CAA News Today
US Ratifies Treaty to Protect Cultural Property in Time of War
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 02, 2008
On September 25, 2008, the United States Senate voted to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. This international convention regulates the conduct of nations during war and military occupation in order to assure the protection of cultural sites, monuments, and repositories, including museums, libraries, and archives. Written in the wake of the widespread cultural devastation perpetrated by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and modeled on instructions given by General Dwight Eisenhower to aid in the preservation of Europe’s cultural legacy, the Hague Convention is the oldest international agreement to address exclusively cultural-heritage preservation. The US now joins 121 other nations in becoming a party to this historic treaty. By taking this significant step, the US demonstrates its commitment to the preservation of the world’s cultural, artistic, religious, and historic legacy.
Although the US signed the convention soon after its writing, the Pentagon objected to ratification because of increasing cold-war tensions. Only with the collapse of the Soviet Union did the US military withdraw its objections, and President Bill Clinton transmitted the convention to the Senate in 1999. The public attention given to the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad in 2003 and the looting of archaeological sites in southern Iraq during the ensuing years revived interest in the convention, and the Senate finally voted to give its advice and consent to ratification last week.
A number of understandings were established in connection with the ratification, mostly to ensure that the convention does not interfere substantially with the US military’s ability to wage war. The final element of the ratification is a “declaration,” which states that the treaty, though self-executing: (a) does not require the US government to prosecute anyone who violates the convention (implicitly meaning that such prosecution is required only if a US law is also violated); and (b) does not give individual persons a right of redress in US courts.
Peter Tompa at the Cultural Property Observer provides a summary and commentary on what happened in the Senate. CAA has posted PDFs of both the introduction of the Hague Convention to the Senate by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the ratification of the treaty, from the Congressional Record.
Statements by Hague Convention Advocates
While US policy has been to follow the principles of the convention, ratification will raise the imperative of protecting cultural heritage during conflict, including the incorporation of heritage preservation into military planning; ratification will also clarify the United States’ obligations and encourage the training of military personnel in cultural-heritage preservation and the recruitment of cultural-heritage professionals into the military. Cori Wegener, president of the US Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS), noted that “Ratification of the Hague Convention provides a renewed opportunity to highlight cultural-property training for US military personnel at all levels, and to call attention to cultural-property considerations in the early stages of military planning. The US Committee of the Blue Shield will continue its commitment to offering cultural-property training and coordination with the US military and to increase public awareness about the 1954 Hague Convention and its international symbol, the Blue Shield.”
Patty Gerstenblith, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP), cited among the advantages of ratification, “Most importantly, it sends a clear signal to other nations that the United States respects their cultural heritage and will facilitate US cooperation with its allies and coalition partners in achieving more effective preservation efforts in areas of armed conflict.”
The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has advocated ratification of the Hague Convention for more than fifteen years. John Russell, AIA vice president for professional responsibilities, commented that “By ratifying the 1954 Hague Convention, the US has affirmed its commitment to protecting cultural property during armed conflict. The Archaeological Institute of America will continue to work with the Department of Defense to integrate the Convention’s provisions fully and consistently into the US military training curriculum at all levels.”
Since the founding of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation in 2004 and of the US Committee of the Blue Shield in 2006, ratification has been among their primary priorities. AIA, LCCHP, and USCBS formed a coalition of preservation organizations that submitted testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in support of ratification and worked with members of the Senate to achieve this historic step. The Statement in Support of US Ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention urging Senate ratification, joined by twelve other cultural preservation organizations, is available from LCCHP.
LCCHP acknowledges the additional assistance of the Society for American Archaeology and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in the effort to achieve ratification of the Hague Convention.
CAA Standards and Guidelines
CAA has advocated for the ratification of the convention for decades. CAA has also published its own Standards and Guidelines on issues related to international cultural heritage: the CAA Statement on the Importance of Documenting the Historical Context of Objects and Sites (2004), A Code of Ethics for Art Historians and Guidelines for the Professional Practice of Art History (1995), part of which addresses trafficking in works of art; and the Resolution Concerning the Acquisition of Cultural Properties Originating in Foreign Countries (1973).
