21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual – Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur is a multilingual, double-blind peer-reviewed journal published open access (Diamond). Founded in September 2019, the journal represents a new forum for art history, embracing the full range of diverse objects, questions, and methodologies that comprise and enrich the discipline. Our authors retain copyright to their texts and full publishing rights without restriction; “Author Processing Charges” (APCs) are not levied. Individual issues and contributions are generally published under the license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 unless this license has to be modified for specific issues or contributions due to restrictions imposed by institutions holding image rights.
As a scholar-led journal 21: Inquiries is archived at arthistoricum.net/Heidelberg University Library and currently indexed in DOAJ, EBSCO, ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences), and WorldCat (OCLC).
The journal's Editorial Board is comprised of art historians from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the USA. In addition, the journal has an international Advisory Board that represents essential subfields of the entire history of art in a global perspective.
The title of the journal indicates the intent to expand the boundaries of traditional art history by integrating all methodologies and subject matter related to images and visual phenomena around the globe. The journal seeks to publish methodologically and theoretically rigorous contributions that can claim relevance for their topic beyond exemplary single-case studies.
All submissions (except reviews and debate contributions) are double-blind peer-reviewed and checked for plagiarism with PlagScan. The multilingualism of the discipline is reflected in the journal as much as possible: so far, contributions have been published in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish, but other languages are equally welcome. In the review section of the journal, exhibitions and books are preferably reviewed in a language other than the original.
21: Inquiries has been published since the beginning as an open-access eJournal in cooperation with the digital art history resource arthistoricum.net (sponsored by the German Research Foundation, DFG) and with technical support from Heidelberg University Library. Four issues are published annually which are available free of charge via the eJournals platform of arthistoricum.net. Newly published issues are announced on the website, via newsletter and at arthist.net, as well as via Instagram and X. The articles are also presented individually via tweets and short film clips on the journal's social media channels. Access figures are rising continuously: currently, around 20,000 downloads/year (the most-read article has been downloaded around 4,800 times to date) and the broad geographical spectrum of accesses, which have so far been registered from 150 different countries, testify to the success and growing reputation of the journal.
21: Inquiries's issues are realized by the editorial team at the University of Bern (Katharina Böhmer, Alessandra Fedrigo, Joanne Luginbühl, Lia Schüpbach, and Lisa Leimer). The vision of the editors – to design a layout for 21: Inquiries with its own typeface that can be read equally well on computer screens, tablets, and smartphones – has been realized by Kaj Lehmann (Zurich).
The Editorial Board looks forward to your support of this endeavor. It welcomes submissions covering all subfields further to establish the international open access eJournal 21: Inquiries for the discipline of art history: Send us your submissions and manuscripts and your feedback and suggestions! If you are interested in regular news, check out our website, subscribe to our newsletter, and follow us on Twitter and on Instagram.
The Editorial Board:
Olga Acosta (Bogotá), Naman P. Ahuja (New Delhi), Beate Fricke (Bern), Ursula Frohne (Münster), Celia Ghyka (Bukarest), Birgit Hopfener (Ottawa), Aaron M. Hyman (Baltimore), Karen Lang (Oxford), Karin Leonhard (Konstanz), Rebecca Müller (Heidelberg), Kerstin Schankweiler (Dresden), Avinoam Shalem (New York/Rom) and Michael F. Zimmermann (Eichstätt)
The editorial team:
Katharina Böhmer, Alessandra Fedrigo, Joanne Luginbühl, Lia Schüpbach and Lisa Leimer