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.

Three Artists Who Think outside the Box

Rick Lowe’s achievements resonated well beyond Houston. Theaster Gates and Mark Bradford, who both cite him as an influence, are Lowe’s coconspirators in a mode of political or “social practice” art that actively involves them in underserved neighborhoods. Now old friends who have over the years spoken on many panels together and called each other regularly for advice, the three artists have also assisted each other on their large-scale, community-based artworks. (Read more in the New York Times.)

Revisiting the Educational Turn (How I Tried to Renovate an Art School)

At the dawn of the 2000s, the idea of an “educational turn” in the art world was everywhere. On paper, this evolution seemed irresistible, logical, even profound. So much so that, back then, curators such as Hou Hanru, Maria Lind, Okwui Enwezor, and Ute Meta Bauer started to occupy significant positions within art schools. But none lasted too long. (Read more from Art Review.)

How to Be a Brilliant Conference Chair

Think of the worst conference chairs you have ever experienced. The ones who forgot or mispronounced the speakers’ names or failed to turn up altogether. The ones who didn’t notice the shy hand-raisers and only called on the masters of gesticulation. Or the ones who took advantage of the opportunity to tell the audience about their fascinating research and superior knowledge. Although such debacles can be something of a scholarly rite of passage, there are ways to avoid these pitfalls. (Read more from the Guardian.)

Isabelle Graw on Twenty-Five Years of Texte zur Kunst

There’s no arguing that the publication Texte zur Kunst, founded in 1990 in Cologne by Stefan Germer and Isabelle Graw, has shaped art criticism in Germany and beyond. What started as a small enterprise run from the heart of the German art underground and read by a close circle of like-minded thinkers has, in the course of twenty-five years and one hundred issues, produced a veritable theoretical canon. (Read more from Artnet News.)

I Fit the Description

On his way to get a burrito before work, the artist and professor Steve Locke was detained by Boston police. He noticed a police car in the public parking lot behind Centre Street. As he was walking away from his car, the cruiser followed him. He walked down Centre Street and was about to cross over to the burrito place when the officer got out of the car. “Hey my man,” he said. He unsnapped the holster of his gun. (Read more from Art and Everything After.)

The Mass Market Ain’t What It Used to Be (and What That Means for the Arts)

What does it mean to “engage with an audience”? Whole industries thrive on trying to define, quantify, and strategize engagement and building audience. It breaks down into three parts: Can you find an audience? Can you motivate it to respond in some desired way? Can you convince that audience to continue a relationship with you? (Read more from Diacritical.)

Is It Unwise to Post Unpublished Papers Online?

Is it unwise to make unpublished papers publicly available (e.g., on ResearchGate or Academia.edu)? I’d like to do this but have two concerns. The first is that someone will steal the work. My second concern relates to publishability—journals don’t want previously published work. (Read more from Vitae.)

How to Explain Art to Your Mother

How do I explain to my mother why her sweet little girl, who got straight As in school and still goes to church, is interested in a photograph of a naked child stomping on his mother? In most families you could skirt the issue, tucking it away in the conversational corner reserved for politics and religion. But I’m married to an artist, and just this year we set out to make a living primarily from selling his art. (Read more from Burnaway.)