CAA News Today
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — March 02, 2016
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.
Save Our Public Universities
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1837 lecture “The American Scholar” implicitly raised radical questions about the nature of education, culture, and consciousness, and about their interactions. He urged his hearers to make the New World as new as it ought to be, to outlive the constraints that colonial experience imposed on them, and to create the culture that would arise from the full and honest use of their own intellects, minds, and senses. (Read more from Harper’s.)
Rauschenberg Foundation Eases Copyright Restrictions on Art
Museum goers tend to be unaware of the vast network of copyright protections that underlie images of much of modern and contemporary art, until they try to shoot a cellphone picture of a favorite painting and receive an embarrassing tut-tut from a guard. But for decades, historians, curators, and museum officials have been highly aware of these protections. And many have chafed under a system whose fees and elaborate permission agreements can make publishing scholarly books or publicizing exhibitions prohibitively expensive or an administrative nightmare. (Read more from the New York Times.)
How Many Artists Can’t Create?
The starving artist: one who sacrifices a comfortable lifestyle to invest limited resources toward his or her art. This could be anyone: visual artists, literary artists, musicians, actors. But how many artists or potential artists are out there who simply don’t create because life, with its stresses and burdens, has deprived them of the ability? (Read more from the Michigan Daily.)
Met Museum Settles Lawsuit, Will Revise Admission Signs
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will soon get new signs that spell out, in boldfaced type, the voluntary nature of the museum’s pay-what-you-wish admission policy. The changes—which include replacing the word “recommended” with “suggested”—result from an agreement to settle a lawsuit that accused the Met of trying to mislead visitors into paying an entrance fee when none is required. (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)
Collaborate: An Imperative for Graduate Students
Graduate students need to seek out opportunities for collaboration at every stage of their graduate career. Experience working as part of a team is valuable for PhD students preparing for a rapidly evolving academic job market, and it is indispensable for those pursuing careers beyond academe. Want proof? Survey the requirements section of ads for positions you could see yourself taking. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Importance of Being an Artist’s Assistant
The tradition of artists assisting other artists is as old as the profession itself. The New York gallery Luxembourg and Dayan has also made it the subject of an exhibition, In the Making. Three of the artists included in the show spoke to the Art Newspaper about their experience assisting Andy Warhol, Jack Goldstein, and Robert Rauschenberg, and how it shaped their own work. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Ageism and Creativity
Psychologists generally consider creativity to be the domain of the young. In this they have followed the lead of Harvey Lehman, who in 1953 conceded that “the old usually possess greater wisdom and erudition” but claimed that “when a situation requires a new way of looking at things … the old seem stereotyped and rigid.” Lehman and his successors are guilty of ageism: in this case, a mistaken belief that creativity is inversely related to age. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Who Owns Culture?
The quiet corridors of great public museums have witnessed revolutionary breakthroughs in the understanding of the past, such as when scholars at the British Museum cracked the Rosetta Stone, deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, and no longer had to rely on classical writers to find out about ancient Egyptian civilization. But museums’ quest for knowledge is today under strain, amid angry debates over who owns culture. (Read more from OUP Blog.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 24, 2016
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 Can Nonprofits Improve Their Governance?
Governance is coming up more frequently as a subject of conversation and concern among executives and managers in nonprofit organizations. The topic’s rising prominence coincides with more acute financial stresses and vexing strategic conundrums, both of which traditional governance bodies are finding difficult to handle. Executives are duly concerned. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)
Help Desk: Institutional Bias
I freelance in a museum in a major metropolitan area with a diverse population, but the racial demographics of the institution’s staffing seem glaringly segregated. The white-collar office employees are mostly white, while black and brown employees make up almost all of the security department. While I haven’t felt any discrimination, the racial dynamics seem obvious and weird to me. What should I do? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
Testing the Possibilities of Online Education with Museum MOOCs
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been hailed as a possible solution to providing low-cost, high-quality education and derided as a destructive reallocation of resources from public education to private corporations. Much existing debate is centered on replacing a physical experience of education with a virtual one; the dispute is also entangled with rising educational costs in the United States. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
No Rush to “Go Digital”
Quality, cost, and reputation are the top three factors that influence how faculty members pick which textbooks and course materials they assign, according to results from a survey of faculty at two- and four-year institutions. Virtually every respondent for “Going Digital” said their own assessment of the quality of a textbook is an important or a very important factor influencing their course material selection process, followed by the cost and a near tie between comments from colleagues and students or teaching assistants. Less than one-third of respondents said the availability of digital supplements played an important role. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Librarians Find Themselves Caught between Journal Pirates and Publishers
The rise, fall, and resurfacing of a popular piracy website for scholarly-journal articles, Sci-Hub, has highlighted tensions between academic librarians and scholarly publishers. Academics are increasingly turning to websites like Sci-Hub to view subscriber-only articles that they cannot obtain at their college or that they need more quickly than interlibrary loan can provide. (Read more from Chronicle of Higher Education.)
