CAA News Today
March–June 2010 Issue of The Art Bulletin Published
posted by Christopher Howard — May 05, 2010
The combined March–June 2010 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, has just been published. It will be mailed to all individual CAA members who elect to receive the journal, and to all institutional members.
The central scene of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas graces the cover and introduces the issue’s Interventions essay series. Byron Ellsworth Hamann applies postcolonial and materialist strategies in “The Mirrors of Las Meninas: Cochineal, Silver, and Clay” to consider the artist’s masterpiece within a transatlantic visual archive. A group of six scholars from such diverse disciplines as Precolumbian studies, Romance studies and literature, art history, and Aztec and Spanish colonial art respond to Hamann’s article with texts of their own.
The issue features two other major essays. In “Family Space: Buddhist Materiality and Ancestral Fashioning in Mogao Cave 231,” Winston Kyan considers the diverse integration of family references into the visual program of ninth-century Buddhist Mogao caves at Dunhuang, which marked a turning point in the construction of religious space in medieval China. For “Portrait of Luca Pacioli and Disciple: A New, Mathematical Look,” Renzo Baldasso examines the famous painting as a statement about the achievements of mathematical humanists as well as the subject of mathematics as a mode of thinking, as court activity, and as a form of education.
In the reviews section, Rebecca Zorach evaluates Margaret D. Carroll’s Painting and Politics in Northern Europe: Van Eyck, Bruegel, Rubens, and Their Contemporaries, and Jonathan Unglaub examines Maria H. Loh’s Titian Remade: Repetition and the Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art. In addition, Joel Smith reviews the history and evolution of the notion of objectivity as presented in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s book Objectivity.
Please read the full table of contents for more details. The next two Art Bulletins for 2010 will appear in September and December.
Spring Obituaries in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 05, 2010
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, architects, scholars, teachers, philanthropists, and other important figures in the visual arts.
- Diane Bergheim, an arts advocate based in Alexandria, Virginia, died on March 27, 2010, at the age of 84
- George Ehrlich, a professor emeritus of art and architectural history at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, died on November 28, 2009. He was 84
- Werner Forman, a photographer of art objects who chronicled ancient, Asian, and other non-Western art, died on February 13, 2010, at age 89
- Peter Foster, an architect and the surveyor of Westminster Abbey from 1973 to 1988, died on March 6, 2010. He was 90
- Bruce Graham, the architect of the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center in Chicago, died on March 6, 2010, at the age of 84
- Denys Hinton, a British architect who brought modernism to church architecture, died on February 10, 2010, at age 88
- Terry Rossi Kirk, a scholar of architecture who taught at American University in Rome and authored The Architecture of Modern Italy, died on October 17, 2009. He was 48
- Lionel Lambourne, a curator and scholar at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, died on February 12, 2010, at age 76
- Lesley Lewis, an author and a historian of art and architecture who was one of the first four students at the Courtauld Institute of Art, died on January 29, 2010, at the age of 100
- Rhoda “Dodie” Helen Masterman, an artist and teacher who drew illustrations for novels by Tolstoy, Joyce, Balzac, and more, died on December 17, 2009. She was 91
- Robert McCall, an artist known for his depictions of outer space and for a six-story mural at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, died on February 26, 2010. He was 90
- John Walker McCoubrey, who taught the history of American, English, and French art of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries at the University of Pennsylvania for more than thirty years, died on February 9, 2010, at the age of 86
- Alexander McQueen, a celebrated, innovative, and rebellious London fashion designer, died on February 11, 2010. He was 40
- Charles Moore, a photographer of the civil rights movement whose work reached millions in Life, died on March 11, 2010, at the age of 79
- Edmund “Ted” Pillsbury, who transformed the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, during his eighteen years as director, died on March 25, 2010. He was 66
- Natalie Rothstein, a curator and textiles scholar who spent her entire career at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, died on February 18, 2010, at the age of 79
- Charles Ryskamp, a former director of both the Frick Collection and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York who also taught literature at Princeton University, died on March 26, 2010. He was 81
- Mortimer D. Sackler, a psychiatrist and co-owner of a pharmaceutical company who generously donated to the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Gallery, and the Jewish Museum in Berlin, among others, died on March 24, 2010. He was 93
- Norman Schureman, an artist and professor at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, died on March 20, 2010. He was 50
- Der Scutt, a modernist architect with several building in New York, including Trump Tower, died on March 14, 2010, at age 75
- John Sergeant, a British artist known for his stunning chiaroscuro in his charcoal drawings, died on January 7, 2010. He was 72
- David Slivka, a sculptor and painter from the New York School of Abstract Expressionism who helped create a death mask for the poet Dylan Thomas, died on March 28, 2010, at the age of 95
- Frank Williams, an architect of high-end hotels and condominiums in New York who mixed modern and traditional styles, died on February 25, 2010. He was 73
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Editorial-Board Member Sought for Art Journal
posted by Joe Hannan — Apr 02, 2010
CAA invites nominations and self-nominations for one individual to serve on the Art Journal Editorial Board for a four-year term, July 1, 2010–June 30, 2014. Published quarterly by CAA, Art Journal is devoted to twentieth- and twenty-first-century art and visual culture.
