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.

Do Free Speech and Inclusivity Clash?

Greg Lukianoff has spent much of his career making life miserable for college and university lawyers. So some members of the National Association of College and University Attorneys might have been surprised to hear the head of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education suggest that students—not campus officials—are increasingly the people he worries most about in campus free speech debates. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Decoding the Trump Regime

Political art, however well intentioned, isn’t going to stop Congress and the President from swapping billions in Medicaid for tax cuts for the rich, endangering millions of lives. When the artist Sharon Louden asked on Twitter, “Can things get worse?,” expressing bewilderment and frustration with the latest Republican assault on the Affordable Care Act, I could only reply “Most certainly.” (Read more from Hyperallergic.)

Getting In and Out

 Two weeks after watching Get Out, I stood with my children in front of Open Casket, Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till, the black teenager who, in 1955, was beaten and lynched after being accused of flirting with a white woman. My children did not know what they were looking at and were too young for me to explain. (Read more from Harper’s.)

David Goldblatt on Artistic Freedom, Censorship, and Moving His Archive Out of South Africa

Until recently, the South African photographer David Goldblatt had arranged for his archive to go to the University of Cape Town upon his death. That changed in February 2017, when he announced that he would be moving both the collection and, in time, his entire archive to Yale University. (Read more from ARTnews.)

Contradictions in How We Think about Teaching

Students think ability matters more than effort, and teachers think teaching is a gift that is given more than a skill that can and should be developed. Students want easy answers, and teachers want techniques that work right the first time. Both share the fear of failure. Is this a comparison from which we might learn something? (Read more from Faculty Focus.)

Can We Increase the Impact and Reach of Scholarly Research?

Occasionally, the Learned Publishing editorial team enjoys browsing our archives and reflecting on the changing anxieties, strategies, and values within our community over the years. One hot topic among authors in the last decade is the increasing pressure to reach beyond the traditional confines of journals and faculty tenure cycles. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

Do the Prices at Auction Muddy Our Interpretation of Art?

Art and money have always been uncomfortable bedfellows. Works can’t get made in a vacuum and the machinations of the market help to keep them relevant. The trading records of works of art—who bought them, who sold them, for how much and why—arguably contribute to a more rounded art-historical picture. (Read more from Apollo.)

US Arts Nonprofits Generated $166.3 Billion in Spending in 2015

The average American culture vulture spends an additional $31.47 whenever he or she attends an arts event: almost $17 on food, about $4.50 on souvenirs and gifts, over $3 on local transportation. This is the microlevel of $166.3 billion in economic activity that the nonprofit arts sector contributed to the US economy in 2015, according to an Americans for the Arts study. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)