Submissions Guidelines

IMPORTANT: Please note that we receive a large number of submissions. In order to be able to look at everything we get and not keep you hanging for months, our submission policy is as follows:

— We will only contact you if we can use your submission.
— We will contact you within 6 weeks of submission. If you have not heard from us within 6 weeks, assume that we were not able to use your submission.

We really wish we could have a more generous policy that showed our appreciation for you keeping us in mind but we are a tiny non-profit organization run largely on a volunteer basis and we really can't do anything else. Thanks for your understanding.

Nuts and Bolts Guidelines (more general thoughts on the kinds of articles and artist projects we publish are given further below):

—We only accept electronic submissions sent to the address given at the very end of this page (this pertains to both texts and artist projects). Emails sent to other Cabinet addresses will not be processed. You must include the word "submission" in the subject line of your email so that it does not get eaten up by our spam filters.
—The author's name(s), snail-mail and e-mail addresses, phone number, as well as a very short biography must appear on the first page of the text.
—Texts can be up to 3500 words and should minimize as much as possible the use of jargon. The writing should be accessible to a sophisticated general readership.
— Authors should feel free to include relevant images in TIFF, GIF, or JPEG format. Please don't send enormous pictures with your submission. Max size per attachment is 2 MB.
—Texts should be submitted as an attachment in Microsoft Word or a file format we can open with Word.
— We do not publish poetry or fiction. We also do not accept submissions for sound art or for our online art projects.
— We do not mind multiple submissions, but if pieces have been submitted elsewhere, please let us know in advance. We are willing to reprint if a piece has never been published in English.
—Cabinet does pay for texts! The amount is determined by the length. We are a non-profit and writers' fees reflect our idealistic, noble mission (i.e; they are very low).

Deadlines for forthcoming issues for which we are accepting submissions:
NB: deadlines apply to submissions to the themed sections; submissions to columns and the unthemed section are welcome at any point.
Issue 46, Summer 2012 issue, with a themed section on “Punishment”; February 15, 2012
Issue 47, Fall 2012 issue, with a themed section on “Logistics”; May 15, 2012
Issue 48, Winter 2012–2013 issue, with a themed section on “Trees”; August 15, 2012
Issue 49, Spring 2013 issue (themed section TBD; currently accepting proposals for unthemed section only); November 15, 2012

General Guidelines for Artists:
Cabinet publishes artist projects that treat the magazine itself as an exhibition venue. Unlike most contemporary art magazines, we would like our reader to actually encounter the artwork rather than simply learn of its existence. Photography, conceptual projects, text-based work, or work that treats the formal issues raised by the print medium (i.e; paper, printing, ink, etc.) are particularly well-suited for publication in Cabinet. We do not publish documentation of sculpture or of a performance or installation. Video stills and architecture proposals are also highly unusual for us to print. While a resume is not needed, a brief statement about the work can be included if you think it useful. Don't forget that artist projects appear in both the unthemed and themed portions of the magazine.

General Guidelines for Writers:
Cabinet is an art and culture magazine that approaches the world with an expansive definition of both these terms. We are interested in almost any subject matter, as long as your take on it is original and demonstrates how the apparently familiar world around us is in fact artificial, fascinating, and strange. Cabinet appreciates the unorthodox—daring theses, unfashionable stances, minute observations, forgotten cultural practices, and found documents.

We welcome historical material that sheds light on current cultural issues and are also interested in non-artistic practices that carry an aesthetic surplus. We publish a wide range of voices, ranging from the academic to the surreal. Our approach is to juxtapose high seriousness with the playful ("joco-serioso," as it were). We encourage you to see what kind of material we are interested in by looking at the list of contents of our past issues. Click on any issue cover on this page.

Articles about contemporary art should be idea- rather than person-driven. We avoid articles that are about a single artist's work, including interviews; nor do we run reviews or news items about forthcoming art world events. There are excellent venues that do so. (These excellent venues are often glossy and offer enormous writers' fees. Follow this link to visit the best of them).

Each issue of the magazine has four columns, an unthemed section, and a themed section. We do not accept submissions for the "Colors" column. You can submit for all other columns, as well as for the unthemed and themed section. For some unfathomable reason, some potential contributors seem to feel it is more prestigious to publish in the themed section and we have seen perfectly good essays twisted to fit the theme. Do not submit yourself to such unnecessary contortions. Stay true to what interests you.

Congratulations! If you are still here, we are looking forward to receiving your submission.

Please send your submissions to this e-mail address