c) Vibe
d) All the above—and they should also headline an event at SXSW
10. Chen & Lampert are people I could imagine:
a) Hiring as consultants
b) Having a beer with at my local bar
c) Avoiding at public functions because of the shame they induce
SCORES
10–16: While doomscrolling Hyperallergic and fuming over Timothée Chalamet’s disdain for the slow arts, you inform social media that “art criticism is dead” because Chen & Lampert are besmirching the hallowed legacy of Art in America with hooliganism and puerile jokes.
17–23: Your love of Chen & Lampert is heroic. You are there for our merch drops and cannot wait to subscribe to our future Substack, which we’ll be forced to make if/when they fire us. But you won’t let that happen, and neither will the Pulitzer committee.
24–30: Deep down you’ve always known that Chen & Lampert’s uncomfortable sociological tour of the art world is actually a bighearted ploy to shape a society where artists and art will flourish and save humanity. You look forward to making their dream a reality.
