CAA News Today
Provenance Research in American Institutions
posted by Linda Downs — Aug 28, 2014
Rowman & Littlefield is pleased to announce the release of Volume 10, Number 3 of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, a focused issue dedicated to the subject of provenance research in American institutions. Guest-Edited by Jane C. Milosch, Lynn H. Nicholas, and Megan M. Fontanella, the issue draws attention to current research in the field by highlighting key resources and initiatives, case studies from collections throughout the United States, and perspectives on unprovenanced cultural property and Nazi-era claims.
\Bringing together the expertise of independent scholars and professionals who are affiliated with American institutions, this issue aims to foster dialogue among museums, archives, and research centers and to broaden the accessibility of information. The collection of articles opens with a Foreword by Megan M. Fontanella and an introduction by Lynn H. Nicholas. A closer look at resources and initiatives is offered in the following articles: “Provenance: Not the Problem (The Solution): Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative” by Jane C. Milosch; “Princes, Dukes, and Counts: Pedigrees and Problems in the Kress Collection” by Nancy H. Yeide; “The ‘German Sales 1930–1945’ Database Project” by Christian Huemer; and Laurie A. Stein’s “’Everyone Brings a Piece to the Puzzle’: Conversations with Elaine Rosenberg and Reflections on Provenance Research among The Paul Rosenberg Archives.” Case studies include: “Navigating the Gray Area: Pechstein’s Girl Combing Her Hair, the Littmann Collection, and the Limits of Evidence” by Catherine Herbert; “Researching the Wertheim Collection at the Harvard Art Museums” by Elizabeth M. Rudy; “One Painting Concealed Behind Another: Picasso’s La Douleur (1903) and Guitar, Gas-Jet, and Bottle (1913)” by Christel Hollevoet-Force; “The Eugene Garbáty Collection of European Art” by Victoria Reed; and Dorota Chudzicka’s “’In Love at First Sight Completely, Hopelessly, and Forever with Chinese Art’: The Eugene and Agnes Meyer Collection of Chinese Art at the Freer Gallery of Art.” Perspectives on legal claims include Gary Vikan’s “Provenance Research and Unprovenanced Cultural Property” and Stephen W. Clark’s “Nazi-Era Claims and Art Museums: The American Perspective”.
This impressive group of articles is valuable to art historians, curators, and myriad others whose work addresses provenance. The collection showcases thoughtful, methodical and meticulous research related to individual owners and to individual works and collections of art. It serves as a touchstone for provenance research in American Institutions. Journal Editor Juilee Decker stated, “It is particularly exciting to see this issue of Collections appear in print. This focused issue takes the lead in proactive press regarding the continuous efforts of provenance research at American institutions. Building on the recent interest surrounding ‘The Monuments Men,’ this journal forms part of the epilogue to an unfinished story of provenance that both pre- and post-dates the Second World War, providing insight into the challenging, exciting and ongoing work of provenance researchers that continues to be integral to museums worldwide.”
“The value of this focused issue on provenance research in American institutions,” remarks guest editor and Director of the Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative Jane C. Milosch, is that it “brings together scholars and researchers to share their incredible work and to initiate important discussions for the future. While the greatest focus and challenge of provenance research remains sifting through immense amounts of paper and digital archival materials, communication and collaboration are essential to effective provenance research and to sharing with and educating others on how specialized and time-consuming provenance research is with its often inconclusive results and on-going nature.”
Published by AltaMira Press (an imprint of Roman & Littlefield), Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals is a multidisciplinary journal for all aspects of handling, preserving, researching, interpreting, and organizing collections. To purchase Volume 10, Number 3 (Summer 2014) focusing on “Provenance Research in American Institutions” call 1.800.273.2223 or send an email to: journals@rowman.com with “Issue 10.03” in the subject line. Further information about the journal may be obtained online: https://rowman.com/Page/Journals.
People in the News
posted by CAA — Aug 17, 2014
People in the News lists new hires, positions, and promotions in three sections: Academe, Museums and Galleries, and Organizations and Publications.
The section is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
August 2014
Academe
Wayne “Mick” Charney, associate professor of architecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, has been designated the 2014–2015 Coffman Chair for University Distinguished Teaching Scholars.
R. Luke DuBois, assistant professor of integrated digital media for New York University’s Polytechnic School of Engineering and director of the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center, has earned tenure at his school.
Allison LeighAllison Leigh has accepted a 2014–15 postdoctoral fellowship in art history in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York.
