Job Opportunity
January 7 2015
Picture: The Burlington Magazine
The estimable The Burlington Magazine is advertising for a new editor. Says the magazine's website:
On the retirement of Richard Shone, Editor, The Burlington Magazine is looking for an Editor to lead the publication forwards in both print and digital formats. The successful candidate will be responsible for maintaining the integrity and academic standards of the editorial content, including selecting, commissioning and editing articles with the assistance of an experienced editorial team. The successful candidate must have a bachelor’s degree, but an advanced degree in art history, literature, or a related field is desirable. A high professional standing in a scholarly press, museum, university or equivalent environment is required. The ideal candidate will have a broad knowledge of art and publishing, a tested understanding of the editorial process, and be able to work to tight deadlines. The successful candidate must also have proven leadership skills and the ability to create a positive and productive team environment. The candidate should be able to collaborate effectively with a wide range of colleagues and contacts, both external and internal, and must possess excellent communication skills. This is a board-level position that reports to the Chairman and so requires a candidate who is organized, able to set priorities and juggle competing demands. Some travel is required.
The salary is negotiable, and the closing deadline is 27th February.
The magazine has many strengths to build on, with a strong brand, and superb production values. But clearly some changes need to be made if the magazine is to continue to be relevant in the future.
A priority for the new editor is to sort out the magazine's online offering, along with its pricing structure. There's something wrong with the magazine's website if one-man-band blogs like this deliver some of its highest traffic. It should be the other way around. At the moment, only the headlines of each new article get put online, and if you want to access details of, say, 'New Titian discovered', it's £15, just for a PDF of that article. That's pretty ridiculous for an educational magazine which is charitably funded - via a trust - and which claims to be a world leader. How many art history students can fork out the £28 cover price? For better or worse, the trend these days for academic publications like The Burlington is towards open access, easily searchable material - or at least much cheaper access. If The Burlington wants a guide, then Apollo magazine has got its online offering about right, with new blogs and online features.
The magazine also needs to liven up a bit. Too many articles are impenetrable, pitching the reader straight in, in media res (though I admit this is a wider problem across art history). Some introductions and conclusions would be good, as well as more engaging prose overall. The reviews really need livening up; they're sometimes (with the occasional honourable exceptions) as dull as a three hundred year old varnish. And the magazine also needs to relax about any work of art connected with 'the trade'. It'll happily take dealers' cash in advertising, but it won't touch with a bargepole anything a dealer or auction house might have discovered - even though, overwhelmingly, most discoveries come from the trade these days.
I would put many of the magazine's weaknesses down to the rather creaky ownership and management structure, so that needs to change as much as the magazine itself.
Anyway, if you apply, good luck! And if readers have other recommendations for the magazine, do send them in.
In the latest edition of The Burlington you can read about a newly discovered bust by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, above, in an article by Marie-Noelle Grison, and a review of the V&A's Constable exhibition by the leading Constable scholar Anne Lyles.
Update - a reader writes:
Indeed the estimable The Burlington Magazine has a midlife identity crisis. Is it a professional magazine or an academic journal?
If it is the former then it must serve the entire profession and if the latter then adapt to the current standards for such principally online publications and join a JSTOR type group.
In either case the current generation is web rather than print oriented and its beautiful production standards are expensive like the product of a Savile Row tailor and eventually will have as limited a market.
You can get back issues of Burlington on Jstor up to 2004.
Update II - another reader writes:
I'm sure their attitude will change. They're the last bastion. Remember when everywhere was like that - having to pretend in the Heinz you weren't working for a dealer!
I wonder if the new editor will Trojan-horse the Trade in by introducing more contemporary art, where the Trade/museum lines are even more blurred.
