is the best-known, widest read and most outspoken art critic of our times. His books — among others, The Shock of the New (1981), The Fatal Shore (1987), Nothing If Not Critical (1990), Barcelona (1992), The Culture of Complaint (1995), American Visions (1998), Goya (2004), and Things I Didn’t Know (2006) — and his television series on modern art and architecture made him known to and feared by millions. Hughes grew up in Australia, studied art history and worked and lived in Italy and London before settling in the United States as the flamboyant art critic of Time Magazine. ‘A Defence of What is Priceless’ is the title of the Nexus Lecture he gave in March of 2009.