From a New York Times obit by William Grimes headlined “Peter Schjeldahl, New York Art Critic With a Poet’s Voice, Dies at 80”

Peter Schjeldahl, a critic whose elegant reviews in The New Yorker and, before that, The Village Voice, made him an indispensable guide to contemporary art, died at his home in Bovina, N.Y.

Few critics could match Mr. Schjeldahl for his intimate knowledge of New York’s art world, which he wrote about with undiminished enthusiasm for more than half a century. Even fewer could rival him for sheer eloquence. A poet by vocation in his earlier years, he brought an exquisite word sense to his polished essays, which managed to translate visual subtleties into lapidary prose.