CAA News Today
Teaching the History of Modern Design: The Canon and Beyond
posted by Christopher Howard — February 23, 2015
Teaching the History of Modern Design: The Canon and Beyond
NEH Summer Institute
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
July 6–July 31, 2015
“Teaching the History of Modern Design: The Canon and Beyond” is an exciting four-week NEH Summer Institute that will prepare twenty-five college faculty from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to meet the increasing demand for, as well as interest in, courses on modern design history. In-depth seminars will focus upon three interdependent thematic units: (1) taste and popular culture; (2) women as consumers and producers of design; and (3) political and global interpretations of design after World War II.
The director’s and visiting scholars’ complementary approaches to “The Canon and Beyond” will build upon and reinforce participants’ familiarity with standard material, while simultaneously introducing new material and critical perspectives. Field trips to regional museums and collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Hagley Museum in Delaware will provide participants direct experience with objects and suggest ways to use local collections in their own teaching. Group presentations by our participants will take place during the final week of the institute.
Application deadline: March 2, 2015
Notification date: March 30, 2015
Stipend: $3,300
Visiting scholars: Regina Lee Blaszczyk, University of Leeds, England; Maria Elena Buszek, University of Colorado, Denver; Catharine Rossi, Kingston University, England; Sarah Teasley, Royal College of Art, London; and Vladimir Kulic, Florida Atlantic University.
Project faculty: Carma R. Gorman, University of Texas at Austin
Institute director: David Raizman, Drexel University
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 18, 2015
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 Tall Task of Unifying Part-Time Professors
Robert Yoshioka, a representative of the California Part-Time Faculty Association, is one of many who are agitating for better wages and greater job security for adjunct, part-time, and contingent faculty, who often don’t know whether they’ll be hired back until a few weeks before the semester starts. But as he and his fellow activists prepare for a National Adjunct Walkout Day on February 25—the first nationwide protest of its kind—he is running into a problem: it’s hard to organize a loose collection workers who are hired and fired at will. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
Excuses, Excuses
What’s the most common reason people who want to attend the arts don’t follow through? Time. Or, more accurately, the lack of it. Not surprised? According to the American Time Use Survey, 95 percent of Americans over the age of fifteen participate in leisure activities for an average of five hours a day. Nonetheless, the perception that they lack time keeps them from participating in a host of available activities, and the arts are no exception. (Read more from the National Arts Marketing Project.)
The Art of Twitter Art
Welcome to the world of Twitter art, a whimsical, boundless space dominated by image-generator bots and ASCII character codes and hand-drawn cartoons. Twitter art appears unexpectedly in streams. Twitter art is experimental. Twitter art even interacts with other Twitter art. But Twitter art’s creators face a tricky challenge: they work on a site designed primarily for posting limited text, so users rarely stop and stare at tweets the way they might pause to appreciate other visual-art forms. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Art Magazine
In 1973 Derek Guthrie was fired as an art critic from the Chicago Tribune. There was “under-the-table censorship” occurring, as he called it in his introduction to the recent New Art Examiner Anthology. Chicago, by many accounts, was a cultural backwater. Why not just move to New York and fall in with like-minded individuals in a thriving art scene? Why did he stay in Chicago and found the New Art Examiner? (Read more from F Magazine.)
92 Percent of College Students Prefer Reading Print Books to Ereaders
Despite the embrace of ebooks in certain contexts, ereaders remain controversial. Many people just don’t like them: ereaders run out of battery, they hurt your eyes, and they don’t work in the bath. After years of growth, sales are stagnating. In 2014, 65 percent of six- to seventeen-year-old children said they would always want to read books in print—up from 60 percent two years earlier. (Read more from the New Republic.)
What’s Wrong with the Public Intellectual?
For years, the undigitized gem of American journals had been Partisan Review. Last year its guardians finally brought it online. Some of its mystery has been preserved, insofar as its format remains hard to use, awkward, and hopeless for searches. Even in its new digital form it retains a slightly superior pose. (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)
Is a New Artistic Activism Emerging via Social Media and Forms of Public Protest?
