CAA News Today

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.

Twelve Things You Should Never Say to an Artist

One of the hardest parts of being an artist is courting the seemingly endless barrage of awkward, inappropriate, and downright rude comments hurled your way. Whether it’s an intended compliment or an ignorant gaffe, some statements about l’arte are better left unsaid. Thus we’ve compiled an unofficial guide outlining what you definitely, positively should not say to an artist, whether friend or foe. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)

Teaching Students How To See

“A college is a great context for getting at the things that are life changing and transformative about art,” says Ian Berry, director of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. “You’re working with undergraduates who are figuring out who they’re going to be, learning how to be critical consumers of information, deciding what kind of tribe they’re going to land in.” Berry has dedicated his entire career to the fertile ground of college museums. (Read more from ARTnews.)

Bringing the Museum into the Art-History Classroom

Most art-history instructors include a museum visit or two in the semester schedule. But what if a museum or gallery visit is difficult to arrange, depending upon the geographic location of the college or university, the class size, or the time the class is offered? Even though I have access to numerous museums because I teach in New York City, I found that some of these challenges prohibited my students in engaging with the museum in what I considered to be a meaningful way. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)

Thousands of Years of Visual Culture Made Free through Wellcome Images

Wellcome Library has announced that over 100,000 high-resolution images—including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography, and advertisements—are now freely available through Wellcome Images. Drawn from vast historical holdings, the images are being released under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license, which means that they can be used for commercial or personal purposes, with an acknowledgement of the original source, free of charge. (Read more from the Wellcome Library.)

DIA May Be Asked to Ante Up $100 Million to Break Free from City

Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr met with Detroit Institute of Arts leaders for the first time last week and told them they may have to make a substantial contribution to a fund that would provide hundreds of millions for city pensioners and protect DIA art from being sold as part of the city’s bankruptcy, according to a person familiar with Orr’s plans. Orr did not push for a specific figure, but the city believes $100 million over twenty years “is a number the DIA can get to,” the source said. Museum leaders said that figure was “completely unfeasible.” (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)

Agreement Reached in Plagiarism Row between Artists

A wall-sized, black-and-white checkerboard work by Tobias Rehberger, commissioned by the Berlin national library but concealed for almost year because of a complaint brought by the British Op art painter Bridget Riley, will again go on show. The piece was at the center of a legal row between Rehberger and Riley, who said it plagiarized her painting Movement of Squares (1961) and demanded it be removed from display in the library’s reading room. Rehberger argued that the checkerboard pattern was part of the public domain. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

The Odds Are Never in Your Favor

The academic job market is a process that necessitates failure. Your application materials will end up in the slush pile at dozens of departments, regardless of how well suited you are for the position or how carefully you tailor your materials. Outstanding candidates can easily fail to find a position. And that’s why, when I can’t quite convey that grim reality, I tell my family and friends that if they want to know what the job market is like for PhDs, they should read (or watch) The Hunger Games. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Crowded Out of Ivory Tower, Adjuncts See a Life Less Lofty

His students call him “Prof,” and in the classroom James D. Hoff looks like any other English professor. He is sandy-haired and bearded, with a passion for modern American poetry, and has published essays on Ezra Pound and Laura Riding and is able to forget his worries amid the joys of helping young people discover the power of literature. But his anxieties always come back. At night, he sometimes lies sleepless in the dark, wondering how long he will be able to afford the academic life. (Read more from the New York Times.)