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 01, 2008
CAA pays respect to the following artists, scholars, critics, and academics who recently passed away:
- Tina Allen, a sculptor of influential African Americans, died on September 9, 2008, at age 58
- Michael Baxandall, an art historian best known for transforming the methodologies of the discipline through his books, Giotto and the Orators (1971) and Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (1972), died on August 12, 2008, at the age of 74
- Dale Chisman, an abstract painter based in Denver, died on August 28, 2008. He was 65
- George Deem, a painter who cleverly reworked old-master paintings, died on August 11, 2008, at the age of 75
- Elizabeth Eames, a scholar of medieval tiles at the British Museum, died on September 20, 2008. She was 90
- Manny Farber, a painter and film critic whose writing had appeared since the early 1960s in the Nation, the New Republic, Film Comment, Film Culture, and Artforum, died on August 18, 2008. He was 91
- Marian Griffiths, a longtime director at Sculpture Center in New York, died September 8, 2008, at age 86
- Simon Hantaï, a reclusive French painter, died on September 11, 2008. He was 85
- France Alain Jacquet, a French painter associated with nouveau réalisme, died on September 4, 2008, at the age of 69
- Stephen A. Kliment, a former editor of the Architectural Record, died on September 10, 2008, at the age of 78
- Paul Overy, a British art critic, died on August 7, 2008, at age 68
- John Russell, a contributor of art criticism to the Sunday Times of London and chief art critic of the New York Times from 1982 to 1990, died on August 23, 2008. He was 89 years old
- Petrus Schaesberg, a scholar of modern and contemporary art and an adjunct professor at Columbia University, died on September 23, 2008. He was 40
- Stuart Cary Welch Jr., curator emeritus of Islamic and later Indian art at the Harvard Art Museum and and former special consultant in charge in the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on August 13, 2008. He was 80
- George Zarnecki, an expert on Romanesque art and a former director of the Courtauld Institute in London, died on September 8, 2008, a few days before his 93rd birthday
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
CAA Supports Free Speech Protection Act of 2008
posted by Christopher Howard — Sep 30, 2008
On September 25, 2008, Paul Jaskot and Linda Downs, respectively CAA’s president and executive director, sent the following letter to the US Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary in support of S. 2977, the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008:
The Hon. Arlen Specter, Sponsor
The Hon. Patrick Leahy, Chairman
Members of the Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate
433 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
S. 2977: The Free Speech Protection Act of 2008
We write in support of the proposed Free Speech Protection Act of 2008 (S. 2977). We are a professional organization of over 16,000 members that represents the interests of scholars, authors, artists, libraries, museums, and other individuals and institutions who work in the arts in the United States. We publish three scholarly journals, and support the publication of books and other scholarship through grant programs, an influential annual conference, a website, and other activities. As publishers, and as the representative of authors, artists, and scholars, we urge the Senate to approve S. 2977 expeditiously in this congressional session.
The United States is a beacon of free and open discourse. We produce some of the most widely respected and valued scholarship in the world, as well as some of the most influential art. Other countries and individuals worldwide look to us to set the highest standard for the free exchange of ideas, and our Constitution and Bill of Rights give us the ability to meet that standard.
Now, as publishing becomes ever more globalized, our freedom to publish under United States law is threatened. Libel suits filed in foreign countries pose a grave danger to the free speech rights of American authors, journalists, publishers, and readers. S. 2977 provides authors and publishers with urgently needed protections. This is an excellent bill, and its broad bipartisan support shows that Americans are united in our respect for and reliance on our cherished independence. We must not allow the libel laws of other countries to undermine American laws or chill protected speech.
We concur with the American Association of University Professors, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, American Library Association, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Association of American Publishers, Association of American University Presses, the National Coalition Against Censorship, PEN American Center, and others, who wrote to you on September 10, 2008, stating: “Increasingly in recent years, individuals who challenge the accuracy of published materials have attempted to strike back at their authors by filing lawsuits in foreign countries, most commonly England. U.S. law requires the party alleging libel to prove that the statements objected to are actually false. To avoid this burden, libel plaintiffs have engaged in forum shopping—filing lawsuits in countries with either different burdens of proof or different definitions of libel or both.”