Recent world crises have elicited an unprecedented response on social media and brought on new forms of artistic protest. Think of the brave Mexican artists who have been standing naked in public to protest student killings, shared everywhere online, or take a look at the pictures below for a visual recap of other artistic protest projects over the past few months. They got me thinking: is a new artistic activism emerging via social media and forms of public protest? (Read more from Artnet News.)
Museum Rules: Talk Softly, and Carry No Selfie Stick
In a famous lab trial, a chimp named Sultan put two interlocking sticks together and pulled down an elusive prize, a bunch of bananas hanging just out of arm’s reach. Nearly a century later, eager tourists have conducted their own version of the experiment. Equipped with the camera extender known as a selfie stick, occasionally referred to as “the wand of narcissism,” they can now reach for flattering CinemaScope selfies wherever they go. (Read more from the New York Times.)
AAMD Supports the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — February 17, 2015
In a letter sent to Linda Downs and DeWitt Godfrey on February 9, 2015, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) expressed its support of CAA’s newly published Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts.
Christine Anagnos, AAMD executive director, and Susan Taylor, AAMD president and Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art in Louisinan, write: “AAMD believes the code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts is an excellent contribution to the field and a great point of departure for best practices in the fair use of copyrighted materials. We are thankful to those who helped to develop the guide over the past two years and recognize the hard work of Peter Jaszi and Patricia Aufderheide.”
Results of the 2015–19 Board of Directors Election
posted by Christopher Howard — February 13, 2015
The CAA Board of Directors welcomes four newly elected members, who will serve from 2015 to 2019:
- Jawshing Arthur Liou, Indiana University
- Chika Okeke-Agulu, Princeton University
- Rachel Weiss, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Andrés Zervigón, Rutgers University
DeWitt Godfrey, CAA board president, announced the election results during the Annual Members’ Business Meeting, held on Friday, February 13, 2015, at the 103rd Annual Conference in New York.
The Board of Directors is charged with CAA’s long-term financial stability and strategic direction; it is also the association’s governing body. The board sets policy regarding all aspects of CAA’s activities, including publishing, the Annual Conference, awards and fellowships, advocacy, and committee procedures.
For the annual board election, CAA members vote for no more than four candidates; they also cast votes for write-in candidates (who must be CAA members). The four candidates receiving the most votes are elected to the board.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 11, 2015
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.
President Proposes Funding Increases for Cultural Agencies and Institutions
President Barack Obama has released his administration’s fiscal year 2016 budget request to Congress. In the budget, the president recommended a range of increases in federal funding for the majority of national arts and cultural agencies, programs, and institutions. Specifically, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities are being recommended for a $2 million increase. (Read more from Americans for the Arts.)
Obama Requests $147.9 Million for NEH in 2016
The Obama administration today released a budget request of $147,942,000 for the National Endowment for the Humanities for fiscal year 2016. The NEH, the independent federal agency that will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary this year, awards grants supporting research, education, and public programs in history, philosophy, literature, and other areas of the humanities. (Read more from the National Endowment for the Humanities.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum Launches Effort to Create National Art Database
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is leading a group of fourteen institutions from around the country in an effort to build a shared—and searchable—online database that could spur research and scholarship about American art. One of the first in the nation to make its entire collection available through Linked Open Data, the museum received a grant from the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation to create the American Art Collective to expand the project to other museums. (Read more from the Washington Post.)
Dangers of Art (Students)
The beginning was innocent enough: a class assignment to photograph the rising and setting of the sun. Yet instead of tracking sunlight for several weeks, the camera, strapped to a major Atlanta bridge, was blown up. This case of mistaken identity over a Georgia State University student’s art project caused an unusually large commotion. But this is far from the first time student artwork has been mistaken as a dangerous device or drawn the attention of law enforcement. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The “Wild West” of Academic Publishing
Holding the odd bestseller aside, the digital disruption of the print world that is transforming commercial publishing also affects publishers of scholarly books and journals—and is changing structures for teaching, research, and hiring and promoting professors. Time-honored traditions appear vulnerable to overhaul or even extinction. Sarah Thomas, vice president for the Harvard Library, says, “We are still in the Wild West of sorting out how we will communicate our academic developments effectively.” (Read more from Harvard Magazine.)
