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CAA News Today

Act Now to Support Humanities Funding

posted by March 25, 2014

The National Humanities Alliance sent the following email on March 25, 2014.

Act Now to Support Humanities Funding

Dear Humanities Advocate,

Last year, the House Budget Committee called for the complete elimination of funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities in its budget resolution. By sending messages to elected officials, advocates like you helped to defeat the proposal and preserve critical funding for the humanities.

Now, you can help ensure a brighter future for federal humanities funding by urging your elected officials to join a bipartisan effort to support NEH. By signing on to House and Senate Dear Colleague letters, your Members of Congress can demonstrate support for NEH funding to the appropriations committee members that hold the agency’s future in their hands.

Click here to send our message to your elected officials today. They are waiting to hear from you.

It is critical that you act now. The deadline for Representatives to sign on to the House letter is Monday, March 31, and the deadline for Senators to sign on to the Senate letter is Friday, April 4.

Best regards,

Stephen Kidd, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Humanities Alliance
(202) 296-4994 x149

Humanities Advocacy Day 2014, sponsored by the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), took place in Washington, DC, on Monday and Tuesday, March 10 and 11, 2014. As a member of NHA, CAA supports that organization’s advocacy efforts and sends representatives to its annual meeting each year. CAA’s participation in these activities allows the association to promote the visual arts and to persuade others—in this case the members of both houses of Congress—to embrace the value of the humanities in education and in daily life.

The annual meeting on Monday included an opening welcome by George Washington University’s president, Steven Knapp, followed by a presentation by Stephen Kidd, NHA executive director, outlining the alliance’s advocacy agenda for the year. Knapp introduced additional speakers whose interests and projects intersect with the NHA’s four-pronged argument for stressing the value of the humanities: promoting opportunity for all Americans, fostering innovation and economic competitiveness, ensuring productive global engagement, and strengthening civic knowledge and practice. Knapp also identified two initiatives outside Congress to promote the humanities in the public sphere: Humanities Working Groups for Community Impact (see item 5) and Call for Videos. Aimed directly at the public rather than elected officials, these initiatives will help to establish to those outside the academy that the humanities are an area worth funding.

David Scobey, executive dean of the New School for Public Engagement, presented a talk called “E Pluribus Anthology: Why American Communities Need the Humanities,” which advocated a return to civic engagement as a way of reigniting the humanities. Carol Muller, professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Pennsylvania, discussed a community project that she directs, West Philadelphia Music, which amplified Scobey’s argument. Other speakers during the day included Elva LeBlanc, president of the Northwest Campus of Tarrant County College, who spoke on the relevancy of higher education and the importance of preparing students for change and complexity; and Francisco G. Cigarroa, chancellor of the University of Texas System. In the afternoon, Humanities Advocacy Day participants received issue briefs and background material concerning proposed funding levels for federal humanities programs and position papers that were helpful in preparing for congressional visits.

On Tuesday, six NHA delegates from the state of New York (listed in the next paragraph) visited the offices of Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer and Representatives Jerrold Nadler, Eliot Engel, Carolyn Maloney, Tom Reed, and José E. Serrano. In each instance, the group urged senators and representatives to support specific fiscal-year budgets for the National Endowment for the Humanities ($154.4 million), the Institute for Museum and Library Services ($226.5 million), and the Library of Congress ($593 million), and to properly fund the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and Title VI/Fulbright-Hays international programs. NHA delegates also asked their legislators to sign “Dear Colleague” letters in support of these budgets based on the alliance’s funding recommendations, which are higher than those proposed by the Obama administration.

The New York delegates from NHA were: Kathleen Fitzpatrick, director of scholarly communication for the Modern Language Association; Peter Berkery Jr., executive director of the Association of American University Presses; Jennifer Steenshorne, junior associate editor for Columbia University Libraries; Jonathan Gilad, program assistant at the American Political Science Association; Michael Fahlund, CAA deputy director; and Betty Leigh Hutcheson, CAA director of publications.

