NPR

How the art world excludes you and what you can do about it

First of all, can we stop using the word "liminal"? Bianca Bosker spent five years doing in-depth research for Get the Picture — an irreverent book about "strategic snobbery" in the art world.
In her new book <em>Get the Picture, </em>journalist Bianca Bosker explores why connecting with art sometimes feels harder than it has to be. Above, a visitor takes in paintings at The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London in 2010.

When Bianca Bosker told people in the art world she'd be writing a tell-all about their confounding, exclusive ecosystem, "bad idea," they responded.

"They didn't come right out and threaten my safety or anything," she writes in Get the Picture, "My reputation, well-being, and livelihood as a journalist —that, however, was another story." Judging from the book's recent reviews, she need not worry too much.

Bosker's motivation for writing the book was partly frustration. "I didn't know how to have a meaningful experience of art and that bothered me," she tells me, "But also like I think the art fiends that I got to know, it's not just that they look at art differently. They behave sort of like they've accessed this trapdoor in

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