CAA News Today
Copyright Office Releases New Report on Resale Royalties
posted by Christopher Howard — December 13, 2013
The U.S. Copyright Office today publicly released a report on the issue of resale royalties for visual artists, or the “droit de suite.” The report was requested by Congressman Jerrold Nadler and Senator Herb Kohl in 2012, and is an adjunct to the Office’s 1992 report on the same topic. Some seventy countries have enacted resale royalty provisions in their laws, over thirty of them since 1992, including the United Kingdom, which is home to one of the world’s most significant art markets.
The Copyright Office has concluded that certain visual artists may operate at a disadvantage under the copyright law relative to authors of other types of creative works. Contrary to its 1992 report, the Office is supportive of further congressional exploration of a resale royalty at this time. It also supports exploration of alternative or complementary options that may take into account the broader context of art industry norms and art market practices, for example, voluntary initiatives or best practices for transactions and financial provisions involving artworks. The report reflects the diversity of public comments received by the Office over the past year, and makes a number of observations and recommendations that Congress may wish to consider in its deliberations.
The full report is available at http://www.copyright.gov/docs/resaleroyalty/usco-resaleroyalty.pdf
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — December 11, 2013
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.
Want to Help DIA Art and Detroit Pensions? Now You Can
Inspired by the philanthropist A. Paul Schaap’s $5 million pledge, a local foundation said it created a fund so the public can contribute tax-deductible money to help protect the Detroit Institute of Arts’ collection and city pensions. The Free Press also confirmed that DIA has joined federally mediated talks—which include leaders from at least ten national and local charitable foundations—to create a $500 million fund that could be leveraged for the same dual purpose of shielding the art collection and lessening pension cuts. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
Don’t Loot Detroit’s Art Museum to Pay the City’s Creditors
Last week a federal judge ruled that Detroit was eligible to enter Chapter 9 bankruptcy—the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. That same day, we got a price tag for how much the collection of the threatened Detroit Institute of Arts, one of the country’s oldest and best museums, is likely worth. For months, salivating creditors have circled the museum while the institution has tried to keep them at bay. Now, for better and for worse, we have a price tag. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Fate of Detroit Hangs in the Balance
With a ruling by a federal judge last week that Detroit is eligible to enter bankruptcy, the fate of the city’s art collection—one of the finest in the country—now moves front and center in the legal battle over the city’s future. But the judge, Steven W. Rhodes, questioned for the first time the push by some of the city’s largest creditors to sell paintings and sculpture from the Detroit Institute of Arts. While he did not say specifically that the art should be spared, Judge Rhodes, in a brief mention of DIA by name, said that such a sale would not have helped Detroit avoid bankruptcy. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Invisible No Longer
In 1993 the book The Invisible Faculty commanded the attention of college officials from around the country, seizing on what was then a fast-growing but barely examined trend reshaping the higher-education landscape: the burgeoning role of adjunct, part-time professors being hired as college administrators scoured budgets for ways to cut costs. Two decades later, adjuncts—also called contingent faculty—are no longer invisible. They are squarely in the media spotlight, pushed there by the Affordable Care Act. (Read more from Community College Week.)
Street Artists Go to Court to Protect Their Work
A legal battle between a group of artists and the owners of 5Pointz, the Long Island City graffiti complex, has challenged the way street art is viewed as an ephemeral medium. The case, which the lawyer representing the artists says is not over despite the murals being whitewashed last month, is the first to examine whether authorized graffiti is protected under United States law. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
The Latest Leonardo Debate
The discovery of a previously unknown painting by Leonardo never fails to stir up the experts, the press, and the public. After all, only fifteen to twenty paintings—finished and unfinished—are generally attributed to him. In early October, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported the existence of a painting closely resembling Leonardo’s colored chalk and pastel drawing of the noblewoman Isabella d’Este in the Louvre. (Read more from ARTnews.)
