This is a big week for University of Washington Press art and art history books! First, along with our partners in the Art History Publication Initiative (AHPI) – Duke University Press, Penn State University Press, and the University of Pennsylvania Press – we’re delighted to launch AHPI’s new website: arthistorypi.org.

AHPI’s mission is to help bring art history publishing into the digital age by tackling some of the obstacles that have made it difficult for scholars and publishers to take advantage of evolving digital technologies. All AHPI books are being published in both print and digital form, and the website will host accompanying multimedia materials such as video clips, interviews, podcasts, interactive maps, and more.

The website will also serve as a forum for discussions of rights and permissions issues that can be particularly vexing in the field of art history, with blog posts on recent developments and case studies about problems encountered and solutions found. For more information about the initiative and the first books in it, please visit the new site!

College Art Association 2014 Annual Meeting

In related news, we’re headed to Chicago to participate in the 102nd annual meeting of the College Art Association (CAA). Swing by our booth (#311, 313) to meet UW Press Senior Acquisitions Editor, Regan Huff, and Advancement and Grants Manager, Beth Fuget. Below we detail some of our involvement in the conference, both within and beyond the exhibit hall. We look forward to seeing you there!

Session: Getting Published in the Digital Age: A Guide for Art Historians

Join Regan Huff, Beth Fuget, and other AHPI members  for an insightful discussion about publishing art history work in the digital age. The session will meet at the Hilton Chicago, 8th Floor, Lake Michigan room at noon on Saturday. In addition to UW Press staff, the panel includes Eleanor Goodman (chair), Penn State University Press; Jennifer Norton, Penn State University Press; Ken Wissoker, Duke University Press; and Cali Buckley, AHPI permissions manager.

CAA Book Awards

We are honored to be the publisher of this year’s recipient of the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award,  Painting of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in 17th-Century Japan (2012) by Yukio Lippit. In explaining the decision, the awards committee writes:

Yukio Lippit pursues three questions: What is the nature of artistic production before the advent of the category of art? What was the status of the artist as a social entity and discursive category prior to the transplantation of the European concept of the artist in the late nineteenth century? And what constitutes the “Japaneseness” of painting prior to the consolidation of the nation-state? Focusing on the Kano House of painters over the course of the seventeenth century, Lippit develops answers to these questions by eschewing more conventional methodological approaches and exploring instead a sequence of strategies employed by artists within the Kano House, or operating in tension with it, that helped to formalize a canon for painting conceived as a discrete field of practice with an identifiable national character.

In addition to this prestigious award, two forthcoming University of Washington Press books were awarded grants from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund:

Wei-Cheng Lin‘s Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai (forthcoming May 2014)

Kristina Kleutghen‘s Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in Eighteenth-Century China, (forthcoming Fall 2014)
Special Offer
In celebration of the upcoming meeting, we’re offering a special deal on one of our most beautiful backlist titles: The Complete Jacob Lawrence, a two-volume set catalogue raisonné, normally $175 is available at a 75% discount until March 31. Use code WST75 when ordering through our website.