CAA News Today
New Study on the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 30, 2014
The following announcement was originally published by Ithaka S+R on April 30, 2014.
Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians
A study funded by the Getty Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, called Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians, looks at how art historians’ research practices are evolving in the digital age. Intended primarily for the museums, libraries, academic departments, and visual-resources centers that support research in art history within the United States, this project focused on five key areas:
1. The emergence of “digital art history,” and how it is diverging from the broader understanding of the digital humanities.
2. The interconnected scholarly communities that support art history, including museums, libraries, and visual-resources centers, both within and beyond an art historian’s home institution.
3. The changes that digitization and online search portals have brought to the process of searching for primary sources and the limitations of the current discovery environment.
4. The practices art historians employ for managing their large personal collections of digital images.
5. The state of graduate students’ professional training.
Within these five areas, the report makes clear that the needs of art historians can be successfully met only through the collaborative work of many support organizations. Our findings suggest several opportunities for these organizations to develop new funding, services, tools, and initiatives that will have far-reaching impact on the discipline.
This is the third project to be completed as part of Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services Program. A report for the project in history was released in December 2012, and a report for the project in chemistry was released in February 2013.
NEH and NEA Nominees Await Confirmation
posted by CAA — Apr 29, 2014
The American Alliance of Museums sent the following email on April 28, 2014.
Urge Congress to Confirm Nominees to Lead NEH and NEA
On April 10, President Obama announced Dr. William “Bro” Adams, president of Colby College, as his choice to serve as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Two months earlier, on February 12, Obama announced Dr. Jane Chu, president and CEO of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, as his choice to serve as the next Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
These two nominees must now be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Take two minutes to ask the U.S. Senate to confirm Dr. Adams and Dr. Chu today!
“Dr. Adams will bring a vast array of experiences to the National Endowment for the Humanities, including as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and as president of Colby College, home of the AAM-accredited Colby College Museum of Art,” said Alliance President Ford W. Bell.
“Dr. Chu has dedicated her life to the arts, from her early days as a pianist and music educator to her leadership at one of the nation’s finest performing arts centers,” said Bell. “It will be a great asset to have an NEA Chairman who instinctively understands the economic impact of the arts in our communities, recognizes the value of arts education and aspires to bring great art to all Americans.”
Please urge the U.S. Senate to confirm these nominees swiftly so these talented leaders can get right to work supporting our nation’s cultural and educational treasures.
“These two accomplished leaders will be terrific additions to the cultural landscape in Washington, DC and I urge the U.S. Senate to confirm them without delay,” said Bell.
Read Ford Bell’s complete statement on President Obama’s nominees to lead NEA and NEH.
Since the December 2012 departure of Chairman Rocco Landesman, NEA has been led by Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa. Since the May 2013 departure of Chairman Jim Leach, NEH has been led by Acting Chairman Carole Watson. Read the American Alliance of Museums’ issues briefs on NEH and NEA.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 23, 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.
Summer Survival Strategies for Adjuncts
I’ve lived through enough adjunct summers to know that things get pretty difficult financially around late July. What little money you managed to scrape together during the school year is long gone, and you’re at least two rent cycles away from the next paycheck. For adjuncts who aren’t lucky enough to score classes, the end of the summer can become a deeply stressful period of doing whatever it takes—borrowing, penny-pinching, and scouring Craigslist for odd jobs. (Read more from Vitae.)
Personal Finance in Grad School
Living on a grad student stipend is tough, but we often make it harder on ourselves if we don’t know where the money is going. By tracking our spending habits, we can get a better sense of what we value, our motivations for spending, and areas where we can save a few dollars or even a few hundred dollars. (Read more from GradHacker.)
Can an Economist’s Theory Apply to Art?
