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.

Cuba’s Art Scene Awaits a Travel Boom

As collectors, art connoisseurs, and institutions eagerly gear up to travel to Cuba after President Obama’s decision to loosen the economic embargo, the art scene that awaits them is sui generis: a world whose artists are cut off from supplies and the internet and, at the same time, celebrated by a coterie of international buyers whose curiosity and determination brought them to Cuba long before talk of a thaw. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Artist Who Tested Limits of Freedom of Expression in Cuba Warned off Havana Biennial

The Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera, who was arrested three times last week by Cuban officials, is now discussing with her attorney in Havana the details of the detentions with the aim to bring a case before the Cuban Courts and international bodies such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, according to a report on the Miami-based news website, Martinoticias.com. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur

Vision, inspiration, and mysterious gifts as from above: such are some of the associations that continue to adorn the word “artist.” Yet the notion of the artist as a solitary genius—so potent a cultural force, so determinative, still, of the way we think of creativity in general—is decades out of date. So out of date, in fact, that the model that replaced it is itself already out of date. (Read more from the Atlantic.)

Why Don’t Artists Like the Current Art Market?

Many artists feel scorned and rejected. They want to paint what they want to paint, dammit, and they want galleries to represent those paintings and people to love them and buy them. Or rather, they often feel certain that if only galleries would represent those artworks, people would love them and buy them. I wish it were that simple. (Read more from Slate.)

Museum Capturing Ferguson History as It Happens

From street-artist paintings on boards protecting store windows to signs bearing the now iconic statement “Hands Up Don’t Shoot,” cultural images from the Ferguson protests have become firmly established in recent Missouri history. So much so that the Missouri History Museum is gathering images and items cataloguing the unrest—physical artifacts, cell-phone videos, Twitter feeds, and oral histories from protesters, residents, and police—that followed the August shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. (Read more from the Charlotte Observer.)

California Colleges See Surge in Efforts to Unionize Adjunct Faculty

A wave of union organizing at college campuses across California and the nation in recent months is being fueled by part-time faculty who are increasingly discontented over working conditions and a lack of job security. At nearly a dozen private colleges in California, adjunct professors are holding first-time contract negotiations or are campaigning to win the right to do so. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)

How to Curate Your Digital Identity as an Academic

How might academics—particularly those without tenure, published books, or established freelance gigs—avoid having their digital identities taken over by the negative or the uncharacteristic? After all, no one wants to be associated almost exclusively with blogs of disgruntled students and other potentially contentious sites like Rate My Professors. As an academic or would-be academic, you need to take control of your public persona and then take steps to build and maintain it. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Simple Pictures That Artificial Intelligence Still Can’t Recognize

Computers are getting truly, freakishly good at identifying what they’re looking at. They can’t look at a picture and tell you it’s a chihuahua wearing a sombrero, but they can say that it’s a dog wearing a hat with a wide brim. A new paper, however, directs our attention to one place these super smart algorithms are totally stupid. (Read more from Wired.)