CAA News Today
Dmitrii V. Sarabianov: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Aug 21, 2013
Alison Hilton is Wright Family Professor of Art History at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Dmitrii V. Sarabianov, a Russian art historian and a specialist on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, died in Moscow on July 19, 2013. He was 89 years old. Sarabianov was one of the great art historians of his generation, those who began their scholarly careers during and following World War II.
Born on October 10, 1923, into the family of a Marxist philosopher, Sarabianov showed an early interest in the arts, especially poetry and music, as well as camping and athletics. Soon after he began his undergraduate studies in 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. He joined the army to serve as a translator, was wounded twice, and received several medals for military merit. After the war Sarabianov completed his undergraduate work at Moscow State University and was admitted into the school’s graduate program in art history, earning his candidate’s degree in 1952.
In 1954 he began work at Moscow’s prestigious Institute of Art History, first as a senior researcher and later as deputy director. From 1966 to 1996 Sarabianov taught and served as the head of the Art History Department at Moscow State University. He earned his doctorate in 1971. (In Russia this signifies substantial scholarly achievement beyond the candidate’s degree; it is roughly equivalent to full professorship.) Sarabianov became a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1987 and was elected to the rank of academician five years later.
Sarabianov was an inspiring teacher and mentor whose influence guided the careers of many Russian academics and museum scholars for several generations. Even for those who did not encounter him directly, Sarabianov’s publications—numbering more than 360 books and articles—set a standard for scholarship recognized both in Russia and abroad. Subjects of his monographs, many of them translated, include important nineteenth-century artists, among them Pavel Fedotov, Orest Kiprenskii, Aleksei Venetsianov, Ilya Repin, and Valentin Serov, as well as key figures in early-twentieth-century art such as Vasilii Kandinsky, Pavel Kuznetsov, Robert Falk, Liubov Popova, and Kazimir Malevich. What distinguishes Sarabianov’s work is the scope and originality of his interpretations of Russian art movements. He was among the first to write about Russian nineteenth-century painting in relation to European art, and he published a path-breaking study of international Art Nouveau in 1989. His book Russian Art: From Neoclassicism to the Avant Garde 1800–1917 (1990) is considered the fundamental text on the subject.
Sarabianov always took his civic responsibility as an academic very seriously. He spoke up at meetings, defended intellectual freedom, and voted on policy questions. In 2005, he and colleagues in Moscow’s major museums and other art institutions created the National Organization of Art Experts (NOEXI) to monitor and cope with the unprecedented demands of the chaotic art market in Russia and to establish means of ensuring professional credibility and trust.
Regarded by his peers, his former students, and his readers as a scholar of absolute integrity, Dmitrii Sarabianov will be missed most for his immense charm and kindness. He is survived by his wife, Elena Borisovna Murina, and his sons, Andrei and Vladimir Sarabianov.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 21, 2013
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.
Almanac of Higher Education 2013
The Chronicle of Higher Education takes the measure of higher education in its 2013–14 almanac, an annual compendium of data on colleges regarding the profession, students, diversity, finance, technology, and international issues. This year’s almanac features many new tables and charts along with the familiar ones. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
A Guide to the Web’s Growing Set of Free Image Collections
The J. Paul Getty Trust has launched its Open Content Program, making more than 4,600 high-quality images of artwork available for free online. Though works by van Gogh, Rembrandt, and Dürer had already fallen into the public domain, the Getty’s program makes their digital reproductions much easier to use. The Getty is not the first museum to put so many images online this year. The Atlantic has listed the museums and research institutions that have large, high-quality, free-to-use collections of historically or aesthetically notable images online. (Read more in the Atlantic).
Help Desk: Pressure to Review
I’m a new arts administrator and live in a midsized city. I started writing art reviews last year and now feel pressure to write about my artist friends’ work. It’s not like they are asking me directly, but hints have been dropped. I have no problem reviewing work that I think is good; the problem is that I like some people very much but don’t think their work is that great. How do I avoid reviewing work I don’t like without losing my friends? (Read more in Daily Serving.)
Christie’s Appraisal Will Reveal Value of Detroit Institute of Arts’ Collection
Art museums treat estimated values of their art like state secrets. In fact, major museums such as the Detroit Institute of Arts don’t even know precisely what all of their multi-million-dollar treasures are worth. When officials from the New York–based auction house Christie’s finish formally appraising city-owned works in Detroit this fall, the results will open an unprecedented public window into the market value of thousands of artworks at a top American museum. (Read more in the Detroit Free Press.)
Feminist Anti-MOOC
At first glance, “Feminism and Technology” sounds like another massive open online open course (MOOC) that would involve video components and be available online to anyone, with no charge. But don’t look for this course in any MOOC catalogue. “Feminism and Technology” is taking a few MOOC elements but then changing them in ways consistent with feminist pedagogy to create a distributed open collaborative course (DOCC). (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
More Smiles? More Money
Last November, the artist Martha Rosler had her first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, an installation and performance piece called Meta-Monumental Garage Sale. It was, in fact, an enormous garage sale, with heaps of toys, furniture, clothes, and crockery arranged on a tidy maze of racks and tables winding through the museum’s main atrium. The show continued a project Rosler began in 1973 with Monumental Garage Sale, a performance she staged as a graduate student at UC San Diego and later re-created in museums all over the world. Like its predecessors, Meta-Monumental Garage Sale was a meditation on value. (Read more from N+1.)
Jasper Johns’s Assistant Charged with Stealing the Artist’s Work
In the twenty-seven years that James Meyer worked for Jasper Johns, the assistant answered the artist’s phone, stretched his canvases, bought his paintbrushes, and even drew lines on his canvases. Meyer was recently arrested for stealing at least twenty-two works from his employer and selling them through an unnamed New York gallery for $6.5 million, falsely telling the dealer and buyers that Johns had given them to him as presents and that they would be in the official catalogue raisonné. (Read more in New York Times.)
Pre-Raphaelite Mural Discovered in William Morris’s Red House
It began as an attempt to restore one blurry image that had been hidden for a century behind a large built-in wardrobe on William Morris’s bedroom wall. Months later, the painstaking removal of layers of paint and wallpaper revealed that an entire wall at the artist and craftsman’s first married home was painted by his young friends who would become world-famous Pre-Raphaelite artists. (Read more in the Guardian.)