Thomas Piketty is a name on a lot of people’s lips at the moment. The French economist’s new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is a historic survey of wealth concentration that has quickly become a go-to text for the gathering debate on income inequality. In his book, published in English last month, Piketty argues that the rich are only going to get richer as a result of free-market capitalism. The reason, he says, is simple: returns on invested capital are greater than rates of economic growth, and this has become a “fundamental force for divergence” in society. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Detroit Pension Deals Make Sale of DIA Art Less Likely—but Still Possible
Some bankruptcy experts said that it now appears increasingly unlikely that creditors will be able to get their hands on the city-owned art collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts. But experts also said that even in the wake of tentative agreements between the city and Detroit retirees and pensioners, the bondholders, and others pushing hard for a sale of art still have viable legal arguments. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
The Importance of Being a Director-Curator
For those occupying the highest positions in art institutions, spending time with the works that fill their galleries is inevitably more limited than in their earlier curatorial roles. The chance to do the job that made their name—organizing groundbreaking exhibitions or displaying exemplary scholarship—become fewer as bureaucratic demands become greater. Two directors have arguably the most demanding administrative roles in European museums—Udo Kittelmann and Nicholas Serota—both of who continue to take on lead curator roles in major shows. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
The Lost, Surprisingly Soulful Art of Corporate Identity
Before corporations, entertainment companies, sports franchises, and political parties acquired “brand narratives,” the notion of branding was a subset of a practice called “corporate identity.” CI, as it was known, required companies and design firms to develop, refine, and maintain an integrated identity system defined by laws set down in a bible known as the graphic standards manual. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
How to Earn Tenure II
So now your clock is running out. In some cases, you’ll be asked to write up a personal statement to be included in your dossier. This can be a tricky thing to write. On the one hand, it will be read by experts in your field. On the other hand, it will also be read by some people who don’t know the first thing about your field. How can you possibly write one document to serve such disparate audiences? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Confronting the Myth of the “Digital Native”
When Kaitlin Jennrich first walked into her communications seminar last fall, she had no idea that the professor already knew of her affinity for pink cars and Olive Garden breadsticks—and that she planned to share that knowledge with the class. It hadn’t taken much sleuthing on the professor’s part to uncover those inane nuggets. The eighteen-year-old freshman at Northwestern University had herself lobbed them into the public sphere, via Twitter. Her reaction, she recalls, was, “Oh, no.” (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Frederick Horowitz: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Apr 23, 2014
Elaine Wilson is an artist and a former colleague of the deceased at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Frederick Horowitz, an artist, art educator, writer, and passionate champion of the work and teaching philosophy of Josef Albers, died on September 12, 2013, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was 75 years old.
Horowitz was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Yale University, earning a BA in English in 1960 and a BFA in painting in 1962. His life was forever changed when he enrolled in Albers’s drawing class. Although Horowitz later received an MFA in painting at the University of Michigan in 1964, his contact with Albers at Yale was defining. In the book Josef Albers: To Open Eyes (New York: Phaidon, 2006), coauthored with Brenda Danilowitz, Horowitz recounts the comment Albers made about one of his drawings of the textural quality of a log of wood:
In his crit of one day’s results, Albers singled out a drawing in which repeated black strokes of a soft pencil had jabbed a hole in the newsprint. “Yah,” he exclaimed with delight, and only half ironically, “this boy is getting into it!”
The 12 x 18 inch newsprint pad in which Horowitz did many of the exercises for this class is preserved today, signaling the importance he placed on his experience in this course.
Horowitz spent thirty-five years teaching drawing, design, color, and art appreciation at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor. He was widely respected in southeast Michigan as a teacher with authority and integrity. He mentored countless students who went on to become artists, transferring to four-year art programs around the country. Many of his students were older individuals whose lives were deeply enriched by his courses.
At Washtenaw Horowitz taught the art-appreciation course and wrote More Than You See: A Guide to Art (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985) for use in it, while also widening the book’s scope for a broader audience. More Than You See departs from many textbooks for art appreciation and art history: instead of presenting artworks in a chronological order or grouping them by “ism,” it presents a series of questions about looking at a wide range of paintings and objects without necessarily providing the answers. These questions continually challenge readers to think for themselves.