The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) sent the following email on March 19, 2014

Senate Museum Funding Push is Now Bipartisan; Tell Your Senators to Join the Effort

Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) are now circulating a bipartisan letter urging the Senate Appropriations Committee to provide robust funding in FY 2015 for the Office of Museum Services (OMS) at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). This is the fifth year that Senator Gillibrand has led this effort, but the first time Senator Blunt will co-lead the letter.

The deadline for Senators to sign on to this letter is March 25, 2014.

The Office of Museum Services is receiving $30.1 million this year, well below its authorized level of $38.6 million. The Gillibrand/Blunt letter is your Senators’ chance to go on record in support of museum funding, so ask them to sign on today!

“Following visits from his constituents during Museums Advocacy Day, Senator Blunt decided to co-lead this letter with Senator Gillibrand, making it a bipartisan effort and demonstrating the value of our field-wide efforts in Washington, D.C.,” said Alliance President Ford W. Bell. “I applaud Senators Gillibrand and Blunt for their leadership in supporting museums nationwide. We are especially thrilled that Senator Blunt has joined the cause this year; museums in Missouri should be proud to have such a responsive museum champion in Congress.”

Last year, you contacted legislators in record numbers and you made a real difference: a record-breaking number of Senators signed the letter supporting funding for the IMLS Office of Museum Services. Keep that momentum going by contacting your Senators now.

Thank you for acting on this important issue!

Americans for the Arts sent the following email on March 4, 2014.

President Reduces Support for NEA in 2015 Budget

Today, the Obama Administration released its FY 2015 budget request to Congress, which includes funding for the nation’s cultural agencies and programs, such as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Office of Museum Services, and the Department of Education’s Arts In Education program.

As Americans for the Arts President & CEO Robert Lynch noted in a statement:

The Administration’s FY 2015 request of level funding at $146 million for the National Endowment for the Arts is unfortunately insufficient, considering $154 million has been proposed by the Administration each of the two previous years. Senate appropriators were ready to match this funding each of these years. Investment in the arts is an investment in our nation’s culture, education, and economy. Although it is very welcoming to see the Administration continue support for Our Town and the NEA/Walter Reed Healing Arts Partnership programs, now is the time to boost investment, not reduce it. To reduce support provides both an inconsistent and confusing message for the creative economy in America. This is even more important as the President has recently nominated a new chair to lead the NEA. Arts advocates from across the country will join together on Capitol Hill for Arts Advocacy Day on March 25th to lobby Congress to increase NEA funding to $155 million.

This chart illustrates the inconsistent nature of the Obama Administration’s funding requests for the NEA:

 

 

The following is a comparison of the Administration’s FY 2015 budget request and FY 2014 enacted levels:

 

Key Federally Funded Arts Program

FY 2014 Enacted Appropriations (in millions)

FY 2015 President’s

Budget Request

(in millions)

National Endowment for the Arts

$146

$146

National Endowment for the Humanities

$146

$146

U.S. Dept. of Education’s Arts In Education Program

$25

$0*

Office of Museum Services

$30

$31

Corporation for Public Broadcasting (advanced)

$445

$445

U.S. Dept. of State’s Educational & Cultural Exchange

$560

$578

 

*Similar to previous years, the Administration proposes to consolidate the Department of Education’s Arts In Education program.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The President’s request is traditionally just the first step in the legislative budgeting process. Next, the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate offer their proposals that will reflect their own particular priorities. Appropriations subcommittee work is already underway with several upcoming hearings scheduled.

We ask that advocates remain vigilant in the months ahead as Congress works to pass spending bills. Last year, the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee proposed cutting NEA funding nearly in half! Thanks to your messages to Congress, the nation’s signature cultural agency was spared such drastic cuts after an outpouring of support that helped enable Senate appropriators to drive the final result. We hope to count on your advocacy again this year.

