by Jon Lackman | 1 August 2006 | Books
From the Chronicle of Higher Education: “If scholarly publishing had an endangered-species list, the art monograph would be at the top. At least that’s the perception of many art historians as they struggle to publish their work … ‘It’s not unusual for a scholar working on the Renaissance to pay $10,000 or $15,000 [to supplement the publisher's image permissions budget] to illustrate a book that may sell only 400 or 500 copies’ … Now two leading scholars are poised to issue a major report on the state of art-history publication. In it they assess what has driven unease in the field, even as they soft-pedal notions of crisis … [Hilary] Ballon and [Mariët] Westermann have concluded that if art-history publishing is to thrive, gatekeepers of the visual must loosen their death grip on images. ‘We’re quite clear now that the biggest obstacle is the copyright obstacle,’ says Ms. Ballon. ‘Until you clear that obstacle away, you can’t deal with the other issues.’” [Full disclosure: Mariët Westermann is the director of my graduate program -- Jon]
