James Panero is executive editor and art critic at The New Criterion.


?We are our own art history.? That?s what you?re most likely to hear at this weekend?s Bushwick Open Studios, the self-organized annual arts festival in Brooklyn?s most innovative neighborhood. The do-it-yourself anthem comes from the last lines of ?History by Exclusion, Illuminating the 'Dark Matter' of the Art World,? a manifesto that was published in 2006 but which has been gathering wider notice among artists this season. Its author, Loren Munk, is a Brooklyn-based painter, writer, and videographer who has made an art out of art history and how culture is received.

For Munk, this has involved creating paintings that diagram artists' neighborhoods and how artists influence one another. It also has meant using the tools of the Internet to create more than a thousand videos of local art events under the pseudonym "James Kalm"; the experiences include once getting kicked out of the Whitney Museum.

His manifesto reminds us that the Internet is a cultural liberator only thanks to those with the imagination and will to make their own history.