Tobi Haslett

Tobi Haslett is an American critic and writer. He has written about art, film, and literature for n+1, The New Yorker, Artforum, The Village Voice, and other publications. He lives and works in New York City.

Work
Haslett has written reviews, catalog essays, and introductions to novels. He has written reviews of The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick, Norman Podhoretz's Making It, and The Image Book, directed by Jean-Luc Godard. For Artforum 's special issue titled The Year in Monsters, Haslett wrote about Omarosa Manigault Newman's third book, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.

In 2019, Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Haslett released a statement in Artforum titled The Tear Gas Biennial, decrying the involvement of Warren Kanders, co-chair of the board of the Whitney Museum, and his "toxic philanthropy." Although Kanders has donated an estimated $10 million to the museum, the source of his fortune is derived from Safariland LLC, a company that manufactures riot gear, tear gas, and other chemical weapons used by the police and the military to enforce violent order. As of 1925, the Geneva Convention has outlawed the use of tear gas in all international military conflict, however, the tear gas fired at peaceful protesters and civilians by the police and military during the George Floyd protests as well as migrants on the US-Mexico border is the same brand of tear gas manufactured by Defense Technology, a subsidy of Safariland. A wave of artists from the Biennial, including Korakrit Arunanondchai, Meriem Bennani, Nicole Eisenman and Nicholas Galanin, demanded immediate removal of their work from the Biennial within hours after the essay was published. After mounting pressure from additional artists, critics, and patrons urging the public to boycott the show, Kanders stepped down from his leadership position at the museum. The essay was instrumental in Kanders resignation as well as the museum cutting ties with Kanders financial endowments that are directly connected to the promotion and use of military weaponry and violence during peaceful social unrest.