Art History as Added Value Posted on July 20, 2009 by Julian Myers
Last month Joseph Del Pesco and I wrote about the new initiative by Artforum and e-flux (under their collaborative Art & Education site) which aims to serve as a database of scholarly essay on the history of art. Titled “Call for Art Historical Knowledge,” that post put forward speculations about the new archive, and mentioned that Joseph had sent to Art & Education a request for further clarifications about the editorial structure and economic model of the project.
In late June we received a response from Dawn Chan, an assistant editor at Artforum, who replied that the Papers archive is “an added service to the community,” and “simply a venue whereby scholars can share their work.” It “yields no income.” She informed us that the goal of the project was to make worthwhile papers more easily available – which would supplement, rather than compete with, the venues where these articles might often appear. The few papers currently available seem to confirm this: they’re essays from gallery exhibitions whose catalogs are years old or relatively hard to access; translations, or studies which don’t seem to have been published before. The purview of the papers is wide, and the standards of writing are variable; the submissions are “given a cursory review by an editorial staff member, but are not edited. “All rights and permissions remain with the author. (more…)