Michele Matteini, assistant professor of East Asian art, architecture, and visual culture, has been appointed to a joint appointment at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and Department of Art History.
Robert A. Maxwell, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has joined the faculty of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
Lisa M. Strong, previously manager of curatorial affairs at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has been appointed director of the MA program in art and museum studies and associate professor of the practice at Georgetown University, also in Washington, DC.
Museums and Galleries
Jill DeupiJill Deupi, director and chief curator of University Museums at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, has been appointed director of the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami in Florida.
Barbara Buhler Lynes, founding curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has become Sunny Kaufman Senior Curator for Nova Southeastern University’s Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Vanja MalloyVanja Malloy, formerly Chester Dale Fellow in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has been named curator of American art at Amherst College’s Mead Art Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Alia Nour, associate curator for the Dahesh Museum of Art in New York, has been promoted to full curator at her institution.
Mary Reid, director and curator of the School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, has accepted a position as director and curator of the Woodstock Art Gallery in Woodstock, Ontario.
Organizations and Publications
Laura Beach, formerly deputy editor of The Magazine Antiques, has rejoined Antiques and The Arts Weekly as managing editor.
Rachel Stephens, assistant professor of art in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, has been named editor of SECAC Review, a scholarly journal published by the Southeastern College Art Conference.
Grants, Awards, and Honors
posted by CAA — Aug 15, 2014
CAA recognizes its members for their professional achievements, be it a grant, fellowship, residency, book prize, honorary degree, or related award.
Grants, Awards, and Honors is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
August 2014
Wendy Bellion, associate professor of American art and material culture at the University of Delaware in Newark, has been awarded the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art from the Smithsonian American Art Museum for her book Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; Williamsburg, VA: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2011).
Elizabeth Buhe, a doctoral student in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has received a Student Research Grant from the Mellon Research Initiative to participate in “From ‘Surface’ to ‘Substrate’: The Archaeology, Art History, and Science of Material Transfer,” a conference taking place November 7–8, 2014.
Jennifer Cohen, a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has earned a William H. Truettner Predoctoral Fellowship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will work on “Fantastic Boxes: Shop Windows and Surrealist Space in Wartime New York.”
Laura Dickey Corey, a PhD candidate in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has been awarded the Frick Center for the History of Collecting Junior Fellowship for summer/fall 2014.
John Fagg, a lecturer in the school of English, Drama, and American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham in England, has won the 2014 Terra Foundation for American Art International Essay Prize for “Bedpans and Gibson Girls: Clutter and Matter in John Sloan’s Graphic Art,” which will appear in the journal American Art in 2015.
Annika Fine, a doctoral student in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has received a Student Research Grant from the Mellon Research Initiative to give a presentation during “From ‘Surface’ to ‘Substrate’: The Archaeology, Art History, and Science of Material Transfer,” a conference taking place November 7–8, 2014.
Kristen Gaylord, a doctoral student in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has been awarded the Joan R. Challinor Award for distinction in the area of women and Catholicism from the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Gaylord has also received the Patricia Dunn Lehrman Fellowship from NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Orit Halpern, assistant professor in history at the New School of Social Research and Eugene Lang College and an affiliate in the graduate program in design studies at Parsons the New School for Design, all in New York, has won a 2014 research grant from the Graham Foundation. She will work on “Rational Utopias,” a project that explores the history and ethnography of “smart” territories and ubiquitous computing.
Nicholas Hartigan, a PhD student in art history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has been named a Committee on Institutional Cooperation-Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellow by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. His research project is called “The Changing Function of Public Sculpture.”
Leslie Hewitt, an artist based in New York, has won a 2013 Biennial Award from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, which comes with a $20,000 grant.
Alicia Imperiale, assistant professor of architectural history, theory, and design at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has won a 2014 research grant from the Graham Foundation. Her project is called “An Alternate Organicism in the Journal Zodiac, 1965–1974.”
Katherine Jentleson, a doctoral student in art history at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has become a Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, for her project, “Gatecrashers: The First Generation of Outsider Artists in America.”
Steve Locke, an artist based in Boston, Massachusetts, has accepted a 2013 Biennial Award from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. He will receive a $20,000 gift.
Katherine Markoski, an independent scholar based in Alexandria, Virginia, has received a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her research examines “The Imagination of Community: Artistic Practice at Black Mountain College”
Rachel Middleman, assistant professor of art history at Utah State University in Logan, has won a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, to research “Radical Eroticism: Women, Art, and the Transformation of Sexual Aesthetics in the 1960s.”
