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.

Professor Pay Up 3.4 Percent

Salaries for full-time continuing faculty increased by 3.4 percent this year and 2.7 percent adjusted for inflation, according to a new American Association of University Professors report. But while a continued upward salary trend is promising, the report argues that it doesn’t reflect a systemic threat to higher education: the decline of full-time and ranked faculty positions. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Why Failure Is Being Taught in Art Schools

Of course art schools want to propel students toward success, but should they also teach young artists how to fail? The answer is found sprinkled throughout the curriculum of Chicago’s top art schools, where students are routinely encouraged to consider what it means to fail, but also how to “fail better,” in the immortal words of playwright Samuel Beckett. (Read more from Chicago Magazine.)

What Is Object-Oriented Ontology?

Ask yourself: what does your toaster want? How about your dog? Or the bacteria in your gut? What about the pixels on the screen you’re reading now—how is their day going? In other words, do things, animals, and other nonhuman entities experience their existence in a way that lies outside our own species-centric definition of consciousness? It’s precisely these questions that the nascent philosophical movement known as Object-Oriented Ontology is attempting to answer. (Read more from Artspace Magazine.)

So Long at the Fair?

Love ’em or hate ’em, the art fair is the major marketing phenomenon of our times. The website Artsy lists sixty top fairs worldwide, with estimates for maintaining a booth at one ranging from $15,000 to more than $100,000 a week. Dealers complain of sixteen-hour days, collectors who “buy with their ears,” exhausting travel, and a back-breaking workload for gallery staff. (Read more from Vasari24.)

Seven Bricks to Lay the Foundation for Productive Difficult Dialogues

There are three basic ways that I hear faculty talk about difficult dialogues: in-class dialogues that were planned but did not go particularly well; in-class hot moments that were not anticipated and that the professor did not feel equipped to handle; and difficult dialogues that happen during office hours or outside class. In all three instances, faculty are challenged to use skills they may not have learned at any point in their disciplinary training. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)

A Multiplicity of University Publishing

If you already have a university press in place, why add library publishing to the mix? And why stop there? Why not allow the special affordances of digital media, such as low costs and dissemination at the speed of light, to enable publishing centers across any institution with the pluck to take on the effort? (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

Expanded Horizons: Looking beyond Building Projects

In the 1990s, museum expansions focused on spaces for larger and more dramatically displayed temporary exhibitions and, in the contemporary field, for the installation of larger works of art, in line with artistic practice. Then the focus was on circulation and event space and on revenue-generating activities, segueing into new spaces for educational activities. Today there is an interesting trend toward spaces for performance and music programming. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

Interviewing as Performance Art

Think about the last job talk or speaker seminar you attended. How did the speaker make you feel? Did he or she put you at ease with a fluid delivery and natural speaking style? Or did the speaker seem out of place and appear nervous or uncomfortable in the presence of an audience? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

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.

Wikimedia Art Database Breaks Copyright Law

Sweden’s highest court has found Wikimedia Sweden guilty of violating copyright laws by providing free access to its database of photographs of artworks without the artists’ consent. Wikimedia, part of the nonprofit foundation that oversees Wikipedia, among other online resources, has a database of royalty-free photographs that can be used by the public for educational purposes or the tourism industry. (Read more from Art Daily.)

How Creative Capital Replaced the NEA and Taught Artists to Be Ambitious

Creative Capital is such a big deal in the art world that it even affects the lives of artists who don’t receive its awards. This grant-making organization, based in New York but serving artists nationally, was created in 1999 to counter the economic loss to artists when the NEA killed the majority of its individual artist grants. (Read more from the Stranger.)

How Do I Handle a Backlash against My Art Review?

I wrote a negative review about a show on my blog and received a considerable backlash to it. I eventually took the post down and feel like my entire art scene has blacklisted me. How do I write negative criticism in a small, intimate art community without upsetting everyone? (Read more from Burnaway.)

When Your Art Bleeds You Dry

Art should be ennobling or give us pleasure or, in Picasso’s words, wash “the dust of daily life off our souls.” But sometimes art makes people nervous and worried. Not necessarily because of the content but because it needs to be protected, conserved, and insured—and all those things cost money. (Read more from the New York Observer.)

Art in the New Plutocracy

In 2010, a cadre of muckraking activists started a project called Artigarchy. Its aim was to investigate the relationship between rising inequality and rising art prices, not merely to identify key individuals but to expose institutional relationships, for example, between banks and museums. How do the institutions of the art world shape and actually harm society? (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)

Will the Monograph Experience a Transition to E-Only?

