Since its founding in 1987, American Art has been an indispensable source for scholars, educators, curators, museum-goers, collectors, and professors and students at colleges and universities worldwide. The journal critically engages material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It considers the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Full-color plates and concise prose offer broad appeal.
Current Issue
Cover: Lorna Simpson, Source Notes (detail), 2019. Ink and screenprint on gessoed fiberglass, 144 × 102 × 1 3⁄8 in. © Lorna Simpson. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: James Wang
In the Spring–Summer 2026 issue of American Art:
- Commentaries on Capitalism and the History of United States Art by Alan Wallach, Alice J. Walkiewicz, Siobhan Angus, and David Markus
- The Tip of the Iceberg: Lorna Simpson’s Ice Paintings, by Shawn Michelle Smith
- Full Sets Demand Full Lives: Manicured Hands and Nails in Contemporary Art, by Jillian Hernandez
- Remembering the Ladies in George Caleb Bingham’s Election Series, by Cassandra Good
- Occlusion: Blackness, Performance, and Video in the 1970s, by Catherine Quan Damman
- David Alfaro Siqueiros’s Indictment of the New York Market for Mexican Art and Antiquities: Race, Alienation, and Ethnography, by Jennifer Jolly
Open-Access Features
Read the abstracts of the Fall 2025 issue.
Subscribe to American Art
A one-year subscription for individuals costs $50, and provides full online access to all back issues of American Art. Members of Friends of the Smithsonian, Smithsonian National Associates, American Studies Association, and the College Art Association receive subscriptions at the discounted price of $40. The rate for students is $35. Higher rates apply for institutions.
Information on subscribing, purchasing single issues, or submitting articles to the journal is available through the co-publisher, the University of Chicago Press.
Access the Journal
Browse all issues of American Art, 1987 to present. The opinions expressed in the journal are those of the authors and not necessarily of the editors and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Write for American Art
American Art invites submissions of original scholarly manuscripts. Acceptance is determined by editorial needs and anonymized peer-review. For more information, see Journal Author Submission Guidelines. Prospective authors are welcome to write to executive editor Robin Veder and sign up for a consultation, if desired.
Editorial Board
- heather ahtone, First Americans Museum
- Kirsten Pai Buick, University of New Mexico
- David J. Getsy, University of Virginia
- Michael Hatt, University of Warwick
- Chon A. Noriega, University of California, Los Angeles
- Andrea Pappas, Santa Clara University
- Nizan Shaked, California State University, Long Beach
- Louise Siddons, University of Southhampton
- Cherise Smith, University of Texas at Austin