Post-publication Reviews, Peer Comments, and Discipline Formation in Art History

Abstract The article analyses the role of post-publication reviewing (of books, but also of individual research articles) for the formation of art history as an academic discipline in the early 20th century. The article argues that post-publication reviews were regarded as a crucial medium for establishing a disciplinary community of art historians, thus giving a sense of identity and a forum for exchange to a group of scholars who often came to art history from heterogeneous academic backgrounds. Importantly, this article argues that art historical reviewing in the early 20th century was not a one-way street. Leading journals such as the Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft accommodated opportunities to respond to reviews, but also to other articles, thus creating a forum for exchange and debate. Far from being a tacit, barely reflected practice, the article shows that the need for open debate and peer-evaluation was promoted explicitly by leading art historians and journal editors. By highlighting historic practices of exchange, the article asks to what extent reviewing in early 20th century scholarship provided a system of post-publication ‘peer feedback’ – an idea akin to the notion of “open peer review” that is promoted today as remedy for the perceived shortcomings of blind peer review.