CAA News Today

William S. Smith discusses Adjunct Commuter Weekly, edited by Dushko Petrovich, “a one-off, twenty-page publication” created “by and for these academic day laborers.” Although it “employs the conventions of newspaper publishing in a tongue-in-cheek manner,” it “also seems intended to publicize the struggle it documents.” Moreover, Adjunct Commuter Weekly “has to be seen within a tradition of artists’ publications.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.

Robert Summers reviews Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present, an anthology edited by Alexander Dumbadze and Suzanne Hudson. With the “desire to expand the discussion of contemporary art to include a multiplicity of voices,” the volume features “forty-six international writers” grouped into fourteen rubrics. Although “there are blind spots in the anthology, it is very much worth reading.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.

Jean Li reads The Priest, the Prince, and the Pasha: The Life and Afterlife of an Ancient Egyptian Sculpture by Lawrence Berman. Focusing on “the so-called Boston Green Head,” the book questions “what is it about antiquities that so compels us to collect them” by examining “the personalities responsible for the ‘afterlife’ of the head.” It “spurs reflection on the issues of desire, value, and commodification.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.

Michelle Moore Apotsos reviews Mark Hinchman’s Portrait of an Island: The Architecture and Material Culture of Gorée, Sénégal, 1758–1837. In this “meticulous, compelling” study of Gorée Island, “a depot for the trans-Atlantic slave,” the author brings to light “its accompanying history as a center of globalistic capitalistic enterprise and the point of origin for an emergent brand of Afro-modernity.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.