CAA News Today
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for October 2013
posted by CAA — October 10, 2013
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
October 2013
Chiharu Shiota, performance of IN SILENCE at Centre PasquArt, Biel/Bienne, 2008, black wool, burnt grand piano, and burnt chairs (artwork © Chiharu Shiota; photograph by Sunhi Mang and provided by VG Bild Kunst)
Chiharu Shiota: Trace of Memory
Mattress Factory
505 Jacksonia Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15212
September 12, 2013–May 31, 2014
The Japanese-born, Berlin-based, yet largely nomadic installation artist Chiharu Shiota started using wool to draw in space when she studied painting in 1992. Ever since she has become worldwide known for her haunting environments of dense, convoluted networks of black or red wool that often shroud found objects of personal or social significance, such as shoes, hospital beds, charred chairs, monumental or miniature dresses, et cetera. Her work evokes the psychic interlacing of loss and memory, dream and reality, past and present, the complexity and fragility of human relationships, and the body itself, and Shiota’s networks universalize the personal with an antimonumental scale, despite the often large size of her installations. Exploring remembrance, a central theme of her poetics, for the Mattress Factory’s Trace of Memory, the artist responds site specifically to the storied past of a nineteenth-century row house—the building at 516 Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh—filling eight rooms with her work.
Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s “Selves”
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery
Columbia University, 826 Schermerhorn Hall, MC5517, 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027
September 4–December 7, 2013
Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s “Selves” is a homecoming survey of the fascinating variety of “selves” that this Southern Californian artist invented and embodied between 1972 and 1991. These persons make sharp commentaries on history, identity, and their own fictions, often from a feminist perspective, that resonate with contemporary interrogations of identity and archival slippage. Focusing on themselves as they unfold in videos, photographic series, drawings, and installations, the exhibition offers a unique opportunity not only to follow the tragic and humorous ways in which Antin’s fictional lives develop in time and across media and unveil the complexities of history, identity, and gender under a postmodernist light, but also to study the radical ways in which the artist intervened in the all-male club of Conceptual art and dilated its rigidity with combinations of performance, narrative, fantasy, and biography.
The exhibition features Antin’s best-known alter ego, the African American ballerina Eleanora Antinova from Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, who dreamed to play the classic roles of Giselle and Sylphide but was always relegated to more “exotic” types. Antinova helped Antin to interweave race into the feminist critique that underpins her impersonation of ballerinas. Multiple Occupancy also includes Antin’s Vietnam-era King of Solana Beach, a seventeenth-century-looking monarch who struggles to empower his disenfranchised subjects in their fight against the greed of wealthy landowners; a self-taught ballerina who has mastered poses but cannot dance in motion; the Nurse Eleanor Nightingale, who cares for soldiers at the front line of the Crimean War; and Little Nurse Eleanor, whose attempts to heal her patients fail due to their lust for her a century later. The exhibition ends with Yevgeny Antinov, an exiled Russian film director from the 1920s who disseminates his radical leftist politics through a silent film, The Man without a Word, that depicts Polish shtetl life. The work is an homage to Antin’s mother, who was an actress in Poland’s Yiddish theater.
n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal
Call for Contributions: Religion
n.paradoxa
November 1, 2013
The editorial board of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, published by KT press, seeks contributions on the topic of religion for volume 33, to be published in January 2014. Women artists’ works that have provided a critical view of religious life, belief, doctrine, and representation will be the focus of this volume. How have women artists addressed, challenged, or critiqued representations of themselves in the major and minor religions around the world?
Religions are not only “opium for the masses”; they have also provided major rituals that mediate experiences of birth, marriage, and death in society. Explorations of female power, women goddesses, female spirituality, and sexuality have all been mediated by reconsidering or critiquing many aspects of religious ritual, belief systems, and representations of the role of women (such as Madonna/whore and veiled/unveiled). Women experience different religions and cults as both liberating and oppressive in their moral codes for how they should dress, behave, operate as sexual beings, have families, and live a “good” life.
Artworks that offer critical perspectives on the either liberating or oppressive views of religion for women will be considered here, as well as works that address multifaith (and tolerant) conceptions or readings analyzing the many different religions of the world today. In some parts of the world, artworks and exhibitions are still censored for their idolatry, offense to religious belief, or desecration of religious symbols. Case studies in which women artists have been central to different forms of censorship on religious grounds are welcome. Deadline for copy: November 1, 2013.
