CAA News Today
Inside Higher Ed Reports on the “Great Universities Have Great Museums” Movement
posted by Christopher Howard — October 01, 2009
Today in Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschik reports on recent work of a task force, comprising representatives from seven national and international organizations, that is raising awareness of the value of university and college art museums and galleries in light of recent events involving attempts by schools to sell work from their collections.
In “Avoiding the Next Brandeis,” Jaschik talks to the task-force cochair David Alan Robertson, director of Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, who is “trying to impress upon [regional higher-education accrediting agencies] that museums shouldn’t be viewed as extras, but as ‘teaching institutions and research institutions.’” Jaschik continues, “Another strategy being discussed is encouraging colleges to define the financial exigency plans—or what they would do in a severe financial crisis—and to make the case that museums should not be the first institutions to be closed.”
Lyndel King, task-force cochair and director and chief curator of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, tells the reporter that “we need to educate college administrators and governing boards that disposing of their collections can’t be a way to fill the coffers or seen as an easy way to bring in money.”
The task force comprises representatives from CAA, the American Association of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, the International Council of Museums, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Association of Art Museum Curators. The next meeting of the task force will take place on January 9, 2010, in Sarasota, Florida, in conjunction with the midwinter gathering of the Association of Art Museum Directors.
You may read the petition, published by the task force in July 2009, and include your name and affiliation in the growing list of signatories. A prominent advertisement will appear in the Chronicle for Higher Education later this month; you can download a PDF of it or click and save the above image for use in blogs, press, and more. The task force had planned to include all signatories in the ad, but the list has exceeded 2,200 names and institutional affiliations—too many to include in print.
Inside Higher Ed Reports on the “Great Universities Have Great Museums” Movement
posted by Christopher Howard — October 01, 2009
Today in Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschik reports on recent work of a task force, comprising representatives from seven national and international organizations, that is raising awareness of the value of university and college art museums and galleries in light of recent events involving attempts by schools to sell work from their collections.
In “Avoiding the Next Brandeis,” Jaschik talks to the task-force cochair David Alan Robertson, director of Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, who is “trying to impress upon [regional higher-education accrediting agencies] that museums shouldn’t be viewed as extras, but as ‘teaching institutions and research institutions.’” Jaschik continues, “Another strategy being discussed is encouraging colleges to define the financial exigency plans—or what they would do in a severe financial crisis—and to make the case that museums should not be the first institutions to be closed.”
Lyndel King, task-force cochair and director and chief curator of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, tells the reporter that “we need to educate college administrators and governing boards that disposing of their collections can’t be a way to fill the coffers or seen as an easy way to bring in money.”
The task force comprises representatives from CAA, the American Association of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, the International Council of Museums, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Association of Art Museum Curators. The next meeting of the task force will take place on January 9, 2010, in Sarasota, Florida, in conjunction with the midwinter gathering of the Association of Art Museum Directors.
You may read the petition, published by the task force in July 2009, and include your name and affiliation in the growing list of signatories. A prominent advertisement will appear in the Chronicle for Higher Education later this month; you can download a PDF of it or click and save the above image for use in blogs, press, and more. The task force had planned to include all signatories in the ad, but the list has exceeded 2,200 names and institutional affiliations—too many to include in print.
Listen to Live Audio News Briefing on US v. Stevens on Thursday
posted by Christopher Howard — September 22, 2009
Media Coalition invites listeners to join an audio news briefing discussing the upcoming Supreme Court case US v. Stevens on Thursday, September 24, 2009, at 2:00 PM EDT. Speaking will be David Horowitz from Media Coalition; Laurie Lee Dovey of the Professional Outdoor Media Association; Joan Bertin of the National Coalition Against Censorship; and Chris Finan from the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.
In 2004, Robert J. Stevens was convicted under a federal statute, passed in 1999, which made it illegal to distribute or own media depicting animal cruelty. Stevens, a writer and filmmaker from Virginia, had assembled footage of pit bulls fighting and hunting, mainly in international locations where dogfighting is legal. Last year, Stevens’s conviction was overturned, and the Supreme Court will hear arguments in this case on October 6, 2009. Read CAA’s description of the case and statement on this issue.
