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.

Entire USC First-Year MFA Class Is Dropping Out

We are a group of seven artists who made the decision to attend USC Roski School of Art and Design’s MFA program based on the faculty, curriculum, program structure, and funding packages. We are a group of seven artists who have been forced by the school’s dismantling of each of these elements to dissolve our MFA candidacies. In short, due to the university’s unethical treatment of its students, we, the entire incoming class of 2014, are dropping out of school and dropping back into our expanded communities at large. (Read more from Art and Education.)

Behind the Impasse That Led USC’s 2016 MFA Students to Withdraw in Protest

The graduate class of 2016 at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design has withdrawn in protest from the visual-arts program over administration and curriculum changes. The conflict stems from changes made to the program after students had already arrived on campus, as well as resignations by prominent faculty members. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)

The Conference Manifesto

We are weary of academic conferences. We are humanists who recognize very little humanity in the conference format and content. We have sat patiently and politely through talks read line by line in a monotone voice by a speaker who doesn’t look up once, wondering why we couldn’t have read the paper ourselves in advance with a much greater level of absorption. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Noodling on the Future of Conferences

May I just say, for the record, that I love love love the American Alliance of Museums annual meeting staff. They do a glorious job each year of pulling off the near impossible—decamping for a distant city to host a few thousand of our besties, orchestrating content, transportation, signage, A/V, food, drink, and the logistics of getting a couple hundred vendors in and out of a massive exhibit hall. They totally rock. But I’m a futurist. (Read more from the Center for the Future of Museums.)

The Machine Vision Algorithm Beating Art Historians at Their Own Game

Few areas of academic inquiry have escaped the influence of computer science and machine learning. But one of them is the history of art. The challenge of analyzing paintings, recognizing their artists, and identifying their style and content has always been beyond the capability of even the most advanced algorithms. That is now changing thanks to recent advances in machine learning based on approaches such as deep convolutional neural networks. (Read more from the MIT Technology Review.)

Thinking about Art Thinking

One of the problems we face when talking about art education is that we take the term “work of art” for granted. “Work” refers to labor as much as to an object, while “art” means the discipline in which this is performed, although it is also used as a laudatory adjective. In any case this divides people in two groups: those who make the objects, and those who appreciate them. Those who make them are subject to the criteria of meritocracy, and the educational system aims to distill the few that may rise to the top. (Read more from e-flux Journal.)

Should Graduate Students and Adjuncts Unionize for Better Pay?

Colleges have been cutting costs by using more nontenured instructors, including graduate student teaching assistants and adjuncts, instead of professors. They account for over half of teachers on college campuses. Both adjuncts and graduate instructors have been organizing for higher pay and employment benefits. But is unionization the answer? (Read more from the New York Times.)

Using Art Therapy to Open the Minds of Jihadists

Of all the problems therapists have been tasked with solving, altering the mindsets of committed jihadists is one of the toughest and most important. In Saudi Arabia, which has more experience with this problem than any other nation, they have found a simple tool provides invaluable assistance in this challenging process: paint brushes. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)

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.)

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.

QS World University Rankings by Subject 2015: Art and Design

Discover the world’s top universities for art and design, with the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2015. The rankings highlight the world’s top universities in thirty-six individual subjects, based on academic reputation, employer reputation, and research impact. (Read more from Top Universities.)

How to Get On with Artists, Handle Mergers, and Avoid Lawsuits

Museums collaborate with artists on projects such as exhibitions, artist residencies, commissions, and acquisitions. What should the contracts for these arrangements cover? When a museum commissions a work of art, it generally gets rights of first refusal to buy the work, to be credited in exhibitions, and to apply the commission fee to the purchase price, said John Thomas, a New York–based lawyer. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

Four Questions to Answer before Commissioning an Artist

A successful commission, like any transaction, depends on both parties. The artist must deliver the work to spec, and the collector, once engaged, must step back and let the artist create. This duality adds a layer of complexity to the already nuanced arena of art collecting. Here are four questions to answer before commissioning an artist to create an original work of art. (Read more from Forbes.)

What Is Being Learned from MOOCs? New Report Takes Stock

The hype around the free online courses called MOOCs has drawn millions of students, who are all essentially part of a teaching experiment of unprecedented scale. These days, researchers are increasingly checking in on that experiment. A new report, released last week, seeks to answer the question “Where is research on massive open online courses headed?” (Read more from Wired Campus.)

Recognizing Complicity

Here is where my description of T. J. Clark’s project in Farewell to an Idea ends and questions about its premises arise. If we understand modernism only through those works that despised it, those artists whose output stood in a negative or negating relation to it, then do we provide ourselves with an adequate assessment of what occurred and what role fine art has played in its complicities? What alternative is there to the consensual narratives that propose that the function of aesthetic work is the power and legitimacy of critique? (Read more from the Los Angeles Review of Books.)

