6.5 Appendix f: summit meeting with editors, publishers, art

The capstone of this investigation into the state of art history publishing was the convening of a one-daymeeting among editors, publishers, art historians, museum executives, and Mellon Foundation representatives to share thepreliminary results of the study and begin a cross-domain conversation about how to address the challenges associated withpublishing in this area. A group of thirty people, invited as representatives of key perspectives on this issue, met on March 3,2006 at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University to discuss salient aspects of the issue, such as: changes inpublishing practices, dissertation publishing, e-publishing, the role of journals, the role of museum publications, permissions feesand copyright restrictions, the availability and role of subventions, and approaches to containing publishing costs.

The size of the meeting was deliberately held to below three dozen in order to encourage open discussion anddialogue within a roundtable, working-session format. The meeting included 12 editors and publishers, 9 scholars, 6 representativesof arts institutes and museums, 6 current or former journal editors, and 3 specialists in emerging publishing technologies, aswell as representatives of the Mellon Foundation. (Some participants served in multiple roles; for example, as bothscholars and journal editors.)

The session was organized not so much to elicit information about the challenges associated with art historypublishing (as the earlier focused discussions with art historians and art history editors had been), but to stimulate thinking aboutsteps that might be taken to begin dealing concretely with these challenges. The session was convened by co-principal investigatorMariët Westermann and moderated by Lawrence McGill, with input from Mariët Westermann, Hilary Ballon, and Kate Wittenberg. The meeting ran from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with a 30-minute break for lunch.The session was audiotaped and subsequently transcribed to aid in documenting important outcomes from the discussion.

• Invitation to Summit Meeting
• Background Materials Distributed in Advance of Summit Meeting
• Summit Meeting Agenda
• Summit Meeting Participants