CAA News Today
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 19, 2015
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.
Making the Most of the Syllabus
On the first day of class, after a brief introduction to the class topic and my related background, I pass out the syllabus in hard copy. We then read the document together out loud. I ask a student to read the first paragraph. Then the next student reads the next paragraph, and so on. In addition to ensuring that every student reads the entire syllabus, I help students get over possible anxieties about hearing themselves speak in front of their peers. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
It’s the Little Things That Count in Teaching
Line up course readings. Plan the syllabus. Design lesson plans and homework assignments. Those are some of the big-picture elements that we all fret over as college instructors preparing for the fall semester. But as teachers of writing and rhetoric, we’ve come to realize the crucial role of the (often overlooked) “little” things. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
How Art Became Irrelevant
In terms of quantifiable data—prices spent on paintings and photographs and sculptures, visitors accommodated, funds raised, and square footage created at museums—the picture could hardly be rosier. Equally robust is the art market, to judge by a Christie’s auction on May 11 that set several records, including the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art. But quantifiable data can only describe the fiscal health of the fine arts, not their cultural health. Here the picture is not so rosy. (Read more from Commentary.)
Why Is Stolen Art So Hard to Find?
Twenty-five years ago, two thieves dressed as police officers bluffed their way into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made away with $500 million of artwork by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, and others. The thieves didn’t cover their faces and apparently didn’t know much about what they were stealing: they roughly cut the paintings from their frames and left more valuable works hanging on the walls. Despite the thieves’ apparent inexpertise and the ensuing media attention, no suspects were ever arrested and the art was never recovered. (Read more from Slate.)
Collectible after All: Christiane Paul on Net Art at the Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum artport has been an important institutional presence in net art and new media since its launch in 2002. Created and curated by Christiane Paul, artport features online commissions as well as documentation of new-media artworks from the museum’s exhibitions and collections. This year, artport as a whole was made an official part of the Whitney Museum collection; to mark this occasion, the artist Marisa Olson interviewed Paul about the program’s history and evolution over thirteen years. (Read more from Rhizome.)
The Hell You Say
Half a century ago, the defense of free speech was closely identified with groups like the Free Speech Movement, a confederation of activists who came together at the University of California in Berkeley, after a student was arrested for setting up a table of civil-rights literature, in defiance of antisolicitation rules. But as the 1990s progressed, fights over obscenity subsided and fights over so-called political correctness intensified; “free speech” became a different kind of rallying cry, especially on college campuses. (Read more from the New Yorker.)
Thirteen Art History Emojis We Desperately Wish Were Real
This one goes out to all the art-savvy texters of the world, looking to add some of history’s finest manifestations of creative expression to their OMGs and LOLs. It’s been over two years since the glory days of #emojiarthistory, when the art world banded together to adapt art classics into emojis using the options available. What if, instead of using two dancing ballerinas to signify a Diane Arbus photo, there existed a whole realm of ready-made art emojis based on the canon of art history? (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Late Again?
It’s 9:30 AM, and the upper-level course I teach on mass communication is about to begin. Ten of my twenty-seven students are missing. Twenty minutes later, that number dwindles to just two, as eight students arrive, one by one, during my lecture. Frustration kicks in as I try not to let the latecomers derail my train of thought. Does any of that sound familiar? (Read more from Vitae.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 12, 2015
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.
Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey
The results of the Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey lead to a range of conclusions, many of which are perhaps best addressed by museums on the local level, as local and regional demographics tend to differ considerably across the continent. The headline is unsurprising: utilizing the categories employed by the 2000 US Census, 72 percent of AAMD staff is Non-Hispanic White, and 28 percent belongs to historically underrepresented minorities. (Read more from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.)
Women Take the Lead in US Museum Jobs, but Minorities Are Still Underrepresented
American museums have made significant progress toward gender equality but little headway in building ethnically diverse staff, according to a report from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The average museum’s curatorial, education, conservation, and top administrative staff members are 84 percent white. The report, based on a survey administered to 181 museums, was the first comprehensive study of the ethnic and gender makeup of US museum employees. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
The Guerrilla Girls, after Three Decades, Still Rattling Art World Cages
After three decades as masked crusaders for gender and racial equality in the art world—and increasingly, everywhere else—the Guerrilla Girls have lately been enjoying a victory lap. Last year, the Whitney Museum of American Art acquired the group’s portfolio of eighty-eight posters and ephemera from 1985 to 2012, documenting the number of women and minorities represented in galleries and institutions, including the Whitney itself. (Read more from the New York Times.)
A Sobering Look at How AIDS Changed Art in America
In the most literal way, AIDS left its mark on the art world. Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres are just a few of the well-known artists who died from illnesses related to the virus. And as a result, some of the art from the late 1980s and 1990s reflected the fear, mourning, and misunderstandings surrounding the epidemic. Art AIDS America, an exhibition that’s temporarily up in West Hollywood and opening in full at the Tacoma Art Museum in October, looks at how AIDS inserted itself into the art world’s conversation. (Read more from Wired.)
What’s at Stake in the Artist’s Resale Right Debate?
During the Scull auction of 1973, in which the collector Robert C. Scull sold some fifty iconic works of Pop and Minimalist art for $2.2 million, Robert Rauschenberg, whose work was represented prominently among the lots but who earned nothing from their sale, showed up to heckle the collector. Footage from the Scull auction was played to a packed house at Artists Space in New York, which hosted a panel of arts professionals that addressed resale rights for artists. (Read more from Artsy.)
