Tom Frankovich wrote this "Notes from the Artists Guild President" for the August 1987 newsletter:
     "Thanks to those of you who took time to convey your ideas, feelings, and suggestions on the questionnaire. Your input is vital in our quest to facilitate meaningful communication and action. To my delight, I received numerous responses from our membership…. I will be setting up mechanisms to actualize some of the changes you want to see…. As artists we need to make major strides to give the Artists Guild status it deserves. It's time to hold the museum responsible and accountable to local artists.
     As I read your words there seems to be an almost unanimous feeling of disenfranchisement and betrayal from the museum. It is clear that many of you feel reforms are in order if the museum is to reflect the strength and excellence found in the local arts community. The history of our city and the cultural vitality of our museum is directly tied to our Artists Guild and the arts community at large.
     I have studied the survey and am ready to take action. The signpost to our future direction reads most clearly. The survey indicated that 99% of you want more exhibitions at the museum. I am preparing to sunshine your ideas and needs to the board. I hope that implementation can occur reasonably soon, subject to getting the mechanics in place and running."

     This was the most telling question put in the questionnaire sent out to the membership.
     1) Why did you join the Artists Guild? A consensus of the replies to that question was:
     "For the honor of belonging to an elite group of local artists, and to have the chance to compete for the honor of exhibiting my work in the annual." It was the prestige of being a member of the most important art organization and the ability to show ones work in the SDMA that was the overriding reason behind any artist joining the Guild. That was always the overriding reason anyone ever joined the Guild.

     Robert L. Pincus wrote this review in the San Diego Union September 24, 1987:
Swiggett's Works Seem Silly Now
     "Viewing 'Portrait: Jean Swiggett, 1939-1987,' is a disheartening experience. It is the kind of exhibition I truly want to like, but can't.
     The art history of San Diego is woefully unchronicled and Swiggett has clearly played a part in that history. But this exhibition offers a tale of initial promise and thwarted potential….
This retrospective demonstrates that the school to which he gave so much time and commitment had not forgotten him. Twenty-three paintings and 12 drawings are now on view at the SDSU University Art Gallery. And in the show's brochure, director Tina Yapelli and critic Michael McManus have offered some empathetic words on his behalf, even if McManus overestimates the artist's achievements….
     Technically, these are all decent paintings, even if the figures remain a bit lifeless. Swiggett even reveals himself to be a fine observer of visual phenomena and a skillful draftsman when (to borrow Woody Allen's phrase) he isn't trying to achieve heaviosity. Ultimately, it seems, Swiggett wasn't able to harness his technical talents and wide-ranging knowledge of art to create a significant oeuvre. In this respect, the portrait of the artist we glean from this exhibition is instructive. It shows us just how difficult it is to create an original pictorial vision."

     On November 2, 1987 Jean Swiggett, Professor Emeritus San Diego State University, sent a letter to Tom Frankovich along with a short essay/open letter he wrote on October 23, 1987:
     "Enclosed is a sort of essay on local art criticism in the form of a letter to the publisher of the Copley newspapers. I have attempted to call attention to a problem of concern to many artists in our community. For some years (since the early 1950's, in fact) on and off, I have been a member of the Board of the Artists Guild, a committee of the San Diego Museum of Art, as well as a term as a member of the Board of the Fine Arts Society. For thirty-one years I was professor of art at San Diego State University and know very well of their problems and interests. I am, if I may say so, an unofficial representative of the thinking of many people working in the visual arts in San Diego.
     While I am concerned with the situation regarding art criticism in San Diego as a whole, I have used a review by Robert Pincus in the San Diego Union (9/24/87) as the basis for my letter. This was an attack on a retrospective exhibition of my art…."