Our kickoff advocacy effort will launch at our National Arts Advocacy Day conference on March 24–25. Join us in Washington, DC for the only national event that brings together a broad cross section of America’s cultural and civic organizations, along with hundreds of grassroots advocates from across the country. We encourage you to register for this national arts action summit and join us on Capitol Hill as the arts community brings a united message to Congress to increase funding for the NEA to $155 million! The deadline for advance registration is approaching quickly on Monday, March 10, 2014.

Help us continue this important work by also becoming an official member of the Arts Action Fund. If you are not already a member, play your part by joining the Arts Action Fund today—it’s free and easy to join.

The National Humanities Alliance (NHA) sent the following email on February 27, 2014.

Last chance to register for NHA Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day

Registration deadline: Saturday, March 1, 2014

March 10–11, 2014
George Washington University’s Marvin Center and Capitol Hill
Washington, DC

Advocating Locally for National Impact

The 2014 NHA annual meeting will look beyond broad arguments for the value of the humanities to make the case that fostering and demonstrating impact in local communities is critical to increasing support for the humanities among elected officials and the general public. The meeting will feature a series of speakers who will explore: ways to engage local communities in humanities research, teaching, preservation, and programming; the benefits of publicly engaged work to institutions, students, and communities; the role that the humanities can play in the lives of students as they pursue a variety of career paths and goals; and ways to involve elected officials in this work.

Over the last five years, the humanities have faced particular challenges on the state level, as governors and state legislatures have sought to direct funding and students to other courses of study. This year’s annual meeting will feature two speakers from Texas who can speak to the importance of expanding the role of the humanities in their communities amid the challenging state context.

Participants will also learn about efforts to foster increased collaboration between academic institutions and public humanities organizations with the goal of increasing connections with the broader public.

Click here for a preliminary program.

Registration

Click here to register today.
Registration: $100
Deadline: March 1, 2014

Featured Speakers

Francisco Cigarroa, Chancellor, University of Texas System, and a Member of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences

One of ten children, Francisco Cigarroa is a third generation physician. He graduated from Yale University in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and earned his medical degree in 1983 from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Cigarroa joined the faculty of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in 1995, where he served as director of pediatric surgery before serving as president of the institution from 2000 to 2009. In 2003, President George W. Bush appointed him to serve on the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science. In 2009, Cigarroa became the first Hispanic to be named chancellor of the University of Texas System. As chancellor, he oversees one of the largest public systems of higher education in the nation, which consists of nine universities and six health institutions. President Barack Obama has appointed Cigarroa to serve as a commissioner on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he also serves on the academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences.  Cigarroa is a nationally renowned transplant surgeon and continues to perform liver and kidney transplant surgeries.

Elva Concha LeBlanc, President, Northwest Campus, Tarrant County College District

Elva Concha LeBlanc is president of the Northwest Campus of Tarrant County College District (TCCD). Northwest Campus is one of five campuses of TCCD, a multicampus, single college district of over 50,000 enrollments. Previously, as president of Galveston College, she led the transformation of that institute into a “learning college” with a focus on student learning, assessment, and outcomes. Prior to serving Galveston, LeBlanc was executive vice president for instructional affairs at Austin Community College. A former Tarrant County College student and alumna of the University of North Texas, LeBlanc served TCCD as professor, faculty chair, director of institutional effectiveness, and dean of instruction.

Carol Muller, Professor of Music, University of Pennsylvania

The South African–born Carol Muller is professor of music and current director of the Africa Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published widely on South African music, at home and in exile. Her intellectual interests are in issues of gender, religion, music, diaspora, and postcolonial studies, and her most recent is a book coauthored with South African jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin, called Musical Echoes: South African Women Thinking in Jazz (Duke University Press, 2011); another book, Shembe Hymns (University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2011), was edited by Muller and translated by Bongani Mthethwa. Muller was topic director for the Penn Humanities Forum (2003–4) on subject of Belief. She has done pioneering work in ethnomusicology on issues of civic engagement, community partner and student research in West Philadelphia, and has experimented with online learning over the last decade—her Coursera–Penn course Listening to World Music attracted 37,000 students in its first iteration—it was one of the first humanities courses offered as a MOOC. Muller is also a gumboot dancer.

