End of Year Letter: 2023 -> 2024

End of Year 

2023 -> 2024

2023 has been a pivotal year for Art Papers, one filled with great accomplishments and equally great challenges. We participated in prestigious partnerships, we surfed the zeitgeist with our Spring issue on Artificial Intelligence, and we presented urgent and engaging public conversations with artists, curators, writers, and thought leaders. Then, in the fall, we surmounted unforeseen challenges to this legacy institution’s sustainability by reinventing the organization for an ambitious and, we hope, meaningful conclusion in 2026.

As we turn the page to the next year, and embark upon ambitious programming plans, we’re particularly grateful for our community—the readers, the artists and writers, the curators and educators, and the culturally curious who have supported Art Papers for these 47 years. In 2024, we begin the work of culminating and securing Art Papers’ legacy.

We know that this time of year brings an avalanche of asks, but we hope that you’ll consider making a year-end gift to Art Papers at this pivotal moment in our history.

In 2023 we …

Published 63 texts—including 18 feature essays, 7 interviews, 21 Reviews, 3 Glossary Entries, and 6 Artist Projects. 

Printed 3 issues of ART PAPERS magazine with themes of Artificial Intelligence (co-edited by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian), Refusal + Renewal, and Counter Ecologies (guest edited by Carson Chan and the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Natural and the Built Environment at the Museum of Modern Art).

Invited artist and writer Jillian McManemin to revisit our 1994 issue “Representing Lesbian Subjectivities,” originally guest edited by artist Patricia Cronin. McManemin selected texts from the issue to feature on ARTPAPERS.org, and penned an introduction to contextualize our return to this material, stating, “Digitizing these materials and making them accessible to artists, scholars, and budding sapphic-art-herstorians is deeply important now, during another time when erasure of sexual identity/desire and an assault on bodily autonomy are gripping the United States.”

Hosted 2 ART PAPERS LIVE talks with artists Stephanie Dinkins (in partnership with Carlos Museum + Emory Arts) and Nancy Baker Cahill (in partnership with Flux Projects and Atlanta Design Festival).

Co-hosted an event with JOAN in Los Angeles, featuring an illustrated reading by Art Papers contributing editor, and AI issue co-editor, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian from her new book The Institute for Other Intelligences, a special screening of INYAN/ZINTKALA/INYAN KAGAPI (STONES MAKE BIRDS MAKE STONES) by Kite, a reading by issue-contributor K Allado-McDowell from their current book Air Age Blueprint, and a conversation between K, Mashinka, and Art Papers editor + artistic director Sarah Higgins.

Hosted 5 Contributor Conversations on Instagram and celebrated the birthday of artist and musician Lonnie Holley by screening Thumbs Up for Mother Universe: Stories from the Life of Lonnie Holley followed by a Q&A with Lonnie Holley and the film’s producer George King.

Presented 1 exhibition, A Tremulous Force, in conjunction with Atlanta Art Week and in partnership with Temporary Studios. It featured the work of Atlanta-based artists William Downs, Aineki Traverso, and Kelly Taylor Mitchell alongside New York based poet danilo machado and Pittsburgh-based artist Julie Lee.

Produced a 3-day Art Writing Workshop led by Mildred Thompson Editorial + Art Writing Fellow Sherae Rimpsey. We welcomed a brilliant cohort of 12 writers and 6 instructors with the support of our partners at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane, The Black School, and Community Book Center workshop in New Orleans. Of which, one participant said was, “Absolutely transformative! The content was rich, the communal engagement was intimate, and the overall experience was healing.”

Hosted 2 in-person fundraising events: The 24th Annual Art Papers Art Auction in February at The Factory Atlanta, and, in November, we gathered for Past Present Future: an evening in celebration of Art Papers’ legacy, at the home of art collector and dealer Courtney Bombeck.

Experienced significant changes to our team: we bade farewell to Saskia Benjamin, Art Papers’ executive director of 11 years, and former program + outreach coordinator Jennifer Williams. We welcomed interim executive director Amy Miller, and, in November, we announced the appointment of editor + artistic director, Sarah Higgins to the newly created role of executive + artistic director.

Created a new strategic plan that outlines a dynamic yet radical course for the organization.

In 2024…

We’ll continue publishing online with themes including, Reworlding (guest co-edited by Michael Jones McKean and Making Sense of Site (guest edited by Sherae Rimpsey, as the culmination of our two-year fellowship in partnership with Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane and funded by the Mellon Foundation).

Amy Miller will join the team as director of institutional advancement, and Noah Reyes will continue in the role of program + outreach coordinator.

We’ll produce thoughtfully designed programming that brings together a variety of constituents invested in addressing the growing challenges faced by the nonprofit arts sector in Atlanta. We’ll conduct community research, facilitate roundtable discussions, and present public programs that examine new ways to define success and sustainability for arts institutions.

This approach is inspired by the metaphor of Fire Ecology—a process by which old growth burns to enrich the soil and fertilize new growth. We have clarity of vision and are pleasantly surprised by the incredibly enthusiastic response the community is having to these plans. There is a need for this work, and we’re uniquely positioned to do it.

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