Is the Copyright Office Inflating the Need for Orphan Works Legislation?
The issues and concerns surrounding orphan works emerged from the Copyright Act of 1976 when copyright protection became automatic and registration became optional. The Copyright Office has noted in its most recent report, Orphan Works and Mass Digitization, that the inability to locate the owners of these copyrighted but not registered works is “perhaps the single greatest impediment to creating new works.” But is it? (Read more from Clancco.)
Facing Facts: Artists Need an Entrepreneurial Mindset, Part 2
The attention generated by my first essay on artist entrepreneurship made me elated and depressed simultaneously. It was obviously hitting a nerve of many in the live arts whose training gave them no foundation for how to actually make a living. Although many college and university faculty members came forward in the comment section to demonstrate that there are, in fact, programs that prepare students for the marketplace, there is still a disconnect for most artists between their creative practice and the pragmatic skill set necessary to make a go of it in the real world. (Read more from HowlRound.)
Instagram Takes on Growing Role in the Art Market
Anyone in the art market who was not already paying attention to the social-media platform Instagram had to sit up and take notice in late April after the actor Pierce Brosnan visited the showroom of Phillips auction house in London. Brosnan snapped a selfie in front of a work he admired: the Lockheed Lounge, a space-age aluminum chaise longue by the industrial designer Marc Newson. Then he added the words “let the bidding commence” and posted it to the 164,000 followers of his Instagram feed. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Call for Applicants to PIPS Committees
posted by Vanessa Jalet — Aug 04, 2015
The Professional Interests, Practices and Standards (PIPS) committees address critical concerns of CAA’s members set out in the goals of CAA’s Strategic Plan. CAA invites members to apply for service on one of these PIPS working groups.
Committee on Diversity Practices
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/diversity
The Committee on Diversity Practices supports the development of global perspectives on art and visual culture. The committee promotes artistic, curatorial, scholarly and institutional practices that deepen appreciation of political and cultural heterogeneity, as educational and professional values. To that end, the committee assesses and evaluates the development and implementation of curricular innovation, new research methods, curatorial and pedagogical strategies, and hiring practices that contribute to the realization of these goals.
Committee on Intellectual Property
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/ip
The Committee on Intellectual Property monitors and interprets copyright legislation for the benefit of CAA’s various constituencies. In so doing, it seeks to offer educational programs and opportunities for discussion and debate in response to copyright legislation that affects educators, scholars, museum professionals, and artists.
Committee on Women in the Arts
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/women
The Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) promotes the scholarly study and recognition of women’s contributions to the visual arts and to critical and art-historical studies; advocates for feminist scholarship and activism in art; develops partnerships with organizations with compatible missions; monitors the status of women in the visual-arts professions; provides historical and current resources on feminist issues; and supports emerging artists and scholars in their careers.
Education Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/education
The Education Committee promotes the visual arts as essential human activity; as a creative Endeavor and subject of cultural and historical inquiry and critical appreciative activity, and encourages excellence in teaching at all levels. Its focus is on pedagogy at the higher education level in art history, visual culture, studio, aesthetics, and art criticism, and on the interface between arts teaching and learning research and practice.
International Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/international
The International Committee seeks to foster an international community of artists, scholars and critics within CAA; to provide forums in which to exchange ideas and make connections; to encourage engagement with the international student community; to develop relationships between CAA and organizations outside the United States with comparable goals and activities; and to assist the CAA Board of Directors by identifying and recommending advocacy issues that involve CAA and cross national borders.
Museum Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/museum
The Museum Committee provides a bridge between scholars and arts professionals in the academic and museum fields. It offers a forum for the discussion of issues of mutual interest and promotes museum advocacy issues within CAA. The committee lends support and mentorship for both seasoned and emerging professionals to protect and interpret the arts within museums.
Professional Practices Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/professional
The Professional Practices Committee responds to specific concerns of the membership in relation to areas such as job placement and recruitment, tenure and promotion procedures, scholarly standards and ethics, studio health and safety, and artists’ practices. The Professional Practices Committee also oversees CAA’s Standards and Guidelines.
Services to Artists Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/services
The Services to Artists Committee (SAC) was formed by the CAA Board of Directors to seek broader participation by artists and designers in the organization and the Annual Conference. SAC identifies and addresses concerns facing artists and designers; creates and implements programs and events at the conference and beyond; explores ways to encourage greater participation and leadership in CAA; and identifies ways to establish closer ties with other arts professionals and institutions. To this end, committee members are responsible for the programming of ARTspace and its related events.
Student and Emerging Professionals Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/student
Established in February 1998, the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee is comprised of CAA members who are students, recent graduates, and experienced arts professionals with the intention of better representing students and emerging professionals within the larger CAA and academic framework.
