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.

US Has Funded Artists and Intellectuals for Half a Century, but It’s a Perennial Fight

As the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts celebrate their fiftieth anniversaries, they are still trying to climb out of the cellar, at least financially. While their endurance reflects an ongoing commitment to the arts and humanities, their struggles show that the government’s adherence to that promise can be fickle. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)

Does the Public Have a Right to Culture?

What do we mean when we say that artists and their heirs have a right to remuneration for the artist’s creativity? Conversely, what do we mean when we say that the public has a right to culture? Which public? Which culture? And is this “right” or “non-right” to be mediated solely through the law? (Read more from Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.)

Museum Directors Release Plan to Help Provide Safe Havens for Endangered Antiquities

Amid the wanton destruction of antiquities in Syria and elsewhere, the Association of Art Museum Directors, a group that represents museum directors, proposed a set of protocols to help cultural institutions understand how they can provide safe haven for valuable works of art and archaeological relics that are at risk of being damaged, destroyed, or looted. (Read more from the New York Times.)

The Informal Economy and the Global Art Market

It is difficult to imagine a reason to keep artworks in a free port unless there is speculation going on. If you are a collector of fine art, you want to be able to see and to appreciate what you own. But if you are a speculator, all you need is storage since you are betting that the work is going to increase in value. (Read more from SFAQ.)

Solving the Solvents

Solvents are used in oil painting for various reasons. In the first layers they are frequently meant to make the paint washier—often a necessary step in the painting process for some artists. With thinner and more fluid paint, one is able to sketch or conjure the gesture that breathes life into a blank canvas and informs the subsequent layers. (Read more from Just Paint.)

Why the Visual Artists Rights Act Is Failing

The federal Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), enacted in 1990 in the wake of the removal of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, was supposed to remedy a long series of conflicts between property owners and artists. The law grants artists the rights to prevent intentional modification to their art and the destruction of a work of “recognized stature.” But how effective is it? (Read more from Artsy.)

Humanities Majors’ Salaries

Major in English and expect to live with Mom and Dad for life. That’s the stereotype constantly reinforced by reports on the hot job prospects for nurses or code writers or various other positions for which practical training is seen as the route to economic success. But a new report shows that graduates with degrees in the humanities earn much more than the average for all American workers, challenging those who suggest that a degree in the humanities is a waste, at least financially. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

On the Academic Job Market, Does Patience Pay Off?

How long am I marketable? It’s one of the most difficult questions an academic job seeker can face. And it’s one of the most important questions we hope our Academic JobTracker project can help answer. If you don’t get a job in your first year on the market, should you stay the course and take another swing next hiring season? Or is it already time to explore other career options? (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)