One chapter, titled “Looking over the Artist’s Shoulder,” compares and contrasts an Italian Renaissance painting, Guercino’s Esther before Ahasuerus (1639) and the preparatory drawings for it, with a miniature painting from India and its preparatory drawing. Another chapter, “Reading Paintings,” examines the formal characteristics of several works of art. Horowitz was especially interested in process and in the artist’s choices. By including works from the museums and galleries close to his school, such as the University of Michigan Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts, he tied the book to the experience of his students whom he regularly took to these institutions to see the real thing.
In 1992 Horowitz began thinking about writing a book on Albers’s teaching. Brenda Danilowitz, chief curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, Connecticut, worked with him and coauthored the book. Horowitz interviewed numerous artists who had studied with Albers, asking them about the teacher’s presence in the classroom and studio and about the impact and import of the particular projects he assigned. Research at the archives of the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, Yale University, and the Albers Foundation yielded a rich trove of material, which Horowitz and Danilowitz eventually worked into Josef Albers: To Open Eyes. This groundbreaking book has already changed the teaching of numerous younger artists and art professors, reinvigorating their work in the studio classroom.
While writing To Open Eyes, Horowitz began two courses—on design and on color—at Washtenaw Community College, putting into practice the ideas he was acquiring from his research. His own experience taking the color class at Yale with Albers’s own student, Sewell “Si” Sillman, meant that he was well prepared.
As a teacher Horowitz was disciplined and demanding, a tough but kind critic and grader. He required a great deal from his students, but when he saw a need to mentor and foster the talent of particular individuals he went above and beyond his regular duties to help them. This approach led to developing personal relationships that would last well beyond their time at Washtenaw.
Horowitz’s mentoring did not stop with students. He routinely worked with the part-time faculty that he recruited to teach many sections of the studio-art and art-appreciation classes, discussing with them course assignments and curricula, student behavior, grading policy, and even their students’ artwork. He created an atmosphere of cooperation and collegiality within the college’s art area that made it a laboratory for good teaching, a unique place for the overworked and underpaid instructors to work in. He was honest and generous with everyone, while holding all to his own high standards.
After retiring from Washtenaw Community College in 2003, Horowitz continued to lecture around the country and give workshops on Albers and on color and design (including presentations at the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education conference in 1997 and 2003 and at Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center in Asheville, North Carolina.) Abroad he taught workshops at art schools in Mexico City and Jerusalem.
Horowitz’s recent research at the Albers Foundation included close examinations of several Homage to the Square paintings. He developed his thoughts into a manuscript, now awaiting publication. This text—unlike any other of which I know about this body of work—looks closely at how Albers’s color choices interact with each other in specific ways; it also describes poetically their effect after extended looking. Most people don’t spend the amount of time in front of these works to have the experience Horowitz recounts, but hopefully more of them will. In addition, Horowitz speaks about Albers’s color course in the new digital format of the artist’s influential book Interaction of Color (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. He was also part of a new online art-appreciation course being developed at Washtenaw Community College.
At a memorial celebration of Horowitz’s life at Washtenaw in late October 2013, family, friends, and colleagues remembered him as deeply humane, curious, warm, devoted to his family, funny, and generous with his time, intellect, and heart. He leaves behind a trail of people who loved him and a host of younger artists who, thanks to his inspiration, are devoted to teaching well.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 23, 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.