Jennifer Stettler Parsons, a graduate student in art history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has received a Sara Roby Predoctoral Fellowship in 20th-Century American Realism from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her project is titled “John Sloan: Between Philadelphia and New York, 1892–1907.”
Carol McMichael Reese, Mary Louise Christovich Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, has been awarded a 2014 publication grant (with her two coeditors) from the Graham Foundation for New Orleans under Reconstruction: The Crisis of Planning, the first book to illustrate and analyze architectural, landscape, and planning responses for post-Katrina New Orleans.
Margaret SamuMargaret Samu, from the Art History Department at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women in New York, has been awarded a Summer Fellowship in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, DC. She will use the fellowship to work on her project “Baroque Sculpture Display in Peter the Great’s Summer Garden.”
Nina Schleif from the Bavarian State Art Museums has become a Terra Foundation Senior Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She is investigating “Warhol’s Drawings of the Fifties: Sources, Techniques, Meanings.”
Michelle Smiley, an MA student in history of art at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, has been accepted into the 2014 summer internship program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Juliet Sperling, a graduate student in art history at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has accepted a Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will research “Animating Flatness: Seeing Moving Images in American Painting and Mass Visual Culture, 1820–95.”
Edit Tóth, who teaches at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania State University in Altoona, has earned a 2014 research grant from the Graham Foundation for her book, Bauhaus Photography and Design: Moholy-Nagy, Breuer, Henri, Yamawaki, and Kepes.
Jesús Vassallo, assistant professor in the School of Architecture at Rice University in Houston, Texas, has accepted a 2014 research grant from the Graham Foundation for his project, “Building with Images.”
Jillian Vaum, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in art history at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has participated in the 2014 summer internship program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Megan Whitney, an MA student in art history at the University of Tucson in Arizona, has been accepted into the 2014 summer internship program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Lara Yeager-CrasseltLara Yeager-Crasselt, a lecturer in the Department of Art at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, has been awarded a Belgian American Educational Foundation Fellowship for academic year 2014–15. She will carry out postdoctoral work as a research fellow in the Department of Art History at KU Leuven in Belgium.
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, an artist based in Chicago, Illinois, has received a 2013 Biennial Award from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. She will receive a $20,000 gift from the foundation.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 13, 2014
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.
Museum under Fire for Selling Its Art
If the Delaware Art Museum has a signature painting, surely it is Howard Pyle’s Marooned (1909), which shows a pirate near death, curled up on a sand bar, a tiny figure enveloped by a burning yellow sky. The painting refers to the old custom of punishing insubordinates by shoving them off a ship and onto an island. But these days, you can also view Marooned as a curiously precise description of the museum, which has been ostracized by its peers. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Writing the Book on Reinventing the Book
Over more than five centuries, books have evolved from collections of folded and gathered pages bound between covers to collections of screens connected to a digital cloud. Yet despite the rise in tablet and ebook usage, print persists. Advocates of hard copy continue to make physical books that fill what few bookstores remain. In other words, the state of books today is multifaceted. How can someone possibly make predictions about the future of books? (Read more from the Atlantic.)
Know the Vital Players in Your Career: You
In more than twenty years of working in academe, I have seen innumerable people sabotage their own careers through terrible mistakes. A bad outcome is sometimes due to chance or forces beyond your control, but the single most important factor determining whether you achieve your career goals, including tenure and promotion, is you. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Giving Up the Good
Normally I’d be designing a syllabus right now. I’d be waiting to receive my finalized teaching schedule and telling interested students that they will learn which sections are mine as soon as I do. I’d be going over annotated texts to refresh my memory on topics for the first few weeks of class discussion. But none of that is happening this year. It’s not happening because I’m not teaching. Spring semester was my final term in the classroom as an adjunct. (Read more from Vitae.)
Tenure at Small Colleges
Advice on how to earn tenure usually focuses on what one would expect: teaching, scholarship, and service. Much of this advice is geared toward faculty who work at research-focused institutions. Generic advice columns about earning tenure and promotion offer some useful tips but often fail to capture the nature of faculty work and expectation so often found at small liberal-arts colleges, whose nature of faculty work is different from that at research-focused institutions. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Shared Shelf Commons Now Offers More Than 100,000 Free Files
The number of free images and video in Shared Shelf Commons, an open-access library of digital media, has now topped 100,000. The files come from institutions that subscribe to Shared Shelf, Artstor’s web-based service for cataloging and managing digital collections. (Read more from Artstor Blog.)