     Here are excerpts from that essay sent to Helen Copley; Gerald Warren, editor of the Union; Neil Morgan, editor of the Tribune; the Los Angeles Times; The Reader; Babeor Gallery; Tina Yapelli, Director, University Gallery, SDSU; Martha Longnecker, Director, Mingei International; Laguna Art Museum; and Tom Frankovich:
     "This letter to you is prompted by a review by one of your writers, Robert L. Pincus…. The following pages are some thoughts produced as dissatisfaction with Pincus' writings, with his limitations, with his failure to supply a much-needed catholicity of viewpoints, with his refusal to 'see'….
     Recently San Diego State University mounted a retrospective of my paintings and drawings, 'Jean Swiggett: 1938-1987'. That exhibition incidentally brought out the largest group of people ever to attend an opening at that gallery, estimated at possibly four hundred….
     In writing his review Pincus characterized my work as 'silly', a word I have never seen used before in a write-up of the oeuvre of a serious artist by a competent art critic. Whoever wrote the headline was guilty of the same poor taste. I should add that in the past fifty-three years my paintings and drawings have been included in exhibitions all over the country selected by honored museum directors (such as Henry Hopkins, for years Director of the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art and by other equally well-known in the art world) -- some 160 awards in nearly five hundred exhibitions, about half of which were invitational, some as recent as 1987. Surely, none of the jurors or directors who accepted or invited my work considered it 'silly'.
     It was naturally somewhat of a shock to read Pincus' review in the light of the favorable acceptance of the show at the formal opening, subsequently by the university students (I am told), and by various publications other than yours. I say 'somewhat' as a negative review by Pincus was to be expected. In his writings in the San Diego Union for the past few months there have been increasingly devastating remarks concerning the work of older artists. For instance, he wrote a petulant and unflattering review in August of an invited exhibition at Mingei International of work by Millard Sheets, one of Southern California's most noted and influential older artists and one of the most loved…. Mr. Sheets did not deserve such a detrimental comment as 'bombastic kitsch' in referring to murals in the Home Savings and Loan Bank in the Los Angeles area. These murals had nothing to do with the show, but the reference was included only to provide a demeaning comment and showed a total lack of awareness of the function and suitability of a mural in a savings bank….
     I don't know if Pincus has a particular aversion to the work of older artists. It has been pointed out by two writers on art who know him and his personal opinion (and it is apparent to anyone reading his reviews) that he has an obvious contempt for art based on Renaissance concepts and that he has a definite campaign to encourage interest in forms of contemporary art alien to the tastes of most art-oriented residents of San Diego. In his reviews of the past ten weeks or so I can find no indication of his liking anything other than the latest of the avant garde which have previously received favorable reviews elsewhere. Former art critics of your newspapers -- Naomi Baker, Armin Kietzmann, Richard Reilly, and Mark-Elliot Lugo, all dedicated writers and all highly regarded by their readers, gave an evenly balanced picture of art in San Diego. If they had personal prejudices, they didn't air them in print. Can we now assume that we are to have only biased reviews in your papers, intolerant of certain forms of art?
     One function of a newspaper, like that of a university, is to educate, but in a community as generally conservative as San Diego I do not believe it can be done by denigrating the art of older established artists. You don't make one thing more important by tearing down something else if you have true integrity….
     I must refer you to an article in the San Diego Reader (3/17/87) by Paul Kruger in which mention is made of a petition to re-instate Mark-Elliot Lugo as art critic for the Tribune. To my knowledge there has never been any mention of that petition in either of your papers nor has any action been taken concerning re-hiring Lugo.
     The Reader states that 'several established local artists and art administrators… declined to sign the petition for fear that 'their work would not be reviewed by the Tribune'. I was one who did sign the petition. Several artists have mentioned that they feel retaliation has indeed occurred 'Let this review of Swiggett's retrospective be a lesson to you. Don't question the actions of the editors or writers of the Copley newspapers.' Were indeed your writers instructed to ignore my exhibition or to annihilate it? Is it significant that Susan Freudenham, now writing in Lugo' place for the Tribune, chose not to review my show?
     To have my serious work of fifty years reduced to the word 'silly' has already antagonized many of your readers as proved by the numbers of telephone calls and letters I have received concerning Pincus' adverse comments about Sheets and me. Many local artists of all persuasions, and gallery directors, too, will not dare write to your papers in protest as they are afraid of possible retaliation from your critics if the latter condescend to write about them at all. I know of two writers, at least, whose letters to the editors have been ignored.
     In writing to me recently and congratulating me on my 'beautiful' exhibition one esteemed artist states 'An art critic should be able to see the art in a painting, but he (Pincus) sees only the recognizable layer that hides art from most people. What you do with color and space goes over his head. Since he can find no symbolic meaning in those lines of yours which move with such grace, he has nothing to write about them. What a pity such a person writes as an art critic… Everyone who has a feeling for visual art will know that Mr. Pincus is an… insensitive menace.'
     I will add still another quotation from a second letter. As I want to protect this writer, a very fine artist, from possible negative criticism, I am giving no name nor the sex… but I quote: 'It was a wretched and insensitive blast, obviously not researched or informed. This approach, as you know, was also used on Millard Sheets… I can sincerely say that the possibility that he might take note of my upcoming show frightens me.'….
     Quotes from other letters are: 'pompous', 'predictable', 'boring', 'never read his column', 'arrogant', 'I refused to read it'….
     A writer is someone more than a person able to string words together; an art critic should be a writer who is able to perceive and to make intelligible to his audience more than the surface aspects of the object under consideration. The critic basically has three choices -- a) he can depend on his own abilities of perception, b) he can depend on the artist's own words (which some artists feel should be unnecessary as the piece in question should be able to speak for itself), or c) he can rely on the writings of others.
     Picking up the opening paragraphs of the McManus essay of the poster-catalog for my exhibition, Pincus refers to what he supposes is my admiration for the 'fantastical realism of de Chirico'. McManus does not say this….
     Pincus makes it seem somehow shameful for me to look at other artists, but he unashamedly looks at other writers. He willfully misinterprets the McManus essay. Not only does Pincus not see, he can't read! ….
     While I have no quarrel with the coverage of advanced forms of art as long as it is balanced by reports of more conventional art (and I don't propose a tally-sheet set up in some editor's office), I admit to being baffled by the fact that in the Union (10/11/87) there appeared not one, but two articles on the exhibition of Faux Art at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art…. In a city the size of San Diego with the great number of galleries some exhibition of more traditional art was available for review. Lois Stecker's paintings of India at the Spectrum, Beth King's abstractions at Knowles or the handsome one of ceramics by Kathy Barker, also at the Spectrum, come to mind. None of these have been reviewed.
     As an art critic Pincus has an excellent opportunity to further appreciation in San Diego for local art and artists. It is possible that if he were to do so he could turn around the prevailing attitude of most collectors of present-day art here that art is of no value unless it is produced elsewhere….
     There is no doubt that Pincus is an adequate writer, but I question the possibility that he can ever give an unbiased account, a true picture of all types of art in San Diego. I know I am speaking for countless others when I say you are doing a disservice to the visual arts by allowing Pincus to write about artists and art forms for which he has no sensitivity or interest. I can't believe you would have approved either Pincus' review of my retrospective or the tasteless headline placed above it.
     To paraphrase another writer -- Pincus' review really tells little about my work but a great deal about Pincus. He has made so little effort to 'see' what is in my paintings and drawings that the only thing 'silly' is Pincus himself."

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