How Digital Storage Is Changing the Way We Preserve History
A few years ago, I started using a digital diary platform called Oh Life. I’d relied on a notebook to jot down daily reflections for years, but this was infinitely more elegant. It was more private than a notebook and less clunky, and the platform even let users upload entries by sending an email. But when I logged on recently, searching for something I’d written on Oh Life years ago, all of my entries had vanished. In fact, the whole site had been shut down, and years of my personal history were gone. (Read more from Vice.)
A Strategy Guide for Second-Round Interviews
Interviewing for an academic job is a grueling, anxiety-ridden, and all-around intense experience for candidates, and the competition at the campus-interview stage is stiffer than ever. The key to staying in the game is to focus on what you can control and carry on when things don’t go your way. (Read more from Vitae.)
What Is SoTL?
Art History Teaching Resources’s 2015 survey found that many art historians are unfamiliar with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This relative new area of research originated in the 1990s, growing out of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the recognition, elegantly expressed in Ernest Boyert’s Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, that teaching is an essential part of scholarly activity. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
CAA and SAH Release Guidelines for the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in Art and Architectural History
posted by Christopher Howard — February 23, 2016
The College Art Association (CAA), working jointly with the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), has released its Guidelines for the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in Art and Architectural History for Promotion and Tenure. The guidelines are the result of a Task Force convened by the two associations of ten members from the academic community with experience in digital research, publication, and/or scholarly communications and administration. Established by the Board of Directors in October 2014 and supported by funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this joint task force of CAA and SAH was co-chaired by DeWitt Godfrey, president, CAA and professor of art and art history, Colgate University; and Kenneth Breisch, SAH president and assistant professor, School of Architecture, University of Southern California.
See the SAH announcement.
The project methodology was developed through a collaborative process involving the Task Force, consultant, researcher, and representatives from CAA and SAH. Research components included results from surveys of CAA and SAH members and department chairs, a similar questionnaire for graduate students, interviews with scholars and administrators, research on existing disciplinary and institutional evaluation guidelines, and a review of relevant literature. Alice Lynn McMichael, PhD candidate in Byzantine art history and digital fellow at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, and Raym Crow, principal at Chain Bridge Group served as researcher and consultant.
In addition to a review of current guidelines and current literature on the topic, the researcher was charged with balancing broad survey data with more in-depth discussions of topics that resonate with evaluators of digital work. To this end, interviews were conducted with constituents from sixteen institutions across the United States that produce digital work regularly in art and/or architectural history. Institutions were either public and private and research-intensive or teaching-focused. Interviewees at those institutions had varying academic ranks and included department members, librarians, provosts, deans, chairs, and directors of humanities centers or similar.
Highlights from surveys from CAA and SAH members and interviews include the following:
- Most CAA respondents, across all professional ranks, have never used data gathering and imaging tools (83%), data analysis and visualization tools (80%), three-dimensional modeling (75%), digital storage and preservation tools (73%), and geospatial analysis tools (65%).
- Many characteristics of digital resources were generally valued as important, with the highest importance placed on permanent archiving, documentation of the resource, and ease of use; and relatively less importance on the availability of underlying data, financial sustainability, and permanent citation.
- Graduate students report the highest confidence in evaluating digital scholarship.
- Less than 4 percent of total respondents knew of existing evaluative criteria for digital scholarship in their departments.
- The largest barrier to digital scholarship is lack of access to training.
Read the full Guidelines here. An essay, “Case Studies and Examples for Evaluating Digital Scholarship” by Michelle Millar Fisher, a task force member, provides background information on evaluating digital resources and can be found on the College Art Association website.
