CAA News Today
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Feb 26, 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.
Orr’s Plan Would Protect DIA Artwork, but It’s Not a Done Deal Yet
The fate of the Detroit Institute of Arts remains in limbo in the wake of the recent release of Kevyn Orr’s restructuring plan for Detroit’s finances. While Orr’s plan incorporates the fundamentals of a much-talked-about deal to prevent the forced sale of any masterpieces and to separate the city-owned museum into an independent charitable trust, several critical steps remain before a final settlement would guarantee the museum safe harbor in Detroit’s historic bankruptcy. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
Photographers Band Together to Protect Work in “Fair Use” Cases
To many photographers, a federal appeals court ruling last spring that permitted Richard Prince to use someone else’s photographs in his art was akin to slapping a “Steal This” label on their work, but photographers are pushing back. Several membership and trade organizations have banded together recently to press their cause in Congress and the courts. (Read more from the New York Times.)
No Longer Appropriate?
“Appropriating” other artists’ work without consent is still common, but there is growing evidence—albeit rarely reported—that, although some artists may have started out as willing or unwitting outlaws, they decided that possibly infringing other artists’ copyright was legally unwise and potentially expensive, and they stopped. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Protest Action Erupts inside the Guggenheim Museum
Last weekend, over forty protesters staged an intervention inside the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan during Saturday night’s pay-what-you-wish admission hours. Unfurling Mylar banners, dropping leaflets, chanting words, handing out information to museum visitors, and drawing attention with a baritone bugle, the group highlighted the labor conditions on Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates, where Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a franchise of New York’s Guggenheim, is being built. (Read more from ArtLeaks.)
Eminent Domain
A gallery’s street address says a lot more than its web address. We’ll assume that a gallery at 555 West 24th Street in Chelsea sells more expensive art, represents more well-known artists, and is more influential on the market than, say, the residential address of an artist-run apartment gallery in Bed Stuy. A web address can’t connote this same kind of prestige differential. There are no neighborhoods on the internet, and the cost of rent is always somewhere from $1 to $15 a month. (Read more from the New Inquiry.)
People Lose Their Minds over Obama’s Art History Apology
President Barack Obama’s apology to the art historian Ann Collins Johns has created a frenzy of media coverage, including some inexplicably strange responses. When was the last time you heard art history discussed in mainstream news publications and news channels? Crickets. Exactly. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
In Defense of Art History: Against the Neoliberal Imagination
Obama’s recent statement about art-history majors echoes a crude opinion of the American ruling class—all that is not of immediate and utilitarian interest to the profit system is to be shunned—and underlines a common conception of education and culture and highlights the ongoing onslaught on the humanities and liberal arts. The corporate education model being pushed heavily on public schools, state universities, and city colleges—schools that serve students from largely working-class and poor backgrounds—grants little weight to these subjects. (Read more from Red Wedge.)
The End of the Corcoran Gallery of Art
If the Corcoran Gallery of Art had to be swallowed up by a larger and healthier institution to survive, we might celebrate last week’s announcement that its collection will be devoured by the National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery is hands down the most prestigious and respected steward of fine art in Washington, and its reputation is international. But this is not a swallowing of the Corcoran—this is the end of the Corcoran and its final dismemberment. (Read more from the Washington Post.)
AAMD Provenance Workshops
posted by CAA — Feb 25, 2014
The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) will cosponsor two provenance workshops this spring: one in Seattle, Washington, and another in Washington, DC.
Seattle
This workshop will be held on May 18, 2014, in conjunction with the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries’s annual conference in Seattle. The workshop will review best practices for conducting provenance research in art museums, with a focus on Nazi-era provenance, as well as issues pertaining to antiquities and cultural property. The session is geared to all levels of experience and can serve as a how-to and a refresher. The workshop leaders will discuss due diligence and the acquisition process, online research tools, and the handling of restitution claims. The workshop is limited to fifty participants; ample time will be allotted for Q&A.