The Object as Subject

The books in Bloomsbury Academic’s series Object Lessons are small-formatted volumes, well designed and well packaged, under 150 pages; they fit easily into the palm. They not only discuss everyday objects but they are handsome objects in their own right, which bespeaks their place in the current zeitgeist. They look like things one might want to collect and showcase. In their subject matter and their presentation they tap a fascination with objects, which is hardly new, but seems to be intensifying. Why? (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)

The Trouble with Collaboration

A few weeks ago, I terminated an eight-year-old collaboration with someone who had once been my professor. I was the lead author on the paper, having done all of the writing and analyses. My one-time professor was second author—he’d promised that with his edits and his name on the paper, we would get it in a top journal. Unfortunately, I finished a draft four years ago, and I’ve been waiting … and waiting … and waiting for his input ever since. (Read more from Vitae.)

Museums in Europe and US Draw Up Rescue Plans for Ravaged Sites in Iraq

European and American museums that preserve and display Assyrian artifacts from the ancient royal cities under attack by Islamic State are working to help their Iraqi colleagues prepare for a day when the sites are liberated. A coalition of the willing exists, but it remains to be seen whether institutions will coordinate their efforts. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

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.

Next Practices in Digital

Next Practices in Digital and Technology comprises forty-one examples of recent and ongoing digital initiatives designed by AAMD member museums. From social media and mobile apps, to in-gallery interpretation and behind-the-scenes collections management, Next Practices in Digital and Technology explores the ways museums are using technology to advance accessibility, scholarship, education, and audience engagement. (Read more from the Association of Art Museum Directors.)

Dear Artists, Stop Turning in Bad Grant Applications (Part 1)

Show of hands—how many of you who’ve applied for a grant or fellowship have turned in your application on the deadline day, right before the post office closed or the website shut down, after dashing off an unspellchecked artist’s statement and recruiting friends to write your reference letters the night before? (Read more from GrantSpace.)

Dear Artists, Stop Turning in Bad Grant Applications (Part 2)

When panelists are reading through the material, this is the only impression we have of you. Often, the judging is blind and sourced from out of town. If not, and a panelist has a conflict of interest, they have to state that up front and inform the organization and withdraw themselves from the conversation about your work. So, typically your work will be reviewed and assessed by strangers. (Read more from GrantSpace.)

Time to Change the Rules of Negotiation

It is job-offer season, and lately I’ve received an inordinate number of inquiries related to “negotiating while female.” In addition to the normal jitters that come with going back and forth on an offer, it seems lots of women have heard about the Nazareth College case and read the research that suggests they must play into gender stereotypes in order to secure competitive deals. For example, they have been told that they should make requests on behalf of others rather than themselves so as not to seem pushy or aggressive. (Read more from Vitae.)

Should Art Respond to Science? On This Evidence, the Answer Is Simple: No Way

Physics—it really does your head in. That seems to be the less-than-enlightening message the Japanese visual artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda took from a residency at CERN in Geneva. Ikeda’s installation Supersymmetry, staged in the darkened uppermost level of a multistory car park, is apparently what you get when you introduce an artist to the world’s most advanced particle research institute and its renowned Large Hadron Collider: a lot of sound and light, signifying nothing. (Read more from the Guardian.)

Competing or Complementing: Art Loss Databases Proliferate

Stolen art seems to be ubiquitous and difficult to track. It is relatively easy to ship and sell around the world, and can remain easily hidden for decades. The owner faces the conflict of wanting to publicize the loss widely, while also keeping their personal lives private. The development of databases to record losses was first preceded by newsletter alerts of stolen art that proliferated in the arts community to halt sales with questionable provenance. (Read more from the Center for Art Law.)

Three Quarters of New Collectors Buy Art Online for Investment, Study Finds

Collectors who buy art online are increasingly doing it for investment, according to a report released by the fine-art insurance company Hiscox. As many as 63 percent are driven by the value potential of works of art, with 75 percent of new buyers saying they buy art for investment. However, 93 percent of respondents say they collect for passion. Robert Read, the head of fine art at Hiscox, says rapid growth in the contemporary art market, coupled with a lack of options in other markets, is enticing people to “get on the art ladder.” (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

Tax Break Used by Investors in Flipping Art Faces Scrutiny

Introduced in the 1920s to ease the tax burden of farmers who wanted to swap property, it soon became a tool for real-estate investors flipping, say, office buildings for shopping malls. Now, this little-known provision in the tax code, known as a like-kind exchange, has become a popular tactic for a new niche of investors: buyers of high-end art who want to put off—and sometimes completely avoid—federal taxes when upgrading their Diebenkorns for Rothkos. (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.