Members of the Task Force included:
- Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehall Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
- Kenneth Breisch, SAH President, Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, University of Southern California, and Cochair of Task Force
- Linda Downs (ex officio), Executive Director, College Art Association
- Gabrielle Esperdy, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Editor of SAH Archipedia
- Michelle Miller Fisher, PhD Candidate, Art History, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, and Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art
- Pamela M. Fletcher, Professor of Art History, Chair of Art Department, and Codirector of Digital and Computational Studies Initiative, Bowdoin College
- DeWitt Godfrey, CAA President, Professor of Art and Art History, Colgate University, and Cochair of Task Force
- Anne Collins Goodyear, Codirector, Bowdoin College Museum of Art
- Paul Jaskot, Professor, History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University, and Andrew W. Mellon Professor, CASVA
- Bruce M. Mackh, Director, Arts and Cultural Management Program, Michigan State University
- Tara McPherson, Associate Professor, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California
- Abby Smith Rumsey, Former Director, Scholarly Communication Institute, University of Virginia
- Pauline Saliga (ex officio), Executive Director, Society of Architectural Historians
- Ann Whiteside, Librarian and Assistant Dean of Information Services, Harvard University
About CAA
The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other programs, services, and events. CAA focuses on a wide range of issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage, preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching. Learn more at collegeart.org.
About SAH
Founded in 1940, the Society of Architectural Historians is a nonprofit membership organization that promotes the study, interpretation and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes and urbanism worldwide. SAH serves a network of local, national and international institutions and individuals who, by vocation or avocation, focus on the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life. SAH promotes meaningful public engagement with the history of the built environment through advocacy efforts, print and online publications, and local, national and international programs. Learn more at sah.org.
2016 Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant Winners
posted by Christopher Howard — February 18, 2016
CAA is pleased to announce the 2016 recipients of the Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant. This program, which provides financial support for the publication of book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, is made possible by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. For this grant, “American art” is defined as art (circa 1500–1980) of what is now the geographic United States.
The nine Terra Foundation grantees for 2016 are:
- Jean-Pierre Criqui and Céline Flécheux, eds., Robert Smithson. Mémoire et entropie, Les presses du réel
- Erika Doss, Twentieth-Century American Art, translated into Armenian by Vardan Azatyan, Eiva Arts Foundation
- Eva Ehninger and Antje Krause-Wahl, eds., In Terms of Painting, Revolver Publishing
- Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Colossal: Engineering the Suez Canal, Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, and Panama Canal, translated into French by Karine Douplitzky, Éditions des archives contemporaines
- Rockwell Kent, Voyaging Southward from the Strait of Magellan, translated into Spanish and edited by Fielding D. Dupuy, Amarí Peliowski, and Catalina Valdés, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Chile) and Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado
- Will Norman, Transatlantic Aliens: Modernism, Exile and Culture in Midcentury America, Johns Hopkins University Press
- Annika Öhrner, ed., Art in Transfer—Curatorial Practices and Transnational Strategies in the Era of Pop, Södertörn University
- Joshua Shannon, The Recording Machine: Art and the Culture of Fact, Yale University Press
- Fred Turner, The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties, translated into French by Anne Lemoine, C & F Éditions
Two non-US authors of top-ranked books have also been awarded travel funds and complimentary registration for CAA’s 2017 Annual Conference in New York; they also received one-year CAA memberships.
The two author awardees for 2016 are:
- Will Norman
- Annika Öhrner
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 17, 2016
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.
Where Are the Minority Professors?
On average, seventy-five out of every one hundred full-time faculty members at four-year colleges are white. Five are black, and even fewer are Hispanic. But that’s not the whole story. Among the higher ranks and at certain types of institutions, the faculty is even less diverse. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Seven Tips from the Top: Essential Job Advice from US Museum Directors
How do you become a museum director? That’s the question behind a new book of interviews—Eleven Museums, Eleven Directors: Conversations on Art and Leadership—by Michael Shapiro, the former director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
How Do You Make a Living, Midcareer Artist?
Hank Willis Thomas is midway through the long, slow climb to success as an artist. It’s the type of career that’s seen interest but doesn’t feel solidly sustainable. He talked about the value of an MFA, the problems and advantages of living in New York as an artist, and what banking and art have in common. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
Syllabus Adjunct Clause
Here is a sample adjunct clause that can be inserted into any syllabus for courses taught by temporary faculty. Please keep in mind that since situations differ from school to school—and even from department to department—the following may not be universally applicable as written. Therefore, if you decide to use it, make the necessary changes to accurately reflect your own situation. (Read more from School of Doubt.)
