National Art Writing & Publishing Symposium

In 2024, Art Papers launched Fire Ecology, a 3-year, multi-part project designed to diagnose, synthesize, speculate, and report upon the current health of the visual arts nonprofit and writing/publishing fields. The metaphor of fire ecology evokes maintaining ecosystem health by using controlled fires to burn old growth, thereby fertilizing the soil, and clearing space for new growth to thrive. Our goal is to transform the operations of this 20th-century organization into a single project of interlocking research and programs to enrich the ground from which 21st-century models and practices will emerge.

In September 2025, Art Papers presented the Arts Writing & Publishing Symposium in Atlanta, Georgia. This three-day gathering brought together key voices from art criticism and contemporary art publishing to examine the field’s present and future. Sixteen speakers representing some of the most innovative and renowned voices in art writing and publishing gathered together amid a community of writers, critics, curators, artists, and art supporters. This convening emphasized a “real-talk” approach—one of transparency, vulnerability, and storytelling—to foster honest conversations and meaningful connections with people interested in exploring the strategies and complexities of sustaining art writing and publishing.

The video documentation included here presents the core elements of the symposium.

Research, conversations, data, and outcomes from this program will also be distilled in the final issue of ART PAPERS magazine, Fire Ecology. This issue, to be published in 2026, will culminate the Fire Ecology project by disseminating knowledge gained and propositions made throughout the project’s duration.