ARTnews

1902–1936: Founding and early history The magazine was founded in New York City by James Clarence Hyde in 1902 as '''''Hyde's Weekly Art News''', a single–sheet publication issued weekly, covering news about artists, galleries, museums, and the policies impacting them. Hyde had previously worked as a culture reporter for The New York Herald. In its early years, the magazine was primarily a trade publication for the art industry. Hyde renamed the magazine American Art News in November 1904 and expanded it to include multiple pages and illustrations, publishing weekly during the art season between November and May. The same year, James Bliss Townsend, a former art critic at the Herald'', purchased the magazine from Hyde and became editor. As editor, Townsend had generally conservative tastes and disliked modern or avant-garde art, but he softened his stance toward the end of his time leading the magazine. Townsend died suddenly in 1921 and the magazine was sold to Samuel W. Frankel, a former Herald staffer who had left the paper to start an art-focused advertising agency, and Peyton Boswell, a critic who previously wrote for the Herald and other publications. Boswell left the publication in 1925. Frankfurter's ownership stake in the company eventually totaled around 80 percent of the shares. Both Frankfurter and Hess focused the magazine on exhibition reviews and longer, critical essays on art. Hess in particular became known for championing abstract expressionism, action painting, and the New York School of artists, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. In 1962, Frankfurter sold Art Foundation Press to The Washington Post Company, which housed ART News and Portfolio in its magazine division under Newsweek. Frankfurter remained editor until his death in 1965 and was succeeded in the role by Hess. The magazine's name was shortened again in 1969 to ARTnews, which remains its current title. similar to the original weekly publication. ARTnews Associates launched Antiques World in 1978, a monthly sister magazine focused primarily on the antiques trade. By 1979, the circulation of ARTnews had risen to 68,000, moving ahead of its rival Art in America. Esterow's daughter Judith Esterow became associate publisher in 1986, having started at the magazine as a receptionist. That year, The New York Times described the publication as "the elder statesman of American art magazines". Milton Esterow introduced the Top 200 Collectors list in 1990, a special annual issue of the magazine that featured profiles of notable art collectors. The downturn in the art market of the early 1990s put financial strain on the business as it relied on advertising income from galleries and other art market businesses. The magazine expanded its ads to broader consumer and luxury goods in the mid-90s, leading to increased revenue. Robin Cembalest was named editor of ARTnews in 1998. In 2005, the magazine had a print circulation of 85,000. for a reported $2 million. Abbey House confirmed this in June 2014, saying that it had made the purchase through Skaterschikov's privately held firm to better negotiate the sale without being subject to the transparency requirements for large purchases by public companies. The company also announced that it was merging with the parent company of ARTnews to form ArtNews SA. Sarah Douglas, former culture editor of The New York Observer, was named the new editor-in-chief of the publication as part of the transition, replacing Cembalest. In July 2015, businessman Peter Brant announced that he had acquired an ownership stake in ArtNews SA through a series of transactions that involved Brant selling several art magazine brands to the company before becoming its new majority owner, including Art in America, Antiques magazine, and MODERN magazine. As part of the process, ARTnews and Art in America formally merged, with the latter's digital portfolio incorporated into the ARTnews website, though the two continued to publish separate print editions. Artnet News reported that the magazine was losing more than $300,000 annually at the time of the sale. Brant completed additional transactions to transfer ArtNews SA's media properties to his company BMP Media Holdings in May 2016. The new BMP-controlled corporate entity overseeing ARTnews and its sister publications was named Art Media Holdings, while ArtNews SA declared bankruptcy as part of the transaction process. 2018–present: Penske ownership, end of print publication In 2018, Penske Media Corporation, the owner of Variety and Rolling Stone magazines, acquired Art Media Holdings from BMP, including ARTnews, Art in America, and its other art magazines. ARTnews ceased publishing quarterly print issues in 2021, with a final print edition for December 2021–January 2022. Penske also acquired Artforum in 2022, putting all three major American art magazines under the same ownership. ==Notable writers and articles==

The magazine has featured writing and reporting from art critics, curators, historians, journalists, museum leaders, and artists including John Ashbery, Alfred H. Barr Jr., Scott Burton, Kenneth Clark, Arthur Danto, Elaine de Kooning, Willy Eisenhart, Robert Goodnough, Clement Greenberg, Thomas B. Hess, Aldous Huxley, Allan Kaprow, Marshall McLuhan, Robert Motherwell, Eleanor Munro, Linda Nochlin, Frank O'Hara, Fairfield Porter, Harold Rosenberg, Jean-Paul Sartre, Meyer Schapiro, Peter Schjeldahl, James Schuyler, Robert Storr, and Greg Tate. Harold Rosenberg published the influential essay "The American Action Painters" in the magazine in 1952, which helped define the style and critical discourse around action painting and artists like Jackson Pollock. Linda Nochlin's essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?", a revised and retitled version of a previous work for the anthology Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, was published in the January 1971 issue of ARTnews. The essay is generally considered required reading for the fields of feminist art history and feminist art theory inasmuch as it calls out the institutional barriers to the visual arts that women in the Western tradition historically faced; the essay has also served as an important impetus for the rediscovery of women artists, followed as it was by the exhibition Women Artists: 1550–1950. Eleanor Munro called it "epochal", and according to Miriam van Rijsingen "it is considered the genesis of feminist art history." In 1984, the magazine published a story about Nazi-looted art that had become Austrian state property after World War II and been relegated to storage for several decades or donated to state museums. The article included accounts from several officials and descendants of Jewish collectors who said the Austrian government had not done enough to locate the rightful heirs of the paintings or allow restitution, and it led the government to open the holdings to reporters and researchers. Similarly, the magazine published reporting by Russian correspondents in 1992 about art looted by the Soviet Union during and immediately following the war, including details about the government's newly formed special commission to study the state's holdings. The authors of the article on Soviet plunder later expanded their research into a book. ==Awards==

The magazine won the George Polk Award for Cultural Reporting in 1981 for its investigative reporting. The same year, it won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence among publications with a circulation less than 100,000. ARTnews won the Polk Award for Cultural Reporting again in 1992 for investigative reporting into art looted by the Soviet Union and kept by the state. ==ARTnews Top 200 Collectors==

Introduced in 1990 by then-owner Milton Esterow, Collectors on the list are profiled with a brief biography and interviewed about their views on collecting and the art market over the previous year. The full list is published online and in a special annual print issue. As of 2025, the annual Top 200 Collectors issue is the only ARTnews-branded print product still published by the magazine. ==See also==

Notes References ==External links==