Institutional News
posted by CAA — Aug 17, 2013
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.
August 2013
California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, along with the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in Los Angeles, has received a $244,000 grant from ArtPlace America for the September 2013 edition of “Radar L.A., an International Festival of Contemporary Theater” and a related series of performing artist residencies.
California State University, Stanislaus, has received a $20,000 Art Works Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support a study of the differential impacts of arts participation on California’s Central San Joaquin Valley, in particular Stanislaus County.
Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, has won a $20,000 Art Works Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support a study using the federal agency’s Survey of Public Participation in the Arts data to develop a multivariate framework for measuring arts participation.
The Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence has received a $50,000 National Forum Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to hold a symposium titled “Materials Education and Research in Art and Design: A New Role for Libraries,” which took place June 6–8, 2013, at the school’s museum.
The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has accepted a $20,000 grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage for an upcoming exhibition called Strange Currencies.
The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has received a $25,000 grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage for its upcoming exhibition, Barbara Kasten.
The Maine College of Art in Portland has unveiled a new institutional logo, created through a collaboration between Eddie Opara of the design company Pentagram and a group of design faculty and students.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has combined its Department of Prints with the Department of Drawings, creating a new Department of Prints and Drawings. The change took effect on July 1, 2013.
The National Gallery in London, England, has partnered with the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California, to add nearly 100,000 records of art sales from more than 1,200 British auction catalogues that were published between 1780 and 1800. The records will join the Getty Provenance Index, a free online art-historical database.
Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, has received a $25,000 Art Works Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support an analysis of American Community Survey data to determine relationships among selections of arts majors, occupational choices, and labor-market outcomes of American college graduates, including artist job holders.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania has earned a $30,000 planning grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage for a project called “The Contemporary Caucus,” which will engage staff from education, technology, marketing, communications, and exhibitions to identify and implement optimal strategies for connecting with twenty-first-century audiences.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania has received a Curatorial Travel/Internationally Collaborative Pre-exhibition Convening Grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art for an upcoming exhibition, Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the Twentieth Century.
The Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, in partnership with the design firm Project Projects, has completed a new visual identity and website for the school’s museum. Part of the initiative involved the renaming of the exhibiting institution as RISD Museum.
Saint Louis University in Missouri has accepted a $20,000 Art Works Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support a study that will examine how the growth and stability of local arts businesses have contributed to the redevelopment of downtown Saint Louis at the street and block level.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has won a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to support a study of the characteristics, needs, and support systems of ethnically and culturally specific organizations in the United States and Canada.
The Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio, has achieved a milestone in a twenty-year effort to reduce energy consumption. On May 21, 2013, the museum’s main building, a 101-year-old Beaux Arts structure, stopped drawing power from the electrical grid and even began returning power to the system.
The University of Iowa Museum of Art in Iowa City has received permission from its board of regents to construct a new building that will house a collection of 12,000 works. The school’s old exhibition space was destroyed by flooding in 2008.
The University of Maryland, College Park, has won a $25,000 Art Works Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support an analysis of two longitudinal data sets for information about the impact of high school arts education on college attainment, after controlling for certain preexisting differences between arts and nonarts students.
The University of Oregon in Eugene has received a $15,000 Art Works Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the development of an online, annotated resource that identifies American prison arts programs and their histories, related research, and outcomes analyzed on a rubric to be created for this project.
The University of Southern California in Los Angeles has earned a $15,000 Art Works Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support an analysis of survey data from the National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture to map the spatial relationships of media arts organizations to local community characteristics and target audiences.
West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania, has received a $25,000 Art Works Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support a study examining the physiological impacts of participation in music, dance, and the visual arts on economically disadvantaged children.
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has approved a new graphic identity and logo—which it calls the “responsive W”—in consultation with the design studio Experimental Jetset.
Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, has received a $2.1 million grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation to enhance its Art Department with the addition of studio craft and material arts and to foster a close partnership between it and the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design.
The Wolfsonian–FIU at Florida International University in Miami Beach, Florida, has accepted a $5 million donation from the Knight Foundation to fund a project to make the museum’s collection digitally accessible within five years.
Grants, Awards, and Honors
posted by CAA — Aug 15, 2013
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 2013
Joseph Ackley, a PhD candidate in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has been awarded a research grant for his participation in the Mellon Research Initiative conference, “Art History and the Art of Deception,” taking place in October 2013.
Sarah Archino, a teaching fellow in the Department of Art at Millsaps College in Jackson Mississippi, who earned her doctorate in art history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has accepted a 2013–15 postdoctoral teaching fellowship at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris, France, from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Chris Barnard, an artist based in Los Angeles, California, has spent the month of June 2013 in residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont.
Julia Whitney Barnes, an artist based in Brooklyn, New York, has received a commission to create a permanent glass-mosaic installation, titled Coloridas Historias de México, for the Brooklyn School of Inquiry.
Sinclair Bell, associate professor of art history at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, has been awarded a Howard Fellowship from the Howard Foundation at Brown University for 2013–14 to complete a monograph on chariot racing in ancient Rome.
Sarah Berkeley has been named a resident artist by the Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions (ACRE) in Steuben, Wisconsin. Berkeley’s collaborator, Regin Igloria, will join her during the summer 2013 program.
Wendy Bellion, associate professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware in Newark, has received an eight-week visiting professorship at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris, France, for spring 2015.
Steven Bleicher has been awarded a commission to produce a public art project, called Nature and Man in Rhapsody of Light at the Water Cube, in Beijing, China. His collaborators for the work were the artist Jennifer Wen Ma and the lighting designer Zheng Jianwei. Bleicher was the color specialist.
Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and Professor of African and African American Studies in the Department of Art and Architecture at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been named a 2013–14 Getty scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will work on a project entitled “By Sea, Sand, and River: Africa and the West, a History in Art (1300–1800).”
Michele Brody, an artist based in New York, has completed the Emmanuel College Artist in Residence Program, where she worked with three other artists on a class called “Contemporary Art and Artistic Practice.”
