What Models?

In this roundtable discussion from the Art Papers Art Writing and Publishing Symposium, Tempestt Hazel, James Hoff, and Lindsay Preston Zappas talk about funding, institutional, and administrative models that offer stable structures for success. They were prompted by the questions: How can we (re)define success? What tradeoffs exist between the options of different models? How do we build diversity, accessibility, and inclusion into the framework of our models as such initiatives fall increasingly under fire? Nonprofit vs for profit, independent vs imprint, post-covid resilience, writer compensation—what is sustainable?

Tempestt Hazel (she/her) is a curator, writer, and cofounder of Sixty Inches From Center, a collective of editors, writers, artists, curators, librarians, and archivists who have published and produced collaborative projects about artists, archival practice, creative labor, and culture in the Midwest since 2010. Across her practices and through Sixty, Hazel has worked alongside artists, organizers, grant makers, and cultural workers to explore solidarity economies, cooperative models, archival editorial conditions that support more viable writing lives. She is also the founder and host of The Art of It All, a podcast and platform for dialogue and discovery around Black and brown artists and makers. Her work has been featured in publications including Artnet, ARTnews, Burnaway, Cultured Magazine, ESSENCE, Hyperallergic, i-D, and W, among others. She has spoken on panels about arts writing, criticism, and independent publishing at the Guggenheim Museum, The Poetry Foundation, Art Basel Miami Beach, and NADA New York. James Hoff (he/him) is an artist living and working in New York. His work encompasses a variety of media, including sound, video, painting, and publishing. Hoff co-founded Primary Information in 2006 to publish historical and contemporary artists’ books. He has edited or published more than 200 books since 2004, including THING, ArtRite, Broken Music, Black Art Notes, The New Woman’s practice, future canon creation, and systems change in and through the arts.

James Hoff (he/him) is an artist living and working in New York. His work encompasses a variety of media, including sound, video, painting, and publishing. Hoff co-founded Primary Information in 2006 to publish historical and contemporary artists’ books. He has edited or published more than 200 books since 2004, including THING, Art-Rite, Broken Music, Black Art Notes, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog, Women’s Work, Barbara T. Smith’s I Am Abandoned, Robert Gober’s Slides of a Changing Painting, Glenn Ligon’s Distinguishing Piss from Rain, Mary Heilmann’s The All Night Movie, and Cornelius Cardew’s Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, among many others.