CAA News Today
SHERYL REISS INTERVIEW
posted by Christopher Howard — November 12, 2013
Fifteenth Anniversary for caa.reviews
This fall caa.reviews celebrates its fifteenth year of publication. Founded in the fall of 1998, the online journal has published thousands of reviews of books, exhibitions, and more. The journal averages approximately 150 reviews annually.
The journal’s editor-in-chief, Sheryl Reiss, has been involved with caa.reviews since the beginning, first as field editor for books on early modern Southern European art and then as an editorial-board member. In 2010 she returned as editor designate, taking the reins from Lucy Oakley of New York University’s Grey Art Gallery in July 2011. CAA News spoke with Reiss in October via email.
How does caa.reviews fit in with established online journals such as Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, as well as with newer digital publications and reviews journals (Triple Canopy, Cassone, Art Book Review)?
The journal distinguishes itself from these and other online publications in several ways. Founded in 2002, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide focuses exclusively on the “long” nineteenth century in a global context and publishes scholarly articles along with reviews of exhibitions and books. In contrast, caa.reviews covers materials from all periods and cultures, and while we seek to expand the number of essays we publish, our primary focus is on reviews of books, exhibitions, conferences, and recently, digital media. In this sense we also differ from the website of the Historians of Netherlandish Art, which includes a vibrant selection of book reviews. Our audience, currently CAA members, consists primarily of art historians, artists, museum professionals, and others with academic affiliations or interests. When the journal becomes open access next year, we anticipate significant expansion of our readership. The newer review journals you mention serve a broader public with greater emphasis on contemporary art and exhibitions in commercial galleries. Cassone, which focuses primarily on art in the United Kingdom, features interviews and editorial commentary, which could be fruitful paths for our journal to follow.
Have you noticed any subject trends in caa.reviews over the last year or two? If so, have they matched other trends in the academic and museum worlds?
Our coverage is so broad, and the interests of our more than thirty field editors—the group of scholars that commissions the book and exhibition reviews—so varied, that it is difficult to isolate just a few specific trends. That said, I would say that across the board I have noticed interest in materiality as a focus of books under review. Another major trend—in both academia and museums—is tremendous interest in global themes and cross-cultural interchange. In my view, one of the greatest strong points of caa.reviews is the extraordinary range of topics and approaches covered in our reviews.
Field editors will soon write subject pieces of their own, called “Re-views,” which I understand will be somewhat similar to the recent “State of the Field” essays in The Art Bulletin. What would you like to achieve with these contributions?
For some time, members of the caa.reviews Editorial Board have expressed their desire to increase the number of essays we publish. Indeed, this was a goal of the founding editors of the journal. At the CAA Publications Committee session I organized and chaired at the Annual Conference in February of this year, titled “Book Reviews and Beyond: caa.reviews at 15,” the panel (consisting of past editors of the journal and former editorial-board members) considered the scope and object of the reviewing enterprise—not only of books and exhibitions, but also in a more comprehensive sense. The participants and audience members agreed that expanding our efforts to publish thematic essays would be one way to broaden the journal’s mission and appeal. While somewhat similar to our sister journal’s “State of the Field” essays, the “Re-views” series will provide a locus for our field editors to reflect upon their respective fields as seen through the lens of the reviews they have commissioned. We envision publishing one or two of these essays each year, in which the field editors will consider the topics, methodologies, and debates current in publications and exhibitions in their respective areas. Our first essay in the series, by Tanya Sheehan (field editor for photography and an editorial-board member), is titled “Reflections on Photography” and was published in early October. It is our hope that this series will see anew—or re-view—the many fields covered by caa.reviews in the context of reviews the journal has published.
What were some of the challenges and highlights when initiating, working on, and completing the Scalar project on the exhibition Bernini: Sculpting in Clay?
Perhaps the greatest challenge was learning to use the Scalar digital platform, which is very powerful, but also quite daunting. Some of the work was using HTML code, which I had not done for many years. Thankfully, the staff at the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture (which provided a generous grant for the project) was always there to help. One of the great highlights was making the video walkthrough last February at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The project not only permits users to visit the exhibition virtually, it also includes an introductory essay, links to other educational videos and to reviews by a scholar and an artist, a bibliography of further reading, and an interview with one of the curators. I should add that it was a joy to work with two of the exhibition’s curators, C. D. Dickerson III of the Kimbell and Tony Sigel of the Harvard Art Museums. I was fortunate to attend the study days associated with the show both in New York and Fort Worth, which greatly enriched my understanding of Bernini’s terra-cotta models. Finally, I have been really thrilled by the positive response to the project, particularly for classroom use.