Şükran Moral, La Artista, 1994, silver print, 200 x 180 cm (artwork © Şükran Moral)
Despair and Metanoia
Galeri Zilberman
İstiklal Cad. Mısır, Apt. 163, K.3 D.10, Beyoğlu, Istanbul
September 12–October 26, 2013
Despair and Metanoia pairs the work of two pioneering performance artists, the Austrian VALIE EXPORT and the Turkish Şükran Moral, underlining the confluences between both artists’ artistic tropes, themes, gender politics, and provocation strategies. One of the two centerpieces that give the exhibition its title, Moral’s Despair, which features images of a boat of illegal immigrants in the middle of the sea. Another Moral work, Crucified, is a provocative response to the social exclusion and ridicule that her most controversial feminist performances (such as Hammam and Bordello) have triggered—though these contentious works best exemplify her subversive strategies and gender politics. The second part of the exhibition’s title reflects EXPORT’s centerpiece, an installation of twenty-nine videos of performances from the 1970s to today. While this video complements other photographs that showcase the artist’s use of the female body for various ends and her questioning of the construction of gender, it also offers an opportunity for audiences to reevaluate her moving-image work and contemplate its role in her oeuvre.
She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115
August 27, 2013–January 12, 2014
The first North American museum survey of female photographers from the Arab world, She Who Tells a Story brings together more than one hundred images and two videos from twelve leading Iranian and Arab photographers, celebrating the fact that some of the most groundbreaking work in photography from Iran and the Arab world is produced by women. Ranging from fine art to photojournalism, the works “tell stories” about their makers and their contexts, shattering stereotypes about the Orient and about Arab women and casting contemporary life in these countries—especially that of women—under a fresh and challenging light. The exhibition adeptly balances the individual artists, the cultural and sociopolitical specificities of their contexts, and the photographic genres under scrutiny through such themes as “Deconstructing Orientalism,” “Constructing Identities,” New Documentary.” The artists in the show are: Jananne Al-Ani, Boushra Almutawakel, Gohar Dashti, Rana El Nemr, Lalla Essaydi, Shadi Ghadirian, Tanya Habjouqa, Rula Halawani, Nermine Hammam, Rania Matar, Shirin Neshat, and Newsha Tavakolian.
Nalini Malani, installation view of In Search of Vanished Blood, 2012, 6-channel video and shadow play with 5 rotating reverse painted Mylar cylinders, with sound, 11 mins., dimensions variable (artwork © Nalini Malani)
Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood
Galerie Lelong
528 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
September 6–October 26, 2013
A leading video artist in India, Nalini Malani debuts in New York with a projection work called In Search of Vanished Blood that distinguished her participation in last year’s Documenta. Video projections filter across five suspended, rotating Mylar cylinders featuring reverse painted imagery of Hindu and Western icons. The effect creates an immersive shadow play that is complicated by the different speeds of the moving images and further enhanced by sound. Taking its title from the 1965 Urdu poem “Lahu Ka Surag,” In Search of Vanished Blood is also inspired by the 1984 novel Cassandra by Christa Wolf and the 1910 book The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke. The artist, however, draws from history and her own experience as a refugee of the Partition of India, colonialism, and decolonization as she does from literary culture. These investigations form a fleeting narrative that synthesizes the themes that have always preoccupied her—violence, the feminine, and national identity—from an idiosyncratically “internationalist” perspective. The exhibition also includes paintings related to the installation yet hung in a separate room.
The Beginning Is Always Today: Contemporary Feminist Art in Scandinavia
SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum
Skippergata 24 B, Kristiansand, Norway 4666
September 21, 2013–January 2004
Titled with a quote from the eighteenth-century British writer Mary Wollstonecraft and culminating SKMU’s centennial celebration of women’s suffrage in Norway, The Beginning Is Always Today is the first major museum survey of feminist art to be held in Scandinavia in twenty years. The exhibition brings together the work of forty artists from a region where, in spite of advances in sexual liberation and gender equality, feminism is often considered outdated and the feminist art scene remains little known. It also explores both the far-reaching social scope of contemporary feminism in the arts and the legacy of early feminist art’s strategies, while questioning the success of past battles for gender equality and equal rights. The exhibition is accompanied by a scholarly catalogue that promises to shed light on the recent developments of feminist art in Scandinavia, an illuminating sequel to the groundbreaking publication on Swedish art feminism, Konstfeminism (2005), and a recent exhibition on Norwegian art feminism held earlier this year, organized by artists included in this show.