David Scobey, Executive Dean, New School for Public Engagement

David Scobey is a national leader in developing innovative methods to engage institutions of higher education with communities outside the academy. He was previously director of the Harvard Center at Bates College in Maine, established to bring together community-based learning and research, cocurricular work, and environmental stewardship. He is the founder and former director of the University of Michigan’s Arts of Citizenship program, an initiative to integrate civic engagement and the liberal arts. He serves on the boards of Project Pericles, an organization that encourages universities to include civic engagement as an element of undergraduate education, and Bringing Theory to Practice, a project that links education as a public good with civic engagement and concern for the well-being of individual students.

US Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Ed Markey (D-MA) and Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) have introduced legislation to level the playing field for visual artists in the United States by establishing copyright protections for their intellectual property.

“Artists and arts organizations make valuable contributions to our communities and strengthen our quality of life. Just as our copyright laws extend to musicians and authors to encourage their artistic creativity, they should also apply to our visual artists,” said Senator Baldwin, who serves on the National Council on the Arts. “The ART Act is a commonsense measure that helps protect the intellectual property of our artists.”

“Our visual artists are critical cultural contributors, and the ART Act ensures they are fairly compensated for their work,” said Senator Markey. “Their creativity is a currency that should be properly valued. The ART Act also brings the United States in line with over seventy other countries, so that American artists can receive royalties when their works are sold overseas.”

“American artists are being treated unfairly,” said Congressman Nadler, who first introduced a version of the ART Act in 2011 and serves as the Ranking Democrat on the Courts, Intellectual Property, and Internet Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. “At a time when more than seventy other countries properly compensate visual artists for their work, it is time for the United States to do the same. The ART Act will ensure that visual artists get the compensation they deserve and will no longer be at a disadvantage on the international art market. It is the only fair thing to do.”

“Visual artists are the only members of the creative community in the United States who do not receive residual payments for their works. Composers, lyricists, actors, playwrights, screenwriters all deservedly receive royalties for the later productions, performances, or sales of their works,” said Frank Stella, one of the most renowned artists in the world and recipient of the National Medal of Arts by President Obama in 2009. “Unfortunately, visual artists in the US do not earn a penny in residual or resale payments. The benefits derived from the appreciation in the later sale of their works accrue entirely to the collectors, auction houses, and galleries. The adoption of the droit de suite in my country is therefore long overdue.”

Under current copyright law, visual artists—painters, sculptors, and photographers—are denied the ability to fully benefit from the success of their work over time. Unlike recording artists or publishers who, if successful, sell thousands of copies of their work and recoup a royalty from each purchase, artists sell their work only once.  If they are successful, the price of their work increases but they recoup nothing if their original work is resold at a much higher price. The benefits derived from the appreciation in the price of a visual artists’ work typically accrues to collectors, auction houses, and galleries, not to the artist.  In addition, United States artists are at a disadvantage in the global art market where more than seventy other countries have provided resale royalty rights for visual artists.  The American Royalties, Too (ART) Act of 2014 remedies this inequity by providing a modest resale royalty right for visual artists.

The ART Act would:

  • Provide a competitive resale royalty of five percent of the sales price (up to $35,000) for any work of visual art sold at auction for $5,000 or more
  • The resale royalty applies to any auction where the entity conducting the auction has sold at least $1 million of visual art during the previous year
  • Royalties are collected by visual artists’ copyright collecting societies who must distribute the royalties to the artists or their heirs at least four times per year
  • Allows US artists to collect resale royalties when their works are sold at auction in the European Union and more than seventy other countries
  • The ART Act requires further study by the Copyright Office after five years to determine the effects of the resale royalty on the art market and whether it should be expanded to cover works sold by dealers and other art market professionals

The ART Act includes many recommendations from the US Copyright Office’s December 2013 report, entitled Resale Royalties: An Updated Analysis.