How has the road to open access been for the journal? How can the journal encourage more commentary and interaction?
This is a very exciting time for caa.reviews. The path to open access for the journal has been long and steep, with a number of roadblocks along the way. For many years, it has been the desire of past editors and editorial-board members to reinstate the journal’s initial open status. The topic has been discussed at every meeting of the editorial board since I rejoined the journal in 2010, and it is a source of much gratification that in 2014, with the advent of CAA copublishing its journals with Taylor & Francis, the journal will once again be open to all interested readers worldwide. This is a great accomplishment! The editorial board is exploring new ways of presenting review content as the journal’s audience continues to expand. These include implementing moderated commentary and increasing the use of multimedia platforms, as in the recently completed Scalar Bernini project.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — November 06, 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.
Nazi-Looted Art “Found in Munich”
A collection of 1,500 artworks confiscated by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s has been found in the German city of Munich. The trove is believed to include works by Matisse, Picasso, and Chagall, the news magazine Focus reports. Some of the works were declared as degenerate by the Nazis, while others were stolen from or forcibly sold for a pittance by Jewish art collectors. If confirmed, it would be one of the largest recoveries of looted art. (Read more from BBC News.)
Painting Thought to Be by Delacroix Discovered in Santa Barbara
Eik Kahng, curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, believes she has identified a previously unknown painting by Eugène Delacroix. Given the stature of the French Romantic innovator, that’s no small thing. The painting turned up in a local private collection—the Van Asch van Wyck Trust—and Kahng has now included it in her newly opened exhibition, Delacroix and the Matter of Finish. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
So Many Stories to Tell for Met’s Digital Chief
After teaching a generation of journalists at Columbia University about how technology was changing journalism and how they needed to change along with it, Sree Sreenivasan became the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first chief digital officer in August. He was in a similar role at Columbia for more than a year before moving to the Met, where he will oversee seventy people working across multiple departments. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Hurricane Sandy, One Year Later
The predictable chaos and lack of information are the outcome of any disaster, but one year after Sandy (which killed 150 people and damaged or destroyed some 650,000 houses), officials, charities, and disaster experts are concluding that much can be done to smooth the recovery process—and that there’s more for architects to do other than drive-by damage assessments and holding empty “ideas” competitions. Now architects are working in neighborhoods to link people to the resources they need. (Read more from the Architectural Record.)
Who Are You, Really?
Employment-related screening tools were the focus of conversation in the human-resources class I teach. As I expected, there were plenty of questions about how employers use internet searches to make decisions about applicant suitability and a fair amount of outrage about how completely unfair employers are when it comes to using digital content to make hiring decisions. (Read more from On Hiring at the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Understanding Cover Letters
Recently, on a listserv in my field known for being welcoming to outsiders and newcomers but also for being rife with discussions that quickly turn ridiculous, a thread on cover letters followed the usual pattern: a new grad student asks what seems to be an innocuous question, a few professors offer semihelpful responses without getting too sucked in, the rogue academic contributes some tongue-in-cheek humor, a few more grad students take the jokes seriously and panic, and the list erupts in false information and rumors. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Gay Student to Lose His Virginity in Live Sex Performance for Art
A gay student plans to lose his virginity live onstage—all in the name of art. Clayton Pettet, a 19-year-old art student at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London, plans to have gay sex in front of a crowd of between fifty and one hundred people in London on January 25, 2014, for a project called Art School Stole My Virginity. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
As Street Art Grows More Popular, Is It Losing Its Edge?
New York City is a mecca for art, but the latest exhibition drawing crowds isn’t located in a museum—this show is taking place on the streets of the five boroughs, in places you wouldn’t expect art to hang. This particular work, called Waiting in Vain at the Door of the Club, is a piece by a man who goes by the name Banksy, an English-born street artist, and who prefers to remain incognito. (Read more from PBS.)
Smarthistory Call for Essays
posted by Christopher Howard — October 31, 2013
Khan Academy’s mission is a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere. In September 2013, the academy had ten million unique visitors overall. For the art-history content alone, Khan anticipates more than two million visitors from around the globe for the fall 2013 semester. Let’s make sure strong, global art-history content is well represented.
