CAA News Today

Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.

Judge OKs Bankruptcy Plan: A “Miraculous” Outcome

A federal judge approved a plan to end Detroit’s historic Chapter 9 bankruptcy, giving the Motor City an unprecedented shot at recovering from decades of economic despair and municipal mismanagement that left the city awash in debt and struggling to provide basic public services. Judge Steven Rhodes ruled that Detroit’s comprehensive restructuring plan is fair and feasible, providing the legal authority for the city to slash more than $7 billion in unsecured liabilities and reinvest $1.4 billion over ten years in public services and blight removal. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)

“Grand Bargain” Saves the Detroit Institute of Arts

With his decision approving this city’s federal bankruptcy plan, Judge Steven W. Rhodes—aided by nearly a billion dollars in private and state rescue money—ended an unprecedented threat to the Detroit Institute of Arts, whose world-class paintings and sculpture could have been parceled off at auction to help pay city debt. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Warburg Institute Safe as High Court Rules Contents Not the Property of University of London

To the benefit and relief of scholars worldwide, the High Court has rejected the University of London’s claims that all additions to the Warburg Institute since 1944 belong to the university, and instead agreed that they form part of the institute. Furthermore, Justice Proudman held that the University is obliged to provide funding for the activities of the Warburg Institute. (Read more from the Warburg Institute.)

Help Desk: Crowd Funding

I have many friends who are running crowd-funding campaigns. Part of me wants to contribute because these people are my friends, but I would never think to ask others to fund my art practice. Should I give to these campaigns or pretend I never saw the emails? Should I run one myself the next time I need to travel or buy a new laptop? (Read more from Daily Serving.)

Emerging Artists and the New Spirit of Capitalism

Pointing to the avarice of the art world, to its entanglement with big money, is an old game. Concerns about the “corrupting influence” of the market are likely as old as the market itself, and are still voiced with some frequency. Most recently David Bryne caused a surprising ripple of ire by describing how the big money of the Chelsea art scene was making it difficult for him to give the work itself a fair viewing. However, the issue of contemporary art’s relationship to capitalism is more complicated and thorny than being merely a matter of the staggering prices demanded at elite galleries. (Read more from Public Seminar.)

What Can You Really Do with a Degree in the Arts?

Is my BA in creative writing of any use to me at all? It’s hard to say. I sort of have a career in the arts in that I write and think about art all the time. But the relationship between my arts career and my actual career is tenuous. I earn my living writing, but it’s not exactly the type of writing they were preparing me for back at Oberlin. Rather than poetry or fiction or even creative nonfiction, I write entries for business encyclopedias, create items for high school and elementary standardized tests, and do the occasional online study guide for Stephen King novels. (Read more from the Atlantic.)

NCIS: Provence: The Van Gogh Mystery

For many decades, suicide was the unquestioned final chapter of Vincent van Gogh’s legend. But in their 2011 book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith offered a far more plausible scenario—that van Gogh was killed—only to find themselves under attack. Now, with the help of a leading forensic expert, the authors take their case a step further. (Read more from Vanity Fair.)

Culture War: The Case against Repatriating Museum Artifacts

Repatriation claims on the national identity of antiquities are at the root of many states’ cultural property laws, which in the last few decades have been used by governments to reclaim objects from museums and other collections abroad. Despite UNESCO’s declaration that “no culture is a hermetically sealed entity,” governments are increasingly making claims of ownership of cultural property on the basis of self-proclaimed and fixed state-based identities. (Read more from Foreign Affairs.)