Larry Busbea has won a 2013 Grant to Individuals in the category of research from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, based in Chicago, Illinois. His project is called “The Responsive Environment: Aesthetics, Design, and Ecology in the 1970s.”
Katherine Bussard, Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at the Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey, has earned a 2013 Grant to Individuals in the publication category from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Her publication is called Unfamiliar Streets: Photographs by Richard Avedon, Charles Moore, Martha Rosler, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia.
Kimberly Callas, an artist based in Brooks, Maine, has received a Puffin Foundation Grant for her sculptural project Portraits of the Ecological Self. The project includes ten hand-sculpted, life-size portraits that combine a detailed likeness of an individual with natural materials chosen to reveal the unique bond an individual has with nature.
Luis M. Castañeda has won a 2013 Grant to Individuals in the publication category from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, based in Chicago, Illinois. His book is called The Exhibitionist State: Image Economies of the Mexican “Miracle.”
Sheila Crane has won a 2013 Grant to Individuals in the category of research from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, based in Chicago, Illinois. Her project is called “Inventing Informality.”
Florina Hernandez Capistrano-Baker, a consultant for the Ayala Museum in Makati City, Philippines, has been named a 2013–14 Getty scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Her project is called “Routes of Exchange: Tenth–Thirteenth Century Gold from Butuan and Links to the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Trade Network.”
Grace Chuang, a doctoral student in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has received the 2013–14 IFA/Centre Allemand Fellowship in Paris, France.
William Coleman, a doctoral student in the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley, has been appointed a 2013–14 predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. He will continue work on “Thomas Cole’s Buildings: Architecture in Painting and Practice in the Early Republic.”
Erin Corrales-Diaz, a PhD student in the Art Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has been named Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her research involves “Remembering the Veteran: Disability, Trauma, and the American Civil War, 1861–1915.”
Vanessa Frances Rhiannon Crosby, a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has been named a 2013–14 predoctoral fellow by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will work on “Foreign Goods and Trans-Regional Identities: Commemoration as Cross Cultural Encounter.”
John J. Curley, assistant professor in the Department of Art at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina, has received a publication grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art for his book A Conspiracy of Images: Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and Cold War Visuality, forthcoming from Yale University Press.
Melissa Dabakis, professor of art history at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, has been appointed Terra Foundation Senior Fellow in American Art for 2013 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will work on “A Cultural History of Italo-American Relations, 1760–1900.”
Melissa Dabakis, professor of art history at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, has received a publication grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art for her book The American Corinnes: Women Sculptors and the Eternal City, 1850–1876, forthcoming from Pennsylvania State University Press.
Chanchal Dadlani, assistant professor of art history in the Department of Art at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has been awarded a 2013–14 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Her project is titled “Art and Epistemology between Early Modern India and France: The Collection of Jean-Baptiste Gentil.”
Andrew Demirjian, an artist based in Palisades Park, New Jersey, has been awarded a 2013 New Jersey Individual Artist’s Fellowship in the media/digital art category from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Laura DeVito, a student in the MFA program in collaborative design at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, has completed a 2013 Spring Break Residency with Signal Fire in the deserts of Southern California.
Barbara Diener has accepted a residency for summer 2013 at the Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions (ACRE), based in Steuben, Wisconsin.
Rob Duarte has been awarded a summer 2013 residency at the Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions (ACRE), based in Steuben, Wisconsin.
Sam Durant, an artist based in Los Angeles, California, has been selected to participate in the 2013 Getty Artists Program, administered by the Education Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Kara Fiedorek, a doctoral student in art history in the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, has accepted a research grant for her upcoming participation in a Mellon Research Initiative conference, “Art History and the Art of Deception,” scheduled for October 4–5, 2013.
Coco Fusco, an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Brooklyn, New York, has completed a May–June 2013 residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
Ken Gonzales-Day, an artist and the chair of the Art Department at Scripps College in Claremont, California, has accepted a 2013 summer residency at the Terra Residency Program in Giverny, France. He will work on a project called Absence, Stasis, and Other Non-Decisive Moments.
Ellery Foutch, who completed her PhD in the History of Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has earned a 2013–15 postdoctoral teaching fellowship at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, England, with help from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Carl Fuldner, a doctoral student in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has been appointed a 2013–14 predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. His dissertation examines “Evolving Photography: Naturalism and American Pictorialism, 1890–1917.”
Christine Eva Göttler, a professor and chair of the Institut für Kunstgeschichte at Universität in Bern, Switzerland, has been named a 2013–14 Getty scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will work on “Inventing Newness: Art, Local History, and ‘World Knowledge’ in Early Modern Antwerp (Mid-Sixteenth to Mid-Seventeenth Centuries).”
Jennifer Greenhill, associate professor of art history in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has been awarded an eight-week visiting professorship at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris, France, for spring 2014, thanks to the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Kenneth Haltman, H. Russell Pitman Professor of Art History in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, has accepted a visiting professorship in the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, for spring–summer 2014, with assistance from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Adam Han, an MFA student in fiber and material studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois, has been chosen as a 2013 Windgate Museum Intern by the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design. He will contribute to a digital exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art in Washington, DC, that tells the story of studio craft in the United States through primary-source material.
Mazie Harris, a doctoral student in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has accepted a fellowship to attend the 2013 Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, France. She will work on “The Portraits and Proprietary Claims of New York Photography Studios on Broadway 1853–1884.”
Andrew Hemingway, emeritus professor of history of art in the Department of History of Art at University College London in England, has accepted a visiting professorship in the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, for fall–winter 2013, courtesy the Terra Foundation of American Art.
Christopher Heuer, assistant professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, has accepted a 2013 Grant to Individuals in the category of public program from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. He will work on a project called “7 March 1965” with his collaborators, Abbey Dubin and Matthew Jesse Jackson, in a collective called Our Literal Speed.
Patricia Hills, professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Boston University in Massachusetts, has been selected as a guest lecturer for 2013 at the Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, France. She will present “Whatever Happened to the ‘New Art History’? Reflections on Theoretical and Methodological Approaches since the 1970s.
Jessica L. Horton, an independent scholar who earned her doctorate in the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, has been appointed a 2013–14 postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will work on “Diplomatic Choreographies: The Travels of Native American Dance Paintings during the Cold War.”
