CAA News Today

Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.

Cruelty and Kindness in Academia

Academics don’t have a reputation for being kind. To put it gently, higher education values intellect over affect. Kindness tends to be viewed as the opposite of criticism. Scholars, after all, are trained in critique, and not necessarily the constructive kind. (Read more from Vitae.)

Why New-Media Art Still Hasn’t Fully Gone Mainstream

Artists working in “new” media have never been so widely admired—a generation of artists in their twenties and thirties, including Amalia Ulman, Neil Beloufa, Ian Cheng, Jon Rafman, and Cécile B. Evans, are now shown internationally. Yet a quarter of a century after the emergence of digital art, it continues to raise challenges for museums, galleries, and collectors. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

The Questions We Should Be Asking Our Students

How much do you know about how your students study? I’ve been asking the question a lot lately, and most of the answers I’ve heard aren’t all that impressive. They’re more about how the faculty member thinks students study, how they should study, or how they aren’t studying. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)

What It Takes to Recover a Stolen Work of Art

A recent highly publicized announcement that two stolen van Gogh paintings had been recovered after fourteen years was a welcome surprise. How do thieves make off with a painting? What should a victim do after realizing they’ve been robbed? Why are only a tiny percentage of works recovered? (Read more from Artsy.)

Alizarin Crimson: Now You See It…

If a single color embodies the dividing line between pigments considered suitable for permanent works of art and those that are suspect and poor in lightfastness, Alizarin Crimson (PR 83) would be it. And yet the color is still used by many artists who are drawn to it in spite of its many problems. (Read more from Just Paint.)

Old Media, New Media, Data Media: Evolving Publishing Paradigms

Not so long ago we routinely talked of old vs. new media. The old was characterized by investment in and creation of content, which gave rise to a common set of properties—definitive and authoritative journalism and scientific reports, the fixed text, and the pursuit of the finest authors and top creative talent. New media, on the other hand, was digital and had its own set of properties. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

The Rise of Living-Room Galleries in London

Young artists and curators throughout London are organizing public exhibitions in their own homes. Many are recent graduates who cannot afford the hefty cost of renting a temporary space. “There’s a pressing need for young artists to find inexpensive places to show art,” said Elena Colman. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

What’s behind Art’s Uneasy Celebrity Courtship?

The art world collectively raised its eyebrows when Sotheby’s Hong Kong announced a collaborative curated auction with Choi Seung-hyun, the 28-year-old Korean boy-band star known as T.O.P. Yet the art world’s newly discovered courtship of celebrity is deeper than it seems, which is why it’s making so many people uneasy. (Read more from Artnet News.)