ArtSlant shut down after twelve years of operation. Co-founder Catherine Ruggles has determined it is no longer possible to keep the site running.
First and foremost: you deserve a heartfelt thank you! From the start, ArtSlant has always been a community built by and for artists, arts professionals, and art lovers. Whether you maintained a member profile or premium artist website, followed the latest criticism in ArtSlant magazine, applied to the ArtSlant Prize, or wrote exhibition reviews, your contributions helped make ArtSlant what it was: a resource that inspired, supported, and promoted artists and writers from across the global arts community.
Georgia Fee, 50 Kisses
Some background
In 2007, Georgia Fee and Catherine Ruggles launched a twelve-year commitment to emerging artists, arts writers, and critics. Beginning in LA as a network for local artists, ArtSlant Magazine ultimately expanded to fifteen cities and countries worldwide, bringing onboard fresh writers, editors, and artists to critique, unpack, reflect on, and generally chronicle art its engagement with contemporary culture. For nine years, ArtSlant also awarded the ArtSlant Prize, celebrating outstanding work from emerging artists. From 2013–2018, ArtSlant hosted a Residency for artists and writers in Paris, founded in honor of Georgia Fee following her passing in 2012.
Georgia Fee took a chance on so many of us, building open pathways to success in an industry that can be hard to break into. ArtSlant Prize winners had their work evaluated by respected gallerists and curators and exhibited at art fairs in Miami and New York City. Many have gone on to have major gallery representation and exhibit their artwork widely. Likewise, countless writers cut their teeth in this small company to go on to edit and write for mainstream art publications, a trajectory we’ve always been very proud of.
Special thanks to our customer service guru, Marcela Rodriguez Aguilar, our exhibition listings champ, Ninna Palmario, and past editors Andrea Alessi, Natalie Hegert, Joel Kuennen, Charlotte Jansen, Andrew Berardini, Stephanie Cristello, Charlie Schultz, Abraham Ritchie, Trong Nguyen, and Sophia Powers.
ArtSlant Prize IX Winners’ Exhibition, SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW, New York City, 2018. With work by David Rios Ferreira,
Thank you
On behalf of all the staff and editors who have left their marks on the site, we want to extend massive gratitude to each of you who made ArtSlant not only a respected platform for emerging artists and art criticism but also a space for play and experimentation. Without your artwork, artist profiles, blog posts, reviews, and exhibition listings, ArtSlant could never have been the meaningful, engaged community it was. Huge thanks to all the artists who supported ArtSlant through our subscription services. ArtSlant was unique in the world of contemporary art in that it created an opportunity for artists and writers to support each other. We have truly loved browsing through all the incredible artwork you have uploaded and shared on the site and hope we, in turn, played a role in your creative growth.
Save your work
Toward the end of April, Catherine will bring the site down. If you haven’t done so already, please save anything hosted on ArtSlant that you want a record of—be it artwork, blog posts, accolades, or reviews. You can find a record of your artwork, artist statements, prize wins, reviews, and other activities by flipping through the tabs on your ArtSlant profile page. Artists with Premium Subscription websites can look here for info on how to transfer your unique domain name.
Sabato Visconti, Katya Grokhovsky, and daàPo Reo
Archive and Legacy
Now the good news! ArtSlant will live on as a resource in two digital archives: the Library of Congress and the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC).
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress welcomes ArtSlant as “an important part of [its web archive] collection and the historical record.” Initially, the ArtSlant archive will be available to researchers at Library facilities and by special arrangement. After one year, the Library may also make the collection available more broadly by hosting it on its public access website. Learn more about the Library's Web Archiving program goals here and check out their web archives.
NYARC
The New York Art Resources Consortium will also include ArtSlant in its web archive collections. NYARC comprises the research libraries of The Brooklyn Museum, The Frick Collection, and The Museum of Modern Art. These libraries are committed to “enabling access to the broadest possible range of print materials related to art and art history,” Now, they are also making archival copies of important web resources for preservation and access purposes.
All of the content included in the web archive collections is made publicly accessible via NYARC’s Archive-It account (full-text search and metadata), within a shared catalog via records they create for websites (called ARCADE—the union catalog of the Frick, MoMA, and the Brooklyn Museum), and via full-text search in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
We hope you feel as proud as we do that the art and writing of everyone in the ArtSlantcommunity will live on in these resources. We have been honored to shape and continue what Georgia Fee and Catherine Ruggles began, supporting ArtSlant’s commitment to artists, arts writers, and criticism for over a decade.