In the past year the Committee on Diversity has addressed how CAA as an association can positively address diversity awareness, training and implementation and developed a site for resources on diversity practices: http://www.collegeart.org/diversity/; the Committee on Intellectual Property has organized conference sessions on the new Fair Use Code and maintains a resource cite on intellectual property: http://www.collegeart.org/ip/; the Committee on Women in the Arts provides CWA Picks: http://www.collegeart.org/committees/picks and supports scholarship on women in the arts; the Education Committee has organized conference panels on issues in education; the International Committee promotes interactions between scholars on a global basis and has supported the CAA/Getty International Travel program that brings international scholars to the annual conference; the Museum Committee focuses on the history and theory of art museums and academia and has initiated a new project—Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals that has support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Professional Practices Committee updates and develops guidelines for the profession; Services to Artists Committee plans and organizes ArtSpace at the annual conference that presents prominent artists and designers, discussions on artist/designer concerns from safety in the workplace to professional development; the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee organizes panels related to emerging professionals and holds mentoring and mock job interviews at the conference. All committees are seeking new members with expertise in these areas.
This year the Board of Directors has established a Task Force on Committees to strengthen and streamline the important work of CAA’s nine Professional Interest, Practices and Standards committees. The nine PIPS committees are working with the Task Force to determine the future focus and structure of the committees with the goal of better serving the visual arts field.
At the Annual Conference in February each committee presents one or two sessions on a subject related to their committee charge.
Committee members serve three-year terms (2016–2019), with at least one new member rotating onto a committee each year. Candidates must be current CAA members and possess expertise appropriate to the committee’s work. Members of all committees volunteer their services without compensation. Committee work is not for the faint of heart; it is expected that once appointed to a committee, a member will involve himself or herself in an active and serious way.
The following vacancies are open for terms beginning in February 2016:
- Committee on Diversity Practices: 2–3 members
- Committee on Intellectual Property: 4 members
- Committee on Women in the Arts: 3 members
- Education Committee: 6 members
- International Committee: 5 members
- Museum Committee: 0 members
- Professional Practices Committee: 3 members
- Services to Artists Committee: 5 members
- Student and Emerging Professionals Committee: 2–3 members
CAA’s president, vice president for committees, and executive director review all candidates in the fall and make appointments in December, prior to the Annual Conference. New members are introduced to their committees during their respective business meetings at the conference.
Nominations and self-nominations should include a brief statement (no more than 150 words) describing your qualifications and experience and an abbreviated CV (no more than 2–3 pages). Please send all materials to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison at vjalet@collegeart.org. Deadline: October 16, 2015.). Kindly enter subject line in email: 2016 PIPS Applicant.
CAA Executive Director Linda Downs Announces Retirement
posted by Linda Downs — Jul 31, 2015
Linda Downs, executive director and chief executive officer of the College Art Association (CAA), has announced her retirement, effective February 2016. Under her direction during her nine-year tenure, CAA celebrated its Centennial with a new visual identity and reestablished itself as the largest and most active association in the academic and museum visual-arts field. CAA has been a strong advocate on critical issues in the field, including workforce issues such as equity for part-time faculty, changing the restrictions on visas for international scholars and artists, and state and federal support for visual-arts higher education. CAA has made major improvements to its publications: current and archived issues of The Art Bulletin and Art Journal are now available online as a result of a copublishing partnership with Taylor & Francis; caa.reviews became a fully open-access online journal with an increased readership; and the Art Journal Open website was established, with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, to focus more on artists and to complement Art Journal articles in print.
Over thirty professional guidelines and standards were developed through the expertise of the Professional Practices Committee. A task force supported by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation was established to develop the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, which has greatly clarified what fair use is and how to utilize it for third-party images and materials in creative and scholarly work. CAA has changed its journal author contracts accordingly. Book and author subventions increased to approximately sixteen per year through the support of the Mellon Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, and Wyeth Foundation for American Art. International membership increased through the CAA/Getty International Program, which supported attendance and seminars on international issues at the past four Annual Conferences. The Professional Development Fellowships for Art Historians and Artists was reinstated. A new project, Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals, that was initiated by the Museum Committee and funded by the Mellon Foundation will establish a social community forum to promote the exchange of information related to the integration of academic art museums into various academic disciplines of study. Following CAA’s strategic plan, task forces have been established to review the structure of the nine Professional Interest, Practices, and Standards Committees, provide guidelines for digital art and architectural history in promotion and tenure, transform and extend the Annual Conference, review the governance structure, and address greater inclusion and attention to design in programs and publications. CAA has laid the groundwork for transforming itself in directions that are critical to the support of the visual-arts field.
The CAA Board of Directors has expressed its admiration for Downs’s outstanding leadership. DeWitt Godfrey, board president, stated, “Linda has brought CAA to a new professional level of service to members and the visual-arts field. We wish her well in retirement and thank her for her dedicated service.”
CAA has organized a search committee and will retain a search firm to seek a new Executive Director.
About CAA
The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions, nationally and internationally, by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other programs, services, and events. CAA focuses on a wide range of advocacy issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching. Learn more about CAA at www.collegeart.org.
For more information, please contact Nia Page, CAA director of membership, development, and marketing.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 22, 2015
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.
Great Colleges to Work For 2015
This special issue features results of the Chronicle’s eighth annual Great Colleges to Work For survey, based on responses from nearly 44,000 campus employees. The survey found that at colleges recognized for a strong workplace culture, employees were more likely to feel acknowledged, supported, well informed by their leaders, and engaged in a common mission. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
UK Copyright Amendment Provokes Controversy in the Art and Design World
The British government has recently moved to repeal section 52 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Removing this section would increase the copyright duration for artistic designs—as opposed to traditional artistic works—from twenty-five years from the year the designs were first marketed to the more common term of life of the author plus seventy years. The new arrangement has stirred up controversy in the process. (Read more from Center for Art Law.)