Maintaining the Artist Within
Don’t lose sight of that which you love. More important, don’t let life knock your source of creativity out of tune. An artist’s mind never rests, for everything they see, experience, and taste pours over into their vision. Whether you are a painter, writer, architect, chef, dancer, musician, or actor, the fuel for creativity and passion comes from every interaction you have in life. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Why Use a Paintbrush When You Can Make Mind-Bending Art with Code?
Computer code underpins many aspects of our lives. Usually we know exactly what we want that code to do—but what if we didn’t? This is the question posed by the Los Angeles software artist Casey Reas, who employs code to form abstract, bewildering, and literally unexpected creations. (Read more from Wired.)
Social Practice Degrees Take Art to a Communal Level
The first academic concentration in social-practice art dates to just 2005, at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Since then, at least ten other institutions have established graduate-level degree programs in the field, which is sometimes called community engagement, contextual practice, or socially engaged art making. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Ten Questions Gallerists Should Be Asking Themselves Now
Art Basel director Marc Spiegler gave a lecture at the Talking Galleries conference in Barcelona at the end of last year, at a starkly transitional moment within the art world, and posed ten questions that every gallerist should be considering seriously because the answers they find will define their future. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 17, 2016
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.
Where Are the Minority Professors?
On average, seventy-five out of every one hundred full-time faculty members at four-year colleges are white. Five are black, and even fewer are Hispanic. But that’s not the whole story. Among the higher ranks and at certain types of institutions, the faculty is even less diverse. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Seven Tips from the Top: Essential Job Advice from US Museum Directors
How do you become a museum director? That’s the question behind a new book of interviews—Eleven Museums, Eleven Directors: Conversations on Art and Leadership—by Michael Shapiro, the former director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
How Do You Make a Living, Midcareer Artist?
Hank Willis Thomas is midway through the long, slow climb to success as an artist. It’s the type of career that’s seen interest but doesn’t feel solidly sustainable. He talked about the value of an MFA, the problems and advantages of living in New York as an artist, and what banking and art have in common. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
Syllabus Adjunct Clause
Here is a sample adjunct clause that can be inserted into any syllabus for courses taught by temporary faculty. Please keep in mind that since situations differ from school to school—and even from department to department—the following may not be universally applicable as written. Therefore, if you do decide to use it, make sure to make the necessary changes so as to accurately reflect your own situation. (Read more from School of Doubt.)
Maintaining the Artist Within
Don’t lose sight of that which you love. More important, don’t let life take you out of tune to your source of creativity. An artist’s mind never rests, for everything they see, experience, and taste pours over into their vision. Whether you are a painter, writer, architect, chef, dancer, musician, or actor, the fuel for creativity and passion comes from every interaction you have in life. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Why Use a Paintbrush When You Can Make Mind-Bending Art with Code?
Computer code underpins many aspects of our lives. Usually we know exactly what we want that code to do—but what if we didn’t? This is the question posed by the Los Angeles software artist Casey Reas, who employs code to form abstract, bewildering, and literally unexpected creations. (Read more from Wired.)
Social Practice Degrees Take Art to a Communal Level
The first academic concentration in social-practice art dates to just 2005, at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Since then, at least ten other institutions have established graduate-level degree programs in the field, which is sometimes called community engagement, contextual practice, or socially engaged art making. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Ten Questions Gallerists Should Be Asking Themselves Now
Art Basel director Marc Spiegler gave a lecture at the Talking Galleries Conference in Barcelona at the end of last year, at a starkly transitional moment within the art world, and posed ten questions that every gallerist should be considering seriously because the answers they find will define their future. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 10, 2016
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 Schools Pushed to Improve Environmental Record
Art schools and university art departments are where the next generation of professional artists receives its training. A number of schools in the Northeast, however, have been taking a remedial course in the disposal of toxic art materials from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. “Schools just don’t get that environmental rules apply to them,” said Peggy Bagnoli, program leader for the EPA’s College and University Initiative. “They think hazardous wastes are just what big factories produce.” (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Theory in Studio: Model Images
What doesn’t exist can’t be photographed; the limits of photography are the limits of the visible world. However cleverly one crafts the shot, the camera always records just what is in front of it. No wonder that for most of its history, photography was the prototype of pictorial realism. (Read more from Burnaway.)
“Painter-painter,” and the Lingering Specter of Greenberg
The seemingly innocuous phrase “painter-painter” has stuck in my head, only to reemerge every time I see an article that questions the vitality of painting as a genre. This is not one of those articles. My concern is not for painting’s health, but for its fractured state. (Read more from the Brooklyn Rail.)
On the Art of the Immersive, or Is This Even Theater?
