Art Monthly, Missing Issue, April 1978
Readers who have accessed AM’s back catalogue online may have noticed that something is missing from the year 1978. A quick count would soon reveal that only nine issues were published that year instead of ten. The missing magazine is for the month of April, which would have been issue 16. Instead, the number was carried over seamlessly to the May issue, which ran a fulsome apology and explanation from Peter Townsend and his co-editor and publisher, Jack Wendler. To celebrate 40 years of continuous publication, AM invited readers to help create a virtual issue for April 1978 to complete the set. This is it.
The issue contains a feature by Eddie Chambers, on ‘Afro-Caribbean’ Art introduced as follows: "Eddie Chambers points out that, for all the problems associated with the designation ‘Afro-Caribbean art’, it at least served the purpose of highlighting the absence of diversity in the UK art world." The text (on pages 16-17 of the issue) was a reflection on a group exhibition of Black artists' work that took place in London in April 1978, the month and year of the previously missing Art Monthly issue.