by Jon Lackman | 20 February 2009 | Journals
Always on the look-out for blogging art historians, we recently discovered Daniel A. Siedell, assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, whose “work as an art historian, critic, and curator operates on the margins of cultural criticism, theology, and philosophy and is motivated by the conviction that Christian thought and practice as it is embodied in the seven ecumenical councils can nourish a deeper and more expansive understanding of contemporary artistic practice.” In a recent post, he discusses The Curse of the “Special Arts Issue.” Journal editors, he writes, often
feel obliged to publish my work only in the context of a “special arts issue,” in which a number of “similar” essays are compiled together in some thematic format … These well-meaning editors ghettoize art; they marginalize it. The message they send to me as well as to their readership is that art is somehow not quite capable of playing with the big boys of thought, like philosophy, cultural criticism, political science, history, and the like … This is, sadly, something that some art writers themselves buy into, claiming how “distinctive” art is from other forms of cultural practice … Apparently, looking at art (and reading about art) is akin to sitting in a comfortable chair sipping a martini … My writing is a shot of espresso in the morning … I write to put my reader on edge … [Also] those “special arts issues” seem to appear once every five years. (That doesn’t seem to be much of a celebration if you ask me.)