About a year and a half ago, I was discussing a project with a theatrical mentor and made the error of using the word “immersive” in my general description of the idea. His right eye twitched. His face got a little red. “Immersive?!” he shouted. He spun around twice and spat over his left shoulder. “Don’t tell me that. Everyone says their work is immersive now. It’s meaningless!” (Read more from Culturebot.)
Help Desk: Conceptual Conundrum
I just finished the first semester of my MFA at a well-regarded East Coast school. At the end of last term, my professors said that I wasn’t working hard enough to produce an integrated body of work. I get the feeling they want me to create work like other artists in the department, who just make the same painting over and over again. I don’t know what direction to take. Do I stand my ground or give in? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
To Solve the Skills Gap in Hiring, Create Expectations in the Classroom
On the first day of classes I introduce my students to the syllabus and class expectations. I have draconian-seeming rules that students often don’t believe and even many colleagues question. If students are late, they are absent. I do not account for any reasons; they may be absent three times over the semester. They are responsible for contacting classmates about missed work when they are absent. They are responsible for submitting work on time. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Class Discussion: From Blank Stares to True Engagement
Whether it is a seminar course centered on discussion or a lecture punctuated by moments of interaction with students, classroom discussion is likely second only to lecture as the most frequently used pedagogical strategy. Yet the idea of attempting to engage students in discussion is also rather frightening. There’s always the possibility that our invitation to participate will be met with silence. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)
Survey Says 92 Percent of Students Prefer Paper Books over Ebooks
Ebooks may be convenient and cheap, but they aren’t displacing paper just yet, at least in the hearts and minds of college kids. That’s what Naomi Baron, linguistics professor at American University, found out as part of the research she conducted for her new book, Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World. (Read more from NBC News.)
News from the Art and Academic World
posted by Christopher Howard — February 03, 2016
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.
Who Should Pay for the Arts in America?
After fifty years, the ethos on which the National Endowment for the Arts was founded—inclusion and community—has been eroded by consistent political attack. As the NEA’s budget has been slashed, private donors and foundations have jumped in to fill the gap, but the institutions they support, and that receive the bulk of arts funding in this country, aren’t reaching the people the NEA was founded to help serve. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
New White Paper Examines Arts Organizations of Color
The National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University released a white paper titled “Does ‘Strong and Effective’ Look Different for Culturally Specific Organizations?” that examines the distinguishing characteristics of arts organizations primarily serving Asian American, African American, and Hispanic/Latino communities. The study is designed to provide insights, based on measurable data, about the operating contexts and unique challenges that these organizations face. (Read more from the National Center for Arts Research.)
New York Arts Organizations Lack the Diversity of Their City
New York City’s cultural sector does not match the demographic diversity of the its population, though the sector is more diverse than arts organizations on the national level, according to a survey released by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. By examining the staff and leadership at city‐funded nonprofit cultural organizations, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio hoped to show its commitment to promoting and building diversity among arts institutions. (Read more from the New York Times.)
How University Museums Bridge the Gap between Art and Science
It is hard to resist looking at images of your own brain. When the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive reopens on January 31 in a new $112 million building, visitors will see intricate drawings of radiolaria by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel and sketches of the human brain’s branching neural networks by the Spanish-born Santiago Ramón y Cajal, known as the father of neuroscience. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Academics Get Real
Academic bios—such as those for department or personal websites, conference proposals, and social media—are supposed to simultaneously explain scholars’ work and “sell” their potential. While they aim to make one seem intellectually desirable and hirable, authenticity isn’t usually a priority. But what if academic bios got real? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Limits of Open
As Coursera tweaks its business model to find a financially viable way to offer massive open online courses, critics say its MOOCs are becoming less open. Coursera has announced the release of dozens of new courses and course sequences, which it calls Specializations, in subjects ranging from career brand management to creative writing. But many new MOOCs cost $79 up front for the first of five courses or $474 prepaid for the entire program. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Teaching “Selfies”
If you’re looking for ways to improve your teaching this year, record yourself teaching in the classroom. There are many reasons why this form of self-observation works. As uncomfortable as it can be to see yourself on screen, recording yourself is also a powerful tool for reflection. It is relatively easy, low-risk, and totally customizable (Read more from GradHacker.)
