Charlie Finch

Charles Baker Finch Jr. (April 22, 1953 – August 24, 2022) was an American art critic who wrote for Artnet and Coagula.

Early life Finch was born in Manhattan on April 22, 1953. His father was a business executive and his mother was a buyer and homemaker.

Career In the 1980s, Finch hosted a radio program called Artbreaking on WBAI and was a one-time culture columnist for the Paris Review online. He also operated a short lived art gallery in the East Village which he named Real Art.

In 1992, Finch began writing for Coagula Art Journal, and he became known for his often vitriolic and controversial reviews. He then wrote for Artnet from 1996 to 2012. While his defenders praised him as passionate, his writing was also criticized as overly gossipy or cruel.

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. 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.