Kellie Jones, associate professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University in New York, has been named a senior scholar for the 2013 Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, France. Her project is titled “Crisscrossing the World: Los Angeles Artists and the Global Imagination, 1960–1980.”
Wendy Katz, an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, has been appointed a 2013–14 senior fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her project is “The Politics of Art Criticism in the Penny Press, 1833–61.”
Miri Kim, a PhD student in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, has accepted a fellowship to attend the 2013 Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, France. She will work on “‘Right Matter in the Right Place’: The Paintings of Albert Pinkham Ryder.”
Kristina Renee Kleutghen, assistant professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, has been awarded a 2013–14 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will continue her work on “Visions of the West: Rediscovering Eighteenth-Century Chinese Perspective Prints and Viewing Devices.”
Marina Kliger, a PhD student in art history in the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, has accepted a nine-week summer internship at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She will catalogue and digitize rare French and Belgian reproductive prints.
Ethan W. Lasser, Margaret S. Winthrop Associate Curator of American Art at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has received the ninth annual Patricia and Phillip Frost Essay Award from the editorial board of the journal American Art, published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, based in Washington, DC. His article, “Selling Silver: The Business of Copley’s Paul Revere,” appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of the journal.
Dimitrios Latsis, a PhD candidate in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, has been named Committee on Institutional Cooperation–Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellow by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. In a position jointly hosted with the National Museum of American History, Latsis will research “Nature, Nation, Narrative: The Discourse of Landscape in Pre–World War II American Cinema.”
Tirza T. Latimer, chair of the Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in Oakland, has been appointed a guest lecturer at the 2013 Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, France. She will give a talk on “The Making of Modernism’s Origin Myths.”
Craig Lee, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware in Newark, has taken a nine-week summer internship at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He will review files, construction plans, and progress photographs to produce materials showing the development and evolution of the museum’s master facilities plan projects.
Sara Lees, along with her coauthors Richard Tand and Sandra L. Webber, has won the thirty-third annual George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award from the Art Libraries Society of North America. Their publication is called Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2012).
Lihong Liu, who recently earned her doctorate in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, has received a 2013–14 postdoctoral fellowship from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will work on “Artistic Exchange between China and Europe during the Eighteenth Century.”
Michael Lobel, professor of art history at Purchase College, State University of New York, in Purchase, New York, has received a 2012–13 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence from his institution. The award recognizes his work in the category of scholarship and creative activities.
Stéphane Loire, chief curator in the Paintings Department at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France, has been named a 2013–14 museum guest scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. His host at the J. Paul Getty Museum will be the Department of Paintings.
Joe Madura, a doctorial student in the Art History Department at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has been appointed a 2013–14 predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. His dissertation topic is “Revising Minimal Art in the AIDS Crisis, 1984–98.”
Christopher Manzione, an artist based in Vernon, New Jersey, has been awarded a 2013 New Jersey Individual Artist’s Fellowship in the category of media/digital art from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Lee Mazow, associate professor of art history in the Department of Art at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, has been awarded the twenty-fifth annual Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, based in Washington, DC. The prize recognizes his latest book, Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).
Kori Newkirk, an artist based in Los Angeles, California, has won a 2013 fellowship from the Fellows of Contemporary Art. The award comes with a $10,000 prize.
Laura Hart Newlon has accepted a residency at the Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions (ACRE) in Steuben, Wisconsin. Newlon’s collaborator, Kate O’Neill, will join her at the summer 2013 program.
Kasia Ozga has been awarded a summer 2013 residency at the Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions (ACRE), based in Steuben, Wisconsin.
Laure Poupard, a doctoral student at Université Paris IV—Sorbonne in Paris, France, has earned a research travel grant to the United States from the Terra Foundation for American Art. He/she will work on “The Artistic Sources of Propaganda Photographs: Official Photographic Exhibitions in America, 1935–1946.”
Meha Priyadarshini, a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Columbia University in New York, has been named a 2013–14 predoctoral fellow by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California, to work on “From Jingdezhen to Puebla: Cultural and Artistic Exchange across the Pacific.”
Jennifer Quick, a graduate student in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been accepted the 2013 Phillip and Patricia Frost Predoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her project is called “The Dynamics of Deskilling: Ed Ruscha 1956–70.”
Leslie Reinhardt, an independent scholar based in Maryland, has been appointed a 2013–14 senior fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will explore “Copley’s Death of Major Peirson” in a joint position with the National Portrait Gallery
Steve Rowell, an artist, curator, and researchers, has won a 2013 Grant to Individuals in the film category from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. His project is called Parallelograms.
Casey Ruble, an artist based in Clinton, New Jersey, has been awarded a 2013 New Jersey Individual Artist’s Fellowship for her works on paper from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Sofia Sanabrais, an independent scholar based in Los Angeles, California, has been named a 2013–14 Getty scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Her research project is called “The Globalization of Taste: The Influence of Asia on Artistic Production in Colonial Latin America.”
Emily Schlemowitz, an MA student in art history at Hunter College, City University of New York, has been selected as a 2013 Windgate Museum Intern by the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design. She will work closely with curatorial and exhibitions staff at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to assist with research in preparation for the 2014 Arts/Industry exhibition and publication.
Ileana Selejan, a PhD student in art history in the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, has been awarded a research grant to participate in a Mellon Research Initiative conference, “Art History and the Art of Deception,” that will take place October 4–5, 2013.
Yoshiaki Shimizu, Frederick Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology (emeritus) at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, has been named a 2013–14 guest scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. His topic is “Transmission and Transformation: The China–Japan Interface in Arts and Other Things.”
Elizabeth Simmons, a graduate student on the PhD curatorial track in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware in Newark, has accepted a nine-week summer internship at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She will assist in updating collections records according to recent catalogues raisonnés and other art-historical research.
Xiao Situ, a PhD student in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has accepted a 2013–14 predoctoral fellowship from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Situ will continue research and writing for “Emily Dickinson’s Window Culture, 1830–86” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.
Marie M. Sivak, an artist based in Portland, Oregon, has received the 2013 Margo Harris Hammerschlag Direct Carving Award, which comes with a $10,000 prize.
