November 17, 2025
Logan Center for the Arts, The University of Chicago
"Harold Rosenberg and 'The Herd of Independent Minds' "
Logan Center for the Arts, The University of Chicago
"Harold Rosenberg and 'The Herd of Independent Minds' "
A public lecture by award-winning independent scholar, writer, and curator, Debra Bricker Balken. In the past few years, Balken has been struck by the pervasiveness of one of Harold Rosenberg's signature terms, "The Herd of Independent Minds," in both the press and on social media. The title of a key essay written in 1948, the phrase was an indictment of what Rosenberg perceived as a new conformity that had settled into postwar intellectual culture. This conformity had resulted, Rosenberg thought, in the sameness and homogeneity, even banality, of much writing on art and literature. How did Rosenberg land on this term? Just as importantly, how did it shape his aesthetic thought and subsequent role as one of the foremost art critics of his generation? Additionally, why has this term been revived and floated at this juncture in history, and what are the implications of its current usage and meanings?