Democrats Lobby for US Artists’ Economic Rights with Two Bills

Two bills introduced in Congress aim to improve the lives of artists. One proposal seeks to bring droit de suite, also known as the artist’s resale royalty, to the United States. The other encourages artists to donate their own work to museums by allowing them to deduct the works’ fair market value from their taxes. Both bills have been proposed repeatedly in recent years but have never successfully passed into law. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

The Four-Hour Art Week? Read Carol Bove’s Self-Help Guide for Artists

The sculptor Carol Bove likes to play with associations and forms as she builds her assemblages of constructed and readymade objects. Time and space to experiment are crucial elements of her process, as is a certain psychological sovereignty—Bove writes that “creating a nonpurposive, free space in which to play and have fun is essential.” Here, the Brooklyn-based artist gives her best advice for finding happiness (rather than “succeeding”) as an artist, excerpted in its entirety from the new book AKADEMIE X: Lesson in Art + Life. (Read more from Artspace Magazine.)

Ten Techniques from Professional Artists for Breaking through Creative Blocks

Danielle Krysa had a successful career as a creative director for an advertising and branding agency in Canada. She was proud of her professional work but was secretly making her own art on the side. Krysa didn’t talk about her creative work with the same bravado that she approached her professional work. She rarely showed anyone what she was making and often felt a rush of jealousy when coming across the work of artists she admired. (Read more from Fast Company.)

The Art of Selling Art: Young Artists Navigate the Digital World

The art world has been slow to get online. But young artists are increasingly partnering with edgy digital start-ups to turn their creative passion into cash and reach new audiences—even if the big bucks are elsewhere. Nevertheless, online art sales are steadily growing, with 2.5 billion euros in revenue in 2013, according to the annual report of the European Fine Art Fair. (Read more from Deutsche Welle.)

Are Algorithms Conceptual Art’s Next Frontier?

In recent years, algorithms have been telling us what music to listen to, who we should date, what stocks we should buy, and even what we should eat. It comes as no surprise, then, that it should also tell us what art we should view. But what happens when the art we are looking at becomes the algorithm itself? (Read more from Artsy.)

There’s a Game for That: Teaching Art History with “Reacting to the Past”

When faculty facilitate involvement in activities such as simulations and games, and when students work collaboratively through role play and debate, deeper learning and transfer occurs. As part of my efforts to include more active and student-centered learning opportunities into my courses and to encourage knowledge, skills, and attitudes that support higher-order thinking tasks such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, I added a “Reacting to the Past” role-playing game to my introductory-level art-history course. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)

Soap, Chocolate, and Dung—How to Preserve Materials Not Built to Last

Dung, soap, chocolate, plants, blood, hair, urine, light bulbs, petroleum, smoke, animals, and more beauty, hygiene, and medical products than you can find in most chemists: artists have explored an unprecedented range of materials and technologies since the start of the twentieth century. Many are untested for longevity, and others are ticking timebombs where deterioration is concerned. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

The Future of Museums Is Reaching Way beyond Their Walls

The American Museum of Natural History has always been one of the most popular destinations in New York. Even with this influx of people coming to its doorstep, the museum is equally focused on drawing a crowd beyond its campus. The museum today is a sprawling outreach institution that is using apps, social media, and educational programs to slowly grow its reach. (Read more from Fast Company.)

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.

Modest Gains in Faculty Pay

First the good news: full-time faculty member salaries grew somewhat meaningfully year over year: 1.4 percent, adjusted for inflation, according to the American Association of University Professors’ Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession. Not adjusted for inflation, that’s about 2.2 percent across ranks and institution types, and 3.6 percent for continuing faculty members in particular. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

For the Humanities, Some Good News Is Mixed with the Bad

In an otherwise grim picture of the field of humanities, there are still a few bright spots: financial support for academic research in the humanities, which is typically dwarfed by spending to support other fields, has increased in recent years, and there are signs of rising interest in the humanities at the high school and community-college levels. Those are some of the findings in a report released by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Facing Facts: Artists Have to Be Entrepreneurs

In order to be a successful—a word that I grapple with constantly—performing artist, you need to understand business fundamentals, and disseminating this information is crucial. How do you run a crowdfunding campaign that doesn’t make your friends block you on Facebook? How do you identify and brand (ugh … brand) your work? How do you really figure out who your audience is? (Read more from Howl Round.)

Mind the Gap: Art Museum Education, Academia, and the Future of Our Field

Dana Carlisle Kletchka of the Palmer Museum of Art delivered this keynote address at the National Art Education Association’s national convention last month after being honored by that organization as National Museum Education Art Educator of the Year. (Read more from Art Museum Teaching.)