Candidates are individuals with a broad knowledge of modern and contemporary art; institutional affiliation is not required. Applicants who are artists, museum-based scholars, or scholars interested in pedagogical issues are especially invited to apply.
The editorial board advises the editor-in-chief and assists him or her to seek authors, articles, artist’s projects, and other content for the journal; guides its editorial program and may propose new initiatives for it; performs peer reviews and recommends peer reviewers; and may support fundraising efforts on the journal’s behalf. Members also assist the editor-in-chief to keep abreast of trends and issues in the field by attending and reporting on sessions at the CAA Annual Conference and other academic conferences, symposia, and events.
The editorial board meets three times a year, including once at the CAA Annual Conference. Members pay travel and lodging 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. Members may not publish their own work in the journal during the term of service. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name. Please send a letter describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and contact information to: Chair, Art Journal Editorial Board, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Deadline: April 15, 2010.
Ask Your Congressional Representative to Increase NEH Funding
posted by Christopher Howard — Mar 11, 2010
The cochairs of the Congressional Humanities Caucus—David Price (D-NC) and Tom Petri (R-WI)—are circulating a “Dear Colleague Letter” in support of increased funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The letter requests total funding of $232.5 million for the NEH in fiscal year 2011, including $144 million for NEH National Programs and $60 million for the NEH Federal/State Partnership (a $65 million increase over the FY 2010 enacted level).
Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s FY 2011 budget request of $161.3 million represents $7.2 million (5.6 percent) in cuts to NEH programs. Your help is needed to oppose these cuts and to support increased funding for the NEH. Please write your representative today, using the National Humanities Alliance’s new online advocacy tools, and ask them to sign the NEH sign-on letter sponsored by the caucus cochairs.
The humanities represent critical modes of thought and fields of knowledge that foster a broadly educated workforce, undergird our civic institutions, inform complex policy challenges, and enrich individual lives. They support capacities especially relevant to the twenty-first century: knowledge of world cultures, religions, and languages; understanding of US history and democratic traditions; and humanistic perspectives to evaluate the implications of scientific and technological advances. Now is the time to increase—not diminish—federal investment in the humanities through the NEH.
For more information or to sign onto the letter, congressional offices should contact Kate Roetzer with Rep. David Price (5-1784) or Lindsay Punzenberger with Rep. Thomas Petri (5-5406). The deadline for representatives to sign the letter is Tuesday, March 16, 2010.
The sign-on letter, addressed to Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jim Moran (D/VA) and Ranking Member Mike Simpson (R/ID), is available. A list of members who have already agreed to sign is provided below.
Sign-On List (as of March 11)
(AR-2) Vic Snyder
(AR-4) Mike Ross
(CA-5) Doris O. Matsui
(CA-28) Howard L. Berman
(CA-32) Judy Chu
(CT-3) Rosa L. DeLauro
(FL-23) Alcee Hastings
(HA-2) Mazie K. Hirono
(IA-2) David Loebsack
(KY-3) John A. Yarmuth
(MA-3) James P. McGovern
(MA-8) Michael E. Capuano
(MA-9) Stephen Lynch
(MA-10) Bill Delahunt
(MD-8) Chris Van Hollen
(ME-1) Chellie Pingree
(MI-3) Vernon J. Ehlers
(MI-12) Sander Levin
(MI-14) John Conyers, Jr.