The Beginning Is Always Today features the following artists: Lotta Antonsson, Elisabet Apelmo, Pia Arke, Bob Smith, Catti Brandelius, Peter Brandt, Nanna Debois Buhl, Kajsa Dahlberg, Ewa Einhorn, Åsa Elzén, Unn Fahlstrøm, Roxy Farhat, Fine Art Union, FRANK, Unni Gjertsen, Trine Mee Sook Gleerup, Jenny Grönvall, Annika von Hausswolff, High Heel Sisters, Leif Holmstrand, Maryam Jafri, Dorte Jelstrup, Jesper Just, Jane Jin Kaisen, Line Skywalker Karlström, Kvinder på Værtshus, Ane Lan (alias Eivind Reierstad), Lotte Konow Lund, Annika Lundgren, Jannicke Låker, Malmö Fria Kvinnouniversitet (MFK), Eline Mugaas, Ellen Nyman, Radikal pedagogik, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, Annica Karlsson Rixon, Joanna Rytel, Katya Sander, Mari Slaattelid, Lisa Strömbeck, Vibeke Tandberg, Lisa Vipola, and YES! Association/Föreningen JA!
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — October 09, 2013
Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Leonardo da Vinci Painting Lost for Centuries Found in Swiss Bank Vault
It was lost for so long that it had assumed mythical status for art historians. Some doubted whether it even existed. But a five-hundred-year-old mystery was apparently solved after a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was discovered in a Swiss bank vault. The painting, which depicts Isabella d’Este, a Renaissance noblewoman, was found in a private collection of four hundred works kept in a Swiss bank by an Italian family who asked not to be identified. (Read more in the Telegraph.)
Why the Affordable Care Act Matters To Artists
It’s not yet clear how many people purchased insurance through the exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that opened recently. But one of the things I’ve been hearing from a lot of creative people is that the ACA has made it easy to be, or to contemplate being, an artist. (Read more from ThinkProgress.)
Decoding Job Ads
You can teach yourself about what institutions pride themselves from reading their job ads. You’ll start to notice trends in the language and structure of ads, so that you can start to group similarly worded ads together and easily spot the ads that break those patterns, or start their own, set of conventions. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Learn Art History through Ten Stunning Pairs of High Fashion Heels
The designer Nick Adelman challenged himself to encompass the art of different cultures and eras in a fashion medium, and the amount of ornate detail put into these high-heeled shoes practically begs for them to become reality. (Read more from Buzzfeed.)
Is Showing Your Art in a Co-op Gallery Worthwhile?
Last week I wrote a post about the advisability of showing your work in a vanity gallery. In the comments, it became clear that there is some confusion, or at least a blurry understanding, of the difference between a pay-for-display (vanity) gallery and cooperative (co-op) galleries. I feel it would be a good idea to expand the conversation to cover this second type of gallery. (Read more in Red Dot Blog.)
Critics Say Sting on Open-Access Journals Misses Larger Point
Perhaps months from now, when the dust settles and academics really look back at it, they’ll find some hard lessons in the elaborate Science magazine exposé this week by the journalist John Bohannon. After more than a year of work, in which Bohannon, who has a PhD in biology, crafted a fraudulent cancer-research article and painstakingly tracked the responses to it from more than three hundred journals, he gave his industry the embarrassing news that more than half of them had agreed to publish it. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Puzzling Peer Reviews
Just because scholars who seek to publish in open-access journals are open to new forms of peer review doesn’t mean they all see eye-to-eye—or know what to expect. As one sting operation shows, many such journals are unable to reject obviously flawed submissions, even as they promise thorough review processes. Meanwhile, other journals are even criticized for being too much like the traditional publishing they aim to reform. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Agony of Suspense in Detroit
It would have been hard to think of a better metaphor: A fire-breathing dragon was bearing down on the Detroit Institute of Arts. For months now, the institute has found itself confronting a threat never experienced by another American museum of its size and not of its own making: the possibility that parts of its world-class collection will be forcibly sold off to help pay billions in debt owed by the city, now in federal bankruptcy. (Read more in the New York Times.)
Members Respond Enthusiastically to Survey for CAA’s 2015–2020 Strategic Plan
posted by Michael Fahlund — October 08, 2013
The results of the September 4th survey to members identified the most critical concerns in the visual arts field as: 1) the availability of full-time positions in academia and professional careers outside of academia; 2) access to information on professional opportunities and grants; 3) copyright, image licensing costs and fair use; and 4) the need for networking (survey results: www.collegeart.org/pdf/2013CAAMembershipSurvey.pdf). These and other critical interests of the members will assist in shaping the future of CAA as it develops the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan.