S. 2977 is modeled on the recent New York state law that broadens the jurisdiction of New York courts to ensure that foreign libel judgments not be enforced unless they meet New York and U.S. constitutional standards. S. 2977 adds further force to this excellent law by authorizing authors to countersue foreign plaintiffs in a U.S. court for damages of up to three times the amount of the foreign judgment if the foreign plaintiff acted to suppress the speech of the U.S. person.
Passage of S. 2977, the Free Speech Protection Act, is essential to ensure that weaker protections for free speech in other countries do not undermine our fundamental First Amendment freedoms.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Jaskot, CAA President and Professor of Art and Art History, DePaul University; and Linda Downs, Executive Director
CAA Supports Free Speech Protection Act of 2008
posted by Christopher Howard — Sep 30, 2008
On September 25, 2008, Paul Jaskot and Linda Downs, respectively CAA’s president and executive director, sent the following letter to the US Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary in support of S. 2977, the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008:
The Hon. Arlen Specter, Sponsor
The Hon. Patrick Leahy, Chairman
Members of the Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate
433 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
S. 2977: The Free Speech Protection Act of 2008
We write in support of the proposed Free Speech Protection Act of 2008 (S. 2977). We are a professional organization of over 16,000 members that represents the interests of scholars, authors, artists, libraries, museums, and other individuals and institutions who work in the arts in the United States. We publish three scholarly journals, and support the publication of books and other scholarship through grant programs, an influential annual conference, a website, and other activities. As publishers, and as the representative of authors, artists, and scholars, we urge the Senate to approve S. 2977 expeditiously in this congressional session.
The United States is a beacon of free and open discourse. We produce some of the most widely respected and valued scholarship in the world, as well as some of the most influential art. Other countries and individuals worldwide look to us to set the highest standard for the free exchange of ideas, and our Constitution and Bill of Rights give us the ability to meet that standard.
Now, as publishing becomes ever more globalized, our freedom to publish under United States law is threatened. Libel suits filed in foreign countries pose a grave danger to the free speech rights of American authors, journalists, publishers, and readers. S. 2977 provides authors and publishers with urgently needed protections. This is an excellent bill, and its broad bipartisan support shows that Americans are united in our respect for and reliance on our cherished independence. We must not allow the libel laws of other countries to undermine American laws or chill protected speech.
We concur with the American Association of University Professors, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, American Library Association, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Association of American Publishers, Association of American University Presses, the National Coalition Against Censorship, PEN American Center, and others, who wrote to you on September 10, 2008, stating: “Increasingly in recent years, individuals who challenge the accuracy of published materials have attempted to strike back at their authors by filing lawsuits in foreign countries, most commonly England. U.S. law requires the party alleging libel to prove that the statements objected to are actually false. To avoid this burden, libel plaintiffs have engaged in forum shopping—filing lawsuits in countries with either different burdens of proof or different definitions of libel or both.”
S. 2977 is modeled on the recent New York state law that broadens the jurisdiction of New York courts to ensure that foreign libel judgments not be enforced unless they meet New York and U.S. constitutional standards. S. 2977 adds further force to this excellent law by authorizing authors to countersue foreign plaintiffs in a U.S. court for damages of up to three times the amount of the foreign judgment if the foreign plaintiff acted to suppress the speech of the U.S. person.
Passage of S. 2977, the Free Speech Protection Act, is essential to ensure that weaker protections for free speech in other countries do not undermine our fundamental First Amendment freedoms.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Jaskot, CAA President and Professor of Art and Art History, DePaul University; and Linda Downs, Executive Director
CAA.REVIEWS AT TEN YEARS
posted by Christopher Howard — Sep 11, 2008
In October 1998, CAA launched its first online journal, caa.reviews. Founded by Larry Silver of the University of Pennsylvania and Robert Nelson of Yale University, the journal has since reviewed more than 1,100 books, exhibitions, and more.
Ten years ago, art and scholarly publishers were struggling. Few magazines or newspapers were giving serious attention to reviewing art books. The Art Bulletin and Art Journal were nearly alone, and they could review at most about several dozen books per year each. Meanwhile in academia, art scholarship was flourishing, but new publications couldn’t get the peer assessment they needed. CAA’s print journals are quarterlies; as a website that could regularly publish texts as they are written and edited, caa.reviews could be a means of reviewing new books more quickly.
