This web publication marks the second Centennial celebration of The Art Bulletin, which may rightly claim several beginnings. The centennial celebration in 2011 marked the occasion of the foundation of the College Art Association in 1911, for which Natalie Boymel "Tally" Kampen, then Chair of the Editorial Board, compiled a “Centennial Anthology” of board members’ favorite articles for the College Art Association website. Many of the articles in the anthology mark key moments in the intellectual development of the discipline of art history; all reflect the social, structural, and infrastructural development of the journal. Explicit, directed involvement with the formation of the discipline is evident from the very first issues as has been noted recently in several venues. Participants in the Publications Committee session, “Celebrating The Art Bulletin,” organized by Tally Kampen and held during the 2010 Annual Conference, based their ruminations on the journal's future in the journal's past. In addition, Susan Ball, executive director emerita, edited a volume of essays on the history of CAA, The Eye, the Hand, the Mind: 100 Years of the College Art Association, in which Craig Houser considered the history of The Art Bulletin along with the full slate of CAA’s scholarly publications. Following those activities, it seemed appropriate to explore new possibilities for scholarly publication on the occasion of the journal’s centennial.

In celebration of the centennial year of the first issue in 1913, we feature three articles from the "Centennial Anthology" toward your consideration of The Art Bulletin’s digital future. “Publishing The Art Bulletin: Past, Present, and Future,” presents these articles as they may be found in the journal's current online format as pdf documents, that is as scans of the print journal (issues up to 2008 accessible via JSTOR), and as the articles might be read in the tablet format that is popular now. Here, you may look back at the development of the print journal through an Interactive Timeline in which all Table of Contents are grouped by decade; changes in format and content are noted by year. To a great extent, this is an exercise in form and function, tracing some of the ways by which the journal came to take its present form in print to serve the purposes it serves now, and asking what forms the journal might take to serve the future needs of art historical inquiry across the discipline as well as, perhaps, beyond disciplinary boundaries. Intersections of form with content, and changes in form and content, are considered here mainly as they reflect the stated concerns of the Editors.

The online publishing platform used here allows further exploration of this information through links, keywords, and tags, which enable the visualization of complex data sets. Tag visualization generates impressionistic and dynamic diagrammatic renderings of categories of information so as to allow the reader to see thematic connections and strike alternate paths through the year entries of the timeline. All relevant tags are noted at the bottom of the screen for each year entry. You might, for example, decide to explore tags for editorial statements, or other tagged themes noted in timeline entries. Cost has always been a concern so changes and events associated with cost (subventions, for example, and cost increases for subscriptions) have been tagged, as have illustrations and other aspects of format, and content. (For navigation possibilities, see this video.) However you chart your paths through this information you will sketch alternate histories of intellectual concerns and the more mundane restrictions that have mitigated the aspirations of the journal's Editors and readership. Is this example of an open source platform for born-digital publishing the kind of publishing option The Art Bulletin should consider taking advantage of in its digital future?

As the journal of record for the discipline in America, The Art Bulletin provides essential services for art historical scholarship across all fields (presenting a compendious view of ongoing research at the highest levels and emerging areas of common interest, as well as furnishing a venue for the peer-reviewed articles so essential to tenure and promotion in the academy) with the goal of sustaining the discipline. How do you imagine the journal might exploit online opportunities while continuing to serve and support the discipline? How might a more robust online presence address current disciplinary needs or problems? No step into the future should be undertaken without concerted consideration by the readership of The Art Bulletin of past developments and current trends in the history of art. We ask you to explore this site, imagine the possibilities, and let us know your thoughts. To submit your comments, click on the comment button at the bottom of the Home page.

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