Sebastian Smee joins The Post’s Features team

From Features Editor Liz Seymour, Deputy Features Editor David Malitz and Deputy Features Editor Mitch Rubin:

We are delighted to announce that Sebastian Smee, the art critic of The Boston Globe, will be joining The Post in January as an art critic.

Hiring Sebastian represents an expansion of The Post’s fine arts coverage. He will team with Philip Kennicott to review major exhibits nationwide and report engagingly on the art world for a wide audience. Phil becomes the senior art and architecture critic and will also continue to write cultural criticism.

Sebastian has been the art critic at the Boston Globe since 2008. When he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2011, judges praised his “vivid and exuberant writing about art, often bringing great works to life with love and appreciation.” This now gives us two Pulitzer Prize-winning art critics.

Sebastian has worked for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines worldwide, including the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Spectator, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and the Australian. He is the author of “The Art of Rivalry: Four friendships, betrayals, and breakthroughs in modern art.” (Random House), as well as five books on the British artist Lucian Freud and one (coming out soon) on the American artist Mark Bradford. He also teaches non-fiction writing at Wellesley College.

Sebastian is married to Joanne Sadler, a professional violinist who has played with the Opera Australian Orchestra, among many others in Australia, Europe and the U.S. She teaches strings in the Somerville, Mass. Public School system. They have two children, Tom, 13 and Leila, 10. The family is currently spending a year in Sydney, Australia, where Sebastian and his wife grew up, and will be returning to Boston at the end of the year. He will work from Boston after a week of orientation here starting Jan. 8.