- Molly Lamb Bobak, an artist, teacher and the first Canadian woman to be sent overseas as a war artist, died on March 2, 2014. She was 95
- Markus Brüderlin, a Swiss curator, art historian, and director of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, died on March 16, 2014, at age 55
- Chu Teh-Chun, a Chinese painter also known as Zhu Dequn who was celebrated for integrating traditional Chinese painting with Western abstraction, died on March 26, 2014. He was 94 years old
- Derek Clarke, a painter inspired by Scottish and Irish landscapes, died on February 10, 2014, at the age of 101. He had taught for many years at the Edinburgh College of Art
- Margaret Crow, a Texan philanthropist and matriarch of a family of real-estate developers, died on April 11, at age 94. The Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas is named for her and her husband
- Alan Davie, a Scottish painter of colorful abstractions, passed away on April 5, 2014. He was 93 years old
- Lucia Eames, a designer, the daughter of Charles Eames, and the owner of the Eames Office for twenty-six years, died on April 1, 2014. She was 83
- Joseph Anthony “Joe” Gatto, a noted jewelry artist and the founding visual-art dean of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, died on November 13, 2013. He was 78 years old. CAA has published a special obituary for Gatto
- John Heskett, a writer, professor, and lecturer on industrial design who greatly expanded the theorization of his subject, died on February 25, 2014. He was 76
- Frederick Horowitz, an artist, educator, author, and advocate of Josef Albers’s teaching, died on September 12, 2013, at age 75. CAA has published a special text on Horowitz
- Alexis Hunter, a feminist and conceptualist photographer who based in London, died on February 24, 2014. She was 65
- Charlotte Jirousek, associate professor of textiles and apparel at Cornell University, passed away on February 12, 2014. She was 75 years old
- Peter Kalkhof, a German artist based in London known for his colorful linear abstractions, died on February 24, 2014, at the age of 80. He also taught art for many years at Reading University
- Monika Kinley, a British curator, collector, and dealer who specialized in outsider art, passed away on March 9, 2014, at age 88
- Donald F. McCallum, an art historian, professor, and scholar of Japanese art, died on October 23, 2013. He was 74 years old. CAA has published a special obituary for McCallum
- Kenneth W. Prescott, an art historian, curator, and ornithologist whose last position was chairman of the Department of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, died on August 20, 2013. He was 93
- Ernest Silva, a painter, sculptor, and professor at the University of California, San Diego, from 1979 to 2013, died on February 24, 2014. He was 65
- Edward Sozanski, an art critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer for three decades, died on April 14, 2014. He was 77 years old
- Martin Sullivan, the former director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery from 2008 to 2012, died on February 25, 2014. He was 70
- Theo Wujcik, an artist, professor, and master printmaker who worked with Jasper Johns and Robert Morris, died on March 29, 2014, at age 78
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.
Kanwal Khalid: 2014 International Travel Grant Recipient
posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — Apr 21, 2014
Kanwal Khalid was a participant in the 2014 CAA-Getty International Travel Grant Program. A professor of fine arts at University of the Punjab in Pakistan, she specializes in the history of South Asian art and design with a particular focus on miniature painting in nineteenth-century Lahore. Khalid is also a practicing miniature painter and former curator of paintings at the Lahore Museum. Below she describes her experiences at the 102nd Annual Conference in Chicago.
Just when you think you have seen it all, something turns up and surprises you with its novelty and magnitude. The College Art Association did just that when I attended its Annual Conference in Chicago last February. For me, it became more than attending a conference; it was the experience of a lifetime that changed many of my perspectives.
In Pakistan, art history has always been part of the academic study of fine arts, but now it has become an independent discipline in its own right. This is a relatively recent development, of which I have been a part, and art history is enjoying a high status for the first time in the history of Pakistan. But still it is a comparatively new field. When I came to the Chicago conference, it was a complete surprise to realize that thousands of people share the same passion. CAA and the Getty Foundation have caught a tiger by the tail that is growing fast and expanding everywhere.
The chill of Chicago and the layers of snow couldn’t mar the fiery passion of the scholars, students, artists, and art historians participating in the conference. Interactive sessions, exhibitions, bookstalls, art-supply booths—this was a completely magic world for me. To breathe in thoughts and objects that are the passion of my life was a real treat.
Another dimension of knowledge was listening to presentations by the other nineteen recipients of CAA’s International Travel Grant Program and realizing what wonderful work was going on in their countries regardless of all the challenges they face on daily basis, very similar to the situation in my own country.
