British Art Studies

During the period covered by this report, three 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 20 (July 2021) was an open issue that included a conversation piece feature titled ‘British Art After Brexit’, which brought together short texts from twelve authors responding to a provocation by the editors. The feature explored the impacts of Brexit on the study, making and exhibition of British art, and is part of an ongoing dialogue in the journal and wider field about national frameworks for art history.

The next two issues were both special issues. Issue 21 (November 2021) was titled ‘Redefining the British Decorative Arts’ and was guest-edited by Iris Moon, an assistant curator of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It contained eleven articles alongside six features – including an interview, a virtual tour and a roundtable discussion – that spotlight the work of artists and curators today in researching, displaying and reinterpreting decorative arts. Issue 22 (April 2022) ‘Thames River Works’ used an ecocritical lens to interrogate the relationship between industry, the Thames and art in the nineteenth century, taking the Thames-side works of James McNeill Whistler as a starting point. It contained seven articles and was guest-edited by Justin McCann, an independent art historian and former Lunder Curator for American Art and Whistler Studies at the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine; and Shalini Le Gall, the Chief Curator and Susan Donnell and Harry W. Konkel Curator of European Art at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine.

In February 2022, a redesign of the journal was also started. This will see us implement improvements identified by the user-experience testing carried out on the journal’s website in February 2020, meet web accessibility standards and reduce the website’s carbon footprint and bandwidth demands. Fabrique, a digital design agency based in the Netherlands, will carry out the redesign.