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.

What Happens When a Museum Closes?

Four recently dissolved cultural institutions—the Museum of Biblical Art in New York, the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science in California, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Higgins Armory Museum in Massachusetts—each offer a lesson in how to weather the complex process of closing a museum. (Read more from Artsy.)

Help Desk: Underrepresentation

I have been with my gallery for a long time and received press and write-ups, but no collectors. How do I motivate my dealer to show and sell my work? I’ve been hustling and struggling a long time, and I’m kind of over it. (Read more from Daily Serving.)

Oiling Out and the Cause of Dead Spots in Oil Paintings

It’s been a problem for a very long time: blotchiness, sinking in, dead spots. For oil painters these are well-known terms, conjuring up images of skin disease as much as painted surfaces, but whatever words are used the implication is clear—it’s an undesirable nuisance, a loathsome interloper in the creative process. (Read more from Just Paint.)

Getting beyond the Anecdote: Research and Art-History Pedagogy

Pedagogical innovations abound in art-history classrooms. National and regional conferences increasingly feature panels of inspirational examples and case studies. These sessions are well attended by instructors eager for new, proven ideas to improve their teaching. The speakers assure this audience of improved student engagement and efficacy at achieving learning outcomes with this or that innovation. But how can they prove it? (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)

An Editor’s View of Digital Publishing

The Getty was relatively quick to embrace digital publishing, but for our early ebooks, the editorial workflow remained much the same; only the end product was different. For our two new online collection catalogues, Ancient Terracottas from South Italy and Sicily and Roman Mosaics, however, we thought differently from the outset. (Read more from the Getty Iris.)

Diversity as a Tenure Requirement

Pomona College’s faculty has voted to change the criteria for tenure to specifically require candidates to be “attentive to diversity in the student body.” While many colleges and universities encourage faculty members to support diversity efforts, and a few have encouraged tenure candidates to reference such work, Pomona’s requirement may go further because it applies to all who come up for tenure. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

What Obama’s Overtime Rule Could Mean for Colleges

The Obama administration has released a rule that will extend overtime pay to millions more American workers, including hundreds of thousands of lower-level salaried employees on college campuses. Much attention has focused on the impact on postdoctoral fellows, the overworked, underpaid backbone of the academic research enterprise. But it’s not just postdocs who will benefit from the rule. Many entry- and midlevel professionals will qualify, too. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

How Long Will Your Class Remain Yours?

Administrative interference with faculty prerogatives across many different kinds of technology has enabled an attack on workers’ control in academia. Universities willing to interfere with electronic communications, social media, and even the faculty’s control over standards for individual courses will likely seek to oversee the way that all courses are taught at their schools. (Read more from Digital Pedagogy Lab.)