Beginnings
In the early 1990s, Larry Silver, who was then CAA president, conceived of a reviews journal. He recalled, “I hoped that CAA could sponsor an inexpensive bimonthly reviews journal, on the model of the German Kunstchronik, to fill this gap.” A few years later, Robert Nelson had the idea to go from a print to online publication. At that time, he and Silver regularly read two scholarly reviews distributed electronically. Founded in 1993, the Medieval Review sent its reviews via an email listserv. The second review, the Bryn Mawr Classical Review also published its reviews via a listserv. Perhaps, they thought, CAA could do something similar.
In the mid-1990s, CAA had limited IT—no full-time staff, no website—so it was a steep learning curve all around. “In some ways caa.reviews was the tail that wagged the dog,” Silver said, “and got CAA to think about electronic communications, a homepage, and related services.” And as it turned out, CAA was ahead of most other scholarly societies in the arts and humanities in making this investment in electronic publishing. It had been common in the sciences for several years, but not in our world. Leila Kinney of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology joined Silver and Nelson to advocate for not only a reviews journal but also a homepage for the organization.
The board was enthusiastic, but CAA didn’t have the money to simply launch an entirely new publication. Funding was sought, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded CAA a $79,000 grant to get the project started. The grant terms required that the journal eventually become financially self-sustaining, which was attractive to the board. CAA was able to offer the journal freely on the internet, with open access, for several years to non-CAA members, which built a readership and in turn helped to attract more reviewers. But in 2003 caa.reviews became a benefit of CAA membership, like The Art Bulletin and Art Journal are, and is now also available to institutions through a subscriber agreement.
Work began on both building the journal’s website and commissioning reviews. Nelson, Silver, and Kinney enlisted the library and computer expertise of Katherine Haskins, then at the University of Chicago libraries, for technical issues and assembled a small editorial board for leadership; Nelson served as editor-in-chief for the first year. Together they collected a group of about ten to fifteen field editors to commission reviews. This is still the working structure of the journal: editors specializing in one area of art or art history, and located anywhere in the world, commission reviews within that field or specialty.
The first handful of texts, posted in October 1998, reflected the diversity of scholarship in art history: reviewed were books on old masters such as Hans Holbein, Nicolas Poussin, and Édouard Manet, as well as on subjects like Byzantine ivories, women artists in the Renaissance, Islamic inscriptions, the art of late imperial and early modern China, aesthetic theory, and much more.
Silver, who took the editorial reins from Nelson in 1999 and served until 2005, said, “It didn’t take long for readers to find us and to send compliments on the quality of the reviews. I particularly remember getting a response to a review on a book on Dutch art from the author in Holland, who was delighted to have his book reviewed well and quickly, while there was still a chance to discuss ideas freshly.”
The New Medium
At first caa.reviews felt resistance about scholarly writing on the internet. Online publication was certainly seen as less prestigious at the beginning, so the editorial board had to work hard to make it clear that the standards for reviewing were the same as those at The Art Bulletin and Art Journal. Sheryl Reiss, currently teaching art history at the University of Southern California, was field editor for early modern Italian art from 1998 to 2003: “I generally didn’t have problems finding reviewers in a field rich in publications. Initially, though, some younger scholars were justifiably concerned whether an electronic book review would carry the same weight in tenure decisions as a print review.” More and more readers and academics, however, came to embrace the new publishing medium.
“I wonder how early readers felt about the change from handwritten manuscripts to the printed page,” said Frederick Asher, who joined as field editor of South Asian art in 1999 and then served as editor-in-chief from 2005 to 2008. “Did they resist that new access to knowledge? With caa.reviews and other carefully refereed and edited journals, we are only speaking of the mode of presentation, not the content, which is impeccable, no different from any other CAA publication.”
The resistance in some fields was problematic but understandable: both contemporary art and cinema were fields in which reviewers are accustomed to being paid and making a living as critics, and caa.reviews had difficulty for a while finding those who could write reviews for free. Contemporary art remains an underdeveloped area of coverage for this reason. Theory is a difficult field to encompass as well, though caa.reviews has always been sensitive to that topic and active in reviewing new works of importance since the journal began.