The scholarly literature incorporates a number of different material types. Reference publishing and collections have perhaps been transformed more than any other content type. Why should a database be issued in print format at all? (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

Does It Count for Tenure?

I am starting a new tenure-track job in the fall. I have a journal article from this past year and another one coming out this spring. Will they count toward my tenure case at the new job? (Read more from Vitae.)

An App That Pushes Aside the Art-World Curtain

The process of buying and selling art has a reputation for opacity, but a new mobile app that promises to instantly provide price data could help open the market. The free app, called Magnus, uses digital-recognition technology similar to that of Shazam, which “hears” music to provide song titles, and Vivino, which reads wine labels and reveals ratings and restaurant markups. (Read more from the New York Times.)

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.

The Resurgence of Women-Only Art Shows

While some artists are ambivalent about being viewed through the lens of gender, the all-women’s group exhibition, which fell out of favor in the 1980s and 1990s, is flourishing again. At least a dozen galleries and museums across the United States are featuring women-themed surveys, a surge curators and dealers say is shining a light on neglected artists, resuscitating some careers, and raising the commercial potential of others. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Help Desk: Why Your Show Wasn’t Reviewed

None of my shows has ever been reviewed, even though I’ve exhibited my work in solo and group shows for almost six years. Press releases, personal emails, and newsletters have been sent from me and from the galleries. The galleries aren’t blue-chip, but they’re decent, and there’s an audience. Why can’t I get a review? (Read more from Daily Serving.)

How Critical Thinking Sabotages Painting

Critical thinking benefits disciplines based in words, and I use it myself when teaching modern art history and humanities seminars. But it’s a disaster when used to teach painting, whether to college art majors who want to become painters, to students who want to go into neighboring fields like graphic design or photography, or to biology students who decide to give painting a try. (Read more from Two Coats of Paint.)

We Need Ethnographic Museums Today—Whatever You Think of Their History

Since the 1970s ethnographic museums, perceived as warehouses of colonial loot, were charged with divesting non-Western works of the significance they once carried, in the heat and dust of ceremony, in the movement of dance or oratory, on the bodies of their former owners, in the flow of life. Among commentators and curators, there was much argument regarding approaches to display. (Read more from Apollo.)

Grade Inflation, Higher and Higher

The first major update in seven years of a database on grade inflation has found that grades continue to rise and that A is the most common grade earned at all kinds of colleges. Since the last significant release of the survey, faculty members at Princeton University and Wellesley College, among other institutions, have debated ways to limit grade inflation, despite criticism from some students who welcome the high averages. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Revising the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Dissertation

Like many graduate students, I wrote a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad dissertation, so revising it into a book has been something of a challenge. I’ve worked through it in two different ways. First, I’ve changed my writing and editing habits for what feels like the hundredth time. Second, I’ve adopted a strategy of recasting my chapters as journal articles. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

How Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Publications

Some survey findings make good sense and deserve attention on their own merits. Perhaps the most significant of these—which is a theme explored across the report—is that discovery patterns and practices vary across different sectors such as academic, corporate, and medical; different countries and levels of national income; and different fields and disciplines. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

Getting Down to Brass Taxes: An Interview with Tax Expert Rus Garofolo

Tax day is fast approaching—what’s a freelance artist or burgeoning arts organization to do? In anticipation of the IRS’s upcoming deadline, Amanda Keating sat down with Rus Garofolo, founder of Brass Taxes, to discuss some key questions that arts organizations might want to consider in their tax prep. (Read more from Fractured Atlas.)

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.

How to Be an Unprofessional Artist

No one likes being called an amateur, a dilettante, a dabbler. “Unprofessional” is an easy insult. The professional always makes the right moves, knows the right thing to say, the right name to check. Controlled and measured, the professional never sleeps with the wrong person or drinks too much at the party. (Read more from Momus.)

The Complicated Relationship between Animals and Art

At this year’s CAA Annual Conference, I organized a session on “The Art of Animal Activism” with Keri Cronin of Brock University. The session explored art since the nineteenth century that has taken nonhuman animals seriously as subjects with sentience and agency—not just as decorative ornaments or symbols. I was pleased, and somewhat surprised, that the session was so well received. (Read more from National Public Radio.)

Volume, Weight, and Pigment to Oil Ratios

Oil painters concerned with fat over lean will often turn to information about the oil absorption values for particular pigments as a way to compare how oily or lean certain colors might be. This has led to many misconceptions and outright wrong conclusions that seem to persist in various forums and articles. (Read more from Just Paint.)

Can an Art Critic Fairly Review an Artist Friend’s Work?