If you are interested in contributing your expertise in the form of short introductory essays to help make art history accessible to a global audience, Smarthistory could really use your help. The website’s founders, Steven Zucker and Beth Harris, seek art historians, archaeologists, and conservators in many areas of study; they have a particular need for specialists in African, Asian, precolonial American, and Pacific art.
Smarthistory has created an interactive list of topics, a Trello Board, with an eye toward supporting introductory art-history courses. If something important is missing, please let Zucker and Harris know! Once you’ve decided on a topic, send an email to Zucker and Harris (along with your CV). If everything is in order, you will be added to the Trello Board, so you can claim that topic.
Here are the essay guidelines:
- Length: 800–1,000 words
- Writing style: informal, experiential, contextual
- Content: for teaching (not original research)
As a general rule, Smarthistory looks for the narratives a great professor tells his or her class to make students fall in love with a particular subject or work of art.
All accepted contributed content is published on both khanacademy.org and smarthistory.khanacademy.org. All content is published with a Creative Commons attribution and noncommercial license. You remain the owner of your content, and your contribution is always attributed.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — October 30, 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.
Government Shutdown Cost Smithsonian Nearly $3 Million
The sixteen-day federal government shutdown cost the Smithsonian an estimated $2.8 million in lost sales and around 800,000 visitors, according to a statement from the institution. The bipartisan Senate agreement that ended the shutdown will provide back pay for all furloughed federal workers, including 3,512 Smithsonian employees. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Can Yelp Change the Way We Think about Art?
Yelp gives us a quasi-empirical way to pinpoint the best slice of pizza in half-mile radius. In the process, though, the service has done something else: it’s democratized food criticism, giving anyone with an internet connection a mandate to opine on cuisine, decor, ambiance, and the overall aptitude of a restaurant’s staff. No matter how little you know about Thai food, on Yelp, your voice is heard. For the last few years, Brian Droitcour has been turning over an interesting question: why can’t it do the same for art? (Read more from Wired.)
Welcoming Art Lovers with Disabilities
On a recent Friday night, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York held its first public exhibition of original art made in its “Seeing through Drawing” classes. Participants—all blind or partly sighted—created works inspired by objects in the museum’s collection that were described to them by sighted instructors and that they were also allowed to touch. In another gallery, a tour in American Sign Language was followed by a reception for deaf visitors. (Read more from the New York Times.)
The Enduring Value of Enduring Questions
In an October 22 letter to Carole Watson, acting chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, questioned grants the agency has issued to consider questions like “What is the good life and how do I live it?” Sessions affirmed “the value of the humanities” but insisted that “care and discipline must be exercised by any government agency that decides to favor some projects over others.” (Read more from Commentary.)
Intro to Résumés for CV-Minded Academics
In academia, your curriculum vitae (CV) is the master list of all your professional accomplishments and a requirement when looking for jobs in academia. The modern academic CV is usually a multipage document that covers everything of note you have accomplished during your graduate education. Outside academia, the traditional format for job applications is the résumé, which is easy to forget when all the people around you are obsessed with growing their CVs. (Read more from Grad Hacker.)
From Welfare to the Tenure Track
Last summer, as her forty-fifth birthday approached, Melissa Bruninga-Matteau made a promise to “end part of her life.” She had earned a PhD in medieval history from the University of California, Irvine, back in 2011 and hoped to glide into a solid faculty position. Instead, the previous two years had been marked by disappointment, depression, and rejection. Though she had applied for more than one hundred teaching openings, nothing much had panned out. (Read more from Chronicle Vitae.)
Staying Relevant
If basic market forces are reshaping higher education, common knowledge dictates that incumbents will lose market share to newcomers. But based on discussions at a conference on sustainable scholarship hosted by Ithaka, which promotes innovative forms of teaching and scholarly communication, no one—from faculty members to librarians—intends to play the role of the incumbent. Disaggregation, unbundling, and public-private partnerships were recurring themes during a daylong brainstorming session on innovative forms of teaching and learning—themes that the almost two hundred attendees suggested could prevent their fields from becoming obsolete. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Slave of the Internet, Unite!
Not long ago, I received, in a single week, three invitations to write an original piece for publication or give a prepared speech in exchange for no money. As with stinkbugs, it’s not any one instance of this request but their sheer number and relentlessness that make them so tiresome. It also makes composing a polite response a heroic exercise in restraint. People who would consider it a bizarre breach of conduct to expect anyone to give them a haircut or a can of soda at no cost will ask you, with a straight face and a clear conscience, whether you wouldn’t be willing to write an essay or draw an illustration for them for nothing. (Read more from the New York Times.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — October 23, 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.
Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education
While the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education are currently in force, an Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) task force is extensively revising them in 2013–14. The existing standards, reviewed by the ACRL standards committee and approved by the organization’s board on January 18, 2000, were also endorsed by the American Association for Higher Education and the Council of Independent Colleges. (Read more from Association of College and Research Libraries.)
5,400 Images from the Getty Research Institute’s Special Collections Now Available as Open Content
Imagine being able to pore over a sketchbook by Jacques-Louis David in minute detail, to investigate Maya, Aztec, and Zapotec ruins in Mexico, or to study the costumes and social mores at Versailles. All of these things are possible with a major addition to the Open Content Program, which includes 5,400 artwork images from the collections of the Getty Research Institute—bringing the total number of available images to over 10,000. (Read more from the Getty Iris.)
The Correlation between Free and Digital Open Access
The most important thing art museums do is make their collections, exhibitions, programs, and scholarship available to the broadest possible public. When it comes to measuring success and mission fulfillment by that last part—accessibility—Los Angeles–area museums are on a roll. (Read more from Modern Art Notes.)
The New Players: How Artist Foundations Influence the Art World
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation represents a rarely discussed dividend of the high-flying postwar and contemporary art market: the growing number of nonprofit artist foundations that burnish the legacies of their creators and provide an invaluable benefit to artists and arts organizations as grant- and gift-giving entities. (Read more from Blouin Artinfo.)
Is Art to Blame for Gentrification?
Bold Tendencies is the art space and cocktail bar standing imperiously on top of a Peckham multistory car park. It is charged with so much architectural symbolism it’s almost funny: a sky-high contemporary gallery in one of London’s poorest districts, packed each evening with painfully well-dressed young white people supping Campari bitters, who gaze down upon the streets of pound shops, mobile phone stalls, and cheap clothes stores below. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Are Artists to Blame for Gentrification?
The current narrative—in newsrooms, in think tanks, in studios and galleries—has art at the bleeding edge of urban transformation. But this narrative is wrong—or at least it keeps getting told in the wrong way. In the 1960s, shortly after the term “gentrification” was coined by the British sociologist Ruth Glass, the experimental art guru George Maciunus converted the large spaces in deindustrialized SoHo into artist cooperatives and live/work spaces, touching off its ultimate conversion into the gleaming nexus of air-brushed boutiques and tony restaurants that it is today. City leaders were so impressed that they wanted to do it again, and ever since the magical power of art to make over cities has been a key talking point. (Read more from Slate.)
Making It Past the First Round
For a high school basketball coach, the hardest part of the job is making the cuts—especially when there are more deserving kids than uniform jerseys, and the differences between the fifteenth player and the sixteenth are minuscule. But when you walk into the gym on the first day of tryouts and see the dozens of hopefuls, most of whom have no chance of making the team, all you want to do is eliminate as many as possible, as quickly as possible, so you can get down to the hard work of making a final roster. I’ve experienced similar feelings as a search-committee member, looking at 150 or more applications for three or four full-time positions. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Digital Takeover: Not If but When
We are so accustomed to the big, glossy, full-color art book that it seems that this tool of art history, not to mention the art trade, has been with us forever. But books of this kind only really took off following the revolution in color printing that happened soon after the First World War. Now, thanks to the inexorable march of technology, things are changing again. Digital art books are becoming inevitable, for pretty much the same reasons that the printed book replaced the medieval illuminated manuscript. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
2014 Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Women’s Caucus for Art
posted by Christopher Howard — October 22, 2013
The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has announced the recipients of its 2014 Lifetime Achievement Awards: Phyllis Bramson, Harmony Hammond, Adrian Piper, and Faith Wilding. The winners of the 2014 President’s Art and Activism Award are Janice Nesser-Chu and Hye-Seong Tak Lee.
Please join WCA for an awards celebration on Saturday, February 15, 2014, in Chicago, Illinois. The event will be held during the annual WCA and CAA conferences. The awards ceremony, open free of charge to the public, will take place from 6:00 to 7:30 PM, followed by a ticketed gala from 8:00 to 10:00 PM at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The ticketed gala will include a walk-around gourmet dinner, open bar, and the opportunity to congratulate the awardees. Individual tickets may be purchased online for $150 prior to January 7 and for $165 thereafter.
