Editorial

Washington, May 2019

This issue of the New Art Examiner acknowledges we made a mistake by attempting to change our name to the New Art Gazette. We were frightened by a lawyer’s advice pointing out the possibility of being sued. On second thought, we decided this was unlikely and the publisher would be happy to go to court to defend his long held and obvious intellectual property rights as the co-founder and long-time publisher of the New Art Examiner.

This situation emerged when previous colleagues in Chicago secretly hijacked The New Art Examiner, as they wished to control it and derive a seedy eminence from being seen as the inheritors of its fine and important tradition. The magazine had folded in 1990 when it passed into new hands, after the founding editors, the late Jane Addams Allen and Derek Guthrie, retired to Cornwall with ill health. At that time the NAE was the largest circulated serious art journal printed outside New York.

In 2014 Derek Guthrie approached Daniel Nanavati in Cornwall UK, to resurrect the NAE. Without money or support the NAE returned to life, later with the support of previous Chicago colleagues. They attempted to censor copy from the UK which defiled the agreement that each team was independent and limited freedom of speech.

Times have changed and social media has virtually destroyed small publications, even well-established newspapers are suffering. The New Art Examiner managed to survive as Daniel Nanavati managed the website, www.newartexaminer.net which is showing remarkable response for a specialized art journal with over 280,000 unique visitors since January 2017.

To reclaim our identify we reversed our previous decision, defied the turncoats of Chicago, Michel Segard, Michael Ramstedt, Tom Feldhacker and Tom Mullaney, who made an unethical power grab and in so doing reinforced Chicago’s reputation as excessively provincial. The New Art Examiner is proud of its editorial reach which is only possible with volunteer writers who respect the mythic status the NAE has attained. I feel sure that the NAE will continue its progress internationally.

The NAE will continue its policy of print issues with an online copy, all letters to the editor with gratitude. Critical writing in these days of excessive PR, needs a voice that is in short supply and a tolerant outlet. Art and artists have to rise above the demands of money and manufactured status.

Derek Guthrie