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.

IIE Launches Program to Assist Threatened Artists

The Institute of International Education will soon launch a program to save the lives and work of artists who face persecution in their home countries. The new Artist Protection Fund, a three-year pilot program supported by a $2.79 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will make life-saving fellowship grants to threatened artists from any field of artistic endeavor and place them at host universities and arts centers in countries where they can safely continue their work and plan for their future. (Read more from the Institute of International Education.)

Protecting Priceless Art from Natural Disasters

The reviews of the new design of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York have been glowing. But the most intriguing feature might be one that’s gone largely unnoticed: its custom flood-mitigation system, which was designed halfway through the museum’s construction, in the aftermath of 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, when more than five million gallons of water flooded the site. (Read more from the Atlantic.)

Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures, and Fixes

Despite encouraging signs of women’s improved status and visibility in the art world, there are still major systemic problems. Do not misunderstand me: women artists are in a far better position today than they were forty-five years ago, when Linda Nochlin wrote her landmark essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Access to “high art” education, to which women have historically been denied, is now possible for many with financial means. Moreover, the institutional power structures that Nochlin argued made it “impossible for women to achieve artistic excellence, or success, on the same footing as men, no matter what the potency of their so-called talent, or genius,” have been shifting. (Read more from ARTnews.)

62 Women Share Their Secrets to Art World Success: Part One

What are the secrets to a successful career in the art world? Artnet News asked sixty-two women in the upper echelons of museums, galleries, art public-relations firms, and art nonprofits to tell us what they’ve learned over the course of their careers, and to offer their advice for women looking to break into the business. (Read more from Artnet News.)

62 Women Share Their Secrets to Art World Success: Part Two

What are the secrets to a successful career in the art world? Artnet News asked sixty-two women in the upper echelons of museums, galleries, art public-relations firms, and art nonprofits to tell us what they’ve learned over the course of their careers, and to offer their advice for women looking to break into the business. (Read more from Artnet News.)

The Rise of the Private Art “Museum”

In the heart of Berlin stands a windowless concrete bunker so awesomely ugly that, when you see it, you instinctively avert your gaze. It is heavy, gray, and shrapnel-pocked, and has no signage to explain its protean history. Designed by the Nazi architect Karl Bonatz, the bunker was built in 1942 as an air-raid shelter for Germans. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the building was appropriated for use first as an avant-garde performance space and later as a techno club. In 2003, Christian and Karen Boros bought the building to display a portion of their sizable collection of contemporary art. (Read more from the New Yorker.)

Looking for Creativity in Brains Will Take More Creativity

About a decade and a half ago, the neuroscience world got super stoked about a sexy new way to look at living brains: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Now, fMRI is still a great tool—just as long as you’re applying it to questions that it can actually answer. The problem is, many questions that can be answered simply with fMRI data have, by virtue of being simple, already been answered. That means any successive studies done with fMRI have to meet a much, much higher bar. (Read more from Wired.)

Digitally Divided

There’s nothing like being without the internet for a few days to realize how much I don’t miss it, at least occasionally. But it also makes me realize how much I assume when I have regular access. I’ve been vacationing in parts of the country where our cell phones can’t reach a signal. It’s a good time to relax, listen to the wind in the trees, take long walks with no particular destination in mind, but you can’t pick up the latest news, keep your email clutter cut down to size, or check tomorrow’s weather, all things that I take for granted normally. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)