(MI-15) John Dingell
(MN-8) Jim Oberstar
(MO-5) Emmanuel Cleaver II
(MP-AL) Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan
(NC-4) David Price (cosponsor)
(NH-1) Carol Shea-Porter
(NJ-7) Leonard Lance
(NJ-8) Bill Pascrell, Jr.
(NJ-12) Rush Holt
(NV-1) Shelley Berkley
(NY-8) Jerrold Nadler
(NY-12) Nydia Velazquez
(NY-14) Carolyn B. Maloney
(OR-1) David Wu
(RI-2) James R. Langevin
(TX-25) Lloyd Doggett
(VA-3) Robert C. “Bobby” Scott
(WI-6) Thomas Petri (cosponsor)
(WV-3) Nick J. Rahall, II
Ask Your Congressional Representative to Increase NEH Funding
posted by Christopher Howard — Mar 11, 2010
The cochairs of the Congressional Humanities Caucus—David Price (D-NC) and Tom Petri (R-WI)—are circulating a “Dear Colleague Letter” in support of increased funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The letter requests total funding of $232.5 million for the NEH in fiscal year 2011, including $144 million for NEH National Programs and $60 million for the NEH Federal/State Partnership (a $65 million increase over the FY 2010 enacted level).
Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s FY 2011 budget request of $161.3 million represents $7.2 million (5.6 percent) in cuts to NEH programs. Your help is needed to oppose these cuts and to support increased funding for the NEH. Please write your representative today, using the National Humanities Alliance’s new online advocacy tools, and ask them to sign the NEH sign-on letter sponsored by the caucus cochairs.
The humanities represent critical modes of thought and fields of knowledge that foster a broadly educated workforce, undergird our civic institutions, inform complex policy challenges, and enrich individual lives. They support capacities especially relevant to the twenty-first century: knowledge of world cultures, religions, and languages; understanding of US history and democratic traditions; and humanistic perspectives to evaluate the implications of scientific and technological advances. Now is the time to increase—not diminish—federal investment in the humanities through the NEH.
For more information or to sign onto the letter, congressional offices should contact Kate Roetzer with Rep. David Price (5-1784) or Lindsay Punzenberger with Rep. Thomas Petri (5-5406). The deadline for representatives to sign the letter is Tuesday, March 16, 2010.
The sign-on letter, addressed to Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jim Moran (D/VA) and Ranking Member Mike Simpson (R/ID), is available. A list of members who have already agreed to sign is provided below.
Sign-On List (as of March 11)
(AR-2) Vic Snyder
(AR-4) Mike Ross
(CA-5) Doris O. Matsui
(CA-28) Howard L. Berman
(CA-32) Judy Chu
(CT-3) Rosa L. DeLauro
(FL-23) Alcee Hastings
(HA-2) Mazie K. Hirono
(IA-2) David Loebsack
(KY-3) John A. Yarmuth
(MA-3) James P. McGovern
(MA-8) Michael E. Capuano
(MA-9) Stephen Lynch
(MA-10) Bill Delahunt
(MD-8) Chris Van Hollen
(ME-1) Chellie Pingree
(MI-3) Vernon J. Ehlers
(MI-12) Sander Levin
(MI-14) John Conyers, Jr.
(MI-15) John Dingell
(MN-8) Jim Oberstar
(MO-5) Emmanuel Cleaver II
(MP-AL) Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan
(NC-4) David Price (cosponsor)
(NH-1) Carol Shea-Porter
(NJ-7) Leonard Lance
(NJ-8) Bill Pascrell, Jr.
(NJ-12) Rush Holt
(NV-1) Shelley Berkley
(NY-8) Jerrold Nadler
(NY-12) Nydia Velazquez
(NY-14) Carolyn B. Maloney
(OR-1) David Wu
(RI-2) James R. Langevin
(TX-25) Lloyd Doggett
(VA-3) Robert C. “Bobby” Scott
(WI-6) Thomas Petri (cosponsor)
(WV-3) Nick J. Rahall, II
Survey Demonstrates Strong Student Demand for the Humanities but Declining Conditions for Faculty
posted by Christopher Howard — Mar 09, 2010
Despite the humanities playing a core role in higher education with strong student interest, four-year colleges and universities are increasingly relying on a part-time, untenured workforce to meet the demand. These facts, common knowledge to many professors, have been confirmed in the recently released results of the Humanities Departmental Survey, conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a consortium of disciplinary associations, including CAA.
