This arrived in my email today:
Dear Wildlife Art magazine community,
It is with deep regret that we announce that Wildlife Art magazine ceased operations Friday, May 9. We remain hopeful that someone will purchase the magazine and continue to operate it for the benefit of wildlife art lovers around the world.
…and it goes on to offer the services of the magazine’s staff for hire.
So, this seems like an excellent topic for discussion: whassup with this? why did it happen?
Entries (RSS)
May 14th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
It was obvious to me that, even before it was sold to the most recent owner a couple years ago, Wildlife Art was struggling to find/keep an audience. By the time it was sold, the focus had changed from wildlife to include landscape art, western art, photography, etc. A lot different from the old days when the magazine was a half-inch thick, crammed with limited edition print ads (which wasn’t necessarily a good thing either :-).
The newest incarnation of the magazine (that went belly-up on the 9th) appeared to continue that confused focus. I stayed with it for about a year, but the magazine seemed to be trying to become another Art of the West. I like Art of the West very much and have been a subscriber for years, but as an artist who lives and paints in NY, I didn’t want or need two such magazines. In other words, Wildlife Art seemed to me to have lost its balance. So after about a year of the magazine under new management, I didn’t resubscribe. I haven’t looked at the magazine for over a year so I don’t know what recent changes might have led to its demise. I had spoken to a few other artists who said they missed the “original” Wildlife Art too.
Something similar happened to Equine Art magazine a few years ago. It thrived for a few years, then seemed to lose focus; it tried briefly to focus on the elite “horsey lifestyle” but was finally sold to the folks who publish The Bloodhorse and Keeneland Magazine in KY. They really improved the content and I thought the magazine was doing well - I had taken a 2 year subscription - but it suddenly went belly-up as well.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I just sent in my 2 year subscription a few weeks ago, crap. I knew they were struggling but did not know it was this bad. I am sad to hear this. I counted on the magazine to keep up on what is happening in our ‘painting critters world’. I think I will have a glass of wine.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
My understanding was that the Hansens owned and published a newspaper, which they put up for sale upon buying Wildlife Art. The newspaper didn’t sell and didn’t sell and Keith Hansen had to stay on until it did. Remember his editorial a few issues back about getting more involved? They let the editor and her husband go a couple of issues ago and took it over themselves.
I had decided two issues into the new regime that I was not going to renew and then they got more or less enough on track that I did hang in until, as it turns out, the end.
I have advertised with them for over a year and had more than one email discussion with Paul Montag, the sales guy, about the loss of focus and how irritated I and other animal artist friends were to see the western art/ non-wildlife art slant show up, especially on the cover.
We talked about getting advertisers and I pointed out that hitting up the artists was going after the people who mostly Don’t Have Any Money. And that the owners have (oops, had) the only magazine devoted to wildlife art and that they held it in trust for us all.
I guess I made my point strongly enough the last time that Paul forwarded my email on to Patricia, who called me on the phone to talk about the magazine. She and I wrote back and forth a couple of times also . No doubt the Hansens are good people. I felt pretty good about Wildlife Art after talking to Patricia last year.
But, you know, I also got the feeling that they didn’t know much about the genre before they bought the magazine. And if you’re not sure what you’ve got, how do you decide where you’re going? Didn’t it seem like they were trying this and trying that to see what got traction in the market?
Hate to say it, but I think they published some pretty average art, too. I did everything I could to convince Paul that they needed to raise the standard of both the editorial content and the Artist’s Profiles issue. I suggested that they consider jurying it. I told him point blank that I was so unhappy with the last Profiles that I wouldn’t be doing it again. I found that very frustrating. Maybe I wasn’t the only one.
It also wouldn’t surprise me to find out they had no margin for error because the sale of the newspaper took so long and now the economy is tanking. Maybe they “bought the second house before the first one sold”. Such a shame. I got acquainted with Bob Koenke at the Susan K. Black Foundation conferences. I don’t even want to think about how he feels right now after building up the magazine for, what, twenty-plus years.j
May 15th, 2008 at 5:54 am
I had almost forgotten this, but a year after the Hansens took over, I wrote them a fairly long letter about my disappointment with the growing Western Art/non-animal/west coast focus. I even included a list of artists from around the country whose work merited consideration. Keith Hansen called me back and thanked me for my input; following that I noticed what I thought was an attempt to feature a few east coast artists but as Susan said, the work and content seemed pretty average. It was almost as if they had decided that no one wanted to read about the “biggies” any more. Maybe that was their take on the magazine’s struggle to hold an audience: that people were bored with reading about Brenders, Bateman, et al? I don’t know…but I wasn’t really surprised to receive the email saying that it had folded.