The Overexposed Museum
For some time, art museums have been expending considerable amounts of energy and other resources on a broad campaign of public engagement designed to establish a stronger bond between themselves and the public, and thus cement the museum’s place as an essential—even indispensable—component of public life. Social media promotes their programs and addresses the public in other ways, crowdsourcing guides them in their acquisition and exhibition decisions, and crowdfunding helps pay for them. So far this campaign seems to be paying dividends. (Read more from the New Criterion.)
Inside the Box
In the United States we are raised to appreciate the accomplishments of inventors and thinkers—creative people whose ideas have transformed our world. We celebrate the famously imaginative, the greatest artists and innovators from van Gogh to Steve Jobs. Viewing the world creatively is supposed to be an asset, even a virtue. It’s all a lie: most people don’t actually like creativity. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: people are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise. (Read more from Slate.)
CWA Picks for December 2013
posted by Christopher Howard — December 05, 2013
Each month CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts produces a curated list, called CWA Picks, of recommended exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship in North America and around the world.
The CWA Picks for December 2013 consist of four important survey exhibitions of work by Isa Genzken at the Museum of Modern Art and Harmony Hammond at Alexander Gray Associates in New York, by Martha Wilson at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and by Kimsooja in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
Image Caption
Isa Genzken in her studio, 1982 (photograph provided by the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin).
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — December 04, 2013
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.
Detroit Bankruptcy Creditors Ask Judge to Take Steps toward Sale of DIA Treasures
A coalition of the largest creditors in Detroit’s bankruptcy is taking the first legal step toward pressuring the city to sell art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Three bond insurers, the city’s largest employee union, and several European banks filed a motion in federal court last week asking Judge Steven Rhodes to appoint a committee to oversee an independent evaluation of the market value of the multibillion-dollar city-owned collection at the DIA. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
Debating an MFA? The Lowdown on Art School Risks and Returns
For aspiring artists, December is the cruelest month, when thoughts of pursuing an MFA must turn to action or be cast to the winds. It’s grad-school application time—and what a time it is to undertake such a commitment! Given the skyrocketing cost of tuition, mounting student debt, high interest rates on loans, and a tough job market, you’d be crazy not to measure your education’s value against the risk involved in paying for it, especially if you are considering a master’s degree in art or design. (Read more from Modern Painters.)
When Do Great Artists Hit Peak Creativity?
The question of when highly accomplished people reach their peak level of creativity has long fascinated researchers. Some make huge breakthroughs relatively early in life: think of Igor Stravinsky, who composed the groundbreaking ballet The Rite of Spring at age 31. Others go through an extensive period of trial and error before finding their unique voice. A 2011 study found modern-day physicists make their most innovative discoveries at age 48. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
Are Arts Donors Also Arts Leaders?
If a wealthy person writes a large check to a worthy cultural organization, does that constitute an act of leadership? It’s an interesting question. You’d think it must, since that increasingly has become the descriptive word of choice, along with “vision,” in the speeches of thanks from grateful recipients, preferably coupled with adjectives on the level of “extraordinary” or “stunning.” (Read more from the Chicago Tribune.)
Wrapping Up: Asking Students to Reflect and Evaluate
We’re nearly at the end of the semester, and I’m currently writing the latest iteration of my students’ final (nontest) assignment for the semester, the portfolio and self-evaluation. The instructions for the assignment are fairly straightforward: to create their portfolio, students are asked to gather all of their work completed during the semester and then, based on provided questions or prompts, write two to three pages reflecting on their work for the semester. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
The Art of Art Dealing
Do you want to know how to sell art? Do you have one foot in the past? Do you have your other foot in the future? Do you consider yourself someone with a point of view and something to say? If you answered yes to these questions, then this article is for you. (Read more from the Gallerist.)
