As art-agenda approaches its tenth birthday in June—global pandemics notwithstanding—its mission to deliver intelligent, original and influential writing on contemporary art continues to evolve.
It is in the spirit of change that we are pleased to announce Ben Eastham as the new Editor-in-Chief of art-agenda. He succeeds Filipa Ramos who, in her six years at the helm, has expanded the publication’s remit through the introduction of features such as Conversations, Rearview, and Double Take, as well as initiating cross-institutional collaborations such as META, with Textwork/Ricard Foundation. The reception for these series–in combination with exhibition reviews and roundups–has reinforced our founding belief that intelligent, long-form art criticism is migrating online. In addition to this, Filipa oversaw the recent renovation of art-agenda’s website and consolidated art-agenda’s highly respected global network of contributors. She steps down to dedicate herself to her academic commitments and to focus on her writing and research.
Ben will build on the foundations put in place by Filipa. Chief among his aims is to integrate new formats into art-agenda’s publishing cycle that will complement its continued commitment to sharp, intelligent, and rigorous exhibition reviews. This will create a regular monthly cycle of features and interviews, a rhythm in which single exhibition reviews are contextualised by in-depth engagements with the themes shaping the discourse. He will also look to take advantage of art-agenda’s substantial archive of reviews, to bring in new subject positions and widen the field of art-agenda’s enquiry into contemporary visual culture, to situate the publication within the wider constellation of e-flux, and to work with both writers and editorial team on longer-term research projects. Or so he tells us.
Ben is founding editor of the art and literary magazine The White Review and joins from ArtReview, where he was editor. He was previously Associate Editor at Documenta 14 and is the editor of books including Luis Camnitzer’s One Number is Worth One Word (e-flux, 2020). His art criticism has been widely published and his second book, The Imaginary Museum, is forthcoming with TLS Books in August. He is happy to be supported by the London-based editors Francesca Wade, author of Square Haunting (2020), and Patrick Langley, whose novel Arkady was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2018.
