Editorial policy

Sources read and named

Every entry rests on sources the desk has read. Each entry names them at the foot of the page: monographs, exhibition catalogues, museum records, press archives, published interviews, and the words of artists and curators quoted in them. Where a claim has no source, the entry says so in place.

The date an entry was checked

Reading about humour in art moves: attributions change, catalogues are reissued, museums revise a record. Each entry carries the date it was last checked. A date records when a person last sat with the material and confirmed it.

Corrections

A correction that names the entry and gives the source is applied and the entry is re-dated. Silent edits are not made: an entry either keeps its date or shows the new one.

Plates

Photographs on this site are plates generated for the entry and captioned as plates. They illustrate a scene the text describes; they are not reproductions of a specific artwork, and the caption never claims to be one.