Employed, but…
A new study looking at large cohorts of PhD recipients in history is quick to point out that the doctorate in the field almost always seems to result in employment—and not of the barista variety. Further, the study finds that many new doctorates are finding their way to the tenure track—and that such positions still exist for those starting their careers. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
California Using $2 Million Arts Grant Windfall for New Programs
The California Arts Council, the agency behind state government’s arts grants, is putting down most of its chips from a one-time, $2 million funding windfall on several new bets involving arts education and community improvement through the arts. Arts council leaders are hoping that quick payoffs in the form of early success stories from the new programs will improve the long-neglected agency’s chances of replenishing its depleted funding. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — November 27, 2013
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.
Can—and Should—Charitable Foundations Help Rescue Detroit Pensions and DIA Artwork?
National and local foundations have been asked to help bail out Detroit. But getting them to open their checkbooks will be a complicated dance of priorities, politics, and practicalities. The federal mediator in the Detroit bankruptcy is asking a group of at least nine local and national foundations to consider collectively contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to solve two of the most contentious issues in the case: municipal pensions on the chopping block and Detroit Institute of Arts paintings on the auction block. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
Christie’s Price-Tagging of DIA Artwork for Bankruptcy Planning Is Delayed
A highly anticipated evaluation of thousands of city-owned treasures at the Detroit Institute of Arts is not expected to be finished until at least the second week of December. The report from Christie’s auction house in New York, which Detroit officials previously said would be completed in October or November, is expected to have a major impact on the fate of the museum’s world-class collection. The report also will likely influence negotiations between emergency manager Kevyn Orr and creditors and the settlement plan Orr eventually submits in court. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
A Real Pollock? On This, Art and Science Collide
For nearly sixty years, a small painting with swirls and splotches of red, black, and silver has stood as a symbol of enmity between two women: Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock’s widow, and Ruth Kligman, his lover. Until her death, in 2010, Kligman, herself an artist, insisted the painting was a love letter to her created by Pollock in the summer of 1956, just weeks before he died in a car crash. But the painting was rejected by an expert panel set up to authenticate and catalogue all of Pollock’s works by a foundation established by Krasner. (Read more from the New York Times.)
German “Lost Art” Register Posts Further Pictures
German authorities released more pictures and details of the massive trove of art that was discovered in a Munich apartment last year. Prosecutors gave the official “Lost Art” website permission to put an additional fifty-four entries online, taking the total to seventy-nine. The new items include works by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and the German impressionist Max Liebermann. (Read more from USA Today.)
Dealer’s Hand
David Zwirner, the son of a famous German dealer, opened his first gallery in 1993, in SoHo. Since then, he has risen to be one of the most prominent dealers in the world. He is not really a pioneer, in terms of the art he has championed, or the style in which he has presented it, or the people he has sold it to. He is, in many respects, one more boat on a rising tide. (Read more from the New Yorker.)
The (Off-Campus) Future of MIT
Anant Agarwal has quit cold turkey—coffee, that is. But the president of edX, the massive open online course provider cofounded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is as energetic about MOOCs as ever, despite almost daily calls from traditionalists for the death of his product. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Resurgent Interest in Performance-Based Funding for Higher Education
Observers of higher-education policy might be forgiven a sense of surprise at recent developments in the funding of state higher-education systems. At the turn of the century, after indifferent results and occasional policy debacles, it was easy to find commentary from chastened proponents on the declining commitments to performance-based funding and budgeting systems for public higher education. Yet in recent years, performance funding has risen from the near dead, returning forcefully to the policy and political agendas of many states. What factors have driven this resurgence? (Read more from the American Association of University Professors.)
Art Makes You Smart
For many education advocates, the arts are a panacea: they supposedly increase test scores, generate social responsibility, and turn around failing schools. Most of the supporting evidence, though, does little more than establish correlations between exposure to the arts and certain outcomes. A few years ago, however, through a large-scale, random-assignment study of school tours to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, scientists were able to determine that strong causal relationships do in fact exist between arts education and a range of desirable outcomes. (Read more from the New York Times.)
November 2013 Picks from CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — November 21, 2013
Each month CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts produces a curated list, called CWA Picks, of recommended exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship in North America and around the world.