Outside the grandeur of the Hilton Hotel, it was the world of museums and modern architecture. I really liked the friendly size of museums in Chicago, which were not as overwhelming as other institutions I have visited, where there’s always a sense of missing a lot even after seeing so much. In all the museums that I visited in Chicago, I was able to return to many of my favorite galleries more than once during the week.
And then a bad snowstorm hit just as we were departing Chicago for New York. Our destination was the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and I will not be exaggerating if I call it a researcher’s paradise. The library was a dream-come-true. The best part for me was being surrounded by mountains—the Berkshires were an enchanted land containing everything I could desire. Here, we raised questions, made suggestions, and challenged old concepts in a true scholarly approach.
The time passed too quickly, and we were saying goodbye to each other at Penn Station in New York City, with a hope that someday we will meet again. I traveled south to give a lecture in Delaware and then attend a meeting in Washington, DC. My experience at CAA turned out to be a great asset for these events, where I imparted my knowledge of South Asian art and culture with more confidence and vigor, especially during a briefing to the South Asian desk at the US State Department about the contemporary educational and cultural situation of Pakistan.
CAA’s 2014 Annual Conference was a life-changing event. Now I’m more confident about my research and teaching methodology because a comparison with other approaches helped me improve my own ways of doing things. I’m so very much looking forward to attending the conference next year.
After returning to Pakistan, I have talked with my students about the potential and scope of CAA and to encourage them to become members. This will give them an exposure to a world of dedicated art historians, enthusiastic academicians, and talented artists, with endless opportunities for those who have the judgment and ability to take advantage of them.
Image Caption
Kanwal Khalid in Chicago.
People in the News
posted by CAA — Apr 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.
April 2014
Academe
Christine Hahn has earned tenure in the Department of Art and Art History at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
David Joselit has left Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, for a new post as Distinguished Professor of Art History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Museums and Galleries
Darby English, director of research and academic programming at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has been appointed consulting curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He will retain his position at the Clark.
Sandra Q. Firmin, curator of the UB Art Galleries at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, has accepted the directorship of the CU Art Museum at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
David Rubin has left his curatorial position at the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas.
Organizations and Publications
Jill Deupi has joined the board of directors of the Association of Art Museums and Galleries as its New England representative.
Jessi DiTillio has been appointed interim administrative director of the Association of Art Museums and Galleries.
Reni Gower of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond has been reelected to the Southeastern College Art Conference’s board of directors for a three-year term.
Sandra Reed of the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, has been reelected to the Southeastern College Art Conference’s board of directors for a three-year term.
Institutional News
posted by CAA — Apr 17, 2014
Read about the latest news from institutional members.
Institutional News 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.
April 2014
The Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock has received a spectacular gift of 290 watercolors and drawings by the American artist John Marin (1870–1953) from Norma B. Marin, the widow of the artist’s son.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art and Design (photograph by William Atkins/George Washington University and © George Washington University Photography)The Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art and Design, both in Washington, DC, have announced a merger with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University, also located in the nation’s capital.
The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, England, and the Iran Heritage Foundation have announced funding for a postgraduate and research-assistant post with a focus on Persian arts.
The Frick Art Reference Library and the William Randolph Hearst Archive at Long Island University (LIU) Post have completed a collaborative digitization project, Gilding the Gilded Age: Interior Decoration Tastes and Trends in New York City. With funding from the New York State Regional Bibliographic Databases Program, this project brings together a group of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century auction catalogues held by the library and the archive.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California is one of five major American museums to have received funding for the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program, which provides specialized training in the curatorial field for students across the United States with diverse backgrounds.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has received a gift from Daniel Brodsky, the museum’s chairman, and his wife Estrellita B. Brodsky, an art historian, to endow two new curatorial positions in the museum’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. The two positions will be called the Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art and the Daniel Brodsky Associate Curator of Architecture and Design.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is one of five major American museums to have received funding for the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program, which provides specialized training in the curatorial field for students across the United States with diverse backgrounds.