Help Desk: Selling Out
Recently a design firm approached me about a project that involves artists painting on small refrigerators from which energy drinks will be sold. There will be a gallery exhibition of these fridges before they are distributed to various retail outlets in major cities around the country. The pay is pretty good, though not what I would ideally get for a painting of that size. Will I be committing an ethical transgression if I participate in this promotion? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
Peter J. Cohen Trumpets the Art of Amateur Photography
Waiting for a companion at a Chelsea flea market in New York in the early 1990s, Peter J. Cohen thumbed through a bin of bygone snapshots, torn out of discarded family albums. He didn’t know what attracted him to the images—he’d never been interested in vintage photography and wasn’t the type to reach for a camera to document his own life—but, on a whim, he purchased five of them for $8. When he got home and inspected the photographs more closely, he knew right away that he wanted to return to the flea market to buy more. (Read more from the Boston Globe.)
You Can’t Hurry Greatness
In 1990, the psychologist John Hayes proposed the “ten-year rule,” arguing that even someone with enormous creative potential needs to spend a decade working on his or her craft before producing work of lasting merit. In a newly published paper, Richard Hass of Philadelphia University and Robert Weisberg of Temple University reevaluate this rule by looking at the careers of some of America’s most enduringly popular artists: five composers from the Great American Songbook era. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
Mentoring as a Tenure Criterion
Purdue University, like most colleges and universities, evaluates faculty members up for tenure on their accomplishments in research, teaching, and service. Like most research universities, research has tended to be prominent. But university administrators recently told the Purdue board of plans to make significant changes in those criteria. Coming first will be an expectation that faculty members are active mentors to undergraduates, especially to at-risk students. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Museums’ Disturbing Transformation: Relentless Commercialization
For-profit art dealers are organizing shows for nonprofit museums. Museum professionals are organizing shows for commercial art fairs and galleries. Museum collections are being monetized, rented out for profit to other museums and private corporations. Corporations are co-organizing museum shows. In fact, so commonplace is the boundary-blurring that few any longer notice. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
Modeling the Behavior We Expect in Class
We should be thinking about social learning theory in the context of the college classroom. Although so-called observational learning now has widespread acceptance and a fair amount has been written about the benefits of modeling in the grade-school classroom, there is surprisingly little out there on the topic for college instructors. (Read more from Vitae.)
Improvements to CAA’s Annual Conference
posted by Linda Downs — Jul 16, 2015
CAA’s Annual Conference provides an important platform for the dissemination of new research and creative work. It also provides opportunities for networking, hosts workshops on crucial career topics, tackles pressing issues in the field, and provides an opportunity for institutions to interview candidates for open positions. In an effort to serve its members more effectively, CAA has established a Task Force on the Annual Conference to address ways of providing more occasions for members to exchange work and scholarship. The task force will also investigate greater uses of technology to extend the conference beyond its physical location and increased networking opportunities for professionals in the visual arts. The changes announced below are only the first round of a more thorough redesign of the conference, a very much renewed and improved version of which will be introduced in the coming years.
In preparation for the next Annual Conference, to be held February 3–6, 2016, in Washington, DC, and in an effort to strengthen the Annual Conference while providing an even greater value to the membership and our profession, members of the CAA Board of Directors and the Task Force on the Annual Conference have recommended and approved the following changes:
- Allowing members to present papers and chair sessions in consecutive years at the Annual Conference
- Extending the Annual Conference through low-cost webinars to accommodate those affected by reductions in funds for professional travel. CAA will offer webinars on a regular basis that will highlight the content generated by members
- Conference registration, opening in early October 2015, will have only one advance registration period that will end on December 21, 2015
- A new discounted registration fee for CAA members who are part-time faculty or are independent artists and scholars
- Institutional members may purchase specially discounted student memberships and register their students for the conference at deeper discounts during the advance registration period. These discounts will not be available onsite
- CAA members will be hired to be room monitors and to work at CAA’s registration area for a stipend and free conference registration rather than hiring temporary staff to fill these roles
- Providing a conference that serves members. Everyone who participates (i.e., presenter, speaker, chair) must be a current CAA member at the time of the conference
- All participants will need to either register for the entire conference or purchase a single-time-slot ticket for the session in which they are participating. This change applies to sessions led by all CAA affiliated societies and special-interest groups
CAA must proactively respond to the escalating costs of producing the Annual Conference. Ever-increasing expenses include staffing the conference, union rates at hotels, guaranteeing minimum numbers of attendees, and providing audiovisual equipment and WiFi. In the past, many sessions were offered without requiring CAA membership or conference registration. CAA can no longer subsidize the attendance and participation of nonmembers and nonregistrants. In order for CAA to maintain the high quality of the conference and to meet the needs of its members, we ask for your support as we introduce these changes to improve the conference experience.
The 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, DC, will be outstanding. The keynote speaker will be David Adjaye, architect of the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall and newly designated architect of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Richard J. Powell is CAA’s Distinguished Scholar, and Joyce Scott is the Distinguished Artist who will be interviewed. CAA will sponsor an MFA exhibition with student artists from around the region and host a reception for all CAA members at the Katzen Art Center at American University. In addition, the Annual Conference Committee for the DC meeting is preparing special tours to artists’ studios and museums and organizing special events.