Socially Engaged Arts Undervalued, Say Practitioners
The majority of socially engaged arts practitioners feel their work is not valued by the sector as a whole and that there is not enough understanding of its benefits, a new survey has shown. The Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s ArtWorks Evaluation Survey of Artists also reveals that artists working in community, participatory, and socially engaged settings rely heavily on informal training, with codes of practice and standards neglected by employers, commissioners, and artists alike. (Read more from Arts Professional.)
Museums See Different Virtues in Virtual Worlds
This is an account about how two New York museums seized this dream—and how one of them clings to it still, while the other has found that the internet’s true value isn’t in being everywhere but in enhancing the here. They are the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, both ambitious cosmopolitan art institutions but with rather different reputations: the Met an isle in the global archipelago of leading museums, the Brooklyn Museum more rooted in local soil. Yet, for all their differences, they shared a world-conquering dream some years ago. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Sam Hunter: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Jul 30, 2014
David E. Nathan is the author of this obituary.
Sam Hunter, the founding director of the Rose Art Museum, whose keen insights into the art of his day allowed him to build the museum’s acclaimed collection of modern and contemporary art, died on July 27, 2014, in Princeton, New Jersey. He was 91.
Financed by a $50,000 gift from Leon Mnuchin and his wife, Harriet Gevirtz-Mnuchin, Hunter made acquisitions in the early 1960s that established the Rose as a major force in the art world. The works he collected, masterpieces by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and other leading artists, form the core of the Rose’s beloved collection and continue to set the tone for the museum’s collecting and exhibition practices.
“Sam Hunter played an integral role in the early days of the Rose Art Museum, and his prescient purchases propelled the museum into the consciousness of the art world just a few years after its founding,” said Frederick M. Lawrence, president of Brandeis University. “The way in which he built the early collection, a discrete number of outstanding acquisitions, none for more than $5,000, is one of the iconic stories of the early years of Brandeis University. His impact on the Rose in particular and the university in general continues to this day.”
Hunter came to Brandeis in 1960 as director of the Poses Institute of Fine Arts, and shortly thereafter become the first director of the Rose. Organizers of the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle approached him about curating an exhibition for the Fine Arts Pavilion. The resulting collection of 114 works from 87 artists, including many by artists whose work he would later purchase for the Rose, was subsequently displayed at Brandeis.
In late 1962, Mnuchin called from New York to announce that he and his wife had inherited $50,000, which they wished to donate to the Rose to fund a contemporary art collection. Hunter and Mnuchin immediately began exploring the galleries of New York, often with Robert Scull, a friend of Mnuchin and a prominent collector of Pop art.
“The guiding principle of the selection was individual quality rather than tendency,” Hunter wrote for the brochure accompanying the collection’s exhibition. “As a matter of policy, the collection focused on younger artists with only a token representation of the older generation…. Abstract Expressionism is the collection’s point of departure, taken at a point of subtle but significant transition.”
Although Hunter and Mnuchin set a limit of $5,000 per painting, they managed to gather early and important works by Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann, James Rosenquist, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Marisol, Morris Louis, Johns, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol, and many others.
“It is very difficult to imagine a more significant founding director than Sam Hunter has proved to be,” said Christopher Bedford, the Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose. “Just as Brandeis established its academic reputation with incredible rapidity, so Sam made sure the same happened to the Rose through the acquisitions he made and the exhibitions he organized. The status we enjoy today is in large part due to his vision in the 1960s.”
Bedford also pointed out that Hunter was a towering figure in both curatorial and academic spheres. “He had one foot in the world of museums and one foot in the world of scholarship, a model for how the Rose thinks of itself today,” he said. “He was as much a director/curator as he was a scholar, and that dual commitment continues to represent the Rose in the work we do today.”
Upon learning of Hunter’s death, Bedford decided to name the Rose’s newly established emerging artists fund in his memory. “The fund lacked a name,” Bedford said, “and today it became very apparent what the name of the fund should be. It seems incongruous to apply this term today, but the Gevirtz-Mnuchin fund was an emerging artists fund in the early 1960s: Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Ellsworth Kelly were the emerging artists of their day. It’s only just that we would perpetuate Hunter’s legacy with a fund that boasts his name.”
A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, Hunter graduated from Williams College in 1943. He served in the United States Navy from 1943 to 1946, rising to the rank of lieutenant junior grade and receiving five battle stars.
Hunter began his professional art career in 1947, when he joined the New York Times as an art critic for a two-year stint. He studied at the University of Florence through the Hubbard Hutchinson Fellowship, earning a certificate of studies in 1951. He spent a year as an editor with art publisher Harry N. Abrams before serving as editor of Arts magazine.