Ann HamiltonOhio State University in Columbus has initiated the Ann Hamilton Project Archive, which contains more than one thousand downloadable, high-resolution images from thirty-five installation by Hamilton, an internationally acclaimed artist and Distinguished University Professor in the university’s Department of Art.
The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, has reopened its Study Room after completing the first phase of a major building-conservation project.
The Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, has accepted a $5 million contribution from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to create a permanent, unrestricted endowment to support the core priorities of the school, while naming in perpetuity the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean. A second gift of $900,000 will supplement three existing endowments, created by the foundation in 2010, to establish an artist’s residency, scholarships for international students, and a dean’s resource fund.
Yale University Press in New Haven, Connecticut, has accepted the 2013 Design Book of the Year Award by the editors of Designers & Books for Phyllis Lambert’s volume Building Seagram (2013). The press also received an honorable mention for another book, The Houses of Louis Kahn (2013) by George H. Marcus and William Whitaker.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 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.
Delaware Art Museum’s Deaccession Debacle: My Q&A with Its Former Director, Danielle Rice
While the Delaware Art Museum has been the target of considerable criticism among museum professionals for its decision to sell art to repay debts and enhance the endowment, no one has been more distressed by this development than the museum’s own former director, Danielle Rice, who left at the end of August to direct a program in museum leadership at Drexel University. In a candid, in-depth conversation, Rice expressed her strong disapproval of what the trustees did after she left, outlined what should have been done instead, and commented on what lies ahead for her former institution. (Read more from Culturegrrl.)
Detroit Creditors Demand a Full Reckoning of Museum’s Art
The Detroit Institute of Arts has hit an obstacle in its ongoing quest to safeguard its collection from the city’s creditors amid Detroit’s bankruptcy proceedings. Over the past week, two groups of creditors served the museum with wide-ranging subpoenas for records covering the past hundred years and documenting the ownership history of every work in its 60,000-piece collection. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
What I Learned from Organizing a Conference
Conferences are an integral part of developing oneself as an academic, especially for a graduate student. They provide the chance to practice public speaking, are a great way to get feedback on the progress of one’s work, and are one of the best ways to network with others in your field. But what if you want to be on the other side of the conference? What if you want to organize one? (Read more from GradHacker.)
Galleries Are Man’s World, and Micol Hebron Is Keeping Score
While browsing the glossy pages of Artforum, the artist Micol Hebron kept getting the feeling that male artists were disproportionately represented in the magazine’s advertising. “People assumed that there was an inequity there, but no one had any data,” she recalls. “So every time I got the physical magazine, I would count the ads—the full-page ads for single artists—since that tells you who the galleries are putting their weight behind.” Month after month, she says, the count was roughly the same, “Usually, about 70 percent men.” Sometimes it was worse. (Read more from KCET.)
I’m the Biggest Man on Campus
Overweight professors across academe describe similar battles to achieve self-acceptance, full inclusion in academic life, and genuine respect from students and colleagues. Some struggle daily to navigate campus spaces that don’t comfortably accommodate their size. Some stand in front of classrooms and wonder whether their bodies influence how students perceive their minds. Some say they have trouble adhering to exercise plans or healthy eating habits because their jobs come with lots of research and little structure. Yet larger professors often grapple with these concerns in isolation and silence. (Read more from Vitae.)
What Can You Do with a Humanities PhD, Anyway?