Calling all Adjunct Voices!
Help us collectively record an audiobook of Joe Berry’s Reclaiming the Ivory Tower!!
Call for Introduction, Chapter 1, & Chapter 2!

Adjunct Underground, a radio program dedicated to the issues confronting today’s contingent educational workforce, is looking for any current or former adjunct/contingent/part-time faculty who would be willing to read and record short sections of Joe Berry’s book, Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Our goal is to create a complete audio book of Berry’s book, read entirely by a plethora of adjunct voices.

Are you an adjunct or contingent teacher, and would you be willing to read aloud and record a few pages for us?

The resulting audiobook will be broadcast one chapter at a time, and made available as a free, downloadable podcast, on the program, Adjunct Underground, on KCHUNG Radio.

All contributors can remain anonymous if they so choose, though no voices will be altered in the recordings.

If interested, please look at the spreadsheet at the following link, and select and mark an available section that you would like to read: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnRu6M-k0cvidEVNUktzUGtBUUlDRFJQNHZKYzEtYkE#gid=0. We would like to get as many voices as possible to read this text, so for now we are accepting only ONE section per person.

Send your section request to adjunctunderground@gmail.com, and we’ll send you a pdf of the text, along with a few further instructions. (You’ll then need to record yourself reading the text in a quiet place, using a free program like Audacity, or even your cell phone.)

Finally, please help spread the word by recruiting at least one colleague of yours to participate as well!

Thank you so much for your help!

. . .

From the back of the book:

Reclaiming the Ivory Tower is the first organizing handbook for contingent faculty—the thousands of non-tenure track college teachers who love their work but hate their jobs. It examines the situation of adjunct professors in U.S. higher education today and puts forward an agenda around which they can mobilize to transform their jobs and their institutions.

Full of concrete suggestions for action and based on extensive interviews with organizers Reclaiming the Ivory Tower is the most comprehensive and engaged account to date of the possibilities for a movement that has important lessons for labor organizing in general, as well as for the future of higher education.

Joe Berry teaches labor education and history at the University of Illinois and Roosevelt University in Chicago and chairs the Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor.

. . .

Adjunct Underground
Broadcasting sporadically on some Mondays at 1pm on KCHUNG Radio http://adjunctunderground.kchungradio.org
https://www.facebook.com/AdjunctUnderground

Adjunct Underground is a KCHUNG Radio broadcast and movement dedicated to the trials and tribulations of adjunct instructors in Los Angeles, and throughout the universe! Our sporadic underground broadcasts feature stories, conversations, interviews, rants, and more from our bunker-full of adjunct DJs and hosts, many of whom risk their livelihoods meeting with us to share their stories and insight on the precarity of today’s contingent education professionals! Adjuncts unite! Underground! on KCHUNG Radio!

Filed under: Advocacy, Workforce — Tags:

Written by Donald Preziosi on February 17, 2014.

Above the entrance to an exhibition in Paris in 2011 at the Centre Pompidou called The Promises of the Past was written the claim that the function of art was to make the world better. Better than it might appear at present.

Yet you could argue, at the same time, that what art creates may be a worse world—worse than it appears, or not at all what you would like it to be. Art as both amelioration, betterment, and creative construction: as world-making—and also as destruction and distraction from what reality is imagined to be. The construction and deconstruction of what one takes as reality or as natural.

How could this be? How can we unravel such a dense fabric?

Art has long been regarded as dangerous to the stability of a society and to its professed or desired ideal order. Indeed, 2,500 years ago, in a text we know as The Republic, the Greek philosopher Plato sought to banish the representational arts from an ideal community, because of their distracting effects on its citizens. However powerful, beautiful, spiritually uplifting, or life-enhancing they might be, works of art had the potential to cause individuals to imagine realities differently than what was promoted as real or natural by those holding or desiring power. Plato was far from alone or unique in such a view either in his own or in other societies, both ancient and modern, but his writings give us an insight into the social logic behind such a view.