The CWA Picks for November 2013 include solo exhibitions of work by Sarah Lucas, Ana Mendieta, and Dayanita Singh in London; Anita Steckel, Dorothea Rockburne, Mary Beth Edelson, and Wangechi Mutu in New York; and Amy Sillman and Sophie Calle in Boston. In addition, the committee selected Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz’s show Patriarchal Poetry in Germany and Dear Art, the first appearance in the United Kingdom for the curatorial collective What, How & for Whom.
Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
Image Caption
Wangechi Mutu, Riding Death in My Sleep, 2002, ink and collage on paper, 60 x 44 in. Collection of Peter Norton, New York (artwork © Wangechi Mutu).
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — November 20, 2013
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.
Eight Years Later, Google’s Book Scanning Crusade Ruled “Fair Use”
Eight years after a group of authors and publishers sued Google for scanning more than twenty million library books without the permission of rights holders, a federal judge has ruled that the web giant’s sweeping book project stayed within the bounds of US copyright law. Last week Judge Denny Chin dismissed a lawsuit from the Author Guild, ruling that Google’s book scans constituted fair use under the law. (Read more from Wired.)
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Controversial Copyright Case
The US Supreme Court, in an order issued last week, has decided not to hear the controversial copyright case between the photographer Patrick Cariou and the artist Richard Prince, who appropriated Cariou’s images of Rastafarians in thirty paintings in the series titled Canal Zone. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
SMU’s Major New National Arts Report: What Does Arts Leadership Do?
Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) has just previewed its inaugural report, a major effort drawing on the largest arts database in the country. Jerome Weeks reports some of the study’s conclusions are a little unexpected. NCAR’s purpose is to determine what constitutes success for an arts group and how can it be encouraged and duplicated? (Read more from Art and Seek.)
German Government Knew about Massive Art Trove Nearly Two Years Ago
The German government knew for nineteen months that a huge trove of art, possibly including works stolen by the Nazis, had been found in Bavaria, but kept quiet while prosecutors carried out their investigation. Jewish groups and lawyers for heirs who might have a claim to the works have criticized the secrecy surrounding the case, and the fact that the government only sprang into action after it was revealed by Germany media earlier this month. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Sunday Dialogue: Academia’s Two Tracks
A recent study of Northwestern University indicating that non-tenure-track faculty are better teachers than tenure-track faculty has been met with disbelief and derision—by tenure-track faculty and the American Association of University Professors. It calls into question the myth that the two-track system in academe is an equal opportunity merit system. It is not; it is in fact a caste system with the tenured faculty occupying the upper caste and the off-track faculty serving as the “untouchables.” (Read more from the New York Times.)
No More Digitally Challenged Liberal-Arts Majors
While I don’t think liberal-arts education should be at the service of employers, I do think it is important to enable our BAs to build careers that allow them to continue what they valued about their undergraduate experiences. Too many liberal-arts graduates, especially in the arts and humanities, struggle to find their first positions, and many end up in jobs that have few obvious connections to what they imagined themselves doing. Yearning to follow their academic interests and to be appreciated for what they have to contribute, they end up going to graduate school. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
How to Handle Your Inevitable Rejection: The Vitae Primer
It’s no secret that rejection is a constant and integral part of academic life, especially during job-hunting season. But that doesn’t make repeated knocks to your candidacy (or your psyche) any easier to take or less painful. There’s an abundance of advice on how to get an academic job and manage your career, but little is offered on how to manage your misery when search committees shut the door on your bids. (Read more from Vitae.)
Artist Asks: “What Do You Want to Accomplish Before You Die?”
In the midst of New Orleans still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, Candy Chang channeled her frustration and pain into building a wall. Unlike most walls, this one wasn’t meant to keep people apart, but to bring them closer than ever. Chang, an artist and designer known for thought-provoking, interactive installations, has been preoccupied with the idea of death since her mother passed away when she was fifteen. In 2011, Chang repurposed a wall of a dilapidated house to ask the simple question: What do you want to accomplish before you die? (Read more from Mashable.)