There is a widespread belief that humanities PhDs have limited job prospects, yet recent studies suggest that these tragedies do not tell the whole story. It is true that the plate tectonics of academia have been shifting since the 1970s, reducing the number of good jobs available in the field. What is less widely known is between a fifth and a quarter of them go on to work in well-paying jobs in media, corporate America, nonprofits, and government. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
Stuck in the Middle
Associate professors, in theory, should be hitting a stride in their academic careers. In the middle ranks of faculty, they have typically earned tenure and started to take on broader responsibilities in their departments, juggling more service and governance roles with their teaching and research. But the earning power of these professors is diminishing compared with their peers in ranks above and below them. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Room to Grow
Flexibility stigma is a term scholars use to describe work places that punish those who don’t fit the “ideal worker” profile: solely devoted to one’s job, available twenty-four hours a day and traditionally male. Lots of studies suggest that in academe, such biases are particularly prevalent in the sciences, and that women with young children are the most frequent targets. But a new study argues that both men and women with small children report and resent inflexible department cultures. It also finds that even nonparents resent flexibility stigma, with negative consequences for the department over all. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 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.
The Most Expensive Colleges in the Country Are Art Schools, not Ivies
I recently stumbled across this handy tool from the Department of Education, which generates lists of colleges by cost. The schools that usually get dinged for high tuition (and as a result, scare off low-income applicants) are the elite colleges. But many of those schools are quite rich and distribute a lot of financial aid. (Read more from the Washington Post.)
Sure, I Do Creative Work, but I’m No Artist
Who, exactly, is an artist? Many claim the title, with little to back up their assertion. We’ve all met people who define themselves as artists but have yet to actually produce any actual art. A new study finds that, surprisingly, the reverse is also true. It identifies a large group of Americans who have every right to call themselves professional artists but for some reason avoid doing so. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
You’re Sure of a Big Surprise
Museums across the United States are hiring staff under the “public engagement” rubric, often as part of their education departments. The Henry Art Gallery in Seattle is seeking “a director of education and public engagement,” and in January the Whitney Museum in New York hired a “director of public programs and public engagement.” Both are new positions. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Without Tenure or a Home
In the classroom, Mary-Faith Cerasoli, an adjunct professor of Romance languages, usually tries to get her message across in lyrical Italian or Spanish. But during spring break, she used stencils and ink and abbreviated English to write her current message—“Homeless Prof.”—on a white ski vest she planned to wear on a solo trip to Albany two days later to protest working conditions for adjunct college professors. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Russian Oligarchs and Brazilian Millionaires Interested in DIA? Orr Was Speaking Metaphorically
OK, let’s clear up any misunderstanding: Russian oligarchs and Brazilian millionaires are not amassed in front of the Detroit Institute of Arts in the hopes of being first in line should the treasures inside go up for sale. But that doesn’t mean they, or someone like them, aren’t intensely interested. While giving a speech at the University of Michigan, Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr said that many Russian oligarchs—meaning super-wealthy Russian businessmen—and Brazilian millionaires were “calling and inquiring” about the art. However, Orr’s spokesman Bill Nowling clarified that the emergency manager spoke metaphorically. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
United We Stand: How Galleries Are Working Together
From the Renaissance bottega to the art factories of Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, artists have long recognized that they get by better with a little help from their friends. Institutions have been slower to catch on. As public funding dwindles, the scramble for sponsorship gets ever more rivalrous as museums vie to woo patrons with the glossiest gala dinner and most highbrow curatorial outing. (Read more from the Financial Times.)
Protesters Rain Down Thousands of Bills in Guggenheim Rotunda
At 6:45 PM on March 29, a handheld bell sounded in the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, signaling the second protest action in as many months from the Global Ultra Luxury Faction (or GULF). The ringing was followed by the release of nine thousand “1%” bills of parodic currency, which fluttered downward as patrons rushed to the inner edge of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral ramp. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
Vatican Library Goes Digital
The Vatican Apostolic Library has announced a €18 million deal with a Japanese IT company to digitize 3,000 ancient manuscripts over the next four years. In a press conference last week, the library’s prefect, Monsignor Cesare Pasini, said the partnership with NTT Data Corporation continues “a task we have been undertaking for years” to digitize the Vatican’s entire collection of 82,000 manuscripts, an estimated 40 million pages. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)