2014 Lifetime Achievement Awardees
Phyllis Bramson is an artist and educator whose recent works use folly and innuendo as narrative tactics to embody exaggerated fictions about love. Infused with amusing anecdotes about life’s imperfections, her sensuous paintings are miniaturized schemes meandering through love, desire, pleasure, tragedy, and cosmic disorder. Bramson received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and taught for twenty-two years at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where she is now professor emerita. Since 2007, she has advised MFA students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bramson has shown her work in over thirty solo and innumerable group exhibitions across the United States. In 2013, she will have one-person shows at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago and at Littlejohn Contemporary in New York. Bramson was selected for the Annual Artists’ Interviews at CAA’s 2010 Annual Conference in Chicago, and in 2012 she received the Distinguished Artist of the Year/Chicago from the Union League Club of Chicago.
Harmony Hammond is an artist, writer, and educator who was a leading figure in the feminist art movement in New York in the early 1970s, cofounding A.I.R., the first women’s cooperative art gallery in New York, and the journal Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. Her earliest feminist work combined gender politics with Postminimal concerns of materials and process, frequently occupying a space between painting and sculpture. Since 1984, Hammond has lived and worked in northern New Mexico. She taught at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1998 to 2006. Hammond’s Wrappings: Essays on Feminism, Art, and the Martial Arts (1984) is a seminal publication on 1970s feminist art, and her book Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History (2000) received a Lambda Literary Award. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally and was featured in High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967–1975 (2006–8) and WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007–8) In 2013, Hammond was honored with CAA’s Distinguished Feminist Award.
Adrian Piper is a conceptual artist and analytic philosopher. She received a BA in philosophy with a minor in medieval and renaissance musicology from the City College of New York and a PhD in philosophy from Harvard University. Piper became the first tenured African American woman professor in the field of philosophy. For her refusal to return to the United States while listed as a suspicious traveler on the Transportation Security Administration’s watch list, Wellesley College forcibly terminated her tenured full professorship in 2008. In 2011, the American Philosophical Association awarded her the title of professor emeritus. Piper’s two-volume, open-access study in Kantian metaethics, Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception and Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception, was accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press in 2008 and praised as “groundbreaking,” “brilliant,” “indispensable,” and “original and important.” Piper introduced issues of race and gender into the vocabulary of Conceptual art as well as explicit political content into Minimalism. In 2000, she further expanded the vocabulary of Conceptual art to include Vedic philosophical imagery and concepts. Her artwork has enjoyed numerous national and international traveling retrospectives. She received CAA’s Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work in 2012. Piper lives and works in Berlin, where she runs the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin.
Faith Wilding is an intermedia artist, writer, and educator. She is professor emerita of performance art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a graduate faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and currently a visiting scholar at Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Born in Paraguay, Wilding received a BA from the University of Iowa and an MFA from California Institute of Arts (CalArts). Wilding was a co-initiator of the Feminist Art Programs at Fresno State College and at CalArts and key contributor to the Womanhouse exhibition in 1970–71 with her Crocheted Environment installation and her Waiting performance. Her work with the feminist art movement in Southern California was chronicled in her book By Our Own Hands (1977) and later in The Power of Feminist Art (1994), edited by Norma Broude and Mary Garrard. Wilding’s art, which addresses the recombinant and distributed biotech body in two-dimensional and digital media, audio and video, and installations and performances, has been featured in major feminist exhibitions, including WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007–8), Sexual Politics (1995), Division of Labor: Women’s Work in Contemporary Art (1995), and re.act.feminism (2009). Wilding cofounded and collaborates with subRosa, a cyberfeminist cell of cultural producers using bioart and tactical performance in the public sphere to explore and critique the intersections of information and biotechnologies in women’s bodies, lives, and work. She is also the coeditor of Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices! (2002).