The survey includes data collected from departments of art history, English, foreign languages, history, the history of science, linguistics, and religion at approximately 1,400 colleges and universities. It is the first comprehensive survey to provide general cross-disciplinary data on humanities departments. The results are available on the academy’s Humanities Resource Center Online.
According to the Humanities Departmental Survey:
- Across the humanities, but especially in English and combined English and foreign-language departments, professors at four-year colleges and universities are evolving into a part-time workforce. During the 2006–7 academic year, only 38 percent of faculty members in these departments were tenured. English departments had the greatest proportion of non-tenure-track faculty (49 percent)
- When minors are included, undergraduate participation in humanities programs is about 82 percent greater than counting majors alone would suggest. For the 2006–7 academic year, 122,100 students completed bachelor’s degrees and 100,310 completed minor degrees in the three largest humanities disciplines: English, foreign languages, and history
- Reflecting the demands of a global economy, student interest in foreign language is strong: during the 2006–7 academic year, foreign-language departments awarded 28,710 baccalaureate degrees and had the largest number of students completing minors (51,670). Yet investment in a stable professoriate to teach and study foreign languages and literatures appears to be declining, with a significant reduction in recruitment of full-time faculty members (39 percent fewer recruitments for full-time positions in 2008–9 than hires for 2007–8) and fewer total graduate students than faculty members, the only surveyed discipline for which this was the case
- Turnover rates among humanities faculty were low—only 2.5 percent of humanities faculty left the profession through departure, retirement, or death during the two academic years preceding the survey. Combined with recently instituted hiring freezes on many campuses, career opportunities for the next generation of scholars (there were approximately 84,000 graduate students in the surveyed fields during the 2006–7 academic year) are limited
- Approximately 87 percent of humanities departments reported that their subject was part of the core distribution requirements at their institution
The survey results provide a snapshot of US humanities departments at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The survey covers a broad range of topics, including numbers of departments and faculty members, faculty distributions by discipline, courses taught, tenure activity, undergraduate majors and minors, and graduate students. The data provide new information about each of the disciplines; they also allow comparisons across disciplines. These data are especially important because the US Department of Education has indefinitely suspended the only nationally representative survey providing information about humanities faculty, the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty.
Several national learned societies collaborated with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to develop, field, and interpret data gathered by the Humanities Departmental Survey: the American Academy of Religion; the American Historical Association; the College Art Association; the History of Science Society; the Linguistic Society of America; and the Modern Language Association. The American Council of Learned Societies and the American Political Science Association also provided important assistance. The survey was administered by the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics, which also performed the basic data analysis.
Even though the humanities disciplines represent an essential core of the liberal-arts curriculum, they have long been data deprived. The empirical data now available in the survey, along with the rich collection of information already found in the Humanities Indicators, begin to fill that gap and to establish baselines that will allow stakeholders to track trends in the future. The academy hopes that the Humanities Departmental Survey can be expanded to include additional disciplines and updated regularly, producing trend data that could be incorporated into the Humanities Indicators.
Launched in 2009, Humanities Indicators include data covering humanities education from primary school through the graduate level; the humanities workforce; humanities funding and research; and the humanities in civic life. Modeled after the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators, the Humanities Indicators serve as a resource to help scholars, policymakers, and the public assess the current state of the humanities. The academy continues to update and expand the Humanities Indicators.
The academy looks forward to working with the National Endowment for the Humanities to advance this critical work. The Teagle Foundation provided support for the Humanities Departmental Survey project, and grants from the William and Flora Hewlett, Andrew W. Mellon, and Rockefeller Foundations have advanced the academy’s overall humanities data initiative.
Those who wish to receive announcements of new data and research on the humanities can subscribe to an email alert system at the Humanities Resource Center Online.
Responses
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has posted PDFs of two response papers, from David Laurence and Robert Townsend, on its website for download.