Deborah Stratman, an artist and filmmaker based in Chicago, Illinois, has won a 2013 Grant to Individuals in the exhibition category from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Her project is titled Subsurface Voids.
Edward J. Sullivan, Helen Gould Sheppard Professor in the History of Art at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has received a publication grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. His book, forthcoming from Yale University Press, is called From San Juan to Paris and Back: Francisco Oller, Caribbean Artist in the Age of Impressionism.
Tina Tahir, an artist based in Chicago, Illinois, has been selected a winner of the 2013 ARTslanT Prize for her mixed-media sculpture Thirty (2012).
Ellen Tani, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University in Stanford, California, has received a 2013–15 predoctoral dissertation fellowship from the Carter Woodson Institute for African and African-American Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Her dissertation is entitled “Black Conceptualism and the Atmospheric Turn, 1968–2008.”
Alex Taylor a doctoral student in the Department of History of Art at Oxford University in Oxford, England, has accepted a fellowship to attend the 2013 Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, France. She will work on Forms of Persuasion: Art and Corporate Enterprise in the 1960s.”
Nancy Um, associate professor in the Department of Art History at Binghamton University, State University of New York, in Binghamton, New York, has been named a 2013–14 Getty scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Um will continue working on “The Material World of the Overseas Merchant in Yemen: Ceremonies, Gifts, and the Social Protocols of Trade, 1700-1750.”
Luis Vargas-Santiago, a graduate student in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, has been named Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art for 2013–14 by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. His dissertation is called “The Diaspora of Emiliano Zapata: From the Mexican Revolution to the American Imagination.”
Charlene Villaseñor-Black, associate professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been named a 2013–14 Getty scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She is researching “Itinerant Artists in the Global Early Modern World.”
Emily Warner, a PhD candidate in the History of Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has accepted a 2013–14 predoctoral fellowship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her dissertation is entitled “Crafting the Abstract Environment: The Abstract Mural in New York, 1935–60.”
Sarah Warren, assistant professor of art history at Purchase College, State University of New York, in Purchase, New York, has been named James Renwick Senior Fellow in American Craft at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. The name of her research project is “Craft between Modernism and Counterculture: Rhinebeck and the Studio Craft Movement.”
Spencer Wigmore, a doctoral student in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware in Newark, has taken a nine-week summer internship at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He will assist in research and organization for a forthcoming exhibition on nineteenth-century American landscape photography.
Tatsiana Zhurauliova, a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has accepted a 2013 fellowship for the Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, France. She will work on “Arcadia Americana: American Landscape in the Art of Arshile Gorky, Pavel Tchelitchew, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi during World War II.”
Claire Zimmerman, assistant professor of art history and architecture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has won a 2013 Grant to Individuals for a publication from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, based in Chicago, Illinois. Her book project is called Photographic Modern Architecture.
Books Published by CAA Members
posted by CAA — Aug 15, 2013
Publishing a book is a major milestone for artists and scholars—browse a list of recent titles below.
Books Published by CAA Members appears 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 2013
Matthew Biro. Anselm Kiefer (New York: Phaidon, 2013).
Jane Block and Claude Sorgeloos, eds. Homage to Adrienne Fontainas: Passionate Pilgrim for the Arts (New York: Peter Lang, 2013).
Francesco Freddolini. Giovanni Baratta 1670–1747: Scultura e industria del marmo tra la Toscana e le corti d’Europa (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2013).
Joni M. Hand. Women, Manuscripts, and Identity in Northern Europe, 1350–1550 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013).
Katie Grace McGowan, ed. Post-Industrial Complex (Detroit: Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 2013).
Anita Fiderer Moskowitz. Forging Authenticity: Giovanni Bastianini and the Neo-Renaissance in Nineteenth-Century Florence(Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2013).
Richard Taws. The Politics of the Provisional: Art and Ephemera in Revolutionary France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013).
Xin Wu. Patricia Johanson and the Re-Invention of Public Environmental Art, 1958–2010 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013).
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for July 2013
posted by CAA — Aug 10, 2013
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
August 2013
![Linder Buzzcocks](http://www.collegeart.org/images/committees/cwa-picks/Linder.jpg)
Linder’s artwork for the Buzzcocks’ first single, “Orgasm Addict”
Linder: Woman/Object
Kestnergesellscahft Hanover
Goseriede 11, 30159 Hanover, Germany
June 7–August 4, 2013
The first major survey in Germany of the oeuvre of a leading protagonist of the late-1970s punk scene, Linder: Woman/Object brings together more than two hundred selections that capture the diversity of an artistic practice that cuts across music, dance, and fashion and transcends all types of visual media, from collage and photography to video and performance. The exhibition also highlights the feminist politics that underpin the artist’s work and self-staging.
Linder Sterling—known simply as Linder—was born in Liverpool as Linda Mulvey in 1954. By the end of the 1970s, she had become a key figure in the culturally explosive period of punk and postpunk, developing her art alongside bands such as the Buzzcocks, Magazine, Joy Division, and the Smiths. One of her best-known works is the cover of the Buzzcocks’ single “Orgasm Addict,” which shows a naked woman with grinning mouths on her breasts and an iron replacing her head. In 1978 Linder cofounded the postpunk group Ludus, whose singer she remained until the band split up in 1983. She caused a furor in 1982 by appearing—a quarter of a century before Lady Gaga—in a dress made of scraps of poultry. Linder’s work has become internationally known in recent years through presentations at important institutions such as the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Tate, both in London, and with a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York.
![Mother Armenia](http://www.collegeart.org/images/committees/cwa-picks/MotherArmenia.jpg)
Mother Armenia
Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art
1/3 Pavstos Biuzand Boulevard, Yerevan, Armenia
July 3–August 17, 2013
Organized by the 4Plus Documentary Center in Armenia and curated by Svetlana Bachevanova, this exhibition brings together the work of ten female documentary photographers: Mery Aghakhanyan, Sara Anjargolian, Nazik Armenakyan, Anush Babajanyan, Knar Babayan, Anahit Hayrapetyan, Hasmik Hayrapetyan, Piruza Khalapyan, Inna Mkhitaryan, and Nelli Shishmanyan. Addressing the role of women in modern Armenia as well as broader social injustices, their work captures several aspects of Armenian life from a female point of view that remains rarely voiced in the region. “Women in Armenia still battle to establish a career,” the curator says. “Women are still expected to be full time mothers and housekeepers. But these ten documentarians broke the rules and found a way to pursue careers and create powerful bodies of work.”