2014 President’s Awardees for Art and Activism
Janice Nesser-Chu is an educator, mixed-media artist, and activist in the arts community. Her life’s work has centered on social activism, education, mentorship, and promotion of women in the arts. Nesser-Chu serves as the Legacy Campaign Director on the national board of WCA, on the WCA Saint Louis chapter board, and on the board of directors for ArtTable. Nesser-Chu was president of WCA from 2010 to 2012 and has served on the organization’s board for over eight years. She coordinated the 2011 Art and Social Justice Conference and sat on the advisory board and steering committee for the 2012 Cross-Cultural Engagement: Building a Diverse and Dynamic Community Conference, both held in Saint Louis. She recently served on the Forums Committee for Art Saint Louis and is a founder and past board member of the Northern Arts Council. Nesser-Chu is chair of the Arts and Humanities Department and a professor of art at Saint Louis Community College, Florissant Valley. Previously she served as the director of the school’s galleries and permanent collection and coordinator of the photography program. Nesser-Chu established the Women’s History Month (WHM) and World AIDS Day/Quilt display programs on her campus and continues to serve as the coordinator for WHM. She has a master’s degree in art from Webster University and a BA in journalism with a minor in political science from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. Nesser-Chu has exhibited internationally for over twenty years.
Hye-Seong Tak Lee is an artist, curator, and lecturer from Gwangju, South Korea. While residing in various cities in North America over a ten-year period, she was active in immigrant communities, helping emerging artists enrich their environment through multicultural exhibitions. Since returning to South Korea, she has worked with expatriate artists to broaden her country’s cultural tolerance and expand the society of artists through events such as art classes, workshops, mural projects, and exhibitions. Lee is particularly determined to expand the visibility of women artists in Korea, whose accomplishments have been all but ignored because of the country’s focus on other significant democratic issues. In partnership with WCA’s International Caucus, Lee mounted the 2012 exhibition Woman + Body in Seoul and Gwangju. A survey of contemporary sexual personae—female, transgender, and male—Women + Body raised questions about stereotypes and prejudice, presented diverse points of view, and showcased significant Korean activist women artists spanning several generations, together with WCA activist women artists from the United States. Lee also participated in panel discussions related to gender policies and lectured on the contributions of women in the arts. Woman + Body opened the door for strengthening and widening women artists’ networks for both Koreans and Americans. Lee looks forward to curating more exhibitions with talented women artists from all over the world.
Background
WCA’s Lifetime Achievement Awards were first awarded in 1979 in President Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Past honorees have represented the full range of distinguished achievement in the arts professions. This year’s awardees are no exception. The President’s Art and Activism Award is awarded each year to emerging or midcareer women whose life and work exemplifies WCA’s mission of creating community through art, education, and social activism.
Founded in 1972 in connection with CAA, WCA is a national member organization unique in its multidisciplinary, multicultural membership of artists, art historians, students, educators, and museum professionals. WCA is committed to recognizing the contribution of women in the arts; providing women with leadership opportunities and professional development; expanding networking and exhibition opportunities for women; supporting local, national, and global art activism; and advocating equity in the arts for all.
caa.reviews Celebrates Fifteenth Anniversary with New Series
posted by Christopher Howard — October 21, 2013
On the occasion of its fifteenth anniversary, caa.reviews launched a new series: Re-Views: Field Editors’ Reflections. Authored by members of the journal’s Council of Field Editors, the series provides a locus for editors to reflect upon their respective fields as seen through the lens of the reviews they have commissioned.
The first essay in the series, titled “Reflections on Photography,” is by the field editor for photography and editorial-board member Tanya Sheehan, an associate professor in the Department of Art at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. In this essay Sheehan assesses the topics, methodologies, and debates current in publications about photography over the past several years. Themes she addresses include the global reach and significance of photography, political considerations, the play between “art” and “vernacular” in photography studies, and future directions for the field.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — October 16, 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.
Were the First Artists Mostly Women?
Women made most of the oldest-known cave paintings, suggests a new analysis of ancient handprints. Most scholars had assumed these ancient artists were predominantly men, so the finding overturns decades of archaeological dogma. The archaeologist Dean Snow analyzed hand stencils found in eight cave sites in France and Spain. By comparing the relative lengths of certain fingers, he determined that three-quarters of the handprints were female. (Read more in National Geographic.)
How to Pronounce Artists’ Names, Vol. 1
The art world isn’t really as snobbish as depicted in movies and TV shows like Bravo’s Gallery Girls, and it’s apt to be liberally forgiving of most uncouth behavior … with one notable exception: you can’t get away with mispronouncing artists’ names. To ensure you avoid such embarrassments, consult this handy guide to pronouncing some of the thorniest artist names out there. (Read more from Artspace.)
Who Holds the Rights?
