Tenth Anniversary Issue (10.2)
2024 marks the tenth anniversary of Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, which was founded in 2012 as the first born-digital, open-access journal dedicated to the study of American art, publishing its first issue in the winter of 2015. From those beginnings until today, we have remained committed to publishing new scholarship in our field twice a year and making it freely available to readers worldwide. Over the past ten years, Panorama has published some 550 essays on a range of topics by about 440 authors who have encouraged us to think broadly about our discipline. From feature articles on portraits of enslaved people, landscapes of the Civil War, and myths of the American West to investigations of psychedelic graphic design, transgenerational trauma, and air pollution, Panorama presents readers with new research on compelling topics that bridge disciplines and constantly challenge and expand the parameters of how we define “American” art.
One of the great benefits of being digital is our responsiveness: we are able to be nimble when urgent issues arise that affect not only our field but also national and global interests. This issue went into its final production stage just as former President Donald Trump was reelected. This leaves those of us who voted for a different outcome—including the editors of this journal—feeling a vast array of emotions, which clearly require more time for processing than our publication deadline—even a nimble, digital one—allows. Past special issues of the journal have grappled with crises such as the January 6 insurrection, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Forthcoming issues will undoubtedly confront the consequences of Project 2025 and other agendas of the next Trump administration.
At present, we offer an issue that we planned with special sections that survey our field using methodologies that are familiar and fundamental to Panorama’s unique approaches to scholarship and discourse. Keidra Daniels Navaroli’s “A Look Back: Thirty Years of AmArt-L” provides an analysis of the very first listserv in the field of American art, launched by two graduate students in the fall of 1994. Daniels Navaroli examines the popularity or repetition of certain ideas, keywords, metrics, and what changed over time as the world continued to digitize. A state-of-the-field contribution by Jenni Sorkin takes the form of a questionnaire, surveying a wide geographical range of mid-career and established curators and academics asked to address topical issues. As contributors to the AHAA’s biannual symposium last month, hosted by the Birmingham Museum of Art and the University of Alabama, Birmingham, our editorial team offered a preview of these special contributions. University of Minnesota graduate student Taylor Rose Payer provides a recap of those proceedings for this issue, reflecting on a memorable few days for those in attendance. Many were visiting Birmingham for the first time, experiencing both the city and three sculptors closely associated with it—John Rhoden, Hayward Oubre, and Joe Minter—whose work was on view in historic monographic presentations.
Panorama’s In the Round and Colloquium sections are often developed from panels presented at conferences and symposia, circulating new and in-process research to readers who may have been unable to attend the convening, and this issue’s Colloquium is no exception. Inspired by comments made at the College Art Association’s 2023 conference, Panorama invited scholars to reflect on how US artists have engaged critically with symbols of national identity in ways that model how we might continue to expand and revise the field of American art. Katherine Jentleson’s introduction considers Arcola Pettway, followed by Michael Lobel on Norman Parish, Adria Gunter on Kiyan Williams, Frances Pohl on Ben Shahn, Erin Pauwels on Kay WalkingStick, M. Stang and Charlotte Hecht on Marie Watt, Jonathan Walz on Robert Rauschenberg, and Dina Murokh on Isaac Julien.
Two Research Notes—“In the Aggregate: Women Artists, Museum Work, and the Paths We Tread” by Annelise Madsen and “Janet Sobel’s All Over, Everywhere” by Natalie Dupêcher—offer new scholarship on women artists, showcasing renewed focus on the pre-1945 period. Digital Dialogues include “Closer to Mainstream: Dorothy Liebes Goes Digital,” by Analisa Sato, and “Zombie Humanism, Generative AI Images, and Photography” by Helen Lewandowski. Both explore the idea of the aftereffect: the online version of the Liebes show, first held at Cooper Hewitt in New York, and the long shadow of Edward Steichen’s Family of Man show, reconfigured with imagery generated through artificial intelligence (AI).