The CAA Board of Directors will hold a planning retreat on October 26th to review the survey results along with information gathered from interviews with 20 leaders in related fields, discussions with artists and art historians held at the Clark Research Institute September 19 – 24, and ideas from the CAA standing committees. The Task Force on the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan (www.collegeart.org/about/plan) will prepare a draft of the plan before the February 2014 Annual Conference.
All members are invited to attend the Open Discussion on the Future of CAA at the Annual Members Business Meeting at the Annual Conference in Chicago on Friday, February 14th, 5:30 PM.
Some 670 members expressed interest in one or more of CAA’s 16 different committees, juries, or editorial boards. If you would like to become more involved with CAA and wish to pursue your interest, please contact Vanessa Jalet (vjalet@collegeart.org); information about the various committees is also available on the CAA website (www.collegeart.org/committees/).
And, congratulations to Monta May and Mimi Whalen whose names were selected at random for a one-year, complimentary, individual membership with CAA!
Thank you for your time and ideas.
Update on CAA’s Copyright and Fair-Use Project
posted by Christopher Howard — October 07, 2013
CAA has long been committed to enhancing understanding of copyright and fair-use issues in the field of the visual arts. Over the past year, it began a multiyear project looking toward the development of a code that reflects fair-use practices in the use of copyrighted materials in the field. The project’s methodology is based on the community-based and consensus-driven approach to developing codes of best practices in fair use that is described in Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (2011), which was authored by Patricia Aufderheide, university professor in the School of Communication at American University and director of its Center for Social Media, and Peter Jaszi, professor of law and faculty director of the Washington College of Law’s Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic.
To launch the project, Aufderheide and Jaszi, two of the principal investigators of the CAA project, began interviewing visual-arts professionals in October 2012, with the support of a start-up grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Last December, CAA was awarded a major grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund the project (see https://www.collegeart.org/news/2013/01/14/caa-receives-major-mellon-grant/).
Aufderheide and Jaszi have now completed one hundred interviews, including art historians, artists, museum professionals, archivists, art librarians, critics, designers, editors, publishers, and rights holders. These interviews have yielded rich data on the experiences and views of practitioners in the field.
To supplement these views, last March CAA circulated to members a survey questionnaire asking about their views on copyright and fair use. The survey results, along with research into legal issues and a literature review, have provided valuable information about copyright-related challenges facing the field.
Aufderheide and Jaszi are now drafting an Issues Report to summarize and analyze the information from the interviews, member survey, and literature review. Later this fall, the Issues Report will be reviewed by a number of groups, including the project’s principal investigators and advisors, the Task Force on Fair Use, and CAA’s Committee on Intellectual Property (CIP). CAA also has assembled a Community Practices Advisory Committee (CPAC) to review the report in December. The CPAC members are:
- Maxwell Anderson, Director, Dallas Museum of Art
- Susan Bielstein, Executive Editor, University of Chicago Press
- Martha Buskirk, Professor of art history and criticism, Montserrat College
- Paul Catanese, Chair of Interdisciplinary Arts, Columbia College, and past-chair, CAA New Media Caucus
- Kenneth Hamma, Consulting at the Intersection of Cultural Heritage and IT
- Alan Newman, Chief, Digital Imaging and Visual Resources, National Gallery of Art
- Mari Carmen Ramirez, Curator of Latin American Art and Director, International Center for the Arts of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
- Timothy Rub, Director, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and President, Association of Art Museum Directors
- Christine Sundt, Editor of Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation
After this review process is completed, the Issues Report will be presented to CAA’s Board of Directors and, after the board endorses it, it will then be published in advance of the Annual Conference. The report will be the subject of the CIP’s session at the conference, scheduled for NOON on Saturday, February 15.
Over the course of 2014, the Issues Report will be used in the project’s second phase—as the basis for discussions by small groups of visual-arts professionals around the country in meetings led by Aufderheide and Jaszi. Based on these discussions, CAA then hopes to draft a code of best practices that reflects a consensus of practitioners with respect to fair-use practices in scholarly publishing and in creating and curating artworks in the visual arts.
