Visual Studies Workshop

The Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) was founded in 1969 in Rochester, New York by artist and curator Nathan Lyons (1930–2016). Rooted in Lyons’ progressive vision of the “workshop idea,” VSW became one of the earliest independent, not-for-profit, artist-run spaces in the United States.

Over 50 years later VSW’s core programs continue to reflect our mission and include VSW Press, VSW Salon (formerly the VSW Film Series), Project Space Artist Residencies, and Artist Education programs, as well as a research collection and art library with over a million still and moving images and 40,000 books for artists, critics and the general public to explore, research and reuse.

VSW’s archives and programs support, promote, and explore artist’s works, artist’s studio practice, artist publications, as well as artist and curator critical writing. VSW offers crucial support to artists and curators and provides affordable or free programming around these activities for our community, both onsite and online. (2023)

From 1972, VSW was the publisher of the Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, a bimonthly journal of contemporary art, culture, and politics. Since 2018, it is published by the University of California Press. [1]

Publications

• Hollis Frampton, Circles of Confusion. Film/Photography/Video Texts 1968-1981, forew. Annette Michelson, Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop, 1983, 200 pp.

• Artists' Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, ed. Joan Lyons, Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop, 1985, 269 pp; abbr.ed. as Artists' Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, A Digested Edition, Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop, 1985, 68 pp.

Literature

• https://www.academia.edu/5339301/

Links

• Website

• Afterimage