![Sturtevant](http://www.collegeart.org/images/committees/cwa-picks/SturtevantSerpentine.jpg)
Installation view of Sturtevant: LEAPS JUMPS AND BUMPS at the Serpentine Gallery (photograph © 2013 Jerry Hardman-Jones)
Sturtevant: LEAPS JUMPS AND BUMPS
Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens, London, W2 3XA, United Kingdom
June 28–August 26, 2013
The first solo exhibition of Sturtevant in a public institution in the United Kingdom, LEAPS JUMPS AND BUMPS showcases work created since the 1970s by this Paris-based American artist, illuminating her groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between repetition and difference while demonstrating the wide variety of media she has embraced. The exhibition includes a large-scale video work, Finite Infinite (2010), and a piece comprising garlands of light bulbs, Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (America) from 2004, that is a later version of a work shown at the Serpentine Gallery in 2000 in the Félix González-Torres exhibition.
Autoritratti: Iscrizioni del femminile nell’arte italiana contemporanea
Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna
Via Don Giovanni Minzoni 14, 40121, Bologna, Italy
May 12–September 1, 2013
Autoritratti features old and new works—including some made specifically for the show—by a large number of female Italian artists. Exploring inscriptions of difference in contemporary Italian art, this exhibition, first proposed initially by Uliana Zanetti, is part of an inter- and extramuseum collective initiative that is investigating the role of gender in the work of contemporary women artists in a country in which second-wave feminism was not influential in the arts. That said, the positions and practices of several women artists clearly demonstrate intriguing negotiations of gender difference.
The title of the show merges references to two important feminist thinkers: the British Griselda Pollock and the Italian Carla Lonzi. The artists in the show are: Alessandra Andrini, Paola Anziché, Marion Baruch, Valentina Berardinone, Enrica Borghi, Anna Valeria Borsari, Chiara Camoni, Annalisa Cattani, Alice Cattaneo, Daniela Comani, Daniela De Lorenzo, Marta Dell’Angelo, Elisabetta Di Maggio, Silvia Giambrone, goldiechiari, Alice Guareschi, Maria Lai, Christiane Löhr, Claudia Losi, Anna Maria Maiolino, Eva Marisaldi, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Marzia Migliora, Ottonella Mocellin and Nicola Pellegrini, Maria Morganti, Margherita Morgantin, Liliana Moro, Chiara Pergola, Letizia Renzini, Moira Ricci, Mili Romano, Anna Rossi, Elisa Sighicelli, Alessandra Spranzi, Grazia Toderi, Sabrina Torelli, Traslochi Emotivi, Tatiana Trouvé, Marcella Vanzo, and Grazia Varisco.
![Dame Laura Knight](http://www.collegeart.org/images/committees/cwa-picks/LauraKnight.jpg)
Dame Laura Knight, Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-ring, 1943. Imperial War Museum, London (artwork © Estate of Dame Laura Knight DBE RA)
Laura Knight: Portraits
National Portrait Gallery
Saint Martin’s Place, London, WC2H 0HE, United Kingdom
July 11–October 13, 2013
With over thirty portraits, this exhibition revisits the work and exceptionally successful career (for a woman of her time) of Dame Laura Knight, among the most popular British artists of twentieth century and the first official female member of the Royal Academy of Arts (since 1936). Knight studied art at the Notthingham Art School, encouraged by her mother, an amateur artist herself, who is remembered setting such ambitious goal for her daughter by saying “one day you will be elected in the Academy.” Knight eventually became so successful that she was featured as a role model in books for careers aimed at women in England.
Knight rejected modernism but focused on capturing modern life and culture through portraiture. She was recognized for her commissioned work as an official war painter, creating propagandistic portraits of female factory workers and heroines of wartime bravery. Yet it is her portraits of theater, ballet, and circus performers, English gypsies, and the segregated black patients of Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Memorial Hospital that illuminate the diversity of the works’ backgrounds, vividness of their style, and the immersive method of their production.
Platform: Josephine Meckseper
Parrish Art Museum
279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, NY 11976
July 4–October 14, 2013
Josephine Meckseper is known for the cool, seductive conflation of art objects and commodities in her installations, films, and photographs that unmask the political implications of consumer culture. As this year’s Platform guest at the Parrish, she has responded to the museum’s site, using it as “a perfect display platform” that resonates with the use of commercial displays and everyday items in her work. Two vitrines near the museum’s entrance, containing original sculptures and mass-produced objects, introduce visitors to Meckseper’s signature approach, while other works referencing automobile culture engage the museum’s collection and the world outside it. Alluding to both Jean-Luc Godard’s driving-centric film Weekend and the nearby car dealerships, Sabotage Auto Assembly Line to Slow It Down (2009) incorporates car tires, a conveyer belt, two of the artist’s videos on stacked monitors, and mirrored tiles that cinematically reflect the vehicles in transit along Montauk Highway. With its prominent Jeep insignia, Crow (2011) is placed adjacent to John Chamberlain’s crushed car sculpture
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 07, 2013
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 Young Wellesley Professor Who Invented Contemporary Art
When you think of the cities that helped define cutting-edge art in the twentieth century, you think of Paris, New York, maybe Berlin. In the standard histories, Boston plays a decidedly background role, with the city’s gatekeepers ensuring that the wild works by artists like Picasso, Braque, or Mondrian didn’t soil their elegant private and public collections. “Boston is very dead so far as contemporary art is concerned,” complained a young Wellesley art-history instructor, Alfred Barr Jr., writing to a friend and gallery owner in New York in 1926, well after modernism had caught fire elsewhere. (Read more in the Boston Globe.)
