CAA News Today
Schools Nationwide Reducing PhD Admissions
posted by Christopher Howard — March 31, 2009
Top research schools nationwide—including Emory University, Columbia University, Brown University, and the University of South Carolina—are reducing admissions to their PhD programs. Because of the recession, reports Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed, “some universities’ doctoral classes will be taking a significant hit, with potential ramifications down the road for the academic job market, the availability of teaching assistants, and the education of new professors.”
Reining in stipends and fellowships is one leading factor for limiting admissions, as is the need to cut program budgets. Some believe things will return to normal when the economy picks up, but the recent breadth of graduates compared with a shrinking labor market and dearth of teaching jobs may see admission reductions stay.
In related news, Fay Hansen of Workforce Management analyzes recent surveys by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute and CollegeGrad.com about hiring statistics and practices for freshly minted undergraduates, which “reflect a long-term trend toward producing more college graduates than labor markets can absorb.”
The article—which describes the current situation where “1.5 million undergraduates [who] will receive their bachelor’s degrees this year . . . will collide with 1.85 million workers with bachelor’s degrees or higher who are currently unemployed”—is far from encouraging. Some findings include:
- Some companies are retreating from hiring experienced candidates in favor of new college graduates, “primarily because of costs”
- The disparity between undergraduate majors and available jobs has been exacerbated by the recession. For example, 83,297 students graduated with visual and performing art degrees, and 88,134 in psychology, but only 67,045 and 47,480 students received degrees in engineering and computer and information sciences, respectively. The mismatch continues at the graduate level, with humanities master’s degrees earned outnumbering those in sciences
- Recruiters are pressuring for direct access to professors about the best students, bypassing schools’ own career-services programs
Most troubling for art and art history is that 6 percent of those employers surveyed by CollegeGrad.com are seeking liberal arts and humanities graduates, compared to 36 percent for engineering and 18 percent for computer science.
Regional MFA Exhibition and Warhol Show at USC Galleries
posted by Christopher Howard — February 12, 2009
The Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California (USC) is hosting the 2009 CAA Regional MFA Exhibition, which will showcase the unique, diverse community of young artists in the Southern California region. Held in the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery and the Gayle and Ed Roski MFA Gallery, the exhibition will be on view February 24–28, 2009. The reception for the artists and CAA conference attendees takes place in Watt Hall 104 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM on Friday, February 27.
After the MFA opening reception, stick around USC for a celebration and special viewing of Looking into Andy Warhol’s Photographic Practice at the USC Fisher Museum of Art.
Education Money Floats in and out of Stimulus Bills
posted by Christopher Howard — February 10, 2009
Doug Lederman at Inside Higher Ed has been following the higher-education component of the current economic-stimulus bills in the US House of Representatives and Senate. The Senate version of the bill, which will be voted on today, has cut several earmarks for education that passed in the House legislation. Also, $50 million earmarked by the House for the National Endowment for the Arts was eliminated by the Senate. If the Senate passes its bill, Congress will work with the Obama administration to reconcile the two different stimulus packages. Read Lederman’s article from yesterday for more details and a breakdown of what’s included and excluded in both bills.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight argued last week for economic stimulus for the nation’s arts nonprofit organizations: “I suspect every one of America’s nonprofits has at least one unfunded project that it would like to get going—‘shovel-ready,’ as it were, even if the job doesn’t involve bricks and mortar.” Chris Jones at the Chicago Tribune also makes a case for the importance of arts in economic-stimulus legislation.
This Week at the Rose Art Museum
posted by Christopher Howard — February 06, 2009
News about the closing of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and the selling of its collection slowed down this week, but not without several highlights. Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz issued a formal apology—not for the decision to dismantle the museum’s collection but rather for his mishandling the announcement to do so. He also regretted leaving out the Brandeis community in the board of trustees’ deliberations.
Michael Rush, director of the Rose, posted his statement on the closing and sale directly to his museum’s website this week. The university’s Department of Fine Arts also joined the chorus of protest voices, issuing a statement to all university faculty, students, alumni, and friends of the department. Also, the New York Times condemned the Brandeis decision in an article by Roberta Smith and in an unsigned editorial.
Jeff Gilbride of the Daily News Tribune in Waltham, Massachusetts, was at the “funeral march” held this week by Brandeis students as an “emotional and rowdy counterpart” to last week’s sit-in at the museum. Relatedly, Jeff Weistein from Obit wonders, “Can a Museum Die?”
Greg Cook reviews the current exhibition at the Rose, Hans Hoffmann: Circa 1950, for the Boston Phoenix, and Daniel Grant considers donor responses and restrictions on gifts in his article “Is the University’s Museum Just a Rose to Be Plucked?” for the Wall Street Journal.
The Rose Art Museum website is chronicling the press on the closing and sale. Laurie Fendrich has been passionately following the story in the Chronicle Review, the blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education. And, of course, the Boston Globe has been leading the charge with daily reports.