Finalists for the 2014 Morey and Barr Awards
posted by Christopher Howard — November 18, 2013
CAA is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2014 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award. The winners of both prizes, along with the recipients of ten other Awards for Distinction, will be announced in January and presented during Convocation in Chicago, in conjunction with the 102nd Annual Conference.
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in any language between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2013. The four finalists are:
- Jacqueline E. Jung, The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200–1400 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
- Joan Kee, Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
- Yukio Lippit, Painting of the Realm: The Kano House Painters in 17th-Century Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012)
- Cynthia Robinson, Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile: The Virgin, Christ, Devotions, and Images in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013).
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
The Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for museum scholarship is presented to the author(s) of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2013, under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. The two finalists for this year are:
- Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2013)
- Jeff L. Rosenheim, Photography and the American Civil War (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013)
Second Barr Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, or Collections
The Barr jury has shortlisted a second Barr Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, or Collections. The two finalists are:
- Colin G. Calloway, ed., Ledger Narratives: The Plains Indian Drawings of the Lansburgh Collection at Dartmouth College (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, in cooperation with the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2012)
- Peter C. Sturman and Susan S. Tai, eds., The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century China (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art; New York: Delmonico/Prestel, 2012)
The presentation of the Awards for Distinction will take place on Wednesday evening, February 12, 2014, 5:30–7:00 PM, at the Hilton Chicago. The event is free and open to the public. For more information about CAA’s Awards for Distinction, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs and archivist.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — November 13, 2013
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.
Two Founders of Dia Sue to Stop Art Auction
Two founders of the Dia Art Foundation have taken the unusual step of going to court to try to stop the art organization from auctioning off as much as $20 million in works from its world-class holdings at Sotheby’s. The foundation has come under fire from many parts of the art world over its decision to sell the works and has defended itself by saying that it needed the money to continue to grow and to buy new artworks. (Read more from the New York Times.)
New Council to Develop Standards, Best Practices for Online Learning
Carnegie Mellon University is convening a high-powered consortium of educators, researchers, and technology-company executives that will spearhead efforts to develop standards and promote best practices in online education. The Global Learning Council—to be led by Carnegie Mellon’s president Subra Suresh—will also look for ways to leverage education-technology resources and disseminate data in an education landscape that some think is being turned on its head. (Read more from Wired Campus.)
The Twenty Most Powerless People in the Art World: 2013 Edition
Art Review recently published its art-world power list that starts with a Qatari royal and includes an artist who “doesn’t make a thing.” Hyperallergic has highlighted people, places, and things that it think deserves more attention than the rich, powerful, and well connected for its annual Powerless 20 list. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
Families and Museums Demand List of Nazi-Looted Art
Jewish heirs are fighting to find out if an uncovered Nazi treasure trove contains art stolen from their families during the Holocaust. Families and museums are now demanding that German authorities publish a complete list of the $1.35 billion worth of art found hidden in a Munich storage closet so they can find out if their heirlooms have been recovered. But despite international pressure, German prosecutors are refusing to publish a full inventory of the works. (Read more from USA Today.)
Who Were the Mystery Men behind Germany’s Nazi-Looted Art Haul?
It was the art discovery that stunned the world: more than 1,400 works of art, many of them masterpieces, hidden away for over seventy years, unearthed not in a high-security vault or long-forgotten museum basement, but an anonymous apartment in an upscale German neighborhood. A vast stash of paintings by the likes of Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall, some previously unknown, others that had been presumed lost forever. (Read more from CNN.)
You Need a Website
When you first hear about a fellow academic or receive an email from a person you do not know, what do you do? How do you try to find out basic information about such a person? There is a good chance that you do an online search. Then, you likely click on one of the top results returned by the search engine. You look for information that will give you details about the person’s background, interests, education, papers, and conference presentations, or at minimum their affiliation and the focus of their work. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Wedge Driving Academe’s Two Families Apart
More than one scientist friend at the University of California, Berkeley, has complained to me recently that the stuff coming out of English departments seems pretty wacky. My friends in the English department accuse those in the STEM fields of doing anything corporations want so long as it keeps their labs going. (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)
The Art of Emoji
Digital communication, once confined to letters, numbers, and punctuation, has become a cartoonish full-color landscape littered with pictographs designed to help express emotions and ideas. But as emoji design has developed to include a growing number of icons, the pictographs have become more than as a visual aid for verbal communication, evolving into a vehicle for expression in their own right. (Read more from Slate.)