This summer, CAA signed an amicus curiae brief supporting the National Coalition Against Censorship’s claim that acts of expression, not actual involvement in illegal activities, are protected under the First Amendment and are not subject to criminal penalties. Media Coalition, a trade association that defends First Amendment rights of the mainstream media, filed its own amicus brief in late July.
To RSVP for the audio news briefing, please contact Kai-Ming Cha at 212-587-4025, ext. 12. To hear the briefing, call 1-888-387-8686 and enter access code 1066257.
Listen to Live Audio News Briefing on US v Stevens on Thursday
posted by Christopher Howard — September 22, 2009
Media Coalition invites listeners to join an audio news briefing discussing the upcoming Supreme Court case US v. Stevens on Thursday, September 24, 2009, at 2:00 PM EDT. Speaking will be David Horowitz from Media Coalition; Laurie Lee Dovey of the Professional Outdoor Media Association; Joan Bertin of the National Coalition Against Censorship; and Chris Finan from the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.
In 2004, Robert J. Stevens was convicted under a federal statute, passed in 1999, which made it illegal to distribute or own media depicting animal cruelty. Stevens, a writer and filmmaker from Virginia, had assembled footage of pit bulls fighting and hunting, mainly in international locations where dogfighting is legal. Last year, Stevens’s conviction was overturned, and the Supreme Court will hear arguments in this case on October 6, 2009. Read CAA’s description of the case and statement on this issue.
This summer, CAA signed an amicus curiae brief supporting the National Coalition Against Censorship’s claim that acts of expression, not actual involvement in illegal activities, are protected under the First Amendment and are not subject to criminal penalties. Media Coalition, a trade association that defends First Amendment rights of the mainstream media, filed its own amicus brief in late July.
To RSVP for the audio news briefing, please contact Kai-Ming Cha at 212-587-4025, ext. 12. To hear the briefing, call 1-888-387-8686 and enter access code 1066257.
Brandeis Committee Recommends Keeping the Rose Art Museum Open
posted by Christopher Howard — September 22, 2009
A report issued by a Brandeis University committee recommends that the school’s Rose Art Museum remain open, but the future of the collection of modern and contemporary art is still in doubt.
In the Boston Globe, Tracy Jan writes that the committee, comprising teachers, students, and university trustees and officials, also suggests better integration between the museum and academic departments, which include not just visual art but also math and science. In addition, a full-time director, who would also teach, and an education director should be hired.
This past summer several members of the Rose Art Museum’s board of overseers filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts in an attempt to prevent Brandeis from selling the art collection. Last week the university filed to dismiss that lawsuit, according to Greg Cook of the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research. An October 13 hearing date has been set.
Brandeis Committee Recommends Keeping the Rose Art Museum Open
posted by Christopher Howard — September 22, 2009
A report issued by a Brandeis University committee recommends that the school’s Rose Art Museum remain open, but the future of the collection of modern and contemporary art is still in doubt.
In the Boston Globe, Tracy Jan writes that the committee, comprising teachers, students, and university trustees and officials, also suggests better integration between the museum and academic departments, which include not just visual art but also math and science. In addition, a full-time director, who would also teach, and an education director should be hired.
This past summer several members of the Rose Art Museum’s board of overseers filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts in an attempt to prevent Brandeis from selling the art collection. Last week the university filed to dismiss that lawsuit, according to Greg Cook of the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research. An October 13 hearing date has been set.
Obama Names Committee on the Arts and the Humanities Leaders
posted by Christopher Howard — September 18, 2009
Barack Obama has appointed new leaders to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. George Stevens, Jr., and Margo Lion will serve as cochairs, and Mary Schmidt Campbell will be vice chair.
This committee, founded in 1982 and comprised of private citizens from across the United States, advocates for the arts and humanities as core of a vital society. It works with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services to advance nonpartisan cultural objectives of the Obama administration.
Stevens is a writer, director, producer of motion pictures and television, founder of the American Film Institute, and creator of the Kennedy Center Honors. He fostered a new generation of documentary filmmakers as head of the US Information Agency’s Motion Picture Service during the Kennedy presidency.
