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.

Help Desk: Race and Voice

I am a writer and curator. I’m also a woman of color. How do I tell an editor that I’m entitled to my opinion—even if it brings up issues of race, gender, and identity—without being pegged as the “angry brown woman”? (Read more from Daily Serving.)

How to Avoid Being Published

I enjoyed Maureen Pirog’s recent piece “How to Get Published,” which is filled with common sense and good advice. Back in 2009, I too posted some publishing tips. I wish I could report that things have gotten better since then, but alas, from what I’ve observed with several journals, magazines, and newspapers with which I’m associated, writing in the humanities remains dire. Want to avoid being published? Here’s how. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Is Deskilling Killing Your Arts Education?

In 1974, when I was a freshman art student at a small liberal-arts college in Wisconsin, I wanted to learn to draw the human figure. One untenured professor took me under his wing and encouraged that process, but the department chair, an alcoholic abstract painter, stumbled into the studio late one evening while I was studying a plaster head that showed the muscles of the face. He slowly looked at me, then at the head. “This is not art!” he screamed, lifting the cast high and smashing it on the cement at his feet. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)

The Copyright Office’s Recent Fee Changes

For the first time since 2009, the US Copyright Office instituted a number of fee changes that took effect on May 1, 2014. For a standard registration, the Copyright Office increased the online application fee from $35 to $55 and raised the paper application fee from $65 to $85. The office stated that these increases will allow it to recover a larger percentage of its costs. (Read more from the Center for Art Law.)

Tate Will Put Women Artists First and Foremost

Women artists come to the fore next year at Tate with shows devoted to Sonia Delaunay, Agnes Martin, Barbara Hepworth, and Marlene Dumas. The first retrospective in the United Kingdom dedicated to the French avant-garde artist Delaunay is due to open in spring 2015 at Tate Modern. Delaunay, who produced several large-scale mural paintings for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition with her husband Robert, is known for her vividly colored textiles emblazoned with striking geometrics. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

Why Advertise Research Jobs If You’ve Already Picked Your Winner?

Coming to the end of yet another fixed-term research contract, it was time to start applying for my next one. I was lucky this time: my senior colleagues had just won a large grant, and one of the research assistant jobs was perfect for me. I applied and was offered the position. Great! But it’s not really that great, because the principal investigator had all but offered me the job in advance. The other fifty-plus applicants didn’t really stand a chance. (Read more from the Guardian.)

The Peer-Review Jerk Survival Guide

My academic friends, unless you’re part of a peer-review fraud syndicate, you will almost certainly have to deal with a jerky reader’s report. It might make you cry. It might make you get into a car accident. It might launch into a perplexing and irrelevant tirade about how using the digitized version of a Library of Congress source (rather than, presumably, traveling to the District of Columbia with all of your spare money) is a signifier of “scholarly sloth.” It may make you want to punch through a wall. (Read more from Vitae.)

How to be Supportive of an Artist

My sister is an artist. She’s really talented and I try to help and support her as much as possible by creating a peaceful and quiet environment for her to work in and by letting her know about gallery and museum exhibits or networking opportunities. It seem like whatever I do annoys her. What am I doing wrong? (Read more from KCET.)