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.

No Detail Goes Unnoticed When Art Is a Click Away

The construction of new art museum buildings like that of the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan’s meatpacking district naturally receives a lot of attention. But there’s another kind of construction going on that tells more about where museums are at and where they are going than any shiny new edifice: their websites. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Fighting the Wikipedia Boys’ Club

The midcentury sculptor Doris Porter Caesar’s presence on Wikipedia only came into being a year ago. Before February 1, 2014, her female nudes were mere blips waving at art history from under university archives and phonebook entries. That day, around one hundred female artists got new Wikipedia entries. The intruders behind the takeover were members of the group Art+Feminism, whose global edit-a-thon saw sessions across six countries involving more than six hundred participants. (Read more from Dazed.)

Is the Design World Still a Boys’ Club?

When Gertrud Arndt quit her job in an architect’s office in 1923 to take up a scholarship at an art and design school whose prospectus promised to welcome “any person of good repute, without regard to age or sex,” she had high hopes of studying architecture. Instead, she was told to join the weaving workshop, as were most of the other women intent on studying design at the Bauhaus. (Read more from Frieze.)

Help Desk: Interviews and Expectations

I have an interview with a critic who sent me his questions in advance, and I found them to be leading and directive. How can I approach this conversation so that I can communicate what is interesting about my work? For many artists, dealing with writers and art reviewers is an inevitable part of showing work. What are some tactics in general for making these conversations go well, for both interviewer and interviewee? (Read more from Daily Serving.)

Ten Tips for More Efficient and Effective Grading

Many instructors dread grading, not just because grading takes up a sizable amount of time and can prove itself a tedious task, but also because instructors struggle with grading effectively and efficiently. However, effective grading does not have to take inordinate amounts of time, nor does one need to sacrifice quality for speed. The following tips can help instructors grade more effectively while enhancing student learning. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)

Dealing with Inappropriate Emails from Students

About once a week I will open my inbox and be greeted by an email that will leave me at a loss for words. A few nights ago, for instance, one student emailed me at 10:30 PM on a Sunday requesting—“urgently”—a meeting at 7:30 the next morning. She wanted to discuss an assignment that was due the day after and couldn’t make it any other time during the day. I decided not to respond—at least not immediately. (Read more from GradHacker.)

Teach or Perish

My undergraduates’ career plans are a peculiar mix of naked ambition and hair-shirt altruism. If they pursue investment banking, they do so not merely to make money. Rather, they wish to use their eventual wealth to distribute solar light bulbs to every resident of a developing nation. They’ll apply to the finest law schools in hopes of some day judging war criminals at The Hague. They dream of engineering an app that will make tequila flow out of thin air into your outstretched shot glass. My students, I suspect, are receiving their professional advice from a council of emojis. (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)

Two Bronzes Attributed Convincingly to Michelangelo

A team of art historians, scientists, and anatomical experts has announced that a pair of bronze statues—meter-high, idealized, muscular nude male followers of the god Bacchus riding panthers—are by Michelangelo and date from around 1508–10. The pair, which is in a private collection, will go on display on February 3 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)