Art critic Wolff wins National Headliner Award

Monitor art critic Theodore F. Wolff has won a National Headliner Award in the category ''Consistently Outstanding Special Column.''

Mr. Wolff, an accomplished and widely displayed painter himself, writes on art for both the Arts/Entertainment and Home Forum pages of the Monitor.

Since becoming a full-time critic for the Monitor in 1980, Wolff has written extensively about the art world. Although headquartered in New York, he has spent time in San Francisco as a painter, and in Wisconsin, where he studied at the University of Wisconsin, receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees in art and in art history there. He was born in Bluefields, Nicaragua, and as a child lived in Germany and Canada before moving to Minnesota.

Other top National Headliner Awards went to reporters William Clements, Gene Mustain, and Roy Larson of the Chicago Sun-Times for their series about John Cardinal Cody's alleged personal use of church funds, and to Newsday's Bob Wyrick for his series ''Hazards for Export,'' detailing how American companies export hazardous products overseas.