Art Journal Explores “Queer Affect and Queer Archives”
posted by Christopher Howard — November 12, 2013
In its new issue, the quarterly Art Journal features an eighty-page forum, “Conversations on Queer Affect and Queer Archives.” The forum, which includes works of art, conversations, and explorations by artists, art historians, curators, and other scholars, promises to be a milestone in the art and art history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. It will serve as a critical resource for artists, activists, and scholars alike.
“Conversations on Queer Affect and Queer Archives” is organized by Art Journal’s editor-in-chief, Lane Relyea, in collaboration with Tirza True Latimer, chair of the graduate program in Visual and Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. “Artists, scholars, and activists have been rethinking the politics of what archives preserve, demonstrating that the piecing together of cultural memory is not a neutral pursuit,” Latimer writes in her introduction. “These questions resonate with particular poignancy in outlaw cultures and communities…. Queer archival practices are not only propelled by strong feelings, they may also reanimate suppressed histories of sentiment.”
The forum documents the preservation of the material effects of LGBT people in archives as diverse as the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles, the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, New York University’s Fales Library and Special Collections, and the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, among many other archives. The issue includes a list of thirty-seven archives worldwide, with detailed contract information. It also explores the innovative ways in which artists, curators, and scholars are drawing on and showcasing these legacy materials.
Astonishing stories emerge from these archives:
- The artist Tina Takemoto becomes obsessed with the archival legacy of a gay male Japanese immigrant who arrived in San Francisco in the 1920s and spent WWII in an internment camp in Utah. Takemoto then creates artworks based on the man and the eighty-year span of his life in the United States
- Barbara McBane discovers the papers of a father of two who transitions to become Veronica Marie Friedman. McBane, a professional film editor and scholar, pieces together Friedman’s frame of mind during the metamorphosis, through casual writings such as journal entries, datebook pages, a timeline, and poems written on napkins
- E. G. Crichton, artist-in-residence at San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society, plays matchmaker with artists such as Takemoto and McBane on the one hand, and the archival materials of specific individuals on the other. From the artworks that result, Crichton organizes exhibitions that travel the world. In her text, she details the amazingly widespread network of international archives she has discovered
- Ann Cvetkovich, the author of the book An Archive of Feelings, converses with the artist Tammy Rae Carland, who has photographed ephemeral aspects of lesbian life and dozens of hand-decorated mix tapes given her over the years, as well as behind-the-scenes events at the legendary Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival
- Zackary Drucker contributes “Bring Your Own Body,” the script and images from a 2012 performance work that recounts the transformation of Lynn Edward Harris from Miss Costa Mesa 1968 to a bearded guest on a 1983 television talk show.
- The artist Henrik Olesen uses an intuitive system of classification close to the one elaborated by the art historian Aby Warburg in his unfinished “Mnemosyne Atlas” to organize archival images and artworks into a homoaffirmative historical counternarrative called Some Faggy Gestures (2007)
This issue of Art Journal also includes an essay by Alexandra Kokoli on the British artist Susan Hiller and an exploration by Kirsten Olds of the visual culture of 1970s glam rock in Los Angeles, as exemplified in the work of Les Petites Bonbons.
About Art Journal
Art Journal is published four times a year by CAA for its membership of fourteen thousand. A peer-reviewed journal devoted to twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, it is one of the most vital, intellectually compelling, and visually engaging periodicals in the field. Art Journal features scholarly articles, conversations, portfolios, and other contributions by leading art historians, artists, curators, and critics.
Nonmembers may purchase single copies by writing to rlawson@collegeart.org or by calling 212-392-4404.