For journalistic analyses of the project, please read Scott Jaschik’s “State of Humanities Departments” at Inside Higher Ed and Jennifer Howard’s “Humanities Remain Popular Among Students Even as Tenure-Track Jobs Diminish” at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Survey Demonstrates Strong Student Demand for the Humanities but Declining Conditions for Faculty
posted by Christopher Howard — Mar 09, 2010
Despite the humanities playing a core role in higher education with strong student interest, four-year colleges and universities are increasingly relying on a part-time, untenured workforce to meet the demand. These facts, common knowledge to many professors, have been confirmed in the recently released results of the Humanities Departmental Survey, conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a consortium of disciplinary associations, including CAA.
The survey includes data collected from departments of art history, English, foreign languages, history, the history of science, linguistics, and religion at approximately 1,400 colleges and universities. It is the first comprehensive survey to provide general cross-disciplinary data on humanities departments. The results are available on the academy’s Humanities Resource Center Online.
According to the Humanities Departmental Survey:
- Across the humanities, but especially in English and combined English and foreign-language departments, professors at four-year colleges and universities are evolving into a part-time workforce. During the 2006–7 academic year, only 38 percent of faculty members in these departments were tenured. English departments had the greatest proportion of non-tenure-track faculty (49 percent)
- When minors are included, undergraduate participation in humanities programs is about 82 percent greater than counting majors alone would suggest. For the 2006–7 academic year, 122,100 students completed bachelor’s degrees and 100,310 completed minor degrees in the three largest humanities disciplines: English, foreign languages, and history
- Reflecting the demands of a global economy, student interest in foreign language is strong: during the 2006–7 academic year, foreign-language departments awarded 28,710 baccalaureate degrees and had the largest number of students completing minors (51,670). Yet investment in a stable professoriate to teach and study foreign languages and literatures appears to be declining, with a significant reduction in recruitment of full-time faculty members (39 percent fewer recruitments for full-time positions in 2008–9 than hires for 2007–8) and fewer total graduate students than faculty members, the only surveyed discipline for which this was the case
- Turnover rates among humanities faculty were low—only 2.5 percent of humanities faculty left the profession through departure, retirement, or death during the two academic years preceding the survey. Combined with recently instituted hiring freezes on many campuses, career opportunities for the next generation of scholars (there were approximately 84,000 graduate students in the surveyed fields during the 2006–7 academic year) are limited
- Approximately 87 percent of humanities departments reported that their subject was part of the core distribution requirements at their institution
The survey results provide a snapshot of US humanities departments at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The survey covers a broad range of topics, including numbers of departments and faculty members, faculty distributions by discipline, courses taught, tenure activity, undergraduate majors and minors, and graduate students. The data provide new information about each of the disciplines; they also allow comparisons across disciplines. These data are especially important because the US Department of Education has indefinitely suspended the only nationally representative survey providing information about humanities faculty, the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty.
Several national learned societies collaborated with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to develop, field, and interpret data gathered by the Humanities Departmental Survey: the American Academy of Religion; the American Historical Association; the College Art Association; the History of Science Society; the Linguistic Society of America; and the Modern Language Association. The American Council of Learned Societies and the American Political Science Association also provided important assistance. The survey was administered by the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics, which also performed the basic data analysis.
Even though the humanities disciplines represent an essential core of the liberal-arts curriculum, they have long been data deprived. The empirical data now available in the survey, along with the rich collection of information already found in the Humanities Indicators, begin to fill that gap and to establish baselines that will allow stakeholders to track trends in the future. The academy hopes that the Humanities Departmental Survey can be expanded to include additional disciplines and updated regularly, producing trend data that could be incorporated into the Humanities Indicators.
Launched in 2009, Humanities Indicators include data covering humanities education from primary school through the graduate level; the humanities workforce; humanities funding and research; and the humanities in civic life. Modeled after the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators, the Humanities Indicators serve as a resource to help scholars, policymakers, and the public assess the current state of the humanities. The academy continues to update and expand the Humanities Indicators.
The academy looks forward to working with the National Endowment for the Humanities to advance this critical work. The Teagle Foundation provided support for the Humanities Departmental Survey project, and grants from the William and Flora Hewlett, Andrew W. Mellon, and Rockefeller Foundations have advanced the academy’s overall humanities data initiative.
