Digital Publications

The period covered by this report saw significant milestones in the Centre’s ongoing investment in open access publishing on British art history. One was the release of a major new online publication, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018 at www.chronicle250.com. Published on 30 May 2018, this website explores the history of the Summer Exhibition over 250 years. It combines a complete set of digitised and searchable exhibition catalogues; statistical data; and lively year-by-year essays that examine key artists, artworks and events from each year’s show. Above all, the RA Chronicle offers an innovative model for writing and presenting exhibition history: its 250 short essays were contributed by over 90 experts – including artists, critics, curators and art historians – affording varied perspectives on a long and complex history.

Two issues of the Centre’s open access journal, British Art Studies, which is co-published with the Yale Center for British Art, were also released during this period: Issue 7 (Autumn 2017) and Issue 8 (Spring 2018). Highlights from Issue 7 included a multi-authored conversation on “mod” style and modern art in Britain, convened by Tom Crow and based on his 2017 Mellon Lectures; and a feature examining the Famous Women dinner service, a set of fifty plates made by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant in the 1930s. The latter published new research by Hana Leaper which analyses the service’s relationship to Bloomsbury aesthetics and later feminist art. Issue 8 of the journal included the first publication in British Art Studies to examine television, and was illustrated by embedded fulllength videos of early BBC arts documentaries. It appeared alongside an article by Kobena Mercer on the abstract paintings of Aubrey Williams. The issue’s cover illustrations were chosen by curatorial staff at Impressions Gallery in Bradford, based on their exhibition examining the neglected histories of women war photographers in World War One.

In February 2018, three editors of British Art Studies, Sarah Victoria Turner, Baillie Card and Tom Scutt, co-chaired Digital Surrogates, a session at the annual College Art Association conference in Los Angeles that examined the place of virtual reconstructions in art-historical research today. The strength of the submissions and of the selected papers confirmed that the journal has an important role to play in cultivating conversations around best practices in digital art history.