The Yale Collection of American Literature has acquired the papers of M/E/A/N/I/N/G, an art and culture journal edited by Susan Bee and Mira Schor. A descriptive list of the collection’s contents is available online: M/E/A/N/I/N/G Records Uncat MSS 942. 

Though the print journal ceased publication in 1996, Bee and Schor now edit M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online. In Issue 1, they described the print journal in an editorial: “Susan Bee and Mira Schor founded and coedited M/E/A/N/I/N/G, a journal of contemporary art issues, in 1986 and published between 1986 and 1996. We are both painters. Bee had extensive experience in the design, editing, and publication of small press journals and books as well as degrees in art history and art, Schor’s teaching practice and early training as an art historian had led her, in the early 1980s to begin writing about contemporary art. We felt the need for a discursive space for viewpoints and critical approaches that were not being published. We were committed to creating a zone of critical discussion that was independent of academic or commercial art interests. In addition, M/E/A/N/I/N/G combined critical engagement with the variety and intimacy of artists’ voices. We wanted to provide a space for artists to write about issues of importance to them and for art historians and critics to be able to write about art not favored by the glossies. And we provided a space for writing that is individual even idiosyncratic. The mix was accessible, personal, and sometimes volatile.” (M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online, Issue 1, Editorial).

M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings, Theory, and Criticism / edited by Susan Bee & Mira Schor is available to members of the Yale Community as an e-book: M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology.

Image: Susan Bee, From A Girl’s Life (with writing by Johanna Drucker)