Faculty must defend their rights to their intellectual property, which are increasingly under threat, according to a draft report released by the American Association of University Professors. The report, called “Defending the Freedom to Innovate: Faculty Intellectual Property Rights after Stanford v. Roche,” argues that university attempts to assert ownership over faculty intellectual property have accelerated since—and in response to—that 2011 US Supreme Court decision. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Why the Detroit Institute of Arts Is One Asset That Kevyn Orr Shouldn’t Touch
Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr has taken on a Herculean task. He must untangle decades of mismanagement and bureaucratic negligence and devise a way for the city to meet its obligations to, among others, private contractors and hundreds of police officers, firefighters, and civil servants. To do so, he must view every potential solution and option dispassionately in order to elaborate a fair and balanced plan to pay the staggering debt. What he should not do is view the stunning collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts as a fungible asset, available to satisfy the city’s creditors. (Read more in the Detroit Free Press.)
Hunting Detroit’s Masterworks of Architecture before They Go Extinct
Though Detroit has recently been looking like it was hit by a convoy of mile-wide firenados, there remain signs of architectural grandeur illustrating why it was once known as the Paris of the Midwest. Perhaps nowhere is this faded beauty more palpable than in the large-format photography of Philip Jarmain, a Vancouver native who’s spent three years shooting Detroit’s sublime edifices, sometimes just months before they were wiped out by bulldozers. (Read more in Atlantic Cities.)
AbEx Fakes Scandal Silences the Experts
The crisis around fake Abstract Expressionist works sold in New York—around forty of which were handled by the now-defunct Knoedler Gallery—has sent shockwaves through the art market and is having a chilling effect on scholars. As well as a federal investigation, there has been a slew of civil lawsuits. (Read more in the Art Newspaper.)
Should Academics Write for Free?
In 2006, I published my first article in an academic journal, a lengthy analysis debunking the existence of an Uzbek terrorist organization. I called my mother to tell her the news. “Great,” she said. “What are they paying you?” “Nothing.” She laughed. Then she realized I was serious. (Read more in Chronicle Vitae.)
Why No Nobel Prize for Art?
Science, literature, and peace are recognized—but why is there not a Nobel prize for art? Since the Nobel was first awarded in 1901, it has always included literature in its mainly scientific and political mission. This reflects the hierarchy of the arts at the beginning of the twentieth century. (Read more in the Guardian.)
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — October 10, 2013
In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, historians, curators, educators, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. Notable deaths this summer and fall include the artists Stephen Antonakos and Mark Gottsegen and the Renaissance art historian Mark Zucker.
- Stephen Antonakos, an artist known for abstract sculpture that incorporates neon lighting, died on August 17, 2013, at age 86
- Jack Beal, an American painter of nudes, still lifes, and murals whose representational aesthetic ushered in the New Realism of the 1960s and 1970s, died on August 29, 2013, at the age of 82
- John Bellany, a Scottish figurative painter whose retrospective was held last year at the Scottish National Gallery, passed away on August 28, 2013. He was 71
- Marion Bloch, an art collector and philanthropist, died on September 24, 2013, at age 83. The wife of the founder of H&R Block, she was a longtime supporter of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City
- Michael K. Brown, a longtime curator of the Bayou Bend Collection, part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, passed away on September 8, 2013. He was 60 years old
- Red Burns, an arts professor and chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, died on August 23, 2013. Known as the “godmother of Silicon Alley,” she was 88 years old
- Anne Christopherson, an English painter renowned for her depictions of the Thames River, died on August 15, 2013. She was 91
- Alvin Eisenman, the founding director of Yale University’s graduate program in graphic design, died on September 3, 2013. He was 92
- Cecil Fergerson, a former curator for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a community activist, died on September 18, 2013, at age 82. Fergeson started working for the museum in 1948 as a janitor and became a preparator before joining the curatorial staff
- Juan Garcia de Oteyza, an editor, publisher, and diplomat who served as director of Aperture Foundation from 2008 to 2010, died on August 26, 2013. He was 51
- Mark Gottsegen, a painter and the founder of Art Materials Information and Education Network (AMIEN), passed away on September 24, 2013. He had been a professor at the University of North Carolina in Greenboro and was the author of The Painter’s Handbook
- Alfred Rozelaar Green, a painter who spent the 1930s in Paris and who later founded the Anglo-French Art Centre in London, has died. He was 95 years old
- Ellen Lanyon, a painter and printmaker based in New York whose work has been described as a “unique blend of realism and the surreal,” died on October 7, 2013. She was 86