In 1955, Hunter was appointed associate professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, but left in 1956 to become curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Two years later, he moved to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts as chief curator and acting director.
After leaving Brandeis in 1965, he was appointed director of the Jewish Museum and lectured as a visiting professor at Cornell University. In 1969, he became professor of art history at Princeton University and curator of modern art at the university’s art museum. He retired from Princeton as professor emeritus in 1991.
Hunter is survived by his wife, Maïa; their son, Harry; two daughters, Emmy and Alexa, from his previous marriage to Edys Merrill; and one grandchild, Isabella. A funeral service was scheduled for July 30 in the Princeton University Chapel.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by CAA — Jul 25, 2014
In its periodic list of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, historians, teachers, curators, dealers, philanthropists, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. Of special note is a text on a distinguished scholar of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russian art, Grigorii Iurevich Sternin.
- Roger Ackling, a British sculptor who was a contemporary of Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, and other artists who graduated from Saint Martins School of Art in the 1960s, died on June 5, 2014. He was 66 years old
- Jack Agüeros, a writer, activist, and the former director of El Museo del Barrio in New York, died on May 4, 2014. He was 79
- Eppie Archuleta, a New Mexican weaver who worked in fiber and fabric, passed away on April 11, 2014, age 92. In 1985 she received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts
- Gordon Bennett, a pioneering Australian artist whose work challenged race, power, history, and social conventions, died on June 3, 2014. He was 58 years old
- Tito Enrique Canepa Jiménez, a Dominican painter who lived and worked in New York after immigrating there in the 1930s, died on February 11, 2014. He was 97
- Lynne Cohen, an award-winning Canadian photographer who had taught at the University of Ottawa from 1974 to 2005, passed away on May 12, 2014. She was 69
- Deborah Deery, an art educator and academic administrator at Moore College of Art and Design, died on August 19, 2013. She was 49 years old
- Joseph Doyle, an artist and teacher based in Houston, Texas, died on July 9, 2014, at age 54
- Lee MacCormick Edwards, a philanthropist as well as a lecturer in art history, a photographer, and an author, passed away on April 19, 2014. She was 76
- John Clovis Fontaine, chairman emeritus for both the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, died on September 23, 2013. He was 81 years old
- Edythe Goodridge, a curator and the former director of visual arts for the Canada Council, died on June 4, 2014. She was 77
- Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi art dealer who secretly hoarded millions of dollars’ worth of modern art for decades, died on May 6, 2014. He was 81
- Anne Hollander, a celebrated author and a historian of fashion and costume, died on July 6, 2014. She was 83 years old
- Hans Hollein, an Austrian architect and educator who won the Pritzker Prize in 1985, passed away on April 24, 2014. He was 80
- On Kawara, a Conceptual artist and painter whose work addressed the passage of time, died in late June 2014. He was 81 years old
- Maria Lassnig, an Austrian figurative painter whose retrospective is on view at MoMA PS1, died on May 6, 2014, age 94
- Stanley Marsh, an eccentric Texan millionare who commissioned the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, died on June 17, 2014. He was 76
- Cynthia Mills, the executive editor of the Smithsonian Institution’s journal American Art, died on May 1, 2014. She was 67 years old
- Robert Olsen, a Los Angeles–based painter of outdoor urban scenes, died on April 14, 2014. He was 44.
- Jennifer Wynne Reeves, an abstract painter based in New York, passed away on June 22, 2014. She was 51
- Nan Rosenthal, a curator for the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on April 27, 2014, at the age of 76
- Jerry Rothman, a Los Angeles–based sculptor who was a member of a ceramics movement called Otis Clay, died on June 5, 2014, at age 80
- Frederic Schwartz, an architect, city planner, and the designer of several memorials for September 11, died on April 28, 2014. He was 63
- Claude Simard, a cofounder and director of Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, died on June 24, 2014, at the age of 57. Simard was also an artist and performer
- Grigorii Iurevich Sternin, a distinguished scholar of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russian art, died on November 23, 2013, age 86. CAA has published a special text on Sternin
- Massimi Vignelli, an Italian-born graphic designer who created the 1970s map for New York’s subway system, died on May 27, 2014. He was 83
- Ultra Violet, an artist, actor, author, and Andy Warhol superstar, passed away on June 14, 2014. She was 78
- Melvin J. Wachowiak Jr., a senior conservator for the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute, died on May 28, 2014. He was 56
- Khin Maung Yin, an influential modernist Burmese artist who painted colorful portraits, passed away on June 10, 2014, age 76
Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 09, 2014
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.
