As the novel coronavirus pandemic spreads, we—the people of planet earth—are faced with a dizzying variety of responses: quarantine, containment, vigilant self-quarantine, paranoid self-isolation, and in some cases escape from the above. Suddenly, it is as if circulation itself has turned against us, making healthy freedom of movement in the world a dealer of death. So your flight is cancelled. Your trip is over. We are staying in place for the foreseeable future. Exhibitions, symposia, gatherings of all kinds are postponed. But not sporting events. Those will go on, but without any supporters in the stands. The players will play ...

The inaugural issue of the Foreign Language Index (FLI) stems from discussions with art historians, curators, critics, artists, and students about the state of contemporary art history. Many lamented the increasing hegemony of anglophone scholarship, which can be traced to the rise of online content and the concentrated attention economy, along with the de- mise of both regional print publishing and foreign language acquisition. The dominance of English pervades the entirety of art history, but it is particularly pronounced in the contemporary field insofar as contemporary art is often meant to address a global audience, using English as a means ...

In “International Art English,” Alix Rule and David Levine describe the language of contemporary art by analyzing a corpus of press releases sent by e-flux, which is paid to do so by museums, biennials, publishers, and art fairs in order to reach a subscriber base of more than ninety thousand art professionals. The essay appeared in 2012 and soon surpassed the popularity of every other Triple Canopy publication. “International Art English” generated innumerable conversations about the relationship between language, legibility, and power in the art world: columns in the Guardian, polemics in e-flux’s online journal, debates at conferences for art ...