50 Years of ART PAPERS

50 YEARS of ART PAPERS tells the story of 5 decades of independent, artist-centered, and artist-produced art criticism, offering some of the most significant texts from the magazine’s history—texts that were timely, timeless, or ahead-of-their­ time.

By tracing the work of ART PAPERS—the longest-running nonprofit art magazine in the US—this book captures the unique perspective of this geographically marginalized but culturally central publication as it grew into an internationally distributed, globally engaged publication.

Pre-order your copy of this limited-run book today!
Pre-sales end in June (or sooner if sold-out), the book will ship at the end of 2025.

ART PAPERS will conclude operations and sunset the organization in 2026, at the organization’s 50 year anniversary. 50 YEARS of ART PAPERS will serve as a testimonial and artifact of the publication’s singular contribution to art criticism and print media—celebrating a legacy of bringing marginal views to the center. 

Perhaps the most famous—or infamous—cover in the history of ART PAPERS was the January/February 1993 issue, which bore the image of a Xeroxed rooster. Inspired by Mildred Thompson’s dialogue with Guillermo Gomez-Peña and Keith Antar Mason, in which the artists discussed the significance of a dead chicken in a recent collaboration, the image served as the “cover image” for an issue that was, in actuality, coverless—a cost saving gesture.

The cover design for 50 YEARS of ART PAPERS draws inspiration from this iconic cover image, and from the scrappy, DIY, indomitable tenacity that ART PAPERS has embodied throughout our history.

The book’s structure emphasizes a thematic approach, offering selections of some of the most significant texts from the magazine’s history: interviews, essays, reviews, and works of experimental writing that were timely,  timeless, or ahead-of-their-time.

The book will underscore ART PAPERS’ contributions to the most crucial, impassioned, evergreen, and impactful subjects of discourse that have preoccupied contemporary artists and critics since the mid-20th century. Chapters such as “ART PAPERS on Monuments + Public Art” “ART PAPERS on the body + disability” “ART PAPERS on Technology + New Media” and “ART PAPERS on Folk + Self-Taught Art” will include introductions to the selected texts that situate them within their historical context as well as within the broader span of ART PAPERS’ engagement with the topic, written by former editors, contributors, and contributing editors of the publication.

Interspersed between the thematic chapters will be spotlights on the publication’s graphic design history, documentation of notable public programs, a roundtable between the past editors who stewarded ART PAPERS’ singular voice in American art publishing, and a curated selection of artist projects. The book will also compile the complete Art Papers glossaries—a long-running segment in which artists, critics, and scholars take up a term, or terms, relating to issue themes and present experimental definitions.