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.

Court Rejects Royalties for Artists in Out-of-State Sales

California owners of fine art will not be required to pay artists a share of the profits when the work is resold out of state, a federal appeals court decided last week. In an 8–3 decision, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a provision of a 1976 state law that required Californians to pay 5 percent royalties to the artist if the sale occurred in California or if the owner was a Californian who sold the work out of state. The law is the only one of its kind in the US, though similar requirements exist in some other countries. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)

Asking Students to Bare It All

Art instruction—which has long featured nude models—is not the same as instruction in other subjects. But a complaint from the parent of a student at the University of California at San Diego has drawn attention to the pedagogy behind a course in which all students (and the professor) are naked for a class session. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

What’s the Point of a Professor?

In the coming weeks, two million Americans will earn a bachelor’s degree and either join the work force or head to graduate school. They will be joyous that day, and they will remember fondly the schools they attended. But as this unique chapter of life closes and they reflect on campus events, one primary part of higher education will fall low on the ladder of meaningful contacts: the professors. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Re: Your Recent Email to Your Professor

In the age of social media, many students approach emailing similar to texting and other forms of digital communication, where the crucial conventions are brevity and informality. But most college teachers consider emails closer to letters than to text messages. This style of writing calls for more formality, more thoroughness, and more faithful adherence to the conventions of Edited Standard Written English—that is, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and syntax. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

How Collectors Use Instagram to Buy Art

According to a recent survey of collectors on Instagram, an incredible 51½ percent have purchased works from artists they originally discovered through Instagram. More important, this discovery led to an average of five purchased works by artists originally found on the app. Although respondents are all active on Instagram, and nearly half have collections of one hundred plus works, these are significant findings. Is Facebook’s image-sharing platform the next big sales channel for fine art? (Read more from Artsy.)

Help Desk: The Vanishing Curator

I’m a new MFA grad and I’m trying to break into the gallery system. Recently I had a great studio visit with a well-known curator. We talked for a long while about the work and he seemed very interested, but since then he hasn’t been in touch. What should I do? (Read more from Daily Serving.)

Stop Worrying about Job Security

I hear two common concerns from graduate students and postdocs who are considering a nonacademic career path: Will the work be intellectually stimulating? And will my job be secure? I can easily allay their concerns on the first point, as my work in industry has always been intellectually stimulating. The second concern is harder to dismiss because it is founded in truth. For everyone but tenured faculty professors, job security is mostly a thing of the past. (Read more from Vitae.)

Onwards and Upwards

More than a third of American art-museum directors are of retirement age. The impending influx of new blood at the top may offer museums an opportunity to rethink the job and question many of the assumptions that underlie traditional museum operations: the emphasis on splendid buildings, the primacy of curatorial authority, and the balance between rich donors, for whom museums are often personal vanity projects, and the public, who see museums as shared common goods. (Read more from the Economist.)