How Reviews on Rate My Professors Describe Men and Women Differently
Easy or demanding? Boring or engaging? And what about homework? The student-evaluation site Rate My Professors contains a huge stockpile of information about what college students think of their instructors. And thanks to a new tool created by a Northeastern University professor, those millions of reviews can be mined to reveal students’ biases about male and female professors. (Read more from Chronicle of Higher Education.)
New York Museums Are Banning Selfie Sticks? What a Heroic Idea
At last, someone has stood up to the swilling tide of pseudodemocracy that threatens to turn museums into playgrounds and shopping malls. The selfie stick is now banned in many New York museums. The doctrine that a museum should be full of people at all times, however uninterested they may be, means that most big museums and art galleries will do anything, literally anything, to make themselves more approachable. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Inside Look
Last fall, as I was finishing my doctorate and applying to tenure-track jobs outside my institution, I served on a search committee for assistant-professor openings at my doctoral institution in my areas of study with my dissertation mentors—all of whom are senior scholars. Although I could have declined the service, I recognized that being on the committee would help me gain insights that could improve my own job search. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
2015 Annual Conference Registrant Information
posted by Christopher Howard — February 06, 2015
Thank you for registering for CAA’s 103rd Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 11–14, 2015. This text will provide you with helpful resources and tips to make your conference experience easier and more enjoyable. For a more comprehensive guide, visit the Conference Registrant Information page by logging into your CAA account, where you can access the Conference Program and Abstracts for this year and search or download the Directory of Attendees.
Onsite Check-in
As a preconference registrant, please proceed to the Third Floor West Promenade at the Hilton New York Midtown, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, where you will receive your Conference Program, badge, and tote bag at the registration booths on that floor. If you purchased special event or workshop tickets in advance, they will be included in your registration packet. Depending upon availability, you can buy special event and workshop tickets onsite in the registration area on the Second Floor Promenade.
Conference Website
The Annual Conference website is the best resource for everything related to the conference. There you can find everything from travel discounts and a searchable list of events and sessions to a list of exhibitors in the Book and Trade Fair and the Career Services Guide.
Free Mobile App
CAA is once again offering a free mobile app to help you navigate the conference. The app, which works on most mobile platforms—including iPhones and iPads, Android devices, and Blackberries—allows you to:
- Search and browse sessions and events
- Create a personalized schedule
- Find your way with maps of the conference venue
- Browse exhibitors in the Book and Trade Fair
- Share events on Twitter and Facebook
Visit conference.collegeart.org/app to download the app.
First-time Attendee?
Visit the conference website for a list of practical tips and advice on how to make the most of the four-day event. And watch last year’s preconference Google+ Hangout, which covers conference basics and answers frequently asked questions, from how to choose among the hundreds of sessions and events to what to wear.
Thanks to Attendees and Sponsors
This year’s Annual Conference promises to be our best yet—thank you for being a part of it. We look forward to seeing you in New York next week. Safe travels!
CAA appreciates the support of the 2015 Annual Conference sponsors: the Getty Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Blick, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Alberta College of Art and Design, Artstor, Bloomsbury, Laurence King Publishing, Pearson, Prestel, Yale University Press, Richmond University, IDSVA, and Art in America.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 04, 2015
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.
No Detail Goes Unnoticed When Art Is a Click Away
The construction of new art museum buildings like that of the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan’s meatpacking district naturally receives a lot of attention. But there’s another kind of construction going on that tells more about where museums are at and where they are going than any shiny new edifice: their websites. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Fighting the Wikipedia Boys’ Club
The midcentury sculptor Doris Porter Caesar’s presence on Wikipedia only came into being a year ago. Before February 1, 2014, her female nudes were mere blips waving at art history from under university archives and phonebook entries. That day, around one hundred female artists got new Wikipedia entries. The intruders behind the takeover were members of the group Art+Feminism, whose global edit-a-thon saw sessions across six countries involving more than six hundred participants. (Read more from Dazed.)
Is the Design World Still a Boys’ Club?
When Gertrud Arndt quit her job in an architect’s office in 1923 to take up a scholarship at an art and design school whose prospectus promised to welcome “any person of good repute, without regard to age or sex,” she had high hopes of studying architecture. Instead, she was told to join the weaving workshop, as were most of the other women intent on studying design at the Bauhaus. (Read more from Frieze.)