Victoria Reed, curator for provenance at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Nancy H. Yeide, head of the Department of Curatorial Records at the National Gallery of Art, will conduct the half-day workshop, which will be held at the Hotel Deca in Seattle. Each participant will receive a copy of Yeide’s book Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection (2009), which is the first biography to focus on Hermann Goering’s personal collection and provides the first opportunity since the war to look at the collection as a whole and evaluate its place within art collecting and politics. This carefully documented volume is critical to the clarification of provenances of the objects featured and brings to light pictures whose histories and whereabouts have been hidden for decades.
Registration is available at www.aamg-us.org/registration; scroll down to “Sunday Morning Workshops.”
Washington, DC
In cooperation with the National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, and the American Alliance of Museums, AAMD will sponsor a workshop for advanced researchers following the success of a two-day, Nazi-era provenance seminar that was held in 2011. Taking place at the National Archives on June 17, 2014, this workshop is limited to thirty participants who are experienced researchers working in museums. The event will provide a hands-on workshop on using new and updated online provenance research resources. Registration will include a copy of Holocaust-Era Assets, a Finding Aid to Records at the National Archives at College Park.
Nancy H. Yeide, head of the Department of Curatorial Records at the National Gallery of Art, and Chris Naylor, director of textual records for the National Archives, will lead the one-day workshop, which will be accompanied by an introduction to new materials at the Archives of American Art led by Marisa Bourgoin, chief of reference services for the Archives of American Art, and Laurie Stein, senior provenance advisor for the Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative.
The cosponsors for the DC seminar express grateful appreciation to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for support to defray expenses for workshop participants.
To apply for registration go and to learn more about Kress grants, visit the AAMD website.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Feb 19, 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.
Obama Picks Low-Profile Arts Center Executive to Chair the NEA
Opting for arts-administration and fundraising credentials over star power, the White House announced last week that President Obama will nominate Jane Chu, president and chief executive of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, as the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
The Monuments Men Did More Than Rescue Nazi-Looted Art
The greatest Rubens altarpiece in America is in Ohio, at the Toledo Museum of Art. We have the Monuments Men to thank for that. George Clooney’s galumphing all-star movie The Monuments Men did not impress the critics—“inert,” lamented the Los Angeles Times movie critic Kenneth Turan—but the real-life story of soldiers sent to protect and rescue Europe’s great artworks during and after World War II is impressive. So was its aftermath. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
How American Museums Protected Their Art from the Nazis
Last weekend, George Clooney’s newest film, The Monuments Men, arrived in theaters, highlighting a fascinating chapter in World War II. Beginning in 1943, the Monuments Men dutifully retrieved canvases and confiscated heirlooms stashed in salt mines and inconspicuous locations across the continent (and later Japan). Given the inconceivable scope of the cultural upheaval, it’s understandable that one element of the story remains largely overlooked: the precautions taken to protect artworks on American soil. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
Who Owns This Image?
CAA, an organization of about fourteen thousand artists, scholars, and curators, recently released a report on the state of fair use in the visual arts. The association commissioned Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, a law professor at American, to be the principal investigators, who found that most professionals have no idea how to employ fair use. As a result, they wrote: “Their work is constrained and censored, most powerfully by themselves, because of that confusion and the resulting fear and anxiety.” (Read more from the New Yorker.)
When Cost Cutting and Staff Costs Are Passed Off as Reductions in Administrative Bloat
At the end of December, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Steve Herbert titled “Colleges Trim Staffing Bloat.” So, if you did not read any further than the title, you might think that all of the attention to administrative bloat as a cost-driver in American higher education was finally producing some results. Think again. (Read more from Academe Blog.)
Great Art Needs an Audience
As the virtual replaces the physical and the world gets globalized, we’ve been hearing that art galleries, settled in a single place, are bound to be on their way out. Collectors are now more likely to buy at a fair than from a dealer’s home base; some may do their art shopping online. A few midrange dealers, especially, are already closing their galleries, to conduct all their business in private, at fairs, or by JPEG. I believe that these changes put art itself at risk. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Art at Arm’s Length: A History of the Selfie
We live in the age of the selfie. A fast self-portrait, made with a smartphone’s camera and immediately distributed and inscribed into a network, is an instant visual communication of where we are, what we’re doing, who we think we are, and who we think is watching. Selfies have changed aspects of social interaction, body language, self-awareness, privacy, and humor, altering temporality, irony, and public behavior. (Read more from Vulture.)
Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline
The world may be full of problems, but students presenting projects for Introduction to Creative Studies have uncovered a bunch you probably haven’t thought of. Elie Fortune, a freshman, revealed his Sneaks ’n Geeks app to identify the brand of killer sneakers you spot on the street. Jason Cathcart, a senior, sported a bulky martial-arts uniform with sparring pads he had sewn in. No more forgetting them at home. (Read more from the New York Times.)
People in the News
posted by CAA — Feb 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.
February 2014
Museums and Galleries
Kathleen Bickford BerzockKathleen Bickford Berzock, previously curator of African art at the Art Institute of Chicago, has been appointed associate director of curatorial affairs for the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Michael Brown, a researcher, lecturer, and formerly Mayer Curatorial Fellow for Spanish Colonial Art at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado, has become an associate curator of European art at the San Diego Museum of Art in California.
Elizabeth KozlowskiElizabeth Kozlowski, formerly Windgate Curatorial Fellow at the Arizona State University Museum in Tempe, has become a new curator for the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Texas.
Institutional News
posted by CAA — Feb 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.
February 2014
The Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Frick Collection, whose institutional libraries formed the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), have been awarded a $340,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to initiate a program of web archiving for specialist art-historical resources. The two-year program will follow a 2012 pilot study, Reframing Collections for the Digital Age, also funded by the Mellon Foundation.
The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has accepted a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support an upcoming exhibition, Joseph Cornell and Surrealism, organized by the museum and the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, France.
The J. Paul Getty Trust, based in Los Angeles, California, and the British Museum in London, England, have announce a three-year collaboration with the National Cultural Fund and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), under the aegis of the Indian government’s Ministry of Culture, to build the capacities of ASI’s site-museum and site-management professionals. Nearly one hundred ASI professionals—among them archaeologists, site-museum professionals, site managers, directors, and caretakers—will participate in workshops, trainings, conferences, and working-group meetings in India, Los Angeles, London, and other Asian sites to help reimagine Indian site-museums with enhanced narratives, better collection management, and conservation.
The Herron School of Art and Design, part of Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, has received a $2 million gift from Cindy Simon Skjodt, a philanthropist and advocate for mental health, to endow a chair for the school’s program in art therapy.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania has met the goal of a major five-year initiative, the Lenfest Challenge, having raised a total of $54 million to endow twenty-nine staff positions in its curatorial, conservation, library, archive, education, publishing, and digital-technology departments. H. F. (Gerry) Lenfest, chairman emeritus of the museum’s board of trustees, and his wife, Marguerite, offered a $27 million grant in September 2008, challenging donors to match this gift on a one-to-one basis to endow and name these positions.
The University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles and the Pacific Asia Museum of Pasadena, one of the few American museums dedicated to the arts and culture of Asia and the Pacific Islands, have announced a new partnership that will preserve the museum’s 1924 Chinese Qing Dynasty–inspired mansion in downtown Pasadena as an art museum. The partnership will also enhance the scholarship of the creative faculty and students at USC’s six arts schools and those in the departments of art history, East Asian language and cultures, religion, and archaeology. In addition, the alliance will provide a foundation for a renewed museum-studies and curatorial-training program at USC.
The University of Texas at Dallas has announced the new home for the Arts and Technology (ATEC) program: the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building. This new 155,000-square-foot facility will host programs and promote advancements in visual art, emerging media technology, and multimedia communications.
The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, has received a $9.6 million bequest from the estate of Charles H. Schwartz to establish an endowment to expand and enhance the museum’s collection of English and European works of art from the eighteenth century.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Feb 12, 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.
