ART PAPERS

Yesterday we welcomed book sponsors and local contributors to 📕❤️50 YEARS of ART PAPERS ❤️ 📕for a special book reveal gathering.

We were joined by ART PAPERS co-founder Dan Talley, our first executive director Julia Fenton, longtime associate editor and contributor Jerry Cullum (all pictured in the first photo with current executive and artistic director Sarah Higgins) along with many more to share a first look at the long awaited retrospective book.

Co-edited by Sarah Higgins and Re’al Christian, and designed by Jacob Lindgren, the book is available for purchase in the ART PAERS online store and at A’Capella Books in Atlanta. Pre-order shipments are being processed and those of you who preordered will soon have your book in hand!

Second photo courtesy of Matthew Adeboye 📸 Huge thanks to Lostintheletters for hosting us, to Sun in my Belly for catering, and to all the book sponsors and supporters who made it all possible!

Sarah Higgins Re'al Christian Jacob

🎉 Join ART PAPERS at NYABF for our book launch panel discussion in The Classroom at PS1✏️🎓

On Sunday, September 27, from 3–4 PM, join us at Printed Matter’s 2026 New York Art Book Fair to celebrate the launch of 50 YEARS of ART PAPERS.

Co-editors Sarah Higgins (ART PAPERS Executive + Artistic Director) and Re’al Christian (writer and ART PAPERS Contributing Editor) will be in conversation with ART PAPERS co-founder Dan R. Talley, moderated by Emily Watlington (Art in America Deputy Editor).

Together, they’ll explore how the story of five decades of artist-centered contemporary art writing and publishing can be told through ART PAPERS.

📍 Printed Matter’s 2026 New York Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1
🗓 Sunday, September 27
⏰ 3–4 PM
🎟️ Register for the panel today via the link in ART PAPERS bio
*Tickets to NYABF required for attendance*

This program will serve as the official public launch of 50 YEARS of ART PAPERS (1976–2026), the definitive anthology that tells the story of 5 decades of independent, and often artist-produced, publishing by tracing the work of the longest-running nonprofit art magazine in the US.

Be sure to stop by Booth P3 at NYABF, where 50 YEARS of ART PAPERS will be available for purchase, alongside last-chance archival issues, and where the final issue of ART PAPERS will be available free of charge.

We hope to see you there!
Sarah Higgins Re'al Christian Emily Watlington Dan R. Talley

🔥 🌱 Fire Ecology

Fire Ecology is the final issue of ART PAPERS’ 50-year run.

This special issue is the synthesis and culmination of a three-year project, initiated in response to fatal budget shortfalls, to extend the life of the organization while allowing for a dignified conclusion.

Inspired by Indigenous practices of ecological stewardship through intentional burning, the project took up the metaphor of fire ecology: the practice of maintaining ecosystem health by using fire to clear old growth, fertilize the soil, and make space for new growth.

Fire Ecology will be available free of charge at NYABF

📍 Booth P3

📅 September 24–27

📌 Printer Matter’s New York Art Book Fair MoMA PS1, Queens

📦 Not in New York? You can order a copy for the cost of shipping via the link in the ART PAPERS bio.

Please note: copies are limited, and Fire Ecology will only be available to order through Winter 2026.
Photo: Walker Bankson
walkerbankson

🎨📚✨ ART PAPERS at Printed Matter’s 2026 New York Art Book Fair

ART PAPERS is pleased to announce our participation in Printed Matter’s 2026 New York Art Book Fair, taking place September 24–27 at MoMA PS1 in Queens.

📍 Booth P3

Our booth will feature our newly launched retrospective book, 50 YEARS of ART PAPERS, which tells the story of five decades of independent, artist-centered, and artist-produced criticism through a selection of timely, timeless, and ahead-of-their-time texts from the magazine’s history.

Also available—free to take—will be Fire Ecology, the final issue of ART PAPERS. This special issue synthesizes a three-year project leading toward the organization’s conclusion in December 2026.