Recipients Selected for 2014 CAA International Travel Grants
posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — October 07, 2013
In an effort to promote greater interaction and exchange between American and international art historians and artists, CAA offers twenty International Travel Grants to bring colleagues from around the world to its Annual Conference, to be held next year in Chicago from February 12 to 15, 2014. This is the third year of the program, which has been generously funded by the Getty Foundation since its inception. CAA is pleased to announce this year’s recipients—professors of art history, curators, and artists who teach art history—who were selected by a jury of CAA members from a highly competitive group of applicants. Their names and affiliations are listed below.
In addition to covering travel expenses, hotel accommodations, and per diems, the CAA International Travel Grants include conference registration and a one-year CAA membership. At the conference, the twenty recipients will be paired with hosts, who will introduce them to CAA and to specific colleagues who share their interests. Members of CAA’s International Committee have agreed to serve as hosts, along with representatives from the National Committee for the History of Art (NCHA) and CAA’s Board of Directors. CAA is grateful to NCHA for renewing its generous underwriting of the hosts’ expenses. The program will begin on February 11 with an introductory preconference for grant recipients and their hosts.
CAA hopes that this travel-grant program will not only increase international participation in the organization’s activities, but also expand international networking and the exchange of ideas both during and after the conference. The Getty-funded International Travel Grant Program supplements CAA’s regular program of Annual Conference Travel Grants for graduate students and international artists and scholars. We look forward to welcoming the grant recipients in Chicago at the next Annual Conference.
2014 Recipients of CAA International Travel Grants
- Rael Artel, Director, Tartu Art Museum, Estonia
- Eric Appau Asante, Lecturer, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
- Cezar Tadeu Bartholomeu, Professor of Art History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Laris Borić, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, University of Zadar, Croatia
- Eddie M. P. Butindo-Mbaalya, Lecturer, Kyambogo University, Uganda
- Josephina de la Maza Chevesich, Assistant Professor, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile
- Katerina Zdravkova Gadjeva, Assistant Professor, Institute of Art Studieso, Bulgarian Academy of Science, Bulgaria
- Heba Nayal Barakat Hassanein, Head, Curatorial Affairs Department, Islamic Arts Museum, Malaysia
- Lilianne Lugo Herrera, Professor and Vice Dean, Research and Postgraduate Studies, University of Arts, Cuba
- Heuman Tchana Hugues, Junior Lecturer, University of Maroua/Higher Institute of the Sahel, Camaroon
- Kanwal Khalid, Assistant Professor, Lahore College for Women University, Pakistan
- Mahmuda Khnam, Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic History & Culture, Jagannath University, Bangladesh
- Daria Kostina, Lecturer in Art History, Ural Federal University, and curator of B. U. Kashkin Museum, Yekaterinburg, Russia
- Portia Malatjie, Lecturer, Art History and Visual Culture Rhodes University, South Africa
- Susana S. Martins, Lecturer and Research Fellow, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
- Fernando Luis Martinez Nespral, Head Professor and Researcher, University of Buenos Aires, School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism, Argentina
- Magdalena Anna Nowak, Assistant Curator, National Museum in Warsaw, Poland
- Freeborn O. Odiboh, Associate Professor of Art History and Criticism, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria
- Adriana Oprea, Archivist and Researcher, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Romania
- Ahmed E. Wahby, Lecturer and Vice Dean for Student Affairs, German University in Cairo, Egypt
2014 Annual Conference Website Goes Live
posted by CAA — October 02, 2013
The website for the 102nd Annual Conference in Chicago, to be held from Wednesday, February 12 to Saturday, February 15, 2014 at the Hilton Chicago, goes live today. Get a taste of conference highlights and discover all that comes with registration, including access to all program sessions and admission to the Book and Trade Fair.
The CAA Annual Conference is the world’s largest international forum for professionals in the visual arts, offering more than two hundred stimulating sessions, panel discussions, roundtables, and meetings. CAA anticipates more than five thousand artists, art historians, students, curators, critics, educators, art administrators, and museum professionals will be in attendance.
Online registration is now open, and hotel reservations and travel accommodations can be booked (don’t forget to use the exclusive CAA discount codes to save money!). Register before the early deadline, December 13, to get the lowest rate and ensure your place in the Directory of Attendees. You may also purchase tickets for special events such as the Opening Reception at the Art Institute of Chicago following the presentation of the annual Awards for Distinction, as well as professional-development workshops on a variety of topics for artists and scholars.
CAA will regularly update the conference website in the months leading up to the four-day event, so please be sure to check back often. Averaging more than 40,000 unique visitors per month, the Annual Conference website is the essential source for up-to-the-minute updates regarding registration, session listings, and hotel and travel discounts. Download the Website Advertising Reservation and Contract for rates and terms.
