Interview Publishing Art History on the A&AePortal

In this interview, Patricia Fidler, Publisher for Art and Architecture at Yale University Press, speaks to Marcia Pointon, Professor Emerita in History of Art, University of Manchester, about transforming her classic book Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (1993) into an online publication available on the Art & Architecture ePortal (A&AePortal).

Webpage in the Art & Architecture ePortal, from the digital edition of Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England.

Courtesy of Yale University Press.

In 2019, Yale University Press launched the A&AePortal, an authoritative and innovative eBook resource that features important works of scholarship in the history of art, architecture, decorative arts, photography and design. The site offers many out-of-print and key backlist titles, recent releases and born-digital books from some of the world’s finest academic and museum publishers, including the Paul Mellon Centre (PMC). When presented with the opportunity to interview an author about the platform, I thought immediately of Marcia Pointon, whose book Hanging the Head was uploaded during the first year of our project and has since experienced a high level of usage.

Patricia: When the PMC first approached you about adding Hanging the Head to the ePortal, what went through your mind?

Marcia: My first thought was what a great honour this was and secondly what a great service it would be to students and to the community of art historians. It has been out of print for more years than I can remember, and it has always seemed grotesque that anyone who wants their own copy has to pay an extortionate amount to secure one second-hand. The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) registers extensive photocopying of this text, so it has not been exactly unobtainable, but in terms of accessibility and quality the ePortal is an impressive advance.

Patricia: Hanging the Head has been accessed by hundreds of readers since it was uploaded to the site two years ago. I am curious to know if there are parts of your book that you thought would particularly resonate with today’s students?

Marcia: Areas of interest and concern to students fluctuate. Certainly, the idea of portraiture as a business (Chapter II) would resonate with the agenda of a social history of art; the chapter on wigs (IV) seems to have been of interest in the context of debates on masculinity; the focus on Orientalism (V) could inform debates on race and representation; while Chapter VII, which addresses the way images of children structure gender and class, is relevant across several disciplines. There have been enormous amounts of work done by others in all these areas since 1993, but I believe my book established a framework for a complete rethink of portraiture.

Patricia: In reaching out to authors about putting their book onto the site, I was sometimes told that having it on the platform would make it too easy for students to dip in and out of the text (that is, without having to read the entire book or chapter). Some authors have drawn parallels to ‘data mining’. What do you think about this?

Marcia: I have no concern about students dipping in and out of the text. Learning to skim read and identify rapidly what is most relevant to your inquiry is one of the skills students need to learn. The ePortal makes it all much easier as you can word search as well as scroll down the pages. If the book is well-written, students will in any case want to read more than the ‘data’ they mined.

Patricia: There is a lack of authoritative digital resources in art and architectural history, which is one of the main reasons we developed the ePortal. Other than the complication of securing image files and the rights to reproduce them, why else do you think art history has lagged so far behind other areas of the humanities in digital publishing?

Marcia: I think the problem lies with publishers rather than with authors. It is probably true that some older authors are wedded to hard copy books and, indeed, there is no doubt that the pleasure of a bound book cannot be replicated online. However, possibly due to commercial constraints, publishers solicit either textbooks (minimally illustrated and generally poor in production values) or books that they conceive of as appealing not only to art and architectural historians but to that amorphous thing ‘the general public’. Publishers have never jettisoned the idea that any book on visual culture is also a ‘coffee table’ book, or its more recent variant the museum/gallery book. Both are by definition hard copies, and are characterised by intellectually undemanding text and lots of colour plates.

Patricia: We selected an ePub format for the ePortal, for various reasons relating to desired functionality, such as searching by text or image, which means that the platform does not retain the original layout and design of a previously published book. What did you think when you first saw your book on the platform?

Marcia: I like the fact that you don’t have to turn pages and I prefer the fact that it is a totally different experience from reading a physical book. Some of the illustrations are also an improvement on the original book. So, for example, plate 97 (Adam Viscount Duncan by Henri-Pierre Danloux) is in black-and-white in the book, and in colour on the ePortal. The only downside in comparison to other work I do online is that some of the plates are not sufficiently high-resolution to zoom in and reveal additional details. I understand that high-resolution images are not always made available by museums for use in publications, but we have become accustomed to using the Internet for image searches, so on a digital platform this may come as a surprise.

Patricia: Did you know that an individual can search the site by image, with results indicating all the chapters in which that particular image is reproduced and discussed?

Marcia: I did not know about that particular facility, but now, having tried it out, I can see that it would be very useful. I was equally very intrigued to see that by searching under my name I was able to see all the other authors who had referenced my work. Never having bothered with citation indexes (life is too short!), frankly I was astonished.

Patricia: Have you used the ePortal in your own research?

Marcia: I have used it in quite a limited way. I tend still to purchase books, largely second-hand, as I love my bookshelves, which are a visible history of my working life; but under pandemic lockdown I have had to learn new ways of getting to my sources and in this respect the ePortal is exemplary.

Patricia: In addition to converting previously published books, the ePortal has the ability to publish born-digital books. Could you envision publishing born-digital scholarship?

Marcia: I am totally committed to electronic publishing and currently put as much of my work as possible onto open-access platforms such as ResearchGate and academia.org. I provide PDFs to anyone who asks. The ePortal has confirmed my view that this is where we should be. I would certainly consider a born-digital publication and would advise others to do the same. There is no doubt that students read online these days rather than hard copy, and we all want to reach as many readers as possible.

Patricia: What might you say to another author who is considering adding a book to the ePortal?

Marcia: Go for it!