How to Build a Digital Humanities Took in a Week
Twelve scholars convened at the George Mason University last week to build a web application for the digital humanities as part of the “One Week | One Tool” challenge, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The participants—who included web developers, faculty members, museum professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, and a high-school librarian—spent five days brainstorming, designing, and developing their tool. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Arts Majors Jump Ahead of Tech Grads in Landing Jobs
Here’s a surprise for college students: recent graduates with technology degrees are having a tougher time finding a job than their peers in the arts. The unemployment rate for recent grads with a degree in information systems is more than double that of drama and theater majors, at 14.7 percent vs. 6.4 percent, according to a recent Georgetown University study. Even for computer science majors, the jobless rate for recent grads nears 9 percent. (Read more in USA Today.)
Protecting Detroit’s Artwork Is a Job for Detroit
By now, everybody knows that the city of Detroit has finally filed for bankruptcy—and everybody in the art world knows that its museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, is in deep trouble. Here’s why: Detroit owes roughly $18 billion that it doesn’t have. The sixty-thousand-plus works of art in the permanent collection are owned by the city, not the museum (as is normally the case). According to the Detroit Free Press, the thirty-eight most important pieces have a market value of about $2.5 billion. What next? (Read more in the Wall Street Journal.)
Only the Artists Can Save the Arts Critics
How do you put a price on thought? How do you price an opinion? How do you even price the creative thought that the opinion was formed on? How do you do this in a culture—I think that’s the right word—where people are used not only to getting opinion for nothing, but expect good information for nothing as well? (Read more in the Guardian.)
Caveat Emptor: An Art Exhibit Made Entirely of Forgeries Confiscated by the FBI
Upon entering Caveat Emptor you will likely recognize the exhibition’s work with confidence. Iconic pieces made famous by art legends such as Chagall, Warhol, Gauguin, and de Kooning adorn the walls, and yet, you probably haven’t heard of a single artist showing. That’s right, Caveat Emptor, which translates to “let the buyer beware,” is composed entirely of forgeries that have been confiscated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Read more in the Huffington Post.)
The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Midcentury Books Vanish
Last year I wrote about research being done by Paul J. Heald at the University of Illinois, based on software that crawled Amazon for a random selection of books. At the time, his results were only preliminary, but they were nevertheless startling: there were as many books available from the 1910s as there were from the 2000s. The number of books from the 1850s was double the number available from the 1950s. Why? Copyright protections—which cover titles published in 1923 and after—had squashed the market for books from the mid-twentieth century, keeping those titles off shelves and out of the hands of the reading public. (Read more in the Atlantic.)
Did You Hear That? It Was Art
Nothing? Listen again. Note the sound of your computer’s fan amid distant sirens. Hear your spouse in the next room, playing the Bowie channel on Spotify while chatting on the phone with your mother-in-law. Farther off, a TV is tuned to the news and a stereo plays Bach, while a mouse skitters inside a wall. And know that every one of those sounds can now be the subject of art, just as every vision we see and imagine, from fruit in a bowl to the color of light to melting clocks, has been grist for painting and sculpture and photos. (Read more in the New York Times.)
New Faces for CAA’s Journals
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 02, 2013
The president of the CAA Board of Directors, Anne Collins Goodyear, has confirmed new appointments to the editorial boards of CAA’s three scholarly journals and to the Publications Committee, in consultation with the vice president for publications, Suzanne Preston Blier. The appointments took effect on July 1, 2013.
The Art Bulletin
The three new members of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board are: Sarah Betzer, assistant professor of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and director of the undergraduate program in art history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; Rita Freed, a historian of Egyptian art and chair of the Department of Art of the Ancient World at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in Massachusetts; and Glenn Peers, a professor of medieval art at the University of Texas at Austin. They will serve four-year terms, through June 30, 2017. In addition, Goodyear appointed David Getsy of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois to a two-year term as editorial-board chair.
Art Journal
The new member-at-large for the Art Journal Editorial Board is Juan Vicente Aliaga, a curator and a professor of modern and contemporary art and theory at Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain.
caa.reviews
The caa.reviews Editorial Board welcomes David Raskin as editor designate through June 30, 2014. Raskin is professor of contemporary art history in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism and chair of the Department of Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois. Juliet Bellows, assistant professor of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art in the Department of Art at American University in Washington, DC, joins the editorial board for a three-year term.
New field editors for the journal are: Suzanne Hudson, a historian of modern and contemporary art at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and an active critic, as field editor for reviews of exhibitions of modern and contemporary art on the West Coast; Kevin Murphy, chair of the History of Art Department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, as field editor for books on architecture and urbanism from 1800 to the present; Kristoffer Neville, assistant professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of California, Riverside, as field editor for books on architecture and urbanism, pre-1800; Andrei Pop, assistant professor of art history at Universität Basel in Switzerland, as field editor for books on theory and historiography; and Jason Weems, assistant professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of California, Riverside, as field editor for books on American art.
Publications Committee
Susan Higman Larsen joins CAA’s Publications Committee. Larsen is director of publications at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan and an adjunct professor in the graduate program in museum studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 31, 2013
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 Collection Assessed as Detroit Nears Bankruptcy
As the city of Detroit’s bankruptcy case survived its first legal challenges in federal court, the Detroit Institute of Arts remains at the center of a national debate over what city-owned property can and should be liquidated to help cover its estimated $18 billion debt. At some point in the past two months, Christie’s auction house sent two employees to Detroit to assess the collection. The employees did not meet with museum leadership during their visit. (Read more in the Art Newspaper.)
Embargoes for Dissertations?
The American Historical Association has released a policy calling on history departments and university libraries to allow students to place embargoes on the online versions of PhD dissertations in the field for up to six years. The association says that such a policy is needed to enable new PhDs to successfully publish books based on their dissertations. But some historians are upset about the proposal, which they say isn’t needed and runs counter to the scholarly mission of sharing research findings. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Publishing Your Dissertation Online: What’s a New PhD to Do?
The American Historical Association recently released a controversial statement that strongly advised graduate programs and libraries to adopt a policy allowing the embargoing of the publication of completed dissertations online for up to six years. Supporters argue that it protects junior authors, given that in the current academic climate a completed and published single-authored monograph continues to be the standard for tenure and promotion. Opponents counter with several arguments, such as making the dissertation research public allows the junior scholar to gain credit for his or her work. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Jeffrey Deitch Resigns as Head of Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Jeffrey Deitch has made it official: he’ll be stepping down after a stormy three years as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The museum’s board said it had launched a search for his successor. Deitch told the board of his decision to leave at a recent meeting, according to an official statement. “He will stay on to ensure a smooth transition and the successful completion” of a campaign begun in March to boost the museum’s endowment to $100 million. (Read more in the Los Angeles Times.)