- Frank Martinez, an artist and muralist based in Los Angeles, died on August 17, 2013. He was 89
- Michael McManus, former chief curator of the Laguna Art Museum in California, died on August 10, 2013, at age 60. He had taught at California State University, Fullerton, and the Laguna College of Art and Design
- Mario Montez, a drag performer and film actor who was part of Andy Warhol’s entourage of superstars, died on September 26, 2013. He was 78
- Steve Ross, a literary scholar and the director of the Office of Challenge Grants at the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1995 to 2013, died on August 21, 2013. He was 70
- Sadegh Tirafkan, an Iranian artist who blended photography and other artistic media in innovative ways, passed away on May 9, 2013. He was 47
- Arturo Vega, a Mexican artist who designed graphics for the Ramones, including the band’s famous circular logo, died on June 7, 2013. He was 65 years old
- Gillian Wakely, associate director of education for the University of Pennsylvania Museum, died on August 14, 2013, age 67. She had worked for her institution for forty years
- Kathleen Watkins, an English curator and secretary of the Penwith Society of Arts in St. Ives, Cornwall, for forty-six years, died on September 5, 2013. She was 80 years old
- George Weissbort, a traditional painter of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes who was based in London for decades, died on July 9, 2013. He was age 85
- John Wright, a British artist of many talents—he was a painter, professor, writer, designer, and filmmaker—died on July 9, 2013. He was 82 years old
- Mark Zucker, a Renaissance art historian and a professor in the College of Art and Design at Louisiana State University for thirty-two years, died on August 3, 2013. He was 69
Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — October 09, 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.
Leonardo da Vinci Painting Lost for Centuries Found in Swiss Bank Vault
It was lost for so long that it had assumed mythical status for art historians. Some doubted whether it even existed. But a five-hundred-year-old mystery was apparently solved after a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was discovered in a Swiss bank vault. The painting, which depicts Isabella d’Este, a Renaissance noblewoman, was found in a private collection of four hundred works kept in a Swiss bank by an Italian family who asked not to be identified. (Read more in the Telegraph.)
Why the Affordable Care Act Matters To Artists
It’s not yet clear how many people purchased insurance through the exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that opened recently. But one of the things I’ve been hearing from a lot of creative people is that the ACA has made it easy to be, or to contemplate being, an artist. (Read more from ThinkProgress.)
Decoding Job Ads
You can teach yourself about what institutions pride themselves from reading their job ads. You’ll start to notice trends in the language and structure of ads, so that you can start to group similarly worded ads together and easily spot the ads that break those patterns, or start their own, set of conventions. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Learn Art History through Ten Stunning Pairs of High Fashion Heels
The designer Nick Adelman challenged himself to encompass the art of different cultures and eras in a fashion medium, and the amount of ornate detail put into these high-heeled shoes practically begs for them to become reality. (Read more from Buzzfeed.)
Is Showing Your Art in a Co-op Gallery Worthwhile?
Last week I wrote a post about the advisability of showing your work in a vanity gallery. In the comments, it became clear that there is some confusion, or at least a blurry understanding, of the difference between a pay-for-display (vanity) gallery and cooperative (co-op) galleries. I feel it would be a good idea to expand the conversation to cover this second type of gallery. (Read more in Red Dot Blog.)
Critics Say Sting on Open-Access Journals Misses Larger Point
Perhaps months from now, when the dust settles and academics really look back at it, they’ll find some hard lessons in the elaborate Science magazine exposé this week by the journalist John Bohannon. After more than a year of work, in which Bohannon, who has a PhD in biology, crafted a fraudulent cancer-research article and painstakingly tracked the responses to it from more than three hundred journals, he gave his industry the embarrassing news that more than half of them had agreed to publish it. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Puzzling Peer Reviews
Just because scholars who seek to publish in open-access journals are open to new forms of peer review doesn’t mean they all see eye-to-eye—or know what to expect. As one sting operation shows, many such journals are unable to reject obviously flawed submissions, even as they promise thorough review processes. Meanwhile, other journals are even criticized for being too much like the traditional publishing they aim to reform. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Agony of Suspense in Detroit
It would have been hard to think of a better metaphor: A fire-breathing dragon was bearing down on the Detroit Institute of Arts. For months now, the institute has found itself confronting a threat never experienced by another American museum of its size and not of its own making: the possibility that parts of its world-class collection will be forcibly sold off to help pay billions in debt owed by the city, now in federal bankruptcy. (Read more in the New York Times.)