BLOG PROMPTS

“Stories from the Margins”

Intriguing parts of a research project often end up in the footnotes. Revisit those footnotes––the peculiar facts and pictures that didn’t fully slip into your narrative and deserve their own story.

800–2600 words.

“Thinking with Pictures”

This post should be primarily visual, meaning that it should: 

  • focus on 8 or fewer images, which should be the primary focus and therefore should drive the narrative rather than being merely illustrative. 

  • reveal how the pictures carry their contexts (the who, when, where, and why) with them.

  • need not include footnotes or references, unless they are required by the narrative intent of the project.

800–2600 words.

“What’s on now”

These posts are short exhibition reviews. Ideally, they are written and submitted while the exhibition is still on. The title of the show should be the title of the blog post. Be sure to include the names of participating artist(s) and artworks you’re reviewing, the venue, the name of the curator, and the dates.

800–1800 words.

“Letter to a work of art or design”

Which artwork or design haunts you?

Encounters with artworks and works of design may stay with us. They dwell at the back of our minds and bubble to the surface every once in a while. Write a letter to one of those artworks or designs at the edges of your memory, whether it is one you encountered in a museum, a studio, or on the street.

800–1800 words.

“Ways of Seeing”

The art and design we surround ourselves with shape our everyday selves. What happens when pan-China/Sinophone artists and designers transform the way we perceive our world, near and far? Which artist’s or designer’s presence or work has impacted your way of seeing the world socially, politically, environmentally, and in other human and more-than-human ecologies? Tell us about that interplay between art or design and vision, and how the lens of a painting or work of design revealed something compelling about the complex world in which we dwell.

800–1800 words.

“Salon des Refusés”

Here is your chance to take scholarship that you can’t find a home for and publish it in condensed form. You are encouraged to let your focal visual objects pose questions of you rather than the other way around, to write in your own voice, and to pay attention to indigenous knowledge and philosophies about art and design. Go ahead and experiment.

1200–3600 words.