We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — October 02, 2013
Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Show and Tell: The Dos and Don’ts of Studio Visits
The reasons for a studio visit are many and varied: a curator is trolling for an exhibition, an artist wants to show new work to a collector or a critic, a dealer is interested in representing the art, or a group of art lovers simply wants to see how an artist puts it all together. Whatever the pretext, certain elemental rules of care and courtesy can make the visit a success for both parties. (Read more in ARTnews.)
Should Artists Show Their Work in Vanity Galleries?
In a recent interview, I was asked where I saw the art-gallery business going in the next ten years. This is a very interesting question and could have resulted in an hour-long conversation on its own. Because I only had a few minutes to reply, I pointed to three crucial trends for the future of the business. For the third trend I predicted that we would see a rise in the number of art galleries charging a fee to show and sell artwork. (Read more in Red Dot Blog.)
NEA Report Says Arts Attendance in the US Continues to Slide
The number of people who attended an art show or a performing-arts event in the United States continues to slide, according to a report released by the National Endowment for the Arts. Theater took the biggest hit among the cultural categories, with attendance for musicals and plays off significantly. In 2012, approximately 33 percent of American adults, or 78 million individuals, visited an art museum or gallery or attended at least one performing-arts event. That’s down from the last time the NEA conducted its survey in 2008, when 34.6 percent adults attended arts events. (Read more in the Los Angeles Times.)
US Arts Funding Hit a Record Low in 2011
Government arts funding in the United States reached a record low in 2011, according to most recent edition of the National Arts Index, published by the nonprofit organization Americans for the Arts. Nevertheless, increased public engagement and positive economic forecasts suggest that the industry is slowly rebounding from the 2008 recession. (Read more in the Art Newspaper.)
When Tenure-Track Faculty Take On the Problem of Adjunctification
I am part of an unofficial group of tenured faculty at a state institution that relies on many non-tenure-track faculty, but we are not the tenured faculty Ivan Evans refers to in his piece “When the Adjunct Faculty Are the Tenure-Track’s Untouchables.” When we went on the market, getting a tenure-track job already meant you were the one person standing in the rubble-strewn city of your profession. There was no denying the corpses. (Read more in Social Science Space.)
Don’t Be That Dude: Handy Tips for the Male Academic
There is a plethora of research on the causes of hostile environments for women in academia, and on why we have an underrepresentation of women in many fields. There are support groups for women, societies entirely devoted to women academics (broadly and field specific), workshops for women in academia, and countless articles and blogs devoted to the topic. These initiatives are important, but here’s the thing: gender equality has to be a collaborative venture. (Read more in Tenure, She Wrote.)
Three Teaching Styles
The most effective teachers vary their styles depending on the nature of the subject matter, the phase of the course, and other factors. By so doing, they encourage and inspire students to do their best at all times throughout the semester. It is helpful to think of teaching styles according to the three Ds: directing, discussing, and delegating. (Read more in Faculty Focus.)
Constant Conservators: Wear-and-Tear Experts Protect Works at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
In her training as a fine-arts conservator, Ingrid Seyb learned to recognize the enemies of paintings, sculptures, and other priceless works of art: temperatures, humidity, neglect, time’s passage, clumsy repairs, high-heeled shoes—the list seemed endless. As one of sixteen conservators at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, dealing with such menaces was all in a day’s work. (Read more in the Republic.)
BREAKING: Govt Shuts Down the Arts
posted by CAA — October 01, 2013
Americans for the Arts sent the following email on October 1, 2013.
BREAKING: Govt Shuts Down the Arts
October is National Arts and Humanities Month and how does the federal government celebrate? By closing the doors of federally funded museums, parks, zoos and delaying the distribution of NEA grants that enrich our communities.
Today is only a snapshot of what the 49% cut to the NEA could mean for our communities. As arts advocates, we cannot stand by and let this happen! In response, the Arts Action Fund is extending our petition to deliver even more names to Congress. This means we need YOU to take a stand and tell Congress that these drastic cuts are unacceptable.
Will you add your name to our petition?
You have until October 31st to sign this petition and tell your friends to sign as well. The Arts Action Fund has a goal of adding 10,000 new signers by the end of this month to keep the pressure mounting on Congress to not only oppose the 49% cut, but make sure it gets the funding it deserves for 2014.
Please consider adding your name now. We need you!
Nina Ozlu Tunceli
Executive Director