Brandeis Department of Fine Arts Responds to Museum Closing
posted by Christopher Howard — February 03, 2009
The Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University, chaired by Charles B. McClendon, the Sidney and Ellen Wien Professor in the History of Art, has published a statement on the closing of the Rose Art Museum. It was sent to all university faculty, students, alumni, and friends of this department. Here is the letter in full:
Late Monday afternoon (January 26) the Department of Fine Arts was notified that the University Board of Trustees resolved to disband the Rose Art Museum and sell the collection at auction to raise funds for the university. In addition to despairing at the Trustees’ action, we wish to make clear that at no point in the decision making process was the Department of Fine Arts faculty consulted. Neither was there any communication regarding the decision with the Rose Board of Overseers on which a member of the faculty sits. Nor was any reference made to the museum at the university-wide faculty meeting last Thursday (January 22) when strategies to confront the current fiscal crisis were discussed.
The department faculty wishes to express our profound sadness at the consequences of this abrupt action for the liberal arts mission, cultural life, and intellectual legacy of the university. Since its founding in 1961, the Rose Art Museum has been building a collection of post-war and contemporary art, gradually, steadily, and with the generous support of donors who believe in Brandeis. Often cited as the best in New England, the collection includes superb examples of work by nearly every major artist from the post-war decades, such as Jasper Johns and Willem de Kooning, and deep holdings of art of the present and of classic modern art from both sides of the Atlantic. No other university in the region can claim a more renowned resource for the study of modern and contemporary art. In the past year thousands of visitors came to the Rose to admire the collection.
The Rose has been a leading expression of the value Brandeis places on the arts. The museum has demonstrated the commitment of Brandeis to intellectual rigor in the humanities as well as social sciences and hard sciences. In the last few years it has served as a place where faculty and students from many disciplines come together for symposia, exhibitions, lectures, and concerts. Through the Rose, Brandeis has publicly placed a premium on creative thinking in whatever form it may take. Binding art to the mission of Jewish sponsored scholarship and education was critical to the history of post-war American art. The continued connection between art and education at Brandeis has been a defining aspect of the Brandeis contribution to American higher education. This mission and the values it has imbued in generations of students have been fundamental to the growth and successes of the educational program of the Department of Fine Arts. The Rose is essential to the character of this department as it exists today.
The collection is an intellectual history of post-war society that corresponds to the history of Brandeis itself. Curators and art historians have been drawing on our collection to tell histories of American art and culture to audiences here in Waltham and around the globe. Hundreds of students from studio art and art history classes study the collection each semester. For some, the collection has been the seedbed for important careers in the arts, Academe, and great museums.
As to the proposed future of the museum building, at no time before or after notification of the decision, have members of the Fine Arts Department expressed a desire to change the function of the Rose or reuse the building. There is no academic advantage to be salvaged from closing the museum and selling our art. It is a sad response to the current fiscal crisis that treasures left in trust for current and future students are now being sacrificed. The department remains committed to continuing the legacy of the intellectual and artistic practice here. We are losing an irreplaceable tool to fulfill that goal.
The Department of Fine Arts offers undergraduate degrees in studio art and art history and hosts a postbaccalaureate program in studio art. Both the department and the Rose Art Museum are CAA institutional members.
Friday News on the Rose Art Museum
posted by Christopher Howard — January 30, 2009
Yesterday about two hundred students and other protesters staged a sit-in at the Rose Art Museum, reports the Boston Globe, which has been following the story closely since Monday. A Facebook group and a website, established this week shortly after the news of the closing, played a major role in rallying students and support.
The Boston Globe also presents some of the larger issues surrounding Brandeis University’s finances. Modern Art Notes has published an general email sent by Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz to those who wrote to him. In it Reinharz gives a few more details about his school’s financial situation. The Justice, the independent student newspaper at Brandeis, and the Wall Street Journal are also looking into this part of the developing story.
The Brandeis Hoot also weighs in on the situation, and Emily Leifer of the Justice writes an op-ed about Brandeis’s public image.
Art & Education, the academic wing of e-flux and Artforum, republished and emailed CAA’s statement against the closing.
Rose Art Museum Updates
posted by Christopher Howard — January 29, 2009
Ford W. Bell, president of the American Association of Museums, has issued a Statement on the Closure of the Rose Museum at Brandeis University. Read it at the Boston Globe’s Exhibitionist blog.
Artinfo.com has published the response from the Association of Art Museum Directors.
The Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, a CAA affiliated society, has published its statement, ACUMG Responds to the Closure of the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University.
Also as reported in the Boston Globe, the president of Brandeis University, Jehuda Reinharz, said that while he would not reconsider closing the museum, he is entertaining the possibility that his school might not sell the Rose Art Museum’s art collection and reaffirmed that the museum building would become a “fine arts teaching center with studio space and an exhibition gallery.” CAA notes that the Rose Art Museum as it stands now is already this.
