Art & Australia, one of the country’s premier art magazines, will be relaunched in 2016 as a research and publishing body at the VCA. Eleonora Triguboff, the  previous owner, editor and publisher of the magazine since 2003, gifted the publication and its archives to the University of Melbourne in December 2015.

Triguboff will now become an honorary Chair of the journal while Professor Su Baker, Director of the VCA, takes the reins of editor­in­chief. Dr Edward Colless will also join the team as an editor.

The new Art & Australia will aim to be a forum for polemical and experimental ideas and focus on artistic, historical and critical debates.

“Students at the university will have direct access to key writers and will be mentored in their own work through this higher level of debate, particularly at Honours and graduate levels,” Professor Baker said.

Having been in print since 1963, Art & Australia is the country’s longest running art journal, with its predecessor, known as Art in Australia, beginning in 1916. Students will be able to access over 53 years worth of historical content through the publication’s immense digital archives for their own research purposes. Staff and students will also be able to use the online version of the journal as another academic tool.

“The web presence will have a more dynamic character as it will be an immediate resource,” Professor Baker said. “We expect there to be two print versions a year, but the website [will hopefully] be more dynamic and have [richer] material.”

The project is expected to expand to include visiting speakers and artists, who have the potential to enhance the learning experience of students from the VCA by hosting exhibitions, conferences and events. The editorial team also hopes to establish a publishing culture that students can participate in.

“We find that there are many articulate art students who become extremely good writers. Their voices as the new generation of artists are really valuable. And of course, we have highly motivated young art historians in the Faculty of Arts. The students are, after all, the future writers and readers.”

Art & Australia will relaunch in June 2016 with a focus on contemporary art and its relationship to broader theoretical, socio­cultural and geo­political contexts.

To find more information about the magazine, visit the website here