The simplest and most compelling rationale is this: that the awareness of the artistry or facture of a work of art—the fact that it is a product of human creativity—makes it possible to imagine that the reality it portrays or projects might be imagined otherwise. Both by others or even by oneself at different times or in different places. In other words, once you are aware that the forms and meanings taken by your society as real or natural (perhaps even as created or inspired by superhuman forces) are among any number of possible realities or belief systems, then space is opened for imagining other ways of world-making. To put it another way, you don’t need the visible presence of different social systems, either next door or across the river, to imagine differences: the different exists within art itself.

But what could this mean? The reason for this has to do with what we might call the inherent instability and slipperiness of how things mean—the demonstrable fact that an object or artifact can have different meanings and connotations in different times and places. Just as the same or similar form can have multiple meanings, so the same or equivalent meaning might be embodied or portrayed by distinct forms or expressions. This has been absolutely central to many theological, philosophical, or political debates, now and in the past. It’s the problem of the “relations between” art and religion, or “between” art and politics.

To put this another way, if the only tool you have were a hammer, you’d tend to treat everything as a nail. Thus, as a species, we would be less likely to have survived very long outside a very specific and isolated environment. In technical terms, the potential indeterminacy of meaning—the fact that it cannot be fully controlled—allows for and affords the possibility of adapting to the vagaries of human encounters with worlds. We are, in short, adapted to change; our very existence depends on that flexibility, that openness.

What all or any of this has to do with the dangers of art should be fairly evident and not exactly, as they say, “rocket science.” But remember that science, after all, is itself one of the finest and powerful of the fine arts. And consequently one of the more dangerous.

Art’s dangers are at the same time the source of its powers for positive change and social advocacy. Art advocates and invokes as much as it revokes what you imagine yourself and your worlds to be. Those selves are porous: permeated by and defined relative to others, real or imagined. And, in fact, a close attention to the real powers of art makes the distinction itself between the real and the imaginary, between fact and fiction, and circumstantial and conditional rather than fixed and permanent.

Art is dangerous, in the end, because it brings to consciousness the reality of the fiction of reality—that reality is a work of art: the finest of the fine arts, the supreme fiction.

The College Art Association endorses the deaccessioning policies of the American Association of Museums and Association of Art Museum Directors. These mandate that once a museum approves the serious step of a sale of works from its holdings, those proceeds be put toward the collection and not toward institutional operating costs. The recent sale of the George Bellows painting Men of the Docks from the Maier Museum at Randolph College violates these principles. CAA supports the AAMD censure of the Maier Museum at Randolph College and expresses its regret that Randolph College has compromised the educational and cultural mission of the museum by treating its collection as a fungible asset rather than as a vital part of the institution’s artistic heritage, held in trust for its students and the community.

Filed under: Advocacy — Tags:

Obama and Art History

posted by January 30, 2014

The College Art Association has great respect for President Obama’s initiative to provide all qualified students with an education that can lead to gainful employment. We support all measures that he, Congress, State Legislatures and colleges and universities can do to increase the opportunities for higher education. However, when these measures are made by cutting back on, denigrating or eliminating humanities disciplines such as art history, then America’s future generations will be discouraged from taking advantage of the values, critical and decisive thinking and creative problem solving offered by the humanities. It is worth remembering that many of the nation’s most important innovators, in fields including high technology, business, and even military service, have degrees in the humanities. Humanities graduates play leading roles in corporations, engineering, international relations, government, and many other fields where their skills and creating thinking play a critical role. Let’s not forget that education across a broad spectrum is essential to develop the skills and imagination that will enable future generations to create and take advantage of new jobs and employment opportunities of all sorts.

Read more coverage on this topic:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-art-history-majors-power-the-us-economy/2012/01/06/gIQAUv36hP_blog.html

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/31/obama-becomes-latest-politician-criticize-liberal-arts-discipline

http://chronicle.com/article/No-Laughing-Matter-/144327/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

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