Other updates and articles can be found at Bloomberg.com, the New York Times, and Modern Art Notes, including a Q&A with Michael Rush, director of the Rose Art Museum. Time also interviewed Rush on Tuesday, and Lee Rosenbaum at CultureGrrl has additional information.
Donn Zaretsky at Art Law Blog is also writing about the Rose situation, with deaccessioning in mind.
CAA Protests Rose Art Museum Closing and Art Collection Sale
posted by Christopher Howard — January 29, 2009
The College Art Association (CAA) was shocked and dismayed to learn of the decision by Brandeis University to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its entire art collection for operating revenue.
CAA supports the Codes of Ethics of the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors, which clearly state that works of art in museum collections are held as a public trust and that any proceeds of sales must only support the acquisition of new works. However, perceiving an entire art collection as a disposable financial asset and then dismantling that collection wholesale to cover other university expenses is deeply troubling for all college and university collections.
The closing of the museum at Brandeis will be devastating to the academic community, not only affecting our colleagues at the museum and students and faculty in the Department of Fine Arts, which offers programs in both studio art and art history, but also depriving the entire arts-loving public in New England and around the world. The teaching of art and art history in higher education is untenable without the direct study of physical works of art, and it appears the Brandeis Board of Trustees has disregarded the kind of scholarship and creativity that have been the hallmark of CAA members for nearly one hundred years.
According to news reports, neither Brandeis University nor the Rose Art Museum is on the brink of economic collapse, nor are they unable to maintain the collections. Given that no clear explanation has been offered on the school’s financial exigencies, the closure of the Rose Art Museum and the sale of its collection appear to be in violation of professional museum standards and of academic transparency and due process; the decision also demonstrates a lack of academic responsibility and fiduciary foresight. We appeal to the Trustees of Brandeis to revisit and reverse their decision.
Paul B. Jaskot
President, College Art Association
Professor of Art History
Department of the History of Art and Architecture
DePaul University
Linda Downs
Executive Director, College Art Association
Download a PDF of this letter from the CAA website.
Brandeis University to Close Rose Art Museum and Sell Collection
posted by Christopher Howard — January 27, 2009
Geoff Edgers and Peter Schworm of the Boston Globe reported yesterday that Brandeis University, a private research university in Waltham, Massachussets, plans to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its collection of modern and contemporary masterworks. The measure to shutter the museum, which was founded in 1961, in late summer 2009 is one of several drastic decisions the school is making as it faces a budget deficit of several million over the next couple years.
The school’s website boasts that the museum “houses what is widely recognized as the finest collection of modern and contemporary art in New England. With more than 6,000 objects—paintings, sculptures, works on paper and new media—the Rose collection has particular strengths in American Modernism, American Social Realism, post-War American, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Surrealism and Photorealism.”
“The decision to shut the museum,” writes Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed, “runs directly counter to the ethics codes of art and museum associations, which permit the sale of art donated for a museum only for the purchase of additional art, not to be shifted to other purposes.” The Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, a CAA affilated society, has already spoken out opposing the closure.
Relatedly, Inside Higher Ed also reports on shrinking college and university endowments.
CAA Publishes Its Directories of Graduate Programs in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — January 26, 2009
New editions of CAA’s two Directories of Graduate Programs in the Arts are now available for purchase. Listing more than six hundred programs in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere worldwide, the guides are the most comprehensive resources available for prospective graduate students in the visual arts. Colleges, universities, and independent art schools are all included.
The first volume, Graduate Programs in Art History: The CAA Directory, includes over 260 programs that offer a master’s, doctoral, or related degrees in art and architectural history, visual studies, museum and curatorial studies, arts administration, library science, and more.
The second book, Graduate Programs in the Visual Arts: The CAA Directory, describes 350-plus programs that offer a master’s or other advanced degree in in studio art, graphic and web design, art education, film production, conservation, heritage preservation, and more.
Compiled in 2008 and conveniently divided into two separate volumes, these easy-to-use directories present detailed information on: descriptions of special courses; numbers, names, and specializations of faculty; facilities such as libraries, studios, and labs; student opportunities for research and work; information on financial aid, fellowships, and assistantships; and details on housing, health insurance, and other practical matters.
An index lists schools alphabetically and by state and country for quick reference. An introductory essay presents a detailed description of the elements of a program entry, including explanations of the various kinds of programs and degrees offered, placing the search and selection process in context.
Although these invaluable books are designed primarily for students who are considering graduate study in the arts, they also provide a wealth of data for academic departments and programs, researchers, publishers, and funders.
Each directory is available for $39.95 for members and $49.95 for nonmembers, plus shipping and handling. Please visit CAA’s online store to get your copies of the directories today!
Please note: If you are ordering on behalf of an institution of department within a university, please use this special order form (or request one from Anitra Haendel, CAA office services and purchasing coordinator) and submit it via fax or post. At this time, online purchases can only be processed for individuals.