We’ll also have selections from ART PAPERS’ back catalog, offering a final opportunity to acquire rare and historically significant issues from our 50-year history, alongside limited-edition and artist-designed T-shirts, tote bags, and other merchandise.

If you’re attending NYABF—or will be in New York City the last weekend of September—stop by Booth P3 and see us. We’d love to share this history with you.




Printed Matter Art Book Fairs

🏙️🤝 This quote, from the second of Fire Ecology’s “distillations,”comes from Burnaway () Editor Courtney McClellan, speaking at the Art Papers Art Writing & Publishing Symposium.

📝🎨With a focus on art writing in the US, we brought together writers, editors, and publishers from across the country to participate in discussions to collectively concretize the field’s direction.

⚗️“Distillations” from this and the other symposium panels can be read in the Fire Ecology issue. Get your copy today via the link in the bio.

The issue is offered free of charge, but the edition is limited.

🧠 🔥🌱 This quote is from an essay, written by Sarah Higgins, that reveals the impetus and ethos for the Fire Ecology project. The project, eponymous with the essay and the final issue, was created out of a desire to highlight that it is unsustainable for things to “continue as normal” for nonprofit arts publications. Higgins maps the changing conditions that pushed Art Papers to fundamentally rethink and restructure how we approach art writing.

🔄 The essay describes how gradually closing Art Papers allowed the organization to facilitate this rethinking. No longer trapped in the precarious cycle of securing next year’s funding from dwindling sources, the organization has been able to take a step back, and bring its community together to reconsider how this important work is done.

📖 Adapted for publication from a talk given by Higgins at the Art Papers Symposium, read the full essay in the Fire Ecology issue, available now via the link in the bio.

🗣️ Fire Ecology includes Be Oakley’s “Failure as Futuremaking,” the last in a long line of Artists’ Pages and Projects in Art Papers over the years. “Failure as Futuremaking” functions as an essay and a demonstration of Oakley’s practice, which includes the making of “Protest Fonts,” typefaces created based on the distinct handmade signage from various protests.

💭 “Failure as Futuremaking” confronts the inadequacy of our conceptions of “success” and “failure,” arguing that we have to recognize the necessity, but also the beauty, in failure to expand possibilities and move toward liberation.

🔤 Oakley’s typeface, inspired by signs from the 2022–2023 RISD Teamsters and New School Adjunct strikes, is used throughout the Fire Ecology issue to title each text, infusing Oakley’s meditations into the core of what the issue articulates.

The issue is offered free of charge, but the edition is limited.

📦 Get your copy today via the link in the bio.

🏛️ In the final issue of Art Papers, Fawz Kabra and Isak Berbić write about their project Brief Histories “as a moving set of entanglements, rather than as an organization or a stable structure.” They were invited to give the closing “Houseguest Talk” at Atlanta Art Ecosystems. Adapted for publication, their talk frames Brief Histories as a case study for creating institutional models that are more fit-to-purpose and based upon a more generative value set.

🧾 This quote is from Brief Histories’ text, which can be read in full in the final issue, Fire Ecology🌱🔥

📗The issue is offered free of charge, but the edition is limited.

🔗 Order your copy now via the link in the bio.

Score a piece of ART PAPERS history at our OFFICE SALE— 📦💝THIS SATURDAY, MAY 16, 11 AM – 4 PM.
Join our staff in bidding farewell to the office that Art Papers has occupied since the 1990s, and go home with a (gently loved) piece of that history. Items will be priced to sell, or make us an offer!
WE HAVE
Filing Cabinets
Tabletops/desks
Office Supplies & Equipment
Catering & Event Supplies
Office Chairs
Glassware
& more!
PLUS
Art Magazines (not just ART PAPERS)
Art Books
Art Papers Merch (T-shirts, Totebags, and, of course magazines!)