Volume 16âs comprehensive survey of topics in craft arts, from Dale Chihuly to Nigerian adire cloth, was one of the few issues of 1992 not to be guest edited-a practice with which Editor Glenn Harper achieved greater diversity of content. Guest edited issues included current Contributing Editor Maureen Sherlockâs ãBifocal Borders,ä on the notions of cultural as well as geographical border questions, Deborah Willisâ ãPhotobiographers,ä a survey of African-American photographers, and Cindy Pattonâs ãBoundary Crossings,ä which returned to Sherlockâs theme of borders and boundaries but this time bringing in the dividing lines in gender issues and ethnicity. And Chicagoâs Randolph Street Gallery collaborated on ãCounter Proposals: Adaptive Approaches to a Built Environment,ä including a feature story by their gallery director at the time, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle. The remaining issue of the year (see photo), which contained symposium transcriptions from a lecture series at the Atlanta College of Art titled ãArt in Context: Public and Private Values,ä was printed on varying colors of cover stock that the magazineâs printer had offered at a significant discount. The resulting five versions of the cover added an alluring air of intrigue and collector value which contrasted nicely with the publicationâs grass roots origins.

A feature story in volume 17 on the performance art of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, which prominently featured a deceased chicken, led to a memorable moment of copier art in which Editor Glenn Harper and Designer Elizabeth Lide collectively balanced a dead rooster on the glass plate of a photocopier, producing one of the more startling Art Papers covers (see photo) of the first half of the 1990s. More unexceptionably, a work by the European architecture collective Coop Himmelblau graced the next cover, and a feature on Lonnie Holley marked a continuing concern with Southern folk art. Other issues that year included a symposium on ãThe Spectacle of Culture in Museumsä that featured Fred Wilson at the height of his ãMining the Museumä fame in conversation with anthropologist Ivan Karp. ãThe Antemillennium Dollhouseä was a competition sponsored by the magazine that provoked the imaginations of architectural students to the design of dollhouses that addressed major issues of dwelling or housing.

Guest edited by Patricia Cronin, ãRethinking Lesbian Subjectivitiesä brought to the fore a genre of visual art that provoked and continues to provoke much controversy. The rest of volume 18 was calm by comparison, discussing ãArtists in Communitiesä (see photo), continuing a focus on African-American artists through interviews with Alison Saar and Renee Stout, and offering such unexpected moments as an interview with glass artist Harvey Littleton. A series of interviews by Anne Barclay Morgan with major art critics also got underway, featuring discussions with Eleanor Heartney, Peter Schjeldahl, and Robert C. Morgan. A special issue on self-taught and outsider artists proved to be one of the most popular of the year, eliciting single-copy orders long after its run on the newsstands was over.

An interview with Japanese book artist Shinro Ohtake (see photo) launched the magazineâs coverage in volume 19 of the multi-year Cultural Olympiad, for which Atlantaâs Nexus Press produced five books by international artists from each of the five geographic areas represented by the Olympic rings-the Centennial games preparing to be held in Atlanta the following year. The rise of computer art and the Internet was explored by guest editor Alan Sondheim in an issue on ãFuture Culture,ä a topic the magazine would begin addressing more regularly, while an ongoing interest in art and education was reflected by an issue dealing with art schools. Another historic theme for the publication, the crisis of underfunded and freshly marginalized alternative spaces, was considered in an issue titled ãNo Alternatives?ä that defiantly declared the intention of alternative institutions to stay in business and suggested the possibility of such spaces going online.

A full range of mainstream and marginal visual arts and performance accompanied the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, and the magazine offered extensive coverage throughout volume 20 of everything from Siah Armajaniâs tower and cauldron to the Taboo collectiveâs sendup of the hoopla surrounding Southern identity. An issue featuring international and Southern artistsâ pages was on the streets for the Games themselves. Issues before and after explored topics from ãCity Limits,ä a return to topics of architectural and social space, to the ãArtistâs Survival Guide,ä an issue dealing with practical questions that was so popular with working artists that it became the basis for a column that continues to the present day under the title ãSurviving.ä ãRe-defining the Ninetiesä (see photo) included interviews with Hal Foster and Thomas McEvilley on the elusive topic of how the decade was shaping up just past mid-point. Three of the yearâs six issues were edited by individual staff members Cathy Downey, Jerry Cullum, and Amy Jinkner-Lloyd after the departure of Glenn Harper, who left the magazine to become Editor of the Washington-based publication, Sculpture.

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