Who Ought to Underwrite Publishing Scholars’ Books?
At almost any gathering of academic publishers or librarians, you’ll hear someone float the idea—sometimes phrased as a question—that the model for publishing scholarly monographs is broken. Two sets of ideas aired at the Association of American University Presses’ recent annual meeting don’t say the model is damaged beyond repair. But the proposals, both from groups outside the university-press community, suggest that it needs to be retrofitted, at the least. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
We Should Allow Failing Arts Organizations to Die
Arts organizations are already dying. In Detroit, in New York City, in the United Kingdom. From operas to art galleries. This is no longer an urban versus rural debate. A nonprofit versus for profit debate. A “one discipline is dying” but “others are inexplicably thriving” debate. This is a simple acknowledgement that the industry is in decline. And I think that not only should we allow it, we should encourage it. (Read more from Medium.)
Race, Gender, and Academic Jobs
I am currently the lowest-paid tenure-track faculty member in my department and was told by the man paid to manage me that if I wanted a raise I would probably need to get a new job or at least an offer that might prompt a counteroffer. So I went on the job market and was lucky enough to score a campus interview for an assistant professor position at a liberal arts college in an ideal location. Let’s just call this place Rich Liberal Arts College. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Does the Mojave Desert Need an Artist-Built Swimming Pool? Maybe
The art world loves a work of art that requires trekking to a remote location. There’s Spiral Jetty, one of the most iconic pieces of land art in existence, on the northern shores of the Great Salt Lake. New Mexico has Lightning Field, Walter de Maria’s installation of four hundred stainless-steel poles that serves as Minimal sculpture at most times and a veritable light show during lightning storms. These experiences are about long journeys, landscape, and meditation. Now there’s another piece to add to this list: Social Pool by the Austrian artist Alfredo Barsuglia, who was a resident at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
At Mellon, Signs of Change
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has a reputation for moving in mysterious ways. For forty-five years, it has steadily handed out money—lots of it—to sustain the humanities and the performing arts. As times have gotten tougher, Mellon’s deep pockets have become increasingly important. The foundation tends to attract an unusual level of anxiety and interest, like a rich uncle whose quirks and whims keep poorer relations on their toes. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
When Copy and Paste Reigned in the Age of Scrapbooking
Cutting, pasting, collating—this feels like a new behavior, a desperate attempt to cope with a radical case of information overload. But it’s actually a quite venerable urge. Indeed, back in the nineteenth century we had a similarly intense media barrage, and we used a very similar technology to handle it: the scrapbook. (Read more from the Smithsonian.)
By Design
There are toxic words in every field and, when it comes to design, two of the most ominous are “sculptural” and “artistic.” Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with design projects exhibiting either quality, but those that are described as doing so seldom do. Instead, they are likely to be any or all of the following: bland, silly, blingy, pretentious, shoddy, derivative, ugly, ridiculous, or unjustifiably expensive. (Read more from Frieze.)
Make Sure the Artists Are on Board
The artist-trustees at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles—John Baldessari, Catherine Opie, Barbara Kruger, and Ed Ruscha—went from filling what could have been seen as symbolic posts, demonstrating the museum’s commitment to living artists, to playing a critical role in the museum’s recent public-relations crisis and its recovery-in-progress. Other contemporary art museums are also making space for at least one artist on their boards. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 02, 2014
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.
A World without Tenure? That’s a World without Shared Governance, Too
We’ve been reading arguments against tenure for a while, of course, but there’s a real corporatist edge to recent contributions to the genre. These broadsides envision an Orwellian campus where freedom is servitude—specifically, intellectual servitude to the whims of education technocrats holding up their forefingers to test the winds of supposed market forces. What the antitenure crowd fails to acknowledge is that higher education, as an “industry,” is unique. (Read more from Vitae.)
What Is a Page in the Digital Age?
What is a page? What is a book? These are just two of the questions facing the cohort of museums participating in the Getty Foundation’s Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI), which is helping the field move into online publishing. The Walker Art Center has launched its OSCI publication, On Performativity, which provides another spellbinding answer to the question driving this initiative: How can we rethink the museum catalogue for the digital age? (Read more from the Getty Iris.)
The Incorporated Woman
Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and a host of other big companies in today’s “data-driven economy” share one thing in common: they make a living from harvesting personal data. To regain some ownership and control of her data, Jennifer Lyn Morone decided to become Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc (JLM), registered like all savvy corporations in Delaware. And what started as an art project—her brief as part of a master’s degree at London’s Royal College of Art was to “design a protest”—is now transforming her into a humanoid/corporate hybrid. (Read more from the Economist.)