What a Million Syllabuses Can Teach Us
College course syllabuses are curious documents that represent the best efforts by instructors to distill human knowledge on a given subject into fourteen-week chunks. They structure the main activity of colleges and universities. And then, for the most part, they disappear. Despite the bureaucratization of higher education over the past few decades, syllabuses have escaped systematic treatment. (Read more from the New York Times.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 03, 2016
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.
Who Should Pay for the Arts in America?
After fifty years, the ethos on which the National Endowment for the Arts was founded—inclusion and community—has been eroded by consistent political attack. As the NEA’s budget has been slashed, private donors and foundations have jumped in to fill the gap, but the institutions they support, and that receive the bulk of arts funding in this country, aren’t reaching the people the NEA was founded to help serve. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
New White Paper Examines Arts Organizations of Color
The National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University released a white paper titled “Does ‘Strong and Effective’ Look Different for Culturally Specific Organizations?” that examines the distinguishing characteristics of arts organizations primarily serving Asian American, African American, and Hispanic/Latino communities. The study is designed to provide insights, based on measurable data, about the operating contexts and unique challenges that these organizations face. (Read more from the National Center for Arts Research.)
New York Arts Organizations Lack the Diversity of Their City
New York City’s cultural sector does not match the demographic diversity of the its population, though the sector is more diverse than arts organizations on the national level, according to a survey released by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. By examining the staff and leadership at city‐funded nonprofit cultural organizations, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio hoped to show its commitment to promoting and building diversity among arts institutions. (Read more from the New York Times.)
How University Museums Bridge the Gap between Art and Science
It is hard to resist looking at images of your own brain. When the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive reopens on January 31 in a new $112 million building, visitors will see intricate drawings of radiolaria by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel and sketches of the human brain’s branching neural networks by the Spanish-born Santiago Ramón y Cajal, known as the father of neuroscience. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Academics Get Real
Academic bios—such as those for department or personal websites, conference proposals, and social media—are supposed to simultaneously explain scholars’ work and “sell” their potential. While they aim to make one seem intellectually desirable and hirable, authenticity isn’t usually a priority. But what if academic bios got real? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Limits of Open
As Coursera tweaks its business model to find a financially viable way to offer massive open online courses, critics say its MOOCs are becoming less open. Coursera has announced the release of dozens of new courses and course sequences, which it calls Specializations, in subjects ranging from career brand management to creative writing. But many new MOOCs cost $79 up front for the first of five courses or $474 prepaid for the entire program. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Teaching “Selfies”
If you’re looking for ways to improve your teaching this year, record yourself teaching in the classroom. There are many reasons why this form of self-observation works. As uncomfortable as it can be to see yourself on screen, recording yourself is also a powerful tool for reflection. It is relatively easy, low-risk, and totally customizable (Read more from GradHacker.)
What a Million Syllabuses Can Teach Us
College course syllabuses are curious documents that represent the best efforts by instructors to distill human knowledge on a given subject into fourteen-week chunks. They structure the main activity of colleges and universities. And then, for the most part, they disappear. Despite the bureaucratization of higher education over the past few decades, syllabuses have escaped systematic treatment. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Launch of New caa.reviews Website
posted by Christopher Howard — January 28, 2016
CAA and Routledge are pleased to announce the launch of a new website for caa.reviews, an online, open-access journal of book and exhibition reviews in the visual arts. The new site has a cleaner look, is easier to navigate, and has faster and smarter search tools. New filters based on geography, time period, and genre or specialization allow readers to narrow and focus search results, making it easier to find specific articles. An important addition for caa.reviews is a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-ND), making reviews available for redistribution if the content is unaltered and appropriate credit is given.
DeWitt Godfrey, president of the CAA Board of Directors, writes: “For over seventeen years, caa.reviews has been the only scholarly journal solely dedicated to the review of books and exhibitions. The journal would not exist without the dedication and hard work of the Council of Field Editors and caa.reviews Editorial Board, past and present, who produce 150 substantial reviews each year. CAA is grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its original support of the journal and to Taylor & Francis for making the new version of the journal possible.”
caa.reviews, founded in 1998, publishes timely scholarly and critical reviews of studies and projects in all areas and periods of art history, visual studies, and the fine arts, providing peer review for the disciplines served by CAA. Publications and projects reviewed include books, articles, exhibitions, conferences, digital scholarship, and other works as appropriate. In reviewing and publishing recent texts and projects, caa.reviews fosters timely, worldwide access to the intellectual and creative materials and issues of art-historical, critical, curatorial, and studio practice; the journal also promotes the highest standards of discourse in the disciplines of art and art history. Explore the new site today.