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.

2016 World Monuments Watch List

The 2016 World Monuments Watch features fifty sites in thirty-six countries that are at risk from the forces of nature and the impact of social, political, and economic change. (Read more from World Monuments Fund.)

Appeals Court Gives Google a Clear and Total Fair-Use Win on Book Scanning

The Authors Guild’s never-ending lawsuit against Google for its book-scanning project has been hit with yet another blow. The Second Circuit appeals court has told the Authors Guild (once again) that Google’s book scanning is transformative fair use. (Read more from Techdirt.)

Why Absolutely Everyone Hates Renoir

When God-Hates-Renoir protesters recently rallied outside the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, there was only one reason why anyone might have been surprised to see them there. The museum isn’t mounting a big Renoir show, or celebrating the artist in some other way. Any institution foolhardy enough to do so knows by now to expect some kind of pushback, because everyone hates Renoir, and everyone always has. (Read more from the Atlantic.)

The Value of Randomness in Art and Design

Ask a designer or artist if any aspect of their process is random. The answer will likely reveal a complex relationship between human cognition, digital media, authorship, and even conceptions of reality and the divine. For those of us who work in computational media to make art, the question can be even more focused: When and why do you use a “random()” function when you write code? (Read more from Fast Company.)

Study Sends “Wake-Up Call” about Black and Latino Arts Groups’ Meager Funding

Sending a “wake-up call” to arts donors, a new national study paints a bleak economic picture of African American and Latino nonprofit museums and performing arts companies. The report finds that when large, mainstream arts organizations stage black- or Latino-themed performances or exhibitions, they siphon away artistic talent, donations, and attendance from smaller groups. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)

Art and the #FergusonSyllabus

This past summer I led a seminar, titled “The Local Global: American Art and Globalization in the Digital Age,” that was inspired by the #FergusonSyllabus movement, started by the Georgetown history professor Marcia Chatelain last year in the wake of Michael Brown’s death, the protests in Ferguson, and the delayed start to school. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)

Partial Credit: The 2015 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology

Schools have spent hundreds of millions on technology they believe will improve student outcomes and simplify administrative tasks. Educational technology companies continue to demolish investment records on a quarterly basis. With all this money spent under the guise of improving postsecondary education, the 2015 Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology suggests that many instructors believe the gains in student learning justify the costs. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Me and My Shadow CV

This fall I’m serving as the designated coach for doctoral students in my department who are on the academic job market. They’re a talented group, with impressive skills, hopes, and dreams. I’m grateful to be guiding them, as they put their best selves before search committees. However, one part of the work is not all that pleasant: I also need to ready them to face mass rejection. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)