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[chronicle_moderator]

The number of people earning Ph.D.'s in art history is exploding, but thanks to shrinking sales of monographs and growing production and permissions costs, some university presses have cut back their art-history programs. Will print-on-demand technologies and digital publishing help solve the problem? Do the museums that hold copyright need to redefine "fair use"? What other changes need to be made in how art-history scholarship is produced, evaluated, and distributed?
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[vangoghgal]

The biggest problem, in my view, is the cost of illustrations and reproduction fees. I just had my first book published last year (on an unnamed topic--not Van Gogh--and with an unnamed university press) and I spent thousands of dollars on photographs, copyright fees, a subvention to the publisher for additional images beyond the number in my contract, etc. I had small grants to help with some of it, but not all. Where museums/archives got me was although the works I was illustrating are centuries old and far out of the public domain, they'd charge me for the right to reproduce the *photograph* of said object, which was theirs. Many institutions gave discount or waived the fee, but many did not. In a few cases, museums asked for two copies of the book (sometimes on top of the fee)--the publisher provided one to each institution gratis (thank you), so guess who has to buy the other one at 80 bucks a pop? Why would the museum need two copies?

Moreover, anyone wishing to publish images of works in the collections of the Reunion des Musees Nationaux, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, and many other European museums HAS to go through Art Resource now, which costs a pretty penny. And since you can't have an art history book, or an article, without illustrations...the burden falls on the hapless scholar. For untenured scholars on an assistant professor's salary, this is a real hardship.

At least the things I publish are old enough that I don't have to worry about the same kinds of expenses that would be incurred with modern or contemporary art, which must be a lot more than I have to put up with. I feel for the folks who work in those areas.

[realfrancie]

I've hesitated on posting my thoughts about this article, partly because the topic depresses me to no end, but also because I find the idea absurdly amusing that there's been an "explosion" of art history Ph.D.'s in the first place.  True, the numbers are up, but in reality there are what, a few dozen more granted each a year?  It is still a very small discipline.  And although I haven't checked, I would venture to guess that the increase may be in the emerging field of "visual studies" and in non-Western art, as opposed to the traditional areas of Western art, ancient to modern.

But no, it's not a happy picture, especially for those in TT positions.  Publishing "The Book" has become more difficult for the economic reasons given in the article, but it may also be attributed to more departments having upped the bar for tenure by requiring at least one book published by a university press, plus several articles.  Other forms of publications, such as exhibition catalogs and editions of primary source material, may not count as The Book.  It's my feeling that art history, because of its subject matter, ideally should be more amenable to alternative forms of publishing beyond the almighty monograph.  I'm not sure this will come to pass anytime soon, however.