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.

Art vs. Endowment

More than six years after announcing plans to sell a masterpiece of American painting—the 1912 work Men of the Docks by George Bellows—Randolph College has done so, gaining $25.5 million for its endowment. In selling the painting, the college disregarded the policies of several art and museum groups, which state that museums (including those run by colleges) should sell art only to buy more art, not to improve their finances. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Lessons of California’s Droit de Suite Debacle

The debate over a national droit de suite in the United States is back, as Congressman Jerrold Nadler from New York is advancing a revised version of his Equity for Visual Artists Act of 2011, which failed to become law the first time around. When American supporters of resale royalties seek to advance their arguments, they usually look to other countries for supporting evidence, such as France, while overlooking the California act. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

To Improve Adjuncts’ Plight, “Step One Is to Acknowledge the Problem”

Maria C. Maisto, president of New Faculty Majority, answered via email select questions submitted by viewers of the Chronicle’s online chat about adjunct issues. The questions and her responses have been edited for brevity and clarity. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Women Really Don’t Ask

Like many research centers, my center offers travel awards to graduate students and postdocs to help cover their expenses when presenting at conferences. The typical award is $500, which is often enough to cover travel to conferences in the region. Because my center is very well funded, we don’t really have an official limit to how much someone can request or be awarded. Yet the only people who had requested the full amount to cover their expensive trips were male graduate students. (Read more from Research Centered.)

Help Desk: Performance Anxiety

I am not trained as a visual artist—I hold my graduate degree in dance choreography and before that worked primarily in live theatrical concert dance. However, my focus shifted in grad school, where I started developing work in performance that should live in a gallery space. Now that I am out of school, I have a great new project in the works but no idea how to make it happen. What are the unspoken rules for approaching art spaces and museums with performance work? (Read more from Daily Serving.)

NEA Funds Benefits Both Rich and Poor, Study Finds

Ever since the late 1980s, when the performance artist Karen Finley started playing with yams and chocolate, the NEA has come under fire from some conservative lawmakers. Now House Republicans charge that the endowment supports programming primarily attended by the rich, causing “a wealth transfer from poorer to wealthier citizens.” A recent study challenges that assertion, concluding that federally supported arts programs attract people across the income spectrum. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Academics Launch Torrent Site to Share Papers and Data Sets

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts have launched a torrent site that allows academics to share papers and data sets. AcademicTorrents provides researchers with a reliable and decentralized platform to share their work with not only peers, but also the rest of the world. The site currently indexes over 1.5 petabytes of data, including NASA’s map of Mars. (Read more from TorrentFreak.)

Contagion: Jack Hyland on The Moses Virus

The author of The Moses Virus, Jack Hyland is also a founding partner of Media Advisory Partners. In addition to his career in investment banking, he has served on the boards of several nonprofit institutions, including those of CAA, the American Academy in Rome, Teachers College at Columbia University, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. (Read more from the Hartford Books Examiner.)