There’s no upside for an artist to be friends with an art critic. The personal connection means the critic must pass on reviewing the artist’s work, and while the loss of critical wisdom may be negligible, the loss of exposure is a nuisance for the artist. I have wanted to write about Maggie Michael’s work for years now but can’t without first offering the reader a huge caveat. (Read more from the Washington Post.)

Hundreds of Looted Ancient Artifacts Are Returned to Italy

Hundreds of looted archaeological artifacts that officials say were handled by the London dealer Robin Symes and destined for markets in the United States, Japan, and Britain have been returned to Italy. The artifacts—dating from the seventh century BC to the second century AD—were found two years ago in a storage unit at the Geneva Freeport that investigators traced to Symes. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Business Looms Larger in Art Classes

The new art expert is not necessarily an expert in art. Art-history students used to tackle questions of symbolism, social context, and style in art. Now, many young scholars are at least as focused on prices as they are on the art itself. (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)

What You Teach Is What You Earn

A new assistant professor of computer science at a public four-year college or university in 2015–16 earns, on average, a little more than $85,000. A full professor of history—likely with twenty-plus more years of teaching experience—earns on average a little less than $90,000 and will likely have his or her salary passed by the new computer-science professor in a few years. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

University Press Redux: Preserving Heritage, Charting the Future

University presses in the United Kingdom are enjoying something of a renaissance. Over the past few years, established presses such as Cambridge, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Oxford, and Wales have been joined by a raft of new publishers. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

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.

The Cost of Being Decent to Adjuncts

Even if the adjunct movement for better working conditions succeeds, most adjuncts will lose. That’s one bold claim of a recent paper on the costs associated with a number of the movement’s goals, such as better pay and benefits. While activists and scholars have criticized what they call the paper’s inherently flawed logic, the study’s authors say it is a first step toward a more critical dialogue. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Abstraction Isn’t Neutral: Sondra Perry on the NCAA, Subjecthood, and Her Upcoming Projects

Earlier this month Ella Coon spoke with the video artist Sondra Perry to talk about recent projects, her upcoming exhibitions, and her thoughts on a variety of other subjects, including the role of generosity in her life and work. (Read more from ARTnews.)

Halting Academic Incivility (That’s the Nice Word for It)

A report published last year in the Journal of Applied Psychology confirms what many might say is obvious: “Incivility … defined as insensitive behavior that displays a lack of regard for others, is rampant and on the rise.” This will not be news for academics. Consider the regular calls for an end to faculty incivility—the rudeness, abusive language, bullying, and general meanness that seem to characterize many of our interactions. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

European Museums Adapt to the American Way of Giving

Museums in the United States, helped by favorable tax laws, are sustained by a culture of giving by private donors and a universe of trained development officials. That culture isn’t common in other parts of the world, where governments often support museums. That is changing. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Managing an MOOC

Several years ago I wrote a MOOC, “The Modern Genius: Art and Culture in the 19th Century,” which initially ran through the Canvas network, and then Kadenze. I had never assigned the MOOC course to any of my students, but that changed this January, when my honors modern art students enrolled in the MOOC, and we experimented with a completely flipped classroom. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)

Whither the Digital Humanities?

The digital humanities can be viewed in two ways: as emerging and as emergent. The tension between them is a central force animating the field today. There are two areas—writing and the university—in which this tension is especially apparent, as digital technologies are upending, questioning, or reframing traditional or cherished assumptions. (Read more from Digital Pedagogy Lab.)

Pirating Papers

Peer-to-peer research sharing looks a lot like sharing of other forms of media, a new study suggests. While some researchers are personally opposed to copyright, others pirate research simply for the sake of convenience. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Asia Week Raids: New Details on the Christie’s Seizures

Last week, a series of five federal raids during New York’s Asia Week led to the seizure of at least eight looted antiquities and the arrest of at least one dealer. This is the first of several posts that will discuss the alleged smuggling networks disrupted by those raids. (Read more from Chasing Aphrodite.)

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.

Announcing NEH-Mellon Fellowships for Digital Publication

The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the two largest funders of humanities research in the United States, have announced a new joint fellowship opportunity to support high-quality, born-digital research in the humanities. (Read more from the National Endowment for the Humanities.)

Go Pro: The Hyper-Professionalization of the Emerging Artist

I can understand the widespread notion among curators and critics that the role of the emerging artist has changed dramatically during the past few years. The shift toward professionalization is further encouraged by the growing involvement of wealthy individuals in the art market who first made their capital by investing in financial markets, real estate, or related industries. (Read more from ARTnews.)

