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.

Artists’ Rejection Letters Add Up—Should They Hold onto Them?

Nothing irks artists more than criticism and rejection. A lot of meaning is imputed to what is often a form letter: the art isn’t good; the artist is a bad artist; the artist is an idiot for having submitted artwork in the first place; the person who sent the letter is stupid and biased; that person expressed the considered opinion of the entire world. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)

When Students Won’t Do the Reading

Is there a more common lament among college instructors than “Why won’t students just do the reading?” It’s an important and difficult question. In my experience, many students understand, at least in the abstract, that the reading is important. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Museums Are Keeping a Ton of the World’s Most Famous Art Locked Away in Storage

Most of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work is in storage. Nearly half of Pablo Picasso’s oil paintings are put away. Not a single Egon Schiele drawing is on display. Since the advent of public galleries in the seventeenth century, museums have amassed huge collections of art for society’s benefit. But just a tiny fraction of that art is actually open for people to view and enjoy. (Read more from Quartz.)

A Brief History of Women in Video Art

In the 1960s, following the postwar advent of television in America, video cameras became available to consumers and quickly found their way into the hands of the international art scene. Unlike traditional mediums, however, this one wasn’t dominated by men. (Read more from Artsy.)

AAUP Member Presses to Launch Diversity Fellowship

The Association of American University Presses congratulates the University of Washington on the receipt of a $682,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a pipeline program to diversify academic publishing through funded acquisitions apprenticeships at four university presses. (Read more from the Association of American University Presses.)

Essential PhD Tips: Ten Articles All Doctoral Students Should Read

If you’re still deciding whether to study for a doctorate, or even if you’re nearing the end of your PhD and are thinking about your next steps, we’ve selected ten articles that you really should take a look at. They cover everything from selecting your topic to securing a top job when your years of hard graft come to an end. (Read more from Times Higher Education.)

Feminist Art Historian Amelia Jones Believes That Art History Should Embrace New Narratives and Diverse Voices

“What I am trying to do in my academic life is change art discourse. I want to change the field of art history. It is time to have a new narrative and it is time to bring new, more diverse voices to the field.” So maintains Amelia Jones, vice dean of critical studies at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)

Art-Forgery Trial Set to Begin

On the verge of a trial over the art-forgery scandal that sank one of New York’s most venerable galleries, this much is agreed upon: the black-and-red painting that sold for more than $8 million in 2004 is definitely not by Mark Rothko. Whether that fact was known by Ann Freedman, the former president of Knoedler and Co. who sold the work to the family of Sotheby’s chairman Domenico De Sole, is another matter. (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)