British Art Studies

During the period covered by this report, four issues of British Art Studies, the Centre’s peer-reviewed and open access journal, were published online. The journal was founded in 2015 and is co-published with the Yale Center for British Art.

Issue 13 (30 September 2019) was a themed issue, containing sixteen articles and features as a major output of the Centre’s London, Asia research project, which investigates London’s role as a key, yet under-explored, site in the construction of art-historical narratives in Asia. The next three issues were all open issues. Issue 14 (29 November 2019) was notable for containing the first ever commission of new work by an artist for BAS. For that issue’s cover, James Richards produced a series of GIFs that meditate on the ambiguous, often dangerous, interplay between the internet and personal health. Issue 15 (27 February 2020) featured two films about the wartime and post-war photography of Bert Hardy for Picture Post, alongside a methodological reflection on film as a means to conduct and communicate art-historical research. In Issue 16 (30 June 2020), we published a Conversation Piece feature titled ‘Luxury and Crisis: Redefining the British Decorative Arts’, convened by curator Iris Moon, and an editorial outlining our plans to elevate the voices of Black scholars, curators and artists through the journal.

In February 2020, user experience testing was carried out on the journal’s website by the City Interaction Lab at City, University of London. Users from specific demographics amongst the journal’s readership came into the Lab and were observed by researchers as they completed a series of tasks within the BAS website. This study highlighted numerous possible improvements for the site, which will be implemented in 2021 as part of a broader redesign.

Later in February, the journal also welcomed Sria Chatterjee (Max-Planck Kunsthistorisches 4A Laboratory, Berlin) as a Contributing Editor on a one-year cover position while Sarah Victoria Turner, one of our Editors-in-Chief, was on parental leave. Sria is the first editor to join BAS who is not also a member of staff at the Centre or the YCBA. In the first months of her tenure, this immediately made for a valuable collaboration, generating new conversations and content for the journal.

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Finger and toe postures in ancient and medieval Indian sculptures (detail), undated, from Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “Hands and Feet in Indian Art”, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 24, no. 130 (1913): 204–207. Courtesy of The Burlington Magazine (all rights reserved). Featured in British Art Studies, Issue 15