Art Collectors Weigh Title Insurance

When you buy a piece of art, can you be sure it’s really yours? Many collectors don’t always feel certain on that score. They worry in some cases that after they make a purchase someone will show up, maybe years later, and claim the art was stolen at some point in the past—ultimately leaving the new owner empty handed, without the art or the money paid for it. That’s one reason many art advisers and lawyers recommend title insurance, which can at least partially protect a collector’s financial interests if a piece of art has to be surrendered. (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)

Crystal, AIG Offer Conceptual Art Insurance for Private Clients

Crystal & Co., a strategic risk and insurance advisor, has partnered with AIG Private Client Group to create a new insurance product for private clients with collections of Conceptual art. A certificate is provided by the artist to authenticate an item and without this, the piece is considered worthless. Therefore, if the certificate was lost or damaged, the item may have lost most of its value, according to Crystal & Co. (Read more from the Insurance Journal.)

A Guide to Thesis Writing That Is a Guide to Life

How to Write a Thesis, by Umberto Eco, first appeared on Italian bookshelves in 1977. For Eco, the playful philosopher and novelist best known for his work on semiotics, there was a practical reason for writing it. Up until 1999, a thesis of original research was required of every student pursuing the Italian equivalent of a bachelor’s degree. Collecting his thoughts on the thesis process would save him the trouble of reciting the same advice to students each year. (Read more from the New Yorker.)

Your Teaching Headspace

After my job talk, I was focusing on people’s questions about my scholarship during the Q&A period—and deeply in my “research headspace”—when all of a sudden someone asked: “What is your approach to teaching and how do you teach X concept?” He wasn’t asking how my research informs my teaching. He was just asking about my teaching. Isn’t that a strange question in a job talk Q&A? (Read more from Vitae.)

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.

Almost One Third of Solo Shows in US Museums Go to Artists Represented by Just Five Galleries

Nearly one third of the major solo exhibitions held in American museums between 2007 and 2013 featured artists represented by just five galleries, according to new research. The Art Newspaper analyzed nearly 600 exhibitions submitted by 68 museums for its annual attendance-figures survey and found that 30 percent of prominent solo shows featured artists represented by Gagosian, Pace, Marian Goodman, David Zwirner, and Hauser and Wirth. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

How to Navigate the Art World

The art world can feel like that first time you walk into a high-end luxury store: everything is out of your reach, you’re not quite sure where to start, and there are a whole lot of venomous people judging your every move. Enter Roger White, author of the delicious new book The Contemporaries: Travels in the 21st Century Art World. Astute and conversational, White’s writing unveils the current state of the art academy, the studio, and the art market through the careers of the artists Dana Schutz, Mary Walling Blackburn, and Stephen Kaltenbach. (Read more from the Daily Beast.)

Artists, Not Judges, Should Decide Fair Use

This piece will focus on two implications of the Cariou and Sconnie Nation analyses: (1) the inherently factual nature of “fair use” analysis; and (2) fair use as an affirmative defense. “Fair use” started as a judge-made remedy to technically correct legal conclusions that led to absurd results, a practice commonly known as “equity.” Generally, and in the case of “fair use,” equity requires a court to make a significant factual investigation so as to demonstrate why the technical law should not apply. (Read more from the Center for Art Law.)

White Lies? Fibs? Tall Tales? Just Tell the Truth

Certainly, there are a lot of things that you might be reluctant to tell the truth about that don’t seem so terrible, such as one’s age. It may be embarrassing for some artists to be older and starting out, or to have not ever sold any work or to not have academic degrees in studio art or to not have any real exhibition history. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)

How the Tax Code Hurts Artists

With tax day looming, you can practically hear the cries of creative professionals across the country. That’s because the tax code hits many right where it hurts, by penalizing them for the distinctive way they make money. The biggest offender is still the alternative minimum tax, despite the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which brought long-overdue reform. (Read more from the New York Times.)

English-Only PhDs

What does it mean to be a doctor of philosophy in the sciences? What skills do we expect PhDs to possess? One thing you have to leave off that list: the ability to read or communicate in a language other than English. Nearly all US doctoral programs in the sciences have dropped their foreign-language requirement. (Read more from Vitae.)

An Illustrated Guide to Arthur Danto’s “The End of Art”

In an obituary for the New York Times, Ken Johnson described Arthur Danto as “one of the most widely read art critics of the Postmodern era.” Danto, both a critic and a professor of philosophy, is celebrated for his accessible and affable prose. Despite this, his best-known essay, “The End of Art,” continues to be cited more than it is understood. What was Danto’s argument? Is art really over? And if so, what are the implications for art history and art making? (Read more from Hyperallergic.)

AHTR Reports on AP Art History (Part II)

The second of two-part series on AP Art History, this post examines the revised curriculum for art history that will go into effect later this year, its intended outcomes, and its relevance to art historians at all educational levels. The post also identifies new resources developed specifically for the new curriculum, as well as others that are appropriate for both secondary and university-level instruction in art history. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)