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.

Professors as Targets of Internet Outrage

Many professors who have expressed their views about race and politics this year have found themselves targets of both the left and right. Nothing is too abstrusely academic, it seems, to seed an attack campaign fueled by websites that surveil social media to find gotcha-worthy gems. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Demands to Cancel Dana Schutz’s ICA Exhibit Don’t Help the Cause for Social Justice

A small group of Boston activists demand as much in their passionate opposition to the current Dana Schutz exhibition at ICA Boston. Should an artist be blacklisted and blocked from showing their work at museums around the nation because one of their recent paintings tackled the painful topic of the history of racial violence? (Read more from the National Coalition against Censorship.)

Upstart Co-Lab Wants Businesses to Hire More Artists

We’re used to the common narrative of the artist as someone so inspired that they simply can’t stomach a drab office job, preferring to ditch the cubicle for the white cube. And yet research has found that employers almost universally report creativity is of increasing importance in the “traditional” workplace. (Read more from Artsy.)

The Letters of Picasso’s Dealer and a Century’s Worth of Impressionist Archives Are Going Online

Art historians and dealers researching works of art will soon have a new trove of materials to work with, courtesy of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute. A century’s worth of documentation—stock books from galleries, artists’ correspondence, annotated sale catalogues—will be digitized to develop online catalogues raisonnés for Manet, Morisot, Monet, and more. (Read more from Artnet News.)

The Multifarious Book

A few years ago the director of a university press told me that her goal was “to save the monograph.” “Which one?” I responded. It was an impolitic remark, but it helped to make the point that books perform all kinds of tasks, and when we say we want to “save” the book, it is reasonable to ask if some of those tasks could usefully be performed in better, faster, and cheaper ways. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

Cindy Sherman Takes Selfies (as Only She Could) on Instagram

For the most part artists use Instagram like the rest of us: as a document of everyday fascinations, a bit scrubbed up for public consumption. But Cindy Sherman—who knows more than most about the deceptions of selfies—has quietly been exploring Instagram’s potential for something more than self-promotion. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Performance Piece Featuring Witches Raises Questions at Seattle Art Fair

On Thursday evening, at the end of the first day of the Seattle Art Fair, I went on a witch hunt. Ten women wearing black hooded cloaks were wandering the aisles. Amid booths housing galleries from around the world, the dark figures walked, carrying battle axes, reading poetry, playing music, and taking pictures on their phones. (Read more from the Observer.)

Philippe de Montebello on How the Metropolitan Museum Can Reclaim Its Glory

Philippe de Montebello is an institution in his own right—as venerable and encyclopedic as would befit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which he led for three decades. Recently, Artnet News’s editor-in-chief sat down with de Montebello to discuss the changes and opportunities at the Met, and his new role in the gallery world. (Read more from Artnet News.)