| Charlie Finch | |
| Birth Name: | Charles Baker Finch Jr. |
| Birth Date: | 22 April 1953 |
| Birth Place: | New York City, U.S. |
| Death Place: | New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Art critic |
| Period: | 1992–2012 |
| Education: | Yale University (BA) |
| Children: | Charles |
Charles Baker Finch Jr. (April 22, 1953 – August 24, 2022) was an American art critic who wrote for Artnet and Coagula.
Finch was born in Manhattan on April 22, 1953.[1] His father was a business executive and his mother was a buyer and homemaker.[1] He attended Phillips Academy, received a bachelor's degree in political science from Yale University in 1974, and enrolled at Union Theological Seminary, but did not graduate.[2]
In the 1980s, Finch hosted a radio program called Artbreaking on WBAI and was a one-time culture columnist for the Paris Review online.[3] He also operated a short lived art gallery in the East Village which he named Real Art.[4]
In 1992, Finch began writing for Coagula Art Journal, and he became known for his often vitriolic and controversial reviews.[5] He then wrote for Artnet from 1996 to 2012.[6] While his defenders praised him as passionate, his writing was also criticized as overly gossipy or cruel.[1]
Finch was married twice, first to Mary Truitt, the daughter of sculptor Anne Truitt, and then to Marion Callis; both marriages ended in divorce, with his first marriage dissolving in 1981.[1] With Truitt, he had a son, novelist Charles Finch.[1] [7]
On August 24, 2022, Finch, according to his son, either jumped or fell to his death from the window of his East Village apartment in Manhattan.[8] [4] He had been ill with cancer for about a decade, and a neighbor speculated that he may have been also distressed about his finances, as he lived in his apartment under rent control, and the building had recently been sold.[1] [4]