Those who wish to receive announcements of new data and research on the humanities can subscribe to an email alert system at the Humanities Resource Center Online.
Responses
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has posted PDFs of two response papers, from David Laurence and Robert Townsend, on its website for download.
For journalistic analyses of the project, please read Scott Jaschik’s “State of Humanities Departments” at Inside Higher Ed and Jennifer Howard’s “Humanities Remain Popular Among Students Even as Tenure-Track Jobs Diminish” at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Frick Art Reference Library Opens Two New Online Databases
posted by Christopher Howard — Feb 23, 2010
The Frick Art Reference Library in New York has launched two new online resources that are available to scholars free of charge. The first, called the Archives Directory, is a directory that helps those researching the history of collecting art in the United States. The second, the Montias Database, is a collection of inventories from the Dutch Golden Age.
Inge Reist, director for the Frick’s Center for the History of Collecting in America, says, “Such a consolidated and easily searched online source as the new Archives Directory will prove invaluable to this deepening field of study and will ensure that researchers can locate primary documents such as letters, bills of sale, and other transaction records that are so essential to reliable scholarship. Indeed, users will more readily find their way to all manner of repositories, from those that are well-known to utterly unexpected caches, which in turn may lead to new discoveries and inspire fresh perspectives.”
Archives Directory
The center’s Archives Directory, the first online database of its kind, consolidates a wealth of information about the location and nature of documents and archives available on American collectors. Until now, scholars have had to comb through multiple websites and, if permitted, sift through analogue data held at library, museum, and university archives to construct their own plans for research—a time-consuming and imprecise process. The new directory is, by contrast, accessible around the clock via the institution’s website. Its use will help scholars worldwide as they approach research projects, guiding them beyond existing publications and standard paths to overlooked repositories, including primary source materials.
The Archives Directory guides researchers to more than 5,000 collections held in more than 300 repositories worldwide, which together have bearing on the lives and activities of more than 1,500 American collectors. Information in the Archives Directory was culled from various online and printed materials ranging from federated and individual online library catalogues to Google Books to published literature in the field.
Contributions of additional information for the directory are welcomed by scholars and researchers, so that it will continue to grow and become an increasingly valued resource.
Montias Database of 17th Century Dutch Art Inventories
The complete Montias Database, cosponsored by the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, offers an unprecedented look at ownership of art in Holland during the seventeenth century. It is a trove of searchable information about buyers, sellers, and prices, including comprehensive information on over 50,000 objects (paintings, prints, sculpture, furniture, and so forth) listed in nearly 1,300 Amsterdam city inventories. Approximately half was created in preparation for auctions, almost an equal portion was notarial death inventories for estate purposes, and the remaining documents relate to bankruptcy cases. Although the database, which specifically addresses records from 1597 through 1681, is not a complete record of all inventories made in Amsterdam, it contains a vast amount of information that can elucidate patterns of buying, selling, inventorying, and collecting art.
An eminent economist at Yale University, John Michael Montias began recording details of ownership of works of art from inventories held in the Amsterdam municipal archive, or Geementearchief (now known as the Stadsarchief), in the early 1980s as part of his own work on the prices of Dutch paintings at seventeenth-century auctions.
ONLINE CAREER CENTER JOB STATISTICS
posted by CAA — Feb 11, 2010
CAA’s Online Career Center, the major database for job classifieds in the academic art world, is also an indicator of professional trends in the visual arts. As anticipated in this economic downturn, job postings decreased for full-time positions from CAA’s fiscal year 2008 (July 1, 2007–June 30, 2008) to fiscal year 2009 (July 1, 2008–June 30, 2009).
In addition, indicators from the US Department of Education and the American Association of University Professors show an increase in contingent faculty (e.g., part-time or adjunct positions). CAA, however, is not able to keep statistics on contingent faculty since most hires are made locally and not posted nationally on the Online Career Center.
General Jobs Statistics
Overall, the Online Career Center posted 1,263 jobs in FY 2009, down from 1,757 in FY 2008. A total of 643 jobs have appeared in the first six months of the current fiscal year (July 1–December 31, 2009).
In the charts below, please keep in mind that each job can be posted to multiple categories, so there is not a one-to-one relationship between job and category. Also, the category “Any” is for employers that are looking for someone to teach a broad range of classes.