Art vs. Endowment
More than six years after announcing plans to sell a masterpiece of American painting—the 1912 work Men of the Docks by George Bellows—Randolph College has done so, gaining $25.5 million for its endowment. In selling the painting, the college disregarded the policies of several art and museum groups, which state that museums (including those run by colleges) should sell art only to buy more art, not to improve their finances. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Lessons of California’s Droit de Suite Debacle
The debate over a national droit de suite in the United States is back, as Congressman Jerrold Nadler from New York is advancing a revised version of his Equity for Visual Artists Act of 2011, which failed to become law the first time around. When American supporters of resale royalties seek to advance their arguments, they usually look to other countries for supporting evidence, such as France, while overlooking the California act. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
To Improve Adjuncts’ Plight, “Step One Is to Acknowledge the Problem”
Maria C. Maisto, president of New Faculty Majority, answered via email select questions submitted by viewers of the Chronicle’s online chat about adjunct issues. The questions and her responses have been edited for brevity and clarity. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Women Really Don’t Ask
Like many research centers, my center offers travel awards to graduate students and postdocs to help cover their expenses when presenting at conferences. The typical award is $500, which is often enough to cover travel to conferences in the region. Because my center is very well funded, we don’t really have an official limit to how much someone can request or be awarded. Yet the only people who had requested the full amount to cover their expensive trips were male graduate students. (Read more from Research Centered.)
Help Desk: Performance Anxiety
I am not trained as a visual artist—I hold my graduate degree in dance choreography and before that worked primarily in live theatrical concert dance. However, my focus shifted in grad school, where I started developing work in performance that should live in a gallery space. Now that I am out of school, I have a great new project in the works but no idea how to make it happen. What are the unspoken rules for approaching art spaces and museums with performance work? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
NEA Funds Benefits Both Rich and Poor, Study Finds
Ever since the late 1980s, when the performance artist Karen Finley started playing with yams and chocolate, the NEA has come under fire from some conservative lawmakers. Now House Republicans charge that the endowment supports programming primarily attended by the rich, causing “a wealth transfer from poorer to wealthier citizens.” A recent study challenges that assertion, concluding that federally supported arts programs attract people across the income spectrum. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Academics Launch Torrent Site to Share Papers and Data Sets
Researchers from the University of Massachusetts have launched a torrent site that allows academics to share papers and data sets. AcademicTorrents provides researchers with a reliable and decentralized platform to share their work with not only peers, but also the rest of the world. The site currently indexes over 1.5 petabytes of data, including NASA’s map of Mars. (Read more from TorrentFreak.)
Contagion: Jack Hyland on The Moses Virus
The author of The Moses Virus, Jack Hyland is also a founding partner of Media Advisory Partners. In addition to his career in investment banking, he has served on the boards of several nonprofit institutions, including those of CAA, the American Academy in Rome, Teachers College at Columbia University, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. (Read more from the Hartford Books Examiner.)
CAA Comment on George Bellows Painting Sold by Randolph College
posted by CAA — Feb 10, 2014
The College Art Association endorses the deaccessioning policies of the American Association of Museums and Association of Art Museum Directors. These mandate that once a museum approves the serious step of a sale of works from its holdings, those proceeds be put toward the collection and not toward institutional operating costs. The recent sale of the George Bellows painting Men of the Docks from the Maier Museum at Randolph College violates these principles. CAA supports the AAMD censure of the Maier Museum at Randolph College and expresses its regret that Randolph College has compromised the educational and cultural mission of the museum by treating its collection as a fungible asset rather than as a vital part of the institution’s artistic heritage, held in trust for its students and the community.
The Art Bulletin Seeks a Reviews Editor
posted by Joe Hannan — Feb 06, 2014
The Art Bulletin Editorial Board invites nominations and self-nominations for the position of reviews editor for a three-year term, July 1, 2015–June 30, 2018, with service as incoming reviews editor designate in 2014–15. Candidates should be art scholars with stature in the field and experience in editing book and/or exhibition reviews; institutional affiliation is not required. Candidates should be published authors of at least one book.
