When carrying out a mapping exercise of critics, Alloway occasionally mapped himself. In his notes for a class on the art criticism of Post-Minimalism in the 1970s, he included himself in the categories of “feminism” (with Nochlin, Perreault, and Lippard) and “diversity” (with Perreault and Steinberg)—the others were “process” (Pincus-Witten), “dissent” (Kozloff) and “theory” (Kuspit). And in “Art for Ad's Sake? The Problem of the Magazines” in 1981, he listed common complaints about criticism, with an example of a supposedly guilty critic: “obscurity” (Krauss), “unreadability” (Kuspit), “trendiness” (Pincus-Witten), and “lack of standards” (“the present writer”). This was a criticism Alloway ascribed to the enemies of pluralism, and was based on a misunderstanding of his values. A bigger problem in terms of his reputation has been pigeon-holing. Alloway has become known largely for his contributions to either the Independent Group, and/or Pop art. Seminal texts such as “The Arts and the Mass Media” and “The Long Front of Culture” appear regularly, but texts covering other areas such as Hard Edge, Systemic painting, Photo-Realism, Earth art, critiques of institutions, and, most importantly, women's art, are less frequently reprinted. This is art history's loss. A major part of the problem is that Alloway's preferred mode of writing was the article which is, of course, relatively ephemeral. In articles he could be topical and contribute to ongoing debates. Books appealed far less to him because of their time lag, and were more appropriate to particular projects such as The Venice Biennale and Violent America. It may be regrettable that Alloway did not author a book that expanded the art world as a system and his own philosophy of art but, given his interest in current provisionality and uninterest in future permanency, it is understandable. He was principally a critic whose supreme ability was to respond often brilliantly to the here and now and its immediate context; he was secondarily an historian or theorist. It is the job of later historians to recoup Alloway's ideas as a whole.

Alloway's reputation, therefore, has tended to be shaped by writers who focus on a particular part of his output.