Washington is home to a host of outstanding museums and other cultural institutions, and CAA has not held a conference there since 1991. We are very pleased to bring the conference to Washington, DC, and grateful for the support of our membership and institutions in that region. You will not want to miss this exciting event! Please refer to http://conference.collegeart.org for ongoing updates and news about the 2016 Annual Conference.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 15, 2015
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.
Trigger Warning Diffused
Students at Crafton Hills College who sign up for a course on the graphic novel next year will encounter works such as Fun Home and Persepolis without being first warned on the syllabus that they might be offended. That’s the way it has been at the college, but officials at the California community college said in June that a trigger warning would be added to the syllabus after one student and her parents complained about those two novels as well as two others. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Speaking for the “Quitters” and “Failures”
In the eyes of many academics, as Leonard Cassuto recently pointed out, I am considered a failure because I did not earn a doctorate. Meanwhile, American universities are awarding more doctorates than ever. And yet I have something most of those newly minted PhDs will never have: a full-time, tenured teaching job. (Read more from Chronicle of Higher Education.)
The Booming World of Architecture That Only Exists in Pixels
There’s a long tradition of great architects never building a single thing. They’re called paper architects, because their work is purely two-dimensional. But today, you might look for them working somewhere else: video-game design and three-dimensional visualization. An architectural visualization artist named Ronen Bekerman has been at the center of that shift. (Read more from Gizmodo.)
Help Desk: How to Lob a Pitch
How do I pitch an art article to an editor? I have begun a writing practice that is not reviewing art as much as just reflecting on art, science, and visual culture in essay-length posts. I would love to share them but don’t even know where to start. (Read more from Daily Serving.)
Art Critics Need to Get Serious If They Want to Thrive Online
Amazon announced last month that it would change its payment structure for independent writers who publish directly on the online retailer’s different Kindle platforms, giving out royalties according to the number of pages read by Kindle users, rather than per book downloaded. A per-page payscale privileges a certain kind of writing, one that relies on cliffhangers and withholding information, but this attitude fails to echo the complexities, possibilities, and variety of web-based publishing platforms. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Collector Fights for African Art
Sindika Dokolo, a Congolese businessman and art collector, is on a crusade to force Western museums, art dealers, and auction houses to return Africa’s art, particularly works that might have been removed illegally during the colonial era. “Works that used to be clearly in African museums must absolutely return to Africa,” Dokolo said. “There are works that disappeared from Africa and are now circulating on the world market based on obvious lies about how they got there.” (Read more from the New York Times.)
A Done Deal, Obama to Create Basin and Range Monument
A vast sweep of rural Nevada marked by lonely desert valleys, craggy mountain ranges, and ancient and modern art will become the newest addition to the nation’s inventory of protected landscapes. President Barack Obama will sign a proclamation designating the Basin and Range National Monument on 704,000 acres of Lincoln and Nye counties in Nevada, the White House announced. The artist Michael Heizer has spent decades creating a massive earthen sculpture, called City, in the midst of the newly protected area. (Read more from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.)
Is Adjuncting the “Kiss of Death”?
Numerous commentators have observed that being an adjunct, as a recent essay put it, “actually seems to decrease your chances of securing a tenure-track position.” Some have even gone so far as to label adjuncting a career destroyer, the proverbial “kiss of death.” But is it really? (Read more from Vitae.)
CAA’s Fair Use Code Receives Important New Endorsements
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 13, 2015
Only months after its release, major visual arts organizations continue to endorse CAA’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts. The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) each voted in April to endorse CAA’s set of principles regarding best practices in the fair use of copyrighted materials. In June, the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and Association of Research Libraries (ARL) also voted to endorse.
Founded in 1940, the Society of Architectural Historians is a nonprofit membership organization that promotes the study, interpretation and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes, and urbanism worldwide. SAH serves a network of local, national and international institutions and individuals who, by vocation or avocation, focus on the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life. SAH promotes meaningful public engagement with the history of the built environment through advocacy efforts, print and online publications, and local, national, and international programs.
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association, is the higher education association for librarians, committed to advancing learning and transforming scholarship. Founded in 1940 and representing nearly 11,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals, ACRL is dedicated to enhancing the ability of academic library and information professionals to serve the information needs of the higher education community and to improve learning, teaching, and research. As Mary Ellen K. Davis, executive director of ACRL, stated: “The Code will serve as a valuable open-access resource for our higher education stakeholders.” Both organizations are disseminating the Code to their members.
The mission of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) is to foster excellence in art and design librarianship and image management. Founded in 1972, it has a membership of 1,000 that includes architecture and art librarians, visual resources professionals, artists, curators, educators, publishers, students, and others throughout North America interested in visual arts information. In a written statement, the ARLIS board wrote, “The ARLIS/NA Executive Board endorses the College Art Association’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, an important document that will advance visual arts scholarship and creative practice in this digital age. The Code is a strong step away from a permissions culture that hinders many members of the larger community.”
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of the leading research libraries in the US and Canada. Comprising more than 125 libraries at comprehensive, research-intensive institutions, its mission is to shape and influence forces affecting the future of research libraries in the process of scholarly communication. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations.[3]
Groups that previously have endorsed the Code include the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) and the American Library Association (ALA).