The Art Bulletin features leading scholarship in the English language in all aspects of art history as practiced in the academy, museums, and other institutions. From its founding in 1913, the quarterly journal has published, through rigorous peer review, scholarly articles and critical reviews of the highest quality in all areas and periods of the history of art.
Working with the editorial board, the reviews editor is responsible for commissioning all book and exhibition reviews in The Art Bulletin. He or she selects books and exhibitions for review, commissions reviewers, and determines the appropriate length and character of reviews. The reviews editor also works with authors and CAA’s editorial director in the development and preparation of review manuscripts for publication. He or she is expected to keep abreast of newly published and important books and recent exhibitions in the fields of art history, criticism, theory, visual studies, and museum publishing. The three-year term includes membership on the Art Bulletin Editorial Board.
The reviews editor attends the three annual meetings of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board—held twice in New York in the spring and fall and once at the CAA Annual Conference in February—and submits an annual report to CAA’s Publications Committee. CAA reimburses the reviews editor for travel and lodging expenses for the two New York meetings in accordance with its travel policy, but he or she pays these expenses to attend the conference.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and at least one letter of recommendation to: Art Bulletin Reviews Editor Search, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or email the documents to Joe Hannan, CAA editorial director. Deadline extended: April 16, 2014; finalists will be interviewed on the afternoon of Friday, May 2, in New York.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jan 29, 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.
Snyder Pledges $350 Million to Save Detroit Pensions and DIA Artwork, but Hurdles Remain
A settlement of Detroit’s bankruptcy that would protect city retirees and the Detroit Institute of Arts’s collection appeared closer after Michigan governor Rick Snyder pledged $350 million to a growing rescue fund designed to bring all the major parties together in a grand resolution. US Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes also put his weight behind a grand bargain, saying in a separate hearing that he might not allow DIA artwork ever to be sold to satisfy city debts. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
Where Are the Girls? Jemima Kirke on Women in Art
Jemima Kirke of television show Girls discusses how women have always made art, even if they’ve been absent from the history books and gallery walls. This short film made by the Tate investigates the role of women as makers, not just muses—from Lee Miller to the Guerrilla Girls. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Congress Takes Note
It’s time for Congress to pay attention to the abuse of adjunct faculty members, and the way their poor working conditions impact not only them but also their students, says a new report from the House Education and the Workforce Committee. While the report largely endorses previous studies on the subject, “The Just-In-Time Professor” document marks the first time Congress has so formally acknowledged a situation that adjunct activists have long deemed exploitative. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Class Divide on Campus: Adjunct Professors Fight for Better Pay and Benefits
Marcia Newfield and Rosalind Petchesky are both professors at the City University of New York. They both have advanced degrees. They both have been teaching for decades and are in their seventies. But there’s a big difference between the two: Petchesky is a distinguished professor, and Newfield is an adjunct. That means Newfield makes a fraction of what Petchesky makes. (Read more from NBC News.)
Why Buy the Cow? An Open Letter to the Full-Time Faculty of American Colleges and Universities
It is Saturday night, and as I write this, my young son sleeps; there is a stack of at least 140 papers stuffed into my Jane Eyre tote bag—the seams that cinch the handles to the bag are loosening, and will probably rip before I administer my last final in December. I bought it just this August, but as an adjunct professor this semester, I’m teaching twenty-two credits at three separate colleges. (Read more from I Will Start This Blog. I Mean It!)
Smartphones in the Classroom? Let Students Decide
Should students be allowed to use personal technology in the classroom? That’s a contentious issue for many instructors, myself included. Concerns about distraction—web surfing, Facebook checking, Scrabble playing—may prompt instructors to adopt policies that ban students from using laptops, tablets, and smartphones in class. Understandably so. (Read more from Vitae.)
The Myth of the Tortured Artist
No one blinked an eye when John Malkovich stooped to do Transformers 2. Jimi Hendrix’s reputation as a rock god hasn’t suffered for having been a session guitarist for the Isley Brothers. If your child opened a lemonade stand on the sidewalk you’d probably praise his enterprising spirit. So why is it so odious to some in the art world when an artist tries to make a little coin for himself? (Read more from the Daily Beast.)