Ten Upcoming Shows by Groundbreaking Female Artists

March is Women’s History Month, so there’s no better time to outline a few upcoming shows by female artists admired by Artnet News. From Hong Kong to Los Angeles, 2016 is brimming with exhibitions by awesome artists, who range in age from twentysomethings to one very impressive centenarian. (Read more from Artnet News.)

Winning Strategies for Journal Publishers

“The Inexorable Path of the Professional Society Publisher” takes the view of the underdog—the small or midsized professional society publisher—that struggles to remain competitive in an environment in which administrative costs explode, budgets of customers are flat or declining, and libraries invite consolidation among vendors in order to reduce administrative costs. While few journals truly lose out entirely, some publishers win bigger than others. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

Should All Research Papers Be Free?

Drawing comparisons to Edward Snowden, a graduate student from Kazakhstan named Alexandra Elbakyan is believed to be hiding out in Russia after illegally leaking millions of documents. While she didn’t reveal state secrets, she took a stand for the public’s right to know by providing free online access to just about every scientific paper ever published, on topics ranging from acoustics to zymology. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Job-Market Challenges for Tenure-Track Academics

Often in life our personal experience is limited, and thus we fail to understand the total, complex reality. That is certainly true of the academic job market. Many of us participate in that market only a handful of times as a candidate, and even if we serve on search committees regularly, that experience tends to be limited to certain fields and to our own institutions. (Read more from Vitae.)

Why They Stay and Why They Go

Whether the separation is voluntary or not, losing a tenure-line or otherwise full-time faculty member is always a costly to an institution. The departing professor will take any external research grants with him or her, not to mention the sunk costs of hiring and training. Then there are additional costs that are harder to quantify, such as those to morale, mentorship, service, and leadership. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

What’s the Value of a Liberal-Arts Education in Our Twenty-First Century Digital Economy?

Achieving goals associated with liberal-arts education would require business schools to move into territory more traditionally related to the liberal arts: multidisciplinary approaches, an understanding of global and historical context, a greater focus on leadership and social responsibility, and learning to think critically. (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)

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.

Art Galleries Face Pressure to Fund Museum Shows

Galleries have always provided scholarly support for museums exhibiting their artists’ work. Now they’re expected to provide money, too. In today’s exploding art market and amid diminishing corporate donations and mounting exhibition costs, nonprofit museums have been leaning more heavily on commercial galleries to help pay for shows featuring work by artists the galleries represent. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Help Desk: Critic or Collector?

I want to write a review of a dazzling painting show. While I can’t afford the artist’s paintings, I want to buy a work on paper. Is there an ethical problem of covering this exhibition and buying a piece that is not in it—as long as I don’t write about the artist in the future? (Read more from Daily Serving.)

Co-opting “Official” Channels through Infrastructures for Openness

News recently broke about a new service called DOAI that is designed to support open access. It is not a publishing model or a repository but rather a type of infrastructure. When a user inputs a DOI, DOAI connects the user to a freely available copy of the publication. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

Why the Rauschenberg Foundation’s Easing of Copyright Restrictions Is Good for Art and Journalism

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has announced it would ease copyright restrictions on art belonging to the artist. The move will make images of Rauschenberg’s work much easier to access and disseminate. It will do this in a number of ways. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)

Taking the Family with You on a Fellowship

Seared in my mind is the memory of a day in 2006 when I received my award letter for a much-coveted fellowship in the social sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study. My daughter had just turned four, and I was a recently divorced single mother with a former partner living five thousand miles away. I cried tears of joy at being accepted, followed by tears of sadness for having to turn it down. (Read more from Vitae.)

Archaeology’s Information Revolution

Archaeology, as a way of examining the material world, has always required a certain deftness in scale. You must be able to zoom in very close—at the level of, say, a single dirt-encrusted button—then zoom out again to appreciate why that one ancient button is meaningful. Carrying out that task is now possible in ways that were, until very recently, barely imaginable. (Read more from the Atlantic.)

Read and Unread

Social-media use and text messaging aren’t leading college students to ignore email, according to a new study. But that doesn’t mean students read every email they get. Those findings come from Bowling Green State University, where researchers surveyed 315 students in a variety of majors about their use of email, social media, and text messaging. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

And That’s Me with the Mona Lisa!

An art museum is built for contemplation, exploration, and exhilaration. It’s a place to lose yourself as you’re transported into a wondrous world of color and light, a journey that can leave you dazzled, disturbed, and deeply moved. Or, you can just take a selfie while standing in front of a masterpiece. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)