In Terms Of publishes writing that is a unique literary form: think pieces on live speaking engagements in the visual arts and humanities. The blog concentrates on events in New York City, where its founder and primary author, Christopher Howard, has lived and worked since 2000.

Established in 2011 and active through 2016, the blog offers essays on talks given by a wide range of influential players in contemporary art—artists, performers, historians, curators, critics, and students—as well as writers, scholars, and professionals in music, literature, philosophy, architecture, design, and more.

Additionally, Howard is the author of The Jean Freeman Gallery Does Not Exist, published by MIT Press in 2018 and available everywhere as an ebook.

In Terms Of received the 2014 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

Mutiny and the Mainstream

In Terms Of has a single literary precedent: Judy Seigel’s book Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975–1990, published by Midmarch Arts Press in 1992, which compiles fifteen years of reports on an interdisciplinary array of lectures and panels that took place in New York City and around the country.

Originally published in Women Artists News, a periodical edited by Seigel and Cynthia Navaretta, these fascinating reviews not only demonstrate each writer’s direct engagement with the urgent issues of the day—such as art trends, life in SoHo, social movements, the art market, and the ongoing crisis in art criticism—but they also form an unrivaled historical archive of one aspect of the art world’s recent past. Furthermore, the character, tone, and length of these reports anticipate the blog format by many years.

To give In Terms Of a historical context, and to contextualize similar art-world debates going on today, this blog occasionally reprints reviews from Mutiny and the Mainstream to complement the new, original essays in scope or subject matter.

Questions? Ask chris@in-terms-of.com.