The ten most frequent postings by specialty for studio art and art history in fiscal year 2009 are used as the baseline in the following four charts:
|
Studio Art |
FY09 |
FY08 |
|
Any |
629 |
1,005 |
|
Graphic/Industrial/Object |
185 |
246 |
|
Digital/Media/Animation |
150 |
220 |
|
Drawing/Printmaking/Paper |
96 |
130 |
|
Sculpture/Installation/Environmental Art |
92 |
99 |
|
Ceramics/Metals/Fiber |
89 |
92 |
|
Photography |
85 |
143 |
|
Art Education |
73 |
90 |
|
Film/Video |
70 |
89 |
|
Foundations |
59 |
90 |
The above statistics represent a 30.7 percent decline in the number of positions posted in studio art.
|
Art History |
FY09 |
FY08 |
|
Any |
445 |
561 |
|
Contemporary Art |
101 |
107 |
|
Twentieth-Century Art |
79 |
89 |
|
General Art History |
77 |
110 |
|
Renaissance/Baroque Art |
60 |
64 |
|
Japanese/Korean Art |
56 |
39 |
|
Nineteenth-Century Art |
52 |
61 |
|
Chinese Art |
49 |
39 |
|
South/Southeast Asian Art |
45 |
47 |
|
Art of the United States |
35 |
49 |
The above statistics represent a 14.3 percent decline in the number of positions posted in art history.
A comparison of the top-ten specializations posted in last six months (July 1–December 31, 2009) to the same period in 2008 demonstrates an overall decline of 28.9 percent in studio-art job postings.
|
Studio Art |
2009 |
2008 |
|
Any |
320 |
524 |
|
Graphic/Industrial/Object |
109 |
124 |
|
Digital/Media/Animation |
80 |
112 |
|
Drawing/Printmaking/Paper |
45 |
74 |
|
Sculpture/Installation/Environmental Art |
72 |
32 |
|
Ceramics/Metals/Fiber |
42 |
69 |
|
Photography |
50 |
63 |
|
Art Education |
33 |
56 |
|
Film/Video |
39 |
55 |
|
Foundations |
31 |
46 |
Similarly, job postings in art history has seen an overall decline of 36.9.
|
Art History |
2009 |
2008 |
|
Any |
234 |
329 |
|
Contemporary Art |
34 |
77 |
|
Twentieth-Century Art |
26 |
60 |
|
General Art History |
38 |
56 |
|
Renaissance/Baroque Art |
25 |
46 |
|
Japanese/Korean Art |
28 |
47 |
|
Nineteenth-Century Art |
21 |
42 |
|
Chinese Art |
28 |
41 |
|
South/Southeast Asian Art |
24 |
38 |
|
Art of the United States |
22 |
24 |
Jobs by States and Provinces
All postings indexed by US state and Canadian province include the following top ten in the two previous fiscal years, and the first six months of the current year.
FY 2008 (July 1, 2007–June 30, 2008)
|
1. New York |
196 |
|
2. California |
139 |
|
3. Pennsylvania |
107 |
|
4. Texas |
100 |
|
5. Illinois |
99 |
|
6. Michigan |
87 |
|
7. Massachusetts |
81 |
|
8. Georgia |
70 |
|
9. Florida |
62 |
|
10. Ohio |
55 |
FY 2009 (July 1, 2008–June 30, 2009)
|
1. New York |
119 |
|
2. California |
92 |
|
3. Pennsylvania |
78 |
|
4. Illinois |
75 |
|
5. Georgia |
72 |
|
6. Texas |
64 |
|
7. Massachusetts |
62 |
|
8. Ohio |
58 |
|
9. Michigan |
55 |
|
10. Indiana |
33 |
First half of FY 2010 (July 1–December 31, 2009)
|
1. New York |
66 |
|
2. Illinois |
50 |
|
3. Pennsylvania |
42 |
|
4. Texas |
36 |
|
5. California |
31 |
|
6. Florida |
28 |
|
7. Georgia and Missouri |
27 |
|
8. Massachusetts |
26 |
|
9. Michigan |
25 |
|
10. Ohio |
23 |
2010 CAA Annual Conference in Chicago
As of February 2, 54 employers have indicated they are interviewing at the 2010 Annual Conference in Chicago: 16 booths and 31 tables in the Interview Hall have been rented, and 7 employers have told CAA about plans to interview offsite. Additional employers, which do not always inform CAA of their presence, are expected.