Paul used to call me once in awhile about advertising but I never took an ad. It just seemed to me to be a waste of my hard-earned $$ to advertise my “eastern” equine art in a magazine with such a strong western focus and that still said “Wildlife Art” on the masthead.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I definitely stopped subscribing to that magazine as soon as it was taken over with a new staff. It was a totally different magazine as has already been stated. It bummed me out. So I would just go to the bookstore and find it on the shelf to see if they got any better but they never did. Tons of mediocre art that made me as an artist uninspired for painting animals. And they didn’t even give Bob Kuhn the cover when he passed away……….that shows you they didn’t know wildlife art.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Fascinating reads from everyone! Some completely narrow-minded (ie, only my) perspective:
- The quality of art covered was generally ho-hum, at best, with an emphasis on hair-and-feather (ecch) rendering
- The article layouts were kind of odd - I didn’t like the editorial design, thought it unattractive
- The issue that noted Bob Kuhn’s passing should have been wholly devoted to him - “special collector’s issue”, or something like that.
Paul Montag called me occasionally to advertise; I had tried it some years ago, with zero results, and being the ex-corporate hard-ass that I am, “ROI” is one of those things I consider when advertising.
I had an email exchange with some editorial staff about a year ago regarding their almost complete lack of coverage of women artists - at that point in time, there had been exactly ZERO on the cover over the prior years since Hansen took over. They were sincere and engaged in the conversation, which was nice.
Seems like there’s still room for a true wildlife art magazine - maybe a quarterly, with a diversity of styles and techniques covered (not just male artists who paint every hair), perhaps tied in with the adventure stories that go along with being an animal artist…just noodling…
May 16th, 2008 at 7:01 am
I can’t comment on the magazine, but regarding
I will say that some of us only paint every other hair … and the hardest part is deciding which ones are the other ones (sometimes i just flip a coin)
May 16th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Judging from this discussion, the magazine may actually have received quite a lot of input (and fairly consistent input at that, i.e. loss of focus), yet they were unwilling to change course.
I disliked the “People style” covers and also noticed that, for the final year that I subscribed, no women were featured on the cover.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Laney Hicks was on the cover a couple of issues ago. So that makes……one. Sigh.
I ran a small ad in the classified area for over a year. I suggested to Paul that I was getting kind of lonely back there all by myself but, at $100 an issue, I thought that they could get a fair number of artists to sign on and then they could create that as its own section. He got back to me saying there was concern that if they did that, then the artists might not buy the bigger display ads. I countered that they would get artists who otherwise they wouldn’t get at all. And that maybe they would trade up over time.
So i guess they did decide to do it, although he never sent me the info on it like I’d asked so I could pass the word that one could have a small color display ad for $100/issue, buy 6, 7th one free. The last few issues there were two other artists. I think they could have filled most of a column. Kind of exasperating, but it looks like the problems went pretty deep and they had other concerns.
I had a collector sit down with me to chat about my work at the OPA artist’s registration get-together because she saw my ad. Wouldn’t you know it. Drat.
March 3rd, 2011 at 9:35 am
I always visit your blog and retrieve everything you post here but I never commented but today when I saw this post, I couldn’t stop myself from commenting here. Fantastic article mate!
May 5th, 2011 at 10:32 am
Hi, adore your site..please do research out my internet site at conditions and escape from your comment. thanks
November 19th, 2011 at 9:23 am
I precisely wanted to thank you so much yet again. I’m not certain the things that I might have gone through without these advice revealed by you on such field. Certainly was the intimidating matter for me, but taking a look at your well-written technique you treated that made me to jump with fulfillment. I am happier for this information and then have high hopes you find out what an amazing job that you’re putting in training people with the aid of a site. I am certain you’ve never come across any of us.
November 21st, 2011 at 12:32 am
A person essentially help to make seriously posts I would state. This is the first time I frequented your web page and thus far? I amazed with the research you made to create this particular publish incredible. Excellent job!
November 27th, 2011 at 8:09 am
Keep operating , wonderful occupation!
December 28th, 2011 at 9:03 am
Thought I would comment and say cool theme, have you code it for your own benefit? It??????s really really efficient!