The Essential New Art Examiner

FOREWORD

K athr y n Born FOREWORD The New Art Examiner was Chicago’s only successful art publication . It had a twenty-nine year run, starting in 1973 and ending in 2002, and since its founding by Jane Addams Allen and Derek Guthrie, no other art periodical has survived more than a few issues, or achieved any kind of critical mass of readership. Yet once it closed, it quickly faded into obscurity among a new generation of artists. However, when Derek visited Chicago in 2008, a year after Jane’s death, his mere return spurred a great homecoming and intense discussion about art publishing. A flurry of activity followed; a call for a new publication and a critical look at our current arts coverage, questioning if we were all guilty of what Derek called “boosterism.” It was as if suddenly everyone remembered how fun it was to have heated arguments about art, entertaining romantic ideas about throwing critical punches and taking a beating for what you believed. After his visit, Terri Griffith and I—both active participants in the next generation of online art commentator—were determined to create a simple anthology that would help a new audience understand this phenomena . Many of the magazine’s supporters had made efforts to catalog the volumes, but were ultimately discouraged by copyright issues and the sheer magnitude of content. So we settled upon the idea of showcasing representative articles and spotlighting the editors. We chose this concise, “best of” format to catch the high points. It also released us from liability and intense research needed to document the twenty-nine year history of the New Art Examiner. Yet this format also omits the chronology, complexities , financials, scandals and personalities that accompany any art magazine. There is more to the story than is contained in this anthology, as Janet Koplos’s introduction entitled “The Way We Were” indicates. xiv   F O R E W O R D Determining even the most basic information—such as deciphering the organizational structure behind the magazine’s masthead—was more complicated than expected. As we went through the broadsheet version of the first decade, and then the magazine format, it became apparent that the masthead was continually revised, and the structure of the organization was periodically overhauled. Titles and responsibilities changed on a yearly, and sometimes monthly, basis. No one served at the helm for more than three years after Derek and Jane left Chicago. In one volume, the title of “Managing Editor” suggested the person at the helm, and in other years, it was the person who ran the operations. There was a period when a new name appeared as the apparent person in charge, only to completely disappear a few issues later. And when the publication created bureaus in Philadelphia and other cities, the masthead became so vast it was difficult to fit all the information on a single page. However, we did find that there were, to a great degree, “eras” of the magazine. A new editor would take the New Art Examiner in a new direction. And we feel very fortunate that most of those editors were able to help us by not only writing a personal essay but by selecting articles that tell the story of the New Art Examiner in relation to the history of the Chicago art scene. But note that the essays chosen merely show what was “fit to print” among the feature articles. In meeting the editors, we learned that the real excitement was behind the scenes, as the small publication stood up to the institutions and other powerful bodies. Young artists today have grown up in an era of decentralized media, but the New Art Examiner was central to the art scene. This all took place before the word “blog” was ever spoken, so the New Art Examiner, although it had an audience beyond the Midwest, was the source of news and information for Chicago artists. And although there was never an “online version” with a “comment” section, Jane and Derek printed every letter to the editor they received, making the discussion as public as possible, and ahead of their time in regards to un-moderated discourse. So as the world moves forward, there is no way to simply “bring back” the New Art Examiner in the form it was. But this anthology illustrates the universals–great editing, great writing, a feisty staff who changed and adapted as circumstances dictated, and a publication that rolled with the times...