British Art Studies

British Art Studies (BAS), an open-access digital journal, is a joint publication of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (PMC), London and the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), New Haven. In its second year of publication, the journal and its readership continued to grow and, by June 2017, the website had received over 40,000 unique visitors.

BAS has rapidly become a model of best practice in open-access scholarly arts publishing. In February 2017, journal editors Sarah Turner and Martina Droth convened a panel at the College Art Association (CAA) conference, titled Editing Journals in a Digital Age. At the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) conference in May 2017, the journal won a gold-level MUSE award in the “Open Culture” category.

In June 2017, BAS was also awarded a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support the new digital publishing initiative Objects in Motion Over the coming years, this project will generate a series of articles and features focusing on cross-cultural dialogues between Britain and the United States in the years up to 1980.

In the period covered by this report, four issues were published. These included: the first special issue, British Sculpture Abroad, 1945–2000, co-edited by Martina Droth and Penelope Curtis (Summer 2016); two open issues (Autumn 2016 and Spring 2017); and a second special issue (Summer 2017), Invention and Imagination in British Art and Architecture, 600–1500, edited by Jessica Berenbeim and Sandy Heslop.

Between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2017, the journal team consisted of:

Sarah Victoria Turner (PMC), Editor

Martina Droth (YCBA), Editor

Baillie Card (PMC), Editor – joined the PMC in September 2016

Hana Leaper (PMC), Deputy Editor

Tom Scutt (PMC), Digital Editor

Maisoon Rehani (PMC), Picture Researcher

All issues of the journal are available at www.britishartstudies.ac.uk