These endorsements come in addition to early support for the Code from the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), both of which have recommended it to their members. In a letter to CAA, Susan Taylor, president of AAMD, and Christine Anagnos, its executive director, wrote: “AAMD believes the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts is an excellent contribution to the field and a great point of departure for best practices in the fair use of copyrighted materials…. AAMD believes this document has the potential to be a valuable aid to all professionals in the visual arts and will recommend it to our membership.”
CAA welcomes other endorsements, and encourages organizations in the field to recommend the Code to members. CAA representatives are happy to address questions and to make educational presentations. To make arrangements for a presentation, whether by webinar, conference call, or in person, please contact me at jlanday@collegeart.org. The Code and supporting materials are available at www.collegeart.org/fair-use.
The creation of CAA’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Improve Opportunities for International Cultural Activity; Support the Arts Requirement Timely Service (ARTS) Act
posted by CAA — Jul 10, 2015
The CAA Board of Directors has approved its support of the following notice.
Improve Opportunities for International Cultural Activity
Support the Arts Requirement Timely Service (ARTS) Act
We write to urge your support for the Arts Require Timely Service (ARTS) Act, which improves processing for visa petitions filed by, or on behalf of, nonprofit arts-related organizations by simply ensuring enforcement of current statutory requirements.
Action now will ensure that the U.S. visa process for artists is reliable, efficient, and affordable. Congress recognized the time-sensitive nature of arts events when writing the 1991 federal law regarding O and P visas, in which the USCIS is currently instructed to process O and P arts visas in 14 days. While USCIS has made recent efforts to observe this timeframe, there is a history of extreme unpredictability in the timing of the artist visa process, with wait times of up to six months.
The ARTS Act would consistently reduce the USCIS processing times for nonprofit O and P arts-related visa petitions to a total of 29 days—twice the current statutory requirement. USCIS would be required to treat any nonprofit arts-related O and P visa petition that it fails to adjudicate within the current statutory 14-day timeframe as a Premium Processing case (an additional 15-day turn-around time), free of additional charge. Previous consideration of the ARTS Act has had strong bipartisan support.
American nonprofit arts organizations and artists—in communities large and small across our country—provide an important public service and boost international diplomacy by presenting foreign guest artists in performances, educational events, and cultural programs in communities across the country. Only with consistent improvements over time, will confidence in the U.S. visa process continue to be re-built among U.S. petitioning organizations and foreign artists alike, greatly enhancing international cultural exchange.
Enactment of this provision will make enduring improvements to the visa process. Please support the Arts Require Timely Service (ARTS) Act.
American Alliance of Museums
American Association of Independent Music
American Federation of Musicians
Americans for the Arts
Association of Art Museum Directors
Association of Performing Arts Presenters
Chamber Music America Dance/USA
League of American Orchestras
Literary Network
Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education
National Alliance for Musical Theatre
National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures
Network of Ensemble Theaters
New Music USA
North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents
OPERA America
Performing Arts Alliance
TamizdatAVAIL
The Recording Academy
Theatre Communications Group
Affiliated Society News for July 2015
posted by CAA — Jul 09, 2015
American Society for Aesthetics
The American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), an association for aesthetics, criticism, and theory of the arts, will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the ASA Feminist Caucus Committee with a full day of workshop discussions, followed by a celebratory reception, on Saturday, November 14, 2015. The Feminist Caucus Committee anniversary is part of the annual ASA conference, to be held from November 11–14 at the Desoto Hilton Hotel in Savannah, Georgia. Noted scholars will discuss the evolution and contributions of feminist scholarship within philosophical aesthetics, focusing on three main topics: “History, Feminism, and the American Society for Aesthetics”; “Feminist Scholarship Today OR the Impact—Hidden or Otherwise—of Feminist Scholarship”; and “Feminist Pedagogy and Curricula in Aesthetics.” For more information, please visit www.aesthetics-online.org/feminist or contact Peg Brand.
Arts Council of the African Studies Association
The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) is pleased to announce the large number of association members who will be participating in the upcoming European Conference on African Studies (Paris, July 8–10, 2015). The increased participation of ACASA members in events taking place outside the United States is evidence of the organization’s growing presence on a global scale. It also reflects concerted efforts to create synergies with international partners.
ACASA is currently inviting nominations and self-nominations for service on its board. New board members will begin service at the African Studies Association (ASA) meeting on November 19, 2015. Applicants must be members of ACASA to participate in the nomination and election process. The deadline for nominations is September 20, 2015.
Asian American Women Artists Association
The board president of the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA), Cynthia Tom, is one of three recipients of the Commons Curatorial Residency at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco for A Place of Her Own, on view November 19–December 11, 2015. The Commons, entering its sixth year, is a competitive, yearlong incubator for exhibition research, planning, installation, and realization. The Commons supports risk taking, intercultural learning, and awareness of social issues by providing space and support for exhibitions that instigate accessible, multifaceted participation in the arts. A Place of Her Own excavates the vital dreams and hopes of women and features more than thirty found object art works and large-scale installations by women artists. Each piece is a courageous visual answer to the question, “If you had a place of your own, what would it be?” Exhibited artworks, marked by a saturation of color, imaginative use of materials, and visual storytelling, highlight the personal yet universal journey to seek out and claim a place without external rules or expectations. Events and an interactive installation, Community House, invite the audience to join the journey.
Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey
The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) has launched the H-AMCA reviews program with six new reviews. The organization is thrilled to have partnered with the H-Net editorial team. Readers may access the reviews through the H-Net reviews page. This announcement marks an exciting transition for the established AMCA reviews program that was originally accessible through the AMCA website. The website’s “reviews” section will now act as a supplement to the full reviews published through H-Net.
The AMCA editorial committee that will oversee the new reviews program is: Tiffany Floyd, H-AMCA commons editor and PhD student at Columbia University; Jessica Gerschultz, assistant professor at the University of Kansas and AMCA board member (secretary); Berin Golonu, doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester; Sarah-Neel Smith, assistant professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (fall 2015); and Saima Akhtar, postdoctoral fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. If you have questions about the new H-AMCA reviews program or are interested in reviewing books or events, please contact Tiffany Floyd or Jessica Gerschultz.
Association of Historians of American Art
The board of the Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) thanks two outgoing members—Sarah Kelly Oehler, chair emerita; and Katherine Smith, sessions coordinator—for their service. The board welcomes incoming cochair Ellery Foutch and sessions coordinator Elizabeth Lee.
AHAA hosted its successful third biennial symposium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this past October with 139 members in attendance. At its CAA business meeting on February 13, 2015, AHAA chair Anna Marley proposed a vote to add a new symposium liaison position to the board. The symposium liaison will serve a term of three years and, in consultation with the cochairs, facilitate the coordination of the biennial symposium and act as a liaison between the AHAA board and the local symposium steering committee. AHAA solicited candidates for this position this spring and have named the first symposium liaison: Sarah Kelly Oehler.
The next biannual AHAA symposium will to be held in Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas, in fall 2016. The symposium will be chaired by Maggie Adler and Shirley Reece-Hughes of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Mark Thistlethwaite of Texas Christian University.
Also in 2015, the active AHAA membership grew from 180 to 350, and the AHAA journal was launched.
AHAA looks forward to its sponsored sessions at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC: a professional session, “Claiming the Unknown, the Forgotten, the Fallen, the Lost, and the Dispossessed,” chaired by Robert Cozzolino; and a scholarly session, “Art and Invention in the US,” led by Ellery Foutch and Hélène Valance.
Association of Print Scholars
The Association of Print Scholars (APS) has grown to almost three hundred members since its official launch in October 2014. In May 2015, APS shared its new website, which allows members to create profiles, share scholarship, and learn about upcoming events.
Offline, APS held receptions for members during the CAA Annual Conference in New York, the Renaissance Society of America conference in Berlin, and the Salon de l’estampe in Paris. APS also announced the establishment of the Schulman and Bullard Article Prize, which will be given yearly to recognize an outstanding article by an emerging scholar in the field.
In the coming year, Peter Parshall, former curator of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, will give the APS inaugural lecture, entitled “Why Study Prints Now?” on September 25, 2015, in New York. During the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC, Freyda Spira of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Elizabeth Rudy of Harvard Art Museums will chair the session “The Art of Collecting.”
Coalition of Women in the Arts Organization
At the 2015 CAA Annual Conference in New York, the Coalition of Women in the Arts Organization (CWAO) presented a panel on “Women Artists and Installation Art,” which discussed numerous and innovative approaches that women artists use to present the concepts and issues of their concerns. For CAA’s 2016 meeting in Washington, DC, the organization is preparing a panel on “Technology and Women Artists.” The panel is currently open for proposals, which may include artists who use technology or incorporate it into either traditional or new mediums in order to convey their concepts and their social concerns. Art historians may apply, if presenting a paper about one or more women that use technology in their papers. The panel chair is Kyra Belan, Broward College, PO Box 275, Matlacha, FL 33993.
International Association of Word and Image Studies
The International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS) has announced the latest in its book series, Interactions. The Imaginary: Word and Image/L’Imaginaire: texte et image, edited by Claus Clüver, Matthijs Engelberts, and Véronique Plesch, has just been published by Brill. The imaginary as a critical concept originated in the twentieth century and has been theorized in diverse ways. It can be understood as a register of thought; the way we interpret the world; the universe of images, signs, texts, and objects of thought. In this volume, the imaginary is explored as it manifests itself in encounters between the verbal and the visual. A number of the essays brought together here explore the transposition of the imaginary in illustrations of texts and verbal renditions of images, as well as in comic books based on paintings or on verbal narratives. Others analyze ways in which books deal with film or television and investigate the imaginary in digital media. Special attention is paid to the imaginary of places and the relationship of the imaginary with memory. Written in English and French, these contributions by European and American scholars demonstrate the various concerns and approaches characteristic of contemporary scholarship in word and image studies.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) has been awarded a grant of $8400 from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to continue the IAS/Kress lecture series in Italy for another three years. The 2016 lecture will take place in Florence. IAS announces a one-time, extra IAS Research and Publication Grant of up to $1,000 to fund or subsidize a research trip or publication (deadline: July 15, 2015) and a new grant of up to $1,000 that will support transoceanic conference travel for scholars holding the PhD presenting a paper on Italian art and architecture from the early nineteenth century to the present (deadline: October 1, 2015). Please visit the IAS website for further information and application guidelines.
