Lauren Kroiz, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

decided to eliminate the journal, they did so by radically redefining the goals of their association as "the teaching of the history, analysis, and interpretation, rather than the creation, of art." 4 Thus, Longman's journal accomplished precisely the opposite of what he had hoped, driving artists and art historians further apart. Nonetheless, in its short life Longman's Parnassus imagined innovative ways art historians could use their unique position in American higher education to improve the quality of the nation's art and its citizens. Operating as the lynchpin between humanists and artists, thinkers and makers, Longman envisioned art historians teaching methods of critical judgment that would act as the foundation for their students' future actions in and outside the classroom. The Parnassus that Longman inherited in October of 1940 had been founded in 1929. The journal, which took its name from the mountain home of the Muses in classical Greek mythology, published short articles on a variety of art historical subjects. As art historian Craig Houser has recently noted, Parnassus was distinguished largely by being CAA's "second journal," subsidiary to the Art Bulletin, which began publication in 1913 almost coincident with the organization's founding. 5 Indeed, in 1940, for example, Middeldorf differentiated the two journals by noting Parnassus would not be devoted to the "scholarly questions" of Art Bulletin, but rather to "questions on art criticism and art education." 6 For many art historians the focus on education rather than scholarship made Parnassus the lesser journal. However, Longman suggested that it was precisely this emphasis that made Parnassus the more important of the two. In his editorials, Longman aimed to elevate education by positioning it as a central motivator for scholarship, rather than the inverse. He called for art research, practice, and pedagogy that would be creative and value-driven rather than devoted to