As always, our reviews editors work tirelessly to commission reviews of the latest work shaping our field. This issue includes Book Reviews of Andrea Pappas’s Embroidering the Landscape: Women, Art and the Environment in British North America, 1740–1770, Richard Brookhiser’s Glorious Lessons: John Trumbull, Painter of the American Revolution, Elizabeth Cronin’s The Awe of the Arctic: A Visual History, and Tatiana Reinoza’s Reclaiming the Americas: Latinx Art and the Politics of Territory. We also have five Exhibition Reviews: Framing Freedom: The Harriet Hayden Albums, organized by the Boston Athenæum, Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks” organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, Sargent Claude Johnson, organized by the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, Pacita Abad, organized by the Walker Art Center, and Janet Sobel: All Over organized by the Menil Collection. Sandra Zalman’s perspective on the latter show, which is also the subject of an aforementioned Research Note, provides an additional layer of critical understanding about the importance of Sobel, who, as a self-taught woman artist and an immigrant has so often been left out of narratives of innovation in American abstraction at midcentury.
With this issue, our Exhibition Reviews section welcomes Frederica Simmons of Duke University and bids farewell to Frances K. Holmes of the Institute of American Indian Arts. Holmes has been a vital member of the Panorama team, always contributing to editorial discourse beyond her section and lending her insight and experience as an Indigenous scholar of Indigenous Art in ways that have greatly impacted Panorama and its staff. We look forward to her participation on the journal’s Advisory Council in coming years. This issue also marks Keri Watson’s last as an Executive Editor, which feels like the end of an era. Watson’s term began with issue 7.1, in the spring of 2021, and has spanned many major changes at Panorama—from our redesign in 2022 to a reorganization of the journal’s 501c(3) status in 2023, to major fundraising campaigns resulting in a long-term operating fund that has created unprecedented financial stability for the journal. She will continue to shepherd the journal’s fiscal health as the Finance and Grants Manager, but her professionalism, unflagging energy, and shining example of leadership as the journal’s longest-standing Executive Editor will be greatly missed.
As we look to the future, we are as committed as ever to fostering the ongoing transformation of American art history. This involves not only maintaining the level of scholarly excellence that characterizes our field today but also embracing the next generation of topics, methodologies, and dialogues. That is to say, we aim to produce a journal worthy of such complexity and richness unto itself—one responsive to the needs and interests of its contributors and readers alike. We seek an inclusive forum in which scholars are supported in expanding both the definition and capacity of American art history. We realize that the field is no longer confined to traditional academic departments or well-established institutions, and the diversity of our contributors reflects this wider range of intellectual and professional trajectories. We are dedicated to uplifting the work of emergent scholars, contingent faculty, independent researchers, museum professionals, and artists. Their unique voices and skill sets are singularly valuable to the ongoing life of the field. These voices question dominant narratives, introduce overlooked or marginalized artists and communities, and fill gaps between different institution types and disciplines. At Panorama it is our belief that this multiplicity of perspectives will ensure the ongoing survival of the field—and the journal—into the future. This is where you come in.
Whether you are a graduate student, a museum curator, a professor on the tenure track, or an independent scholar, your contribution to our collective understanding of American art is valuable. We welcome Feature article and Research Note submissions, along with proposals for our In-the-Round, Colloquium, Book and Exhibition Reviews, Digital Dialogues, and Talk Back sections. Every issue of Panorama is a collaboration, and we welcome many scholars who take new, at times unexpected, directions in their work, whether that means deeply focused investigations of single works of art, critically engaged analyses of cultural movements, or innovative reinterpretations of the familiar. The journal benefits from just this kind of original thought and practice, which we foster with contributors across the field. Together, we can ensure that Panorama continues to be a core resource in the field of American art. We invite you to join us in this effort—through your submissions of research, your engagement in our conversations, and your collaboration in determining the future direction of the journal and the field as a whole. We look forward to seeing the exciting work you will bring to the pages of Panorama.
Cite this article: Keri Watson, Katherine Jentleson, Jenni Sorkin, and Cyle Metzger, “Editors’ Welcome: Tenth Anniversary Issue,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 10, no. 2 (Fall 2024), https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.19458.
About the Author(s): Keri Watson, Katherine Jentleson, Jenni Sorkin, and Cyle Metzger are the Executive Editors of Panorama