From Art Book to iPad App: Josef Albers’s Classic Work Undergoes a “Magical” Transformation
Interaction of Color—Josef Albers’s iconic book that taught legions of students and professionals alike how to think creatively about color—has been given a modern makeover as an iPad app, just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of its publication by Yale University Press. The app, which combines Albers’s traditional teaching methods with twenty-first-century technology, was created by the press and the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and developed by Potion, an award-winning design and technology firm specializing in interactive experiences. (Read more in Yale News.)
Genres, Like Sand, Tricky to Pin Down
It is pitch dark as you are swallowed up in a crowd of unknowable size, voices chanting and burbling around you, bodies jostling close by. There is no way to know how big the room is, where you are going, or whether you are about to collide with a wall or a human. It is Tino Sehgal’s This Variation, and as your eyes adjust, performers become slowly visible, moving amid the crowd, dancing and singing or pausing to talk about money and jobs. (Read more in the New York Times.)
Is the Australian Resale Royalty Scheme Benefiting Indigenous Artists?
Australia’s artist resale royalty scheme, which came into effect in June 2010 and is currently being reviewed, seems to be offering increased protection to indigenous artists, with 60 percent of the artists who have been paid royalties being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Indeed, one of the driving forces behind the introduction of the Resale Royalty Right for Visual Artists Bill was to improve the welfare of indigenous artists. (Read more in the Art Newspaper.)
Union Raises for Adjuncts
When adjuncts push to unionize, they typically want better pay, better benefits (or any benefits if they don’t have them), and job security. With unionization drives spreading, a key question is: does collective bargaining yield meaningful gains? The results of numerous initial contracts suggest the answer is “Yes.” Negotiations on first contracts can take six months or more, but gains in those contracts frequently include significant pay increases and other, nonfinancial benefits. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Report Warns against Declining Emphasis on Humanities and Social Sciences
posted by Christopher Howard — Jun 19, 2013
Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Washington, DC, turned a spotlight on the urgent need to refocus the country on maintaining national excellence in the humanities and social sciences—and how failure to do so will have consequences at home and abroad for the future of American education, security, and competitiveness.
Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Mark Warner (D-VA) and Representatives Tom Petri (R-WI) and David Price (D-NC) came together on Capitol Hill this morning to accept a report, prepared at their request, by the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Today’s release of the report, titled The Heart of the Matter, launches a national conversation about the importance of the humanities and social sciences to America’s future. Presented by the commission’s cochairs—Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University, and John Rowe, retired chairman and chief executive officer of Exelon Corporation—the report looks at the vital role of the humanities and social sciences in preparing and sustaining Americans for the responsibility of productive citizenship in the United States and the world.
The Heart of the Matter focuses on five areas of concern: K–12 education; two- and four-year colleges; research; cultural institutions and lifelong learning; and international security and competitiveness. It also makes recommendations to achieve three goals:
1. Educate Americans in the knowledge, skills, and understanding needed to thrive in a twenty-first-century democracy:
- Invest in the preparation of citizens with a thorough grounding in history, civics, and social studies
- Increase access to online resources, including teaching materials
2. Foster an innovative, competitive, and strong society:
- To ensure the vibrancy of humanities and social-science programs at all levels, philanthropists, states, and the federal government should significantly increase funding designated for these purposes
- Create a Humanities Master Teacher Corps to complement the STEM Master Teacher Corps recently proposed by the White House
3. Equip the nation for leadership in an interconnected world:
- Develop a “Culture Corps” that would match interested adults (retirees, veterans, artists, library and museum personnel) with schools, community centers, and other organizations to transmit humanistic and social-scientific expertise from one generation to the next
- Expand education in international affairs and transnational studies
“The American character is defined not by ethnicity—Americans come from many countries, races, religions, and cultures—but by a common set of ideals and principles that unite us as a country,” said Senator Alexander. “Those ideals and principles have always been shared and learned through the study of history, philosophy, and literature, but today their study is at risk. This report is a first step to highlighting the importance of, and ensuring a future for, our nation’s humanities education—and our unique American character as well.”
Senator Warner added, “I commend all the members of the commission for their hard work on The Heart of the Matter. Having a strong knowledge of civics, comprehensive reading and writing skills, and an appreciation of history are important for a well-rounded member of the twenty-first-century world. We must use this report as a foundation to continue to engage with the public on how best to keep our humanities and social sciences robust.”
Congressman Petri noted, “Knowledge and promotion of the humanities and social sciences are absolutely important so that citizens have a firm understanding of our nation’s unique history, culture, and heritage. I hope the recommendations in this report will be seriously considered to improve the teaching and understanding of the humanities and social sciences.”
“The humanities and social sciences help us understand where we’ve come from and who we are as a people, and that understanding points us toward the endeavors we must undertake to help every person reach their full potential,” said Representative Price. “Studies in these areas are critically important to a well-rounded education and the future of our country. This report comes at a crucial moment, and I hope it will help raise the profile of the humanities, provide a better understanding of their value, and spur a national conversation about how the humanities and social sciences keep our nation strong and competitive.”
“Today’s leaders in business, government, the military, and diplomacy must be able to analyze, interpret, communicate, and understand other cultures,” said Brodhead, cochair of the commission. “This report will remind Americans that a broad-based and balanced education, integrating the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences, is the best way to equip our citizens to approach the complex problems of our rapidly changing world.”
“The humanities and social sciences comprise many of the things that give life meaning,” said commission cochair Rowe, “both at the highest level and in our day-to-day activities. They need more public and private support and compared to other things a little money goes a long way.”
A short companion film, The Heart of the Matter, from the Emmy Award–winning Ewers Brothers Productions was also released today. Appearing in the film are the producer, screenwriter, and director George Lucas, the actor John Lithgow, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a steadfast supporter of the humanities and arts in this country, provided primary funding for the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Carnegie Corporation of New York also provided important funding.
The views expressed in the report are those of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences and not necessarily those of the officers and fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.