IAS is currently accepting proposals for its sponsored long (2½ hours) and short (1½ hours) sessions at the 2017 CAA Annual Conference in New York (deadline: August 15, 2015). Visit the IAS website for further information and submission guidelines. IAS secretary Sean Roberts now serves as the society’s executive vice president; the organization will appoint an acting secretary this summer. Please consider writing for the IASblog on any topic related to Italian art and architecture from prehistory to the present!
National Art Education Association
The National Art Education Association (NAEA), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum invite you to participate in SummerStudio: Design Thinking for Art Educators, taking place July 13–17, 2015, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.
NAEA has published two new practical curriculum resources and texts for your classes: Curriculum Inquiry and Design for School- and Community-Based Art Educationand Design Standards for School Art Facilities.
Pacific Arts Association
The Pacific Arts Association-Europe conference will be held July 2–4, 2015, at the Museo de América in Madrid, Spain. The theme of the conference is “Recent Research in Pacific Arts.” For more information, please contact adama@adamaamerica.com.
Pacific Arts Association-Pacific seeks interest in its 2015 conference on “Trading Traditions: The Role of Art in the Pacific’s Expansive Exchange Networks,” to be held at the Fa’onelua Conference Centre in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, from September 30 to October 4, 2015. For further information, contact Karen Stevenson.
A three-day international conference entitled “Pacifique(S)” will take place at the University of Le Havre in France from November 4 to 6, 2015. The organizers of this interdisciplinary conference seek papers addressing the following broad thematic concerns: Oceans, Histories, and Diaspora. If you wish to participate, please send an abstract of up to 250 words to Jacqueline Charles-Rault.
The Pacific Arts Association – North America looks forward to you attending the session “Photography in and of the Pacific: Collecting the Past, Visualizing the Future” at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington DC. This session will be of interest to those studying historic and contemporary photography. Look for a detailed description in CAA’s Conference Program.
The twelfth Pacific Arts Association International Symposium 2016, to be hosted by Auckland Museum in New Zealand, promises to be a dynamic and engaging symposium that will take place between two iconic Pacific events in Auckland: Pasifika Festival (March 11–12) and Polyfest (most likely to occur March 18–20).
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) seeks curators, professors, gallerists, art historians, and scholars to review student and/or professional member portfolios at SPE’s fifty-third national conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference will take place March 10–13, 2016; portfolio reviewers will receive discounted admission to the four-day event in exchange for their participation. For more information on the conference offerings, visit the SPE website. To express interest in serving as a portfolio reviewer, please contact info@spenational.org.
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
As of April 1, 2015, the Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has become incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in the State of New York. As a CAA affiliate society, SHERA will sponsor a 1½-hour session at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington DC, entitled “Collecting, Curating, Canonizing, Critiquing: The Institutionalization of Eastern European Art” and organized by Ksenia Nouril. SHERA is successfully implementing its visiting scholar program with the Russian State University of Humanities in Moscow (RGGU) and the Art Department of the European University in St. Petersburg. Applications need to be submitted six weeks in advance of the planned trip for RGGU and ten weeks for the European University. Inquiries about the process should be submitted to shera.artarchitecture@gmail.com.
Visual Resources Association
The Visual Resources Association (VRA) held its annual conference in Denver, Colorado, from March 11–14, 2015. With fourteen sessions, six workshops, nine posters, and numerous other events, the program covered digital humanities, visual literacy, mapping and geospatial projects, image rights and reproductions, usability testing, digital asset management, crowdsourcing, metadata, sharing collections, archives, research data management, visualization, and more. The two plenary speakers shared thought-provoking perspectives from museums and digital libraries. The opening speaker, Aaron Straup Cope, head of engineering for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, addressed experiences as design objects. Can a design museum collect objects that convey the full experience of, say, Virgin America as service design? Extending the concept of collecting to museum visitors, Cope described the New Cooper Hewitt Experience and new interactive pen that allows visitors to “collect” and “save” objects to customized webpages. The closing speaker, Emily Gore, director for content for the Digital Public Library of America, discussed content and collections workflows, including the DPLA Hubs program. DPLA is currently focused on sustainable collaborations, building community, data quality, and use/reuse. Gore is working to establish new Service Hubs and a framework for rights statements for cultural-heritage materials in partnership with experts in the United States and Europe.
Women’s Caucus for Art
The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has announced the recipients for the 2016 WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards: Tomie Arai, Helene Aylon, Sheila Levrant de’ Bretteville, and Juana Guzman. The recipient for the 2016 President’s Art and Activism Award is Stephanie Sherman. The WCA Lifetime Achievement (LTA) Awards were first presented in 1979 in President Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe. The LTA awards were the first awards recognizing the contribution of women to the arts and their profound effect on society. Today the WCA’s Lifetime Achievement Awards continue to honor women and their work, vision, and commitment. Past honorees have represented the full range of distinguished achievement in the visual arts. This year’s awardees are no exception, with considerable accomplishment, achievement, and contributions to the arts. Join us for the celebration! The LTA awards will be held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, on Thursday February 4, 2016. The event will include a ticketed cocktail reception (6:00–7:30 PM) and the LTA ceremony (8:00–9:30 PM), which is free and open to the public. More information will be available online beginning August 1, 2015.