These numbers are similar to those for last year’s conference, when 59 institutions came to Los Angeles. CAA rented 9 booths and 37 tables in the Interview Hall; 13 employers interviewed offsite.
In comparison, at the 2008 Annual Conference in Dallas–Fort Worth—held before the recession had emerged—CAA rented 40 booths and 64 tables in the Interview Hall. Thirty institutions made interview arrangements elsewhere, bringing the total for that year to 134.
That’s a 56 percent drop in the number of institutions between the 2008 and 2009 conferences, and nearly the same decrease (60 percent) when comparing 2008 to the early totals for 2010.
Interviews at the Annual Conference, however, are just one part of Career Services offered by CAA in Chicago. Schools and institutions also meet informally with job seekers in the tables section of the Interview Hall. CAA offers professional-development workshops and roundtable discussions on a variety of career-related topics at the conference, and networking is encouraged in the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge, which is host to special events throughout the 2010 conference.
Contact
You may request statistical information in other specializations for studio art and art history from Eugenia Lewis, CAA controller.
Donate to Help Save Haitian Libraries and Archives
posted by Christopher Howard — Feb 08, 2010
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), an international collaboration of educational, research, governmental, and nongovernmental institutions that provides access to electronic collections about the Caribbean, is seeking donations and technical assistance for the recovery and protection of Haiti’s libraries and their valuable historical, governmental, and cultural resources.
The Digital Library of the Caribbean has initiated the Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative, the goal of which is to help the country’s three largest heritage libraries and the National Archives, all of which were damaged in the January 12 earthquake. While the main structures remain standing, one library must be evacuated and most likely demolished and the others suffered significant damage, leaving their collections extremely vulnerable. As a result, significant resources will be needed to protect the already brittle, rare books and documents, now left in piles and covered with debris.
The damaged institutions have indicated they need gloves, masks, archival boxes, and temporary staff to assist in the clean-up. Later, they will need to replace broken shelving, repair or replace damaged electronic equipment, and provide more advanced restoration for many of the rarest books and documents.
Laura Probst, dean of FIU Libraries and a dLOC executive committee member, said protecting the historical documents is crucial in the earthquake’s aftermath.
“The collections in these archives represent the collective memory of the Haitian people, their culture, and Haiti’s role in the history of the western hemisphere and the world,” Probst said. “With this initiative we seek to preserve these invaluable resources for Haiti’s future, and for our own.”
FIU has a longstanding partnership with Haiti’s libraries and the National Archives through the Digital Library of the Caribbean and is one of the founding partners and administrators of dLOC, along with the University of Florida and the University of the Virgin Islands.
The Digital Library of the Caribbean’s operations are run out of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at FIU. Brooke Wooldridge, coordinator of dLOC at FIU, will be traveling to Haiti this week to assist the libraries and archives in documenting their needs and planning for the next phases of their recovery.
The Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative at first will channel resources to four institutions in Port-au-Prince:
- Archives Nationales d’Haïti houses both civil and state records, including births, marriage and death certificates, documentation of social works, civil governance and records of the Office of the President, and most government ministries
- Bibliothèque haïtienne des Pères du Saint-Esprit was founded in 1873 by the Fathers of the Holy Spirit. The library holds resources documenting the history of Haiti, French colonization, slavery, and emancipation, and 20th Century records, as well as newspapers and periodicals
- Bibliothèque haïtienne des Frères de l’Instruction Chrétienne was founded in 1912 by the Christian Brothers. It served as depository-library for Haitian imprints and holds titles not even available in the National Library. It also holds one of the most significant collections of Haitian newspapers
- Bibliothèque National d’Haïti was established in 1940 and also serves as a public library providing resources, study space, and research support. It has a small but significant collection of rare books, manuscripts, and newspapers
For more information or to contribute to the Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative, please visit the dLOC website or call dLOC at 305-348-3008.
The text was published earlier today on the website of Florida International University (FIU) and is reprinted here with permission by news.FIU.edu.