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.

Detroit Institute of Arts Will Sue If the City’s Bankruptcy Plan Is Not Approved

The Detroit Institute of Arts is prepared to sue to prevent the sale of its collection if Detroit’s plan for exiting bankruptcy is not approved, the museum’s chief operating officer told the US Bankruptcy Court last week. When Detroit filed for the largest-ever municipal bankruptcy fourteen months ago, the museum began preparing for possible litigation to keep its artworks from being sold to pay city creditors. (Read more from Reuters.)

What to Expect from Artist Residencies

Artist residencies can be an incredible way to expand and improve your art practice, but getting into the right one can be a challenge. I’ve completed residency programs in 2012, 2013, and 2014. Through this process, I’ve learned how to pick the right residency and how to use one residency experience to gain another. Here’s my advice for anyone wishing to dive into the artist residency circuit. (Read more from BurnAway.)

Artists Raising Kids: Thoughts on How to Have It All

This summer, Creative Capital conducted a survey entitled “Artists-As-Parents” to find out how working artists sustain their practice while also being busy parents (or prepare themselves to do so as parents-to-be). We received nearly six hundred responses, giving us a good idea of the profile of artist-parents in our network, the challenges they face, and the strategies they use to maximize their time and productivity. (Read more from Creative Capital.)

Scholars Take Aim at Student Evaluations’ “Air of Objectivity”

Student course evaluations are often misused statistically and shed little light on the quality of teaching, two scholars at the University of California, Berkeley, argue in the draft of a new paper. Even though evaluations have become ubiquitous in academe, they remain controversial because they often assume a high-stakes role in determining tenure and promotion. But they persist because they are easy to produce, administer, and tabulate, said Philip B. Stark, a professor of statistics at Berkeley, in an interview. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

We Asked Twenty Women “Is the Art World Biased?” Here’s What They Said

Artnet News has noticed that bias, both conscious and unconscious, is rampant throughout the world. It’s in the umpteenth exhibition not featuring a woman. It’s in the evening auction whose top winners are male. It’s in art schools the world over, germinating and putting down roots. What to do? We canvassed women collectors, dealers, curators, advisers, and artists to find out their responses to the question “Is the art world biased?” (Read more from Artnet News.)

Why Original Artworks Move Us More Than Reproductions

Now that we can view high-definition reproductions of virtually any artwork from our computer screens, why do people visit art museums anyway? Sure, arranging individual pieces into compelling exhibitions enhances our appreciation, but it’s doubtful that people come for the curation. Clearly, encountering original artworks in person is a unique experience. But why? (Read more from Pacific Standard.)

Who Funds the Arts and Why We Should Care

Anyone passing through Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall one recent Saturday might have witnessed an unscheduled performance by a group of people writhing beneath a huge square of black cloth. Taking its motif from the Malevich exhibition at Tate, the event was designed to flag the museum’s refusal to reveal details of its financial relationship with BP. It was the latest in a series of protests about the sponsorship of institutions—among them the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery—by the energy giant responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010. (Read more from the Financial Times.)

Crimes against Dissertation Humanities

Since I left academia in 2013, I’ve had a part-time job as something called a “dissertation coach.” I work one-on-one with a stable of about a dozen private clients, helping them manage both their workload and the emotional vicissitudes of graduate school. And no matter their field—I’ve worked with scientists, engineers, sociologists, psychologists, historians, and literary scholars—one thing remains the same: my services simply would not be necessary if the faculty advisers of the world saw fit to do their jobs. (Read more from Vitae.)