Davide Quadrio has been invited to be in the editorial advisory panel of World Art.

Art is a global phenomenon. It both confirms social identities and transgresses spatial and temporal boundaries. Making, using and transforming that which is intriguing in visual, spatial or temporal terms is what humans do as part of their sensory and social engagement. In the process they continually remake themselves, their values, their cosmologies and thus their worlds.

Worldwide, art and educational institutions – such as the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (SCVA) and the School of World Art Studies (ART) at University of East Anglia – are re-assessing the collection, display, conservation and interpretation of visual and material cultures. The field of world art studies generates new insights into the processes of making and seeing art in diverse contexts. It re-assesses the complex histories behind world art, challenges disciplinary assumptions about marginalised and minority arts, and explores the assemblages of objects that sustain notions of cultural identity and difference at various sites.

World Art aims to engender an imaginative approach to visual and material culture. It has the potential to redefine the concept of art for future scholars, students and visual producers by addressing the intersections of theory and practice. The journal offers a unique space for showcasing dialogues between artists and academics engaged in the production, reception and interpretation of visual and material cultures. Working through interdisciplinary contexts (of art history, visual culture, material culture, archaeology, museology, heritage studies) that are supported at the University of East Anglia, the editors of World Art aim to create new dialogues that address art as a global and contested concept/practice.

World Art is a peer reviewed journal, which aims to develop appropriate methods and critique conventional wisdom in investigations of art as a global cross-cultural phenomenon. World Art encourages academics, practitioners and other interested parties to engage with art in an open-ended and trans-disciplinary way. The following themes, areas, and issues may be of particular interest to potential contributors:

• Comparative and trans-cultural approaches relating to art history, anthropology, archaeology, museum studies or heritage studies

• Material-focused studies, questioning the relationships between images, artefacts and knowledge

• Questions of locality, nationhood and internationalism, in construction of community identities and the negotiation of boundaries and margins

• Bodily forms of making, in understanding gestures, practices, techniques and technologies

• Real and imagined environments, and representations of landscapes, ecologies and geographies

• Institutional practices and discourses, in comprehending how canons and concepts are articulated and questioned

• The use of language-oriented models in world art studies, and the limits of academic and creative writing

• Time, memory, history and heritage, in framing issues of voice, vernacularism, ownership and rights

The editors of World Art welcome contributions from researchers and practitioners working anywhere in the world. These may take the form of academic essays and reflective pieces, yet might also be conversations, debates, oral histories, translations or picture essays. All contributions, however, will be peer-reviewed. English is the preferred language for written submissions, but editors will consider other languages on a case-by-case basis. The editorial team comprises members of SCVA, ART, the Sainsbury Research Unit and the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures and is supported by an International Editorial Committee and an International Advisory Board.

Daniel Rycroft, Lecturer in the Arts and Cultures of Asia, School of World Art Studies

Veronica Sekules, Director of Edcucation and Research, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

Simon Kaner, Deputy Director, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures

John Mack, Professor of World Art, School of World Art Studies and Sainsbury Research Unit

Christina Riggs, Lecturer in Ancient Mediterranean Art, School of World Art Studies

Margit Thøfner, Senior Lecturer in European Art History, School of World Art Studies

Davide Quadrio, founder and director of BizArt and Arthub, Shanghai/Hong Kong