As a Broadway producer, Lion has worked with Tony Kushner, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, August Wilson, and George C. Wolfe, and her work has earned Tony and Olivier awards and a Pulitzer Prize. She is also an adjunct professor and a member of the Dean’s Council at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Tisch is also home to Campbell, where she is dean. A former chair of the New York State Council on the Arts, Campell was executive director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she wrote the catalogue for the exhibition Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden, 1940–1987.
In early August, President Obama appointed Rachel Goslins, an independent television and film producer, as the committee’s executive director.
Obama Names Committee on the Arts and the Humanities Leaders
posted by Christopher Howard — September 18, 2009
Barack Obama has appointed new leaders to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. George Stevens, Jr., and Margo Lion will serve as cochairs, and Mary Schmidt Campbell will be vice chair.
This committee, founded in 1982 and comprised of private citizens from across the United States, advocates for the arts and humanities as core of a vital society. It works with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services to advance nonpartisan cultural objectives of the Obama administration.
Stevens is a writer, director, producer of motion pictures and television, founder of the American Film Institute, and creator of the Kennedy Center Honors. He fostered a new generation of documentary filmmakers as head of the US Information Agency’s Motion Picture Service during the Kennedy presidency.
As a Broadway producer, Lion has worked with Tony Kushner, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, August Wilson, and George C. Wolfe, and her work has earned Tony and Olivier awards and a Pulitzer Prize. She is also an adjunct professor and a member of the Dean’s Council at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Tisch is also home to Campbell, where she is dean. A former chair of the New York State Council on the Arts, Campell was executive director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she wrote the catalogue for the exhibition Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden, 1940–1987.
In early August, President Obama appointed Rachel Goslins, an independent television and film producer, as the committee’s executive director.
CAA Joins Task Force on University Galleries and Museums
posted by Christopher Howard — September 01, 2009
In response to troubling trends in university museums and galleries—including the sale of Maier Art Museum paintings by Randolph College, the closure of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, and the threat of sale of important modernist works at Fisk University—a task force was formed that includes CAA, the American Association of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, and the Kress Foundation to address ways to educate university trustees about the educational value of university museums and to explore protective avenues. A petition was circulated to various associations and also set up online, which received several thousand signatures—including many from CAA members. The petition will be published in the Chronicle of Higher Education later this fall. Quiet conversations are continuing with Brandeis trustees, and several university accreditation commissions have been apprised of the concerns of the task force and the visual-arts field.
On the same topic, caa.reviews recently published an essay entitled “Curricular Connections: The College/University Art Museum as Site for Teaching and Learning.” The author, Laurel Bradley, who is director of exhibitions and curator of the College Art Collection at Carleton College, provides a brief history of university museums and galleries since the mid-twentieth century before exploring several recent initiatives—some funded by the Mellon Foundation’s College and University Art Museum Program—that combine academic and curatorial teaching and education in novel, and often successful, ways.
Jim Leach Is New Chairman of the NEH
posted by Christopher Howard — August 13, 2009
After receiving confirmation from the US Senate last Friday, Jim Leach was sworn in as the ninth chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). A Republican, Leach previously served southeastern Iowa for thirty years in the US House of Representatives, where he chaired the Banking and Financial Services Committee, the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. He also founded and cochaired the Congressional Humanities Caucus.
After leaving Congress in 2007, Leach was John L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs in Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. In September 2007, he took a year’s leave of absence from Princeton to serve as the interim director of the Institute of Politics and a lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
In a recent staff “town hall” meeting about a new “bridging cultures” theme for the NEH, Leach said, “In an era where declining civility increasingly hallmarks domestic politics and where anarchy has taken root in many parts of the world, it is imperative that cultural differences at home and abroad be respectfully understood, rather than irrationally denigrated.”
Leach graduated from Princeton, received a master’s degree in Soviet politics from the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University, and did additional graduate studies at the London School of Economics. He also holds eight honorary degrees and has received numerous awards, including the Sidney R. Yates Award for Distinguished Public Service to the Humanities from the National Humanities Alliance; the Woodrow Wilson Award from Johns Hopkins; the Adlai Stevenson Award from the United Nations Association; the Edgar Wayburn Award from the Sierra Club; the Wayne Morse Integrity in Politics Award; the Norman Borlaug Award for Public Service; and the Wesley Award for Service to Humanity.