The Fate of Sculptures at Museums around the World
Neil MacGregor and Thomas Campbell, the directors, respectively, of the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will now be able to make arrangements for the first two stops in the planned international tour of plum Burrell Collection works to help raise £45 million to repair and refurbish the Burrell Collection building, the roof of which has been left leaking for decades. The desultory nondebate took place during an international spate of damaged sculptures. (Read more from ArtWatch UK.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jan 22, 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.
Twelve Things You Should Never Say to an Artist
One of the hardest parts of being an artist is courting the seemingly endless barrage of awkward, inappropriate, and downright rude comments hurled your way. Whether it’s an intended compliment or an ignorant gaffe, some statements about l’arte are better left unsaid. Thus we’ve compiled an unofficial guide outlining what you definitely, positively should not say to an artist, whether friend or foe. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Teaching Students How To See
“A college is a great context for getting at the things that are life changing and transformative about art,” says Ian Berry, director of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. “You’re working with undergraduates who are figuring out who they’re going to be, learning how to be critical consumers of information, deciding what kind of tribe they’re going to land in.” Berry has dedicated his entire career to the fertile ground of college museums. (Read more from ARTnews.)
Bringing the Museum into the Art-History Classroom
Most art-history instructors include a museum visit or two in the semester schedule. But what if a museum or gallery visit is difficult to arrange, depending upon the geographic location of the college or university, the class size, or the time the class is offered? Even though I have access to numerous museums because I teach in New York City, I found that some of these challenges prohibited my students in engaging with the museum in what I considered to be a meaningful way. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
Thousands of Years of Visual Culture Made Free through Wellcome Images
Wellcome Library has announced that over 100,000 high-resolution images—including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography, and advertisements—are now freely available through Wellcome Images. Drawn from vast historical holdings, the images are being released under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license, which means that they can be used for commercial or personal purposes, with an acknowledgement of the original source, free of charge. (Read more from the Wellcome Library.)
DIA May Be Asked to Ante Up $100 Million to Break Free from City
Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr met with Detroit Institute of Arts leaders for the first time last week and told them they may have to make a substantial contribution to a fund that would provide hundreds of millions for city pensioners and protect DIA art from being sold as part of the city’s bankruptcy, according to a person familiar with Orr’s plans. Orr did not push for a specific figure, but the city believes $100 million over twenty years “is a number the DIA can get to,” the source said. Museum leaders said that figure was “completely unfeasible.” (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
Agreement Reached in Plagiarism Row between Artists
A wall-sized, black-and-white checkerboard work by Tobias Rehberger, commissioned by the Berlin national library but concealed for almost year because of a complaint brought by the British Op art painter Bridget Riley, will again go on show. The piece was at the center of a legal row between Rehberger and Riley, who said it plagiarized her painting Movement of Squares (1961) and demanded it be removed from display in the library’s reading room. Rehberger argued that the checkerboard pattern was part of the public domain. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
The Odds Are Never in Your Favor
The academic job market is a process that necessitates failure. Your application materials will end up in the slush pile at dozens of departments, regardless of how well suited you are for the position or how carefully you tailor your materials. Outstanding candidates can easily fail to find a position. And that’s why, when I can’t quite convey that grim reality, I tell my family and friends that if they want to know what the job market is like for PhDs, they should read (or watch) The Hunger Games. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Crowded Out of Ivory Tower, Adjuncts See a Life Less Lofty
His students call him “Prof,” and in the classroom James D. Hoff looks like any other English professor. He is sandy-haired and bearded, with a passion for modern American poetry, and has published essays on Ezra Pound and Laura Riding and is able to forget his worries amid the joys of helping young people discover the power of literature. But his anxieties always come back. At night, he sometimes lies sleepless in the dark, wondering how long he will be able to afford the academic life. (Read more from the New York Times.)