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.

The More Things Change

Pay for full-time faculty members rose 2.6 percent this academic year over last, according to “Visualizing Change,” the American Association of University Professors’ Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession. But professors shouldn’t get too excited: adjusted for inflation, that amounts to just 0.5 percent. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

A New Site Is Helping High-Quality Creatives Find Work—and Get Paid

Easle is a freshly launched online platform that aims to connect high-quality creatives with reliable clients across the globe. Through an algorithm, the site helps match creatives with jobs that are well suited to their skills and then facilitates the logistics of paperwork and payment. (Read more from Artsy.)

A Syllabus for Making Work about Race as a White Artist in America

Many white-identified students, artists, and art workers feel stuck in that racial construct. They are nervous to tread into any conversation about race and avoid the question. But what about those who identify as white and still want to make works rich with social and historical narrative? (Read more from Hyperallergic.)

Donated Slides from the Met Get a Second Life

It is definitely a digital-age question: What to do with old-fashioned color slides of all-but-forgotten visits to see Grandma or department store Santas? Year after year, they lie in their boxes on a shelf, no longer looked at. The Metropolitan Museum of Art faced the same question on a much larger scale. It had thousands of 35mm slides, showing everything from close-ups of Manets and Monets to wide-angle shots of the galleries. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Designed for Social Change

Though “spatial justice” is often thought of as an enterprise in the public realm, like the construction of parks and community centers, it’s not as frequently addressed in the private realm. Because housing is essential to well-being, the architect Dana McKinney hopes to eventually create spaces that promote not just equality, but equity. (Read more from the Harvard Gazette.)

Bringing Respect to the Craft Artist

Giving lesser-known artists visibility is key to the mission of the Craft and Folk Art Museum, says executive director Suzanne Isken, whose institution has an annual operating budget of about $730,000. Which is why a $25,000 grant from the NEA has been so crucial for the Los Angeles museum to stage its current exhibition, Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)

Publishers and Open-Resource Advocates Square Off on the Future of Course Content

At a friendly yet spirited debate last month over the pros and cons of open educational resources, publishers and open-access advocates agreed on at least one thing—the “old” textbook market is broken. But that’s pretty much where the common ground ended. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Pedagogic Approaches to Teaching with Art in the Sciences

When dealing with courses in the hard and life sciences, we approach engagement with art differently. Founded on the types of interactions with the collection that STEM faculty tend to request and on the recent pedagogic emphasis on active, inquiry-based learning that also touches on the creative aspects of science, we distinguish four kinds of interactions with art: skill-building, thematic, problem-based, and dispositional. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)