Autonomous Filing Cabinet Embodies Our Everlasting Data Trail
A filing cabinet is following people around the Royal College of Art to remind us that our data is everywhere—and it will follow us everywhere. I Know What You Did Last Summer is Jaap de Maat’s final-year project, the finale to a two-year-long MA in information experience design. And anyone visiting the college this weekend will certainly get a dose of that design experience, as the clunky metal cabinet trundles toward them, stalking their every move. (Read more from Ars Technica.)
Summer Boundaries
Historically, it has been relatively common for some faculty members, particularly those with lower-level administrative responsibilities, to be informally on the hook during the summer months, expected to respond to email and keep up with loose threads, but to go uncompensated for their work during that time period. In addition to being a form of de facto exploitation, such patterns contribute to the gradual but steady marginalization of academic labor across multiple fronts. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
#arthistory: Instagram and the Intro to Art History Course
From museum selfies to the digital humanities, Instagram has become a major force in the art world. Artists now cultivate “Instagram practices,” art institutions have thousands of followers, and hashtags like #monalisa have over 200,000 entries. People in their late teens and twenties—the age demographic that dominates Instagram—contribute the majority of these posts, yet the app is more likely to be banned from college classrooms than encouraged. In a period when educators are grappling with divergences between social media–driven forms of communication and academic communication, Instagram has potential to both enrich content and strengthen the discipline’s relevance for contemporary learners. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
Building a Better Nonacademic Career Panel
Just last week, one of my graduate-school deans invited me to present on a nonacademic career panel with three other alumni. I’m happy to act as a resource for my alma mater—and for graduate students struggling to navigate their career options. But sometimes I wonder if I’m doing much good by showing up. I’m convinced that these panels do little to help their audiences explore, much less pursue, options outside the academy. (Read more from Vitae.)
The Pen Is Mightier Than the Brush? Looking at Six Famous American Male Artist-Critics
Artists have always had a complicated relationship with art criticism. “Do not be an art critic, but paint; therein lies salvation,” Paul Cézanne wrote to his fellow painter Émile Bernard in 1904. Eugène Delacroix wrote an entire essay on the subject in 1829 called “On Art Criticism,” in which he found that art critics—or “watchful dragons” as he called them—“have always presented difficulties.” If artists and art critics are such separate species, what are we to think of artists who themselves are art critics? (Read more from Artspace Magazine.)
CAA Seeks Members for Its Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committee
posted by Vanessa Jalet — Jul 01, 2014
Get involved in an issue that you care about! CAA invites members to apply for service on one of its nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees. These committees address critical issues in the visual arts in an attempt to deal with, and respond to, the pressing concerns of CAA’s members.
Communicating via listserv throughout the year, each committee takes on the objectives it has set for itself, which include: programming ARTspace at the Annual Conference; establishing best practices, standards, and guidelines; sharing and examining pedagogical practices; examining new and developing technologies; addressing issues critical to emerging professionals as well as concerns of diversity and gender; extending the reach of CAA internationally; and clarifying and debating matters of fair use, copyright, and open access. This vigorous exchange of information reveals common goals and leads to solutions that will help CAA members to weather their changing professional landscape.
Committees are active at the Annual Conference in February, where each presents one or two sessions on a subject of its choosing. These sessions, sometimes collaborations between committees and sometimes dealing with workforce issues, are meant to be of immediate value to CAA members. Also at the conference, the committees hold face-to-face business meetings and discuss the past year’s accomplishments while targeting ideas for future projects. Participation on a committee is an excellent and fruitful way to network with other CAA members; for some individuals it is a stepping-stone to service on the organization’s Board of Directors.
The public face of several CAA committees appears most visibly at the conference. The Services to Artists Committee, for example, conceives nearly all content and programming for ARTspace, ARTexchange, and the Media Lounge, while the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee organizes events on professional-development issues that take place in the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge during the conference.
Online, the Committee on Women in the Arts publishes the monthly CWA Picks of exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship, among other activities. CAA’s Museum Committee is currently reviewing several of CAA’s Standards and Guidelines as they relate to museums. This committee also organizes conference sessions on museum leadership and exhibition history and works to provide resources for professionals in academic art museums.
The International Committee warmly welcomed twenty travel-grant recipients from around the world at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago and will host fifteen travel-grant recipients at the 2015 conference in New York.
