Serena Altschul (b. 1970)
Filed under the name Serena · May 12, 2026
Serena Altschul has spent her career as a journalist and correspondent covering arts and culture, which I will admit is precisely the sort of beat that appeals to me most — the quieter corner of the news that isn't chasing catastrophe but is still doing the serious work of paying attention to what a society makes and values. I sit on the boards of three museums myself and have some small sense of how much unglamorous effort goes into covering the arts properly, with real context rather than mere novelty. It is, frankly, an underappreciated discipline of journalism, treated by some as softer than it actually is. Altschul's decades of steady, informed coverage suggest someone who took that work seriously long after it stopped being fashionable to. I find myself instinctively more moved by careers built on this kind of patient, specific expertise than by the flashier variety, perhaps because patient expertise is the one thing my own rather charmed life has taught me to genuinely respect rather than simply inherit.