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.

MoMA Installs Works by Artists from Countries Targeted by Trump’s Travel Ban

In response to President Trump’s executive order temporarily banning immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, the Museum of Modern Art has replaced works in its permanent-collection galleries with eight by artists from the targeted nations. The rehang was instigated and executed by staff who wanted to react to unsettling political circumstances. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)

The Battle to Save America’s Arts Endowment from Trump’s Cuts

The day before Donald Trump was installed as president, details of his administration’s plans for cuts to government spending came to light. Seemingly drawn from a blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation, the plans feature deep cuts to many vital federal programs, including the elimination of the NEA. (Read more from Apollo.)

What We Can Learn from the Brief Period When the Government Employed Artists

That the arts would be funded significantly by the federal government may raise an eyebrow today. But working under a subdivision of the Works Progress Administration known as the Federal Art Project, artists such as Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner helped the country recover from the Great Depression, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. (Read more from Artsy.)

State Spending on Higher Ed Continues Upward Trend

For the fourth year in a row, state spending on higher education is up nationwide. The annual “Grapevine” survey, conducted by the State Higher Education Executive Officers and the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University, shows a 3.4-percent average nationwide increase in spending over the 2016 fiscal year, although that figure could be changed by legislation pending in Illinois. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

The Met: A Great Museum in Decline?

The bad news had been building for months at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even as crowds poured into shows on Hellenistic kingdoms and high-tech fashion, the museum’s deficit was approaching $40 million and had forced the buyout or layoff of some ninety employees. An expansion into a satellite building cost millions of dollars more than expected. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Museums Celebrate the Decriminalization of Homosexuality

Museums across the UK are preparing exhibitions to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act, the legislation that partially decriminalized male homosexuality in England and Wales in 1967. In London, the National Portrait Gallery will present a special display on the city’s gay scene in the 1980s, while the first major exhibition dedicated to queer British art will open at Tate Britain. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

Nobody Is Normal

While medical researchers might miss such fine points, philosophers of medicine have been parsing the nuances and striving to define “normal” for years. One thought experiment asks us to consider variations on the ends of the spectrum that we would not consider pathological: having green eyes, being color-blind, being extremely tall or short, having photographic memory, or being a supertaster. (Read more from Aeon.)

Brad Troemel, the Troll of Internet Art

Brad Troemel’s art plays with a central paradox of the internet: the technology that was supposed to liberate us from the dreary real world has inspired a whole new set of anxieties. For the growing number of artists who use the internet to distribute their work, a key problem has become how to stand out amid a torrent of information. (Read more from the New Yorker.)