The Professional Practices Committee continues to study, develop, and revise CAA’s Standards and Guidelines, so that these documents, once approved by the CAA board, become authoritative, comprehensive documents for art-related disciplines. The Committee on Diversity Practices’ current projects include organizing a 2015 conference session called “Diversity and Pedagogy: The Global Factor,” overseeing the Resource Directory for Diversity Practices, and expanding CAA mentoring programs.
The Committee on Intellectual Property updated the Image Resources page on CAA’s website and continues to monitor the tricky terrain of copyright and fair use, which dramatically affects the work lives of artists and scholars. The Education Committee is currently launching new initiatives concerning curriculum, pedagogy, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. This committee especially seeks new members from studio art, design and/or museums.
Committee members serve three-year terms (2014–17), 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 2015:
- Committee on Diversity Practices: 3–4 members
- Committee on Intellectual Property: 3 members
- Committee on Women in the Arts: 6 members
- Education Committee: 2–3 members
- International Committee: 2 members
- Museum Committee: 4 members
- Professional Practices Committee: 5 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 early November 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. Deadline: October 17, 2014.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jun 25, 2014
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.
AAMD Sanctions Delaware Art Museum
AAMD is deeply troubled and saddened that the Delaware Art Museum has deaccessioned and sold a work of art from its collection to pay outstanding debt and build its operating endowment. Art museums collect works of art for the benefit of present and future generations. Responsible stewardship of a museum’s collection and the conservation, exhibition, and study of these works are the heart of a museum’s commitment to its community and to the public. (Read more from the Association of Art Museum Directors.)
Delaware Art Museum Painting Brings $4.25 Million
The Delaware Art Museum’s first painting up for auction, William Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil, sold for $4.25 million last week, far short of Christie’s low estimate of $8.4 million. The 1868 work by the Pre-Raphaelite master sold within two minutes at Christie’s in London, with a starting bid of £1.9 million. (Read more from the Delaware News Journal.)
Humanities Funding Still in Recovery from Recession
Total funding for humanities research, education, and programs in the United States is still below prerecession levels, according to a new report released last week by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The report, The State of the Humanities: Funding 2014, gathers data on the array of funding sources, large and small, that underwrite the humanities, revealing that federal, state, and private support to the humanities are still recovering from the recession. (Read more from the National Endowment for the Humanities.)
Help Desk: To Apply Oneself
The annual application process for many residencies, fellowships, and publishing opportunities is tough. Should there be a limit on the number of times you apply for the same opportunity before you realize that they just aren’t interested in your practice? Or is it more valuable to demonstrate a little fortitude? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
No One Sits Here Anymore: How Spikes and Fences Erase Communal Life
Since the day it first opened, the windows of my neighborhood gym have been a gathering point for neighbors. They’re right at street level, and they’re big. Lots of us had sat on their deep windowsills for many years, most of all the Pakistanis who live in the surrounding area. Note that I wrote, “had sat,” because ever since Barcelona’s City Hall installed some giant metal plates, no one sits there anymore. The gatherings and chitchats are over. (Read more from Creative Time Reports.)
How Cities Use Design to Drive Homeless People Away
Earlier this month, someone tweeted a picture of a series of metal spikes built into the ground outside a London apartment building. The spikes were intended to discourage homeless people from sleeping in the area, and their presence sparked a public outcry. London’s mayor called the spikes “ugly, self defeating & stupid,” and the mayor of Montreal called similar spikes in his own city “unacceptable!!!!” Protesters poured concrete over a set of spikes outside a Tesco supermarket. Then, after a petition was signed by nearly 130,000 people, the spikes were removed from the London apartment building, the Tesco, and downtown Montreal. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
Should I Go to Art School?
You’ve sent me a tricky one, my dear. There are many personal factors that must be carefully considered by each individual, working in any artistic discipline, who is grappling with this question. While I have no way of knowing your personal capacities, I can certainly give you my general opinion … and you know I love doing that. (Read more from KCET.)
Hemingway: A Simple Online Tool for Better Short-Form Writing (Museum 2.0)
Exhibit labels. Promotional text. Grant proposals. For many arts and museum professionals, writing one-hundred-word chunks of text is a daily activity. Unfortunately, much of that writing is lousy. We have great references for better art writing but don’t always use them. Instead we pack sentences with highfalutin vocabulary, pepper them with clauses, and wrap them up in insider language. Recently, I discovered an online tool called Hemingway that can change that. Its intent is “to make your writing bold and clear.” (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)