Help Desk: Interviews and Expectations
I have an interview with a critic who sent me his questions in advance, and I found them to be leading and directive. How can I approach this conversation so that I can communicate what is interesting about my work? For many artists, dealing with writers and art reviewers is an inevitable part of showing work. What are some tactics in general for making these conversations go well, for both interviewer and interviewee? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
Ten Tips for More Efficient and Effective Grading
Many instructors dread grading, not just because grading takes up a sizable amount of time and can prove itself a tedious task, but also because instructors struggle with grading effectively and efficiently. However, effective grading does not have to take inordinate amounts of time, nor does one need to sacrifice quality for speed. The following tips can help instructors grade more effectively while enhancing student learning. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)
Dealing with Inappropriate Emails from Students
About once a week I will open my inbox and be greeted by an email that will leave me at a loss for words. A few nights ago, for instance, one student emailed me at 10:30 PM on a Sunday requesting—“urgently”—a meeting at 7:30 the next morning. She wanted to discuss an assignment that was due the day after and couldn’t make it any other time during the day. I decided not to respond—at least not immediately. (Read more from GradHacker.)
Teach or Perish
My undergraduates’ career plans are a peculiar mix of naked ambition and hair-shirt altruism. If they pursue investment banking, they do so not merely to make money. Rather, they wish to use their eventual wealth to distribute solar light bulbs to every resident of a developing nation. They’ll apply to the finest law schools in hopes of some day judging war criminals at The Hague. They dream of engineering an app that will make tequila flow out of thin air into your outstretched shot glass. My students, I suspect, are receiving their professional advice from a council of emojis. (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)
Two Bronzes Attributed Convincingly to Michelangelo
A team of art historians, scientists, and anatomical experts has announced that a pair of bronze statues—meter-high, idealized, muscular nude male followers of the god Bacchus riding panthers—are by Michelangelo and date from around 1508–10. The pair, which is in a private collection, will go on display on February 3 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
CAA to Publish Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — February 04, 2015
On February 9, 2015, in time for the Annual Conference, CAA will publish the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, a set of principles addressing best practices in the fair use of copyrighted materials based on a consensus of opinion developed through discussions with visual-arts professionals. It will be a vital resource for all those working in the field, including artists, art historians, museum professionals, and editors.
Printed copies of the Code will be available at Registration at the conference and at the CAA booth in the Book and Trade Fair throughout the week. It will also be available online beginning February 9.
If you are attending the conference, please come to an introductory presentation about the Code on Friday, February 13, 12:30–2:00 PM, in the Trianon Ballroom, Third Floor, New York Hilton Midtown.
CAA’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with additional support provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Media Lounge Workshops at the Annual Conference
posted by Christopher Howard — February 02, 2015
Alternative Economies
A Project of Media Lounge and ARTspace
103rd Annual Conference
February 11–14, 2015
New York Hilton Midtown, Gibson Room
During the 2015 Annual Conference, the Media Lounge and ARTspace will host programming with the shared theme of “Alternative Economies.” These programs will consider models of social, cultural, and technological economies that transform the conditions for critical discourse and art making. The following workshops organized by Jenny Marketou and Stacy Miller are part of the event which take place at the Media Lounge; they are free and open to the public.
Imagining an Alternative School of Art
OWS Arts & Labor | Alternative Economies Working Group
Wednesday, February 11
9:00 AM–1:00 PM
The economic and structural realities of art schools as they exist today can often be a source of anxiety and frustration for students, faculty, and staff alike, so what might an alternative school of art look like? In this workshop the participants will familiarize themselves with over thirty alternative economic models that are in practice throughout the world today. After analyzing the current economic and structural issues apparent in our places of work and study, participants will be asked to imagine and consider the implications of using these alternative models to augment, remedy, or perhaps replace the current structure altogether.
About: Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies Working Group is focused on researching alternative economic models that can be used to create and nurture more equitable and sustainable art worlds. Believing that vibrant creative communities come from the bottom up, they encourage relationships based on mutual aid rather than competition and advocate for cultural institutions rooted in a framework of social, economic, and environmental justice.
Facilitation: Melissa Liu, Daniel Tuss, Antonio Serna, Yana Dimitrova, and James Douglas Whitman.
