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.

Why Is Art So Expensive?

I recently went to a gallery and saw pieces of broken glass selling for $1,000 per shard. Why? And why is art so expensive? (Read more from Slate.)

The Academy’s Dirty Secret

According to a new study that scrutinized more than 16,000 faculty members at 242 schools, just a quarter of all universities account for 71 to 86 percent of all tenure-track faculty in the US and Canada in business, computer science, and history. Just eighteen elite universities produce half of all computer-science professors, sixteen schools produce half of all business professors, and eight schools account for half of all history professors. (Read more from Slate.)

How to Start an Art School

There are plenty of examples out there, from fly-by-night, for-profit scoundrels to august, ivy-draped centuries-old institutions. Why not just join one of them rather than go through the trouble of starting something new? Unfortunately, the current model for art school is awful. Let us count the ways, easily summed in dollars. (Read more from Momus.)

Do Artist Branding and Hollywood Talent Agency Deals Kill an Artist’s Soul?

Many of us have seen the Andy Warhol Converse sneakers and the Uniqlo t-shirts adorned with famous artworks. We’ve seen the painted BMW cars and the branding of vodka bottles. If artists want to put their signature squiggles on a shoe or a bottle of booze, are they compromising their integrity in exchange for a bit of cash? (Read more from Artnet News.)

US Museums Capitalize on Baby Boomers’ Desire to Write Big Checks

Cultural giving among America’s top philanthropists fell slightly in 2014, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual ranking of the fifty largest charitable donors. The news might come as a surprise to US museum directors, who have been swiftly and quietly raising eight-, nine-, and ten-figure donations from eager patrons. Their ambitious capital campaigns make the austerity measures of the recent recession feel like a distant memory. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

From the Journal Editor’s Vantage Point

We could spend a lot of time discussing why academic journals accept so few manuscripts at the outset. Having satirized the peer-review process myself, I would be the first to acknowledge that it’s far from perfect. But pragmatically speaking, it’s important to realize that if you receive a revise-and-resubmit and decide to cut your losses and move on to another journal, you’re likely to face exactly the same outcome. (Read more from Vitae.)

We Need More STEM Majors with Liberal Arts Training

Our culture has drawn an artificial line between art and science, one that did not exist for many innovators. Leonardo da Vinci’s curiosity and passion for painting, writing, engineering, and biology helped him triumph in both art and science. And Steve Jobs once declared: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.” (Read more from the Washington Post.)

Yale to Launch Lens Media Lab for Photograph Research and Conservation

The Lens Media Laboratory, a new research facility that will apply scientific principles to the characterization and conservation of photographs and other lens-based media, has been created as part of the Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, a center dedicated to improving the science and practice of conservation globally. (Read more from Yale News.)