Beyond Faxes with Clip Art: Connective Technology and Art Making
Saturday, February 14
9:30–11:00 AM
This hands-on workshop will move beyond social media as a simple broadcast media for artists and examine how technologically engaged creation and collaboration can enhance, enable, and disrupt established models for art-making practice and interaction. In this workshop, participants will use open-source and/or free tools to connect with artists and create works; they will also discuss relevant issues in practice and pedagogy.
Facilitation: David Hart (MA, Art and Art Education, Teacher’s College, Columbia University) is a producer, writer, and educator with an emphasis in the museum field. He has taught in afterschool settings, corporate workshops, museum programs (in-person and virtually), and undergraduate and graduate programs. Hart worked in the Department of Education and the Department of Digital Media at the Museum of Modern Art and currently is a producer for Acoustiguide, partnering with such institutions as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — January 28, 2015
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 $1,000 Job Interview That Will Not Die
I’m relieved to see that more departments, in a diverse array of fields, are choosing to offer alternatives to the traditional convention interview—or to forego the first-round conference interview altogether, like they should, since, as many sane voices have already opined quite loudly, it is no longer necessary. However, it dismays me to report that some holdouts remain. (Read more from Vitae.)
Don’t Kill the Conference Interview
Rebecca Schuman recently called for the death of the conference interview for faculty jobs. A key reason she listed was the expense, citing the Modern Language Association’s recent convention as a case in point. In fact, she went to considerable length to prove that anyone traveling to Vancouver for that meeting would need to spend more than $1,000. But a data point is not a universal. Many faculty members with full-time jobs and many graduate students seeking employment still think the conference interview is a useful enterprise. (Read more from Vitae.)
How Not to Be a Jerk at Your Next Academic Conference
If you’ve spent any time at an academic conference, you know the scene: a stage full of scholars have just finished presenting their papers. As the Q&A session begins, a woman rises from the audience and prefaces her remarks by saying, in so many words, that she hadn’t been invited to appear on the panel. But here, anyway, are the highlights of her paper—and her credentials and biography, too. (Read more from Vitae.)
Teaching Artists Applying the Breadth of Their Skills
The typical structure of 99 percent of American nonprofit arts organizations includes segregated artistic, administrative, and development departments. My colleagues who work in such segregated institutions experience chasms between departments and waste time bickering and competing for an even share of resources. Aside from the intention of human-resource efficiency, I have never understood the acceptance of this structure. (Read more from ARTSblog.)
L’Origine du Monde Sparks Facebook Legal Battle
Facebook has been taken to court by a French user whose account was closed after he posted an image of Gustave Courbet’s racy painting L’Origine du Monde (1866). According to Le Figaro, the world-famous oil on canvas was part of a promo for an art-history video about the artwork, broadcasted by the highbrow TV channel Arte. The plaintiff, a Parisian schoolteacher, seeks the reactivation of his Facebook account and €20,000 in damages. (Read more from Artnet News.)
The NEA and the Federal Reserve Bank Reports
First, the release of the NEA report, A Decade of Arts Engagement, on arts attendance and participation—widely reported almost everywhere. Not much new here. Confirmation that attendance in the core arts continues a two-decade decline, while distribution of arts via technology is on the increase. Arts participation is up overall if you count “selfless” and downloading your favorite pop song, or maybe dancing in front of your mirror. (Read more from Barry’s Blog.)
Might at the Museum
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s big, new move into twentieth-century art—propelled by Leonard Lauder’s recent $1 billion gift of eighty-one Cubist masterpieces—is altering the balance of power among New York’s biggest museums, a change compounded by the Whitney’s relocation downtown and the Museum of Modern Art’s controversial expansion plans. Sorting through talk of a growing rivalry between the Met and MoMA for artworks, board members, and prestige, Bob Colacello uncovers the forces at work. (Read more from Vanity Fair.)
Effective Ways to Structure Discussion
The use of online discussion in both blended and fully online courses has made clear that those exchanges are more productive if they are structured, if there’s a protocol that guides the interaction. This kind of structure is more important in the online environment because those discussions are usually asynchronous and miss all the nonverbal cues that facilitate face-to-face exchanges. But I’m wondering if more structure might benefit our in-class discussions as well. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)