Despite these issues, the journal has flourished. “I think that the greatest strength of caa.reviews is its breadth of coverage,” said Silver, “particularly outside the traditional European strengths of the discipline. caa.reviews has vastly expanded the attention given to East Asian, Islamic, and other fields in art history, and the journal has striven to give more attention to exhibitions of importance in all fields. Certain publishers, such as the University of Hawai‘i Press, a leader in East Asian art books, have been particularly gratified to get coverage of their publications in caa.reviews.”
The art-publishing world took notice of the journal, and in the ensuing years blurbs from caa.reviews began appearing in print advertisements and on publishers’ websites, alongside quotes from reviews in more established publications. “I am pleased to see that our reviews are being cited by scholars and quoted by publishers just as much as print reviews,” Silver said. “After a decade of activity, we certainly do seem to be taken seriously and regarded as a peer institution of other academic journals.”
Exhibition Reviews
Reviews of exhibitions, while published regularly since the journal began, became a priority in 2004. A half-dozen field editors, representing geographic areas in the United States and internationally, began commissioning evaluations of shows in museums and university galleries. Lucy Oakley, the incoming editor-in-chief who is head of education and programs at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, said, “caa.reviews aims to cover exhibitions at a wide spectrum of art institutions, from prominent museums such as the Metropolitan, National Gallery, Art Institute, and Getty to small university art galleries and alternative spaces. Indeed, it’s at university art museums where the quality of scholarship counts more than the admissions gate, where some of the most interesting, creative, and intellectually ambitious exhibitions are being presented. Typically such shows receive little notice in the commercial art and book review press. Here caa.reviews is poised to make a major contribution in helping to evaluate and spread the word about such exhibitions and their catalogues.”
With the new group of field editors in place, reviews of contemporary artists such as Robert Smithson, Rachel Harrison, and Louise Bourgeois soon appeared alongside considerations of monographic shows on Duccio, Peter Paul Rubens, and Georges Seurat; surveys on Minimal, Turkish, and American Indian art were also reviewed. Because of its immediacy, caa.reviews strives to publish an evaluation quickly, sometimes while an exhibition is still on the walls.
The author of many exhibition reviews himself, Silver said, “The crowds who attend museum exhibitions obviously love and care about art and are interested in how it’s shown. They deserve proper, thoughtful, informed reviews from people who know the material. So do the curators who put their scholarly efforts into a show. After all, these are the means by which generations of people learn about art. And I should think that living artists would particularly benefit from having shows reviewed by scholars, who are less interested in market issues than, perhaps, newspaper and magazine staff reviewers. That is one reason why I reviewed exhibitions in my hometown of Philadelphia for caa.reviews in the early days of the journal. American newspapers are afraid that scholars will write in obscurantist prose and speak only to their specialist peers. So caa.reviews has a wide-open field.”
Essays, Conferences, and More
Essays are still not a major part of the journal, nor are conference reviews, as originally envisioned, but these areas are growing and include many notable highlights. In celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Meyer Schapiro’s birth in 2003, caa.reviews published a trio of essays on the renowned scholar’s writings, with authors looking at Schapiro’s books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, his approaches to methodologies on the study of medieval art, and his ideas on style and semiotics. Review essays on such topics as the 2006 Rembrandt Year, contemporary Asian art in biennials and triennials, the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Walker Art Center expansion have appeared over the years.
Other projects soon developed. In 2006 caa.reviews published extensive reviews of general art-history survey textbooks—the first in CAA publications since the 1990s—and of survey books specific to nineteenth-century art and visual culture. And just last year, caa.reviews began realizing one of its original goals, reviewing academic conferences and symposia. Silver noted, “The dreams of the first year still provide a signpost for future editors of the journal to strive for.”
In a redesign and relaunch in 2007, caa.reviews added a new feature, Recent Books in the Arts. Replacing the traditional Books Received list, which accumulated only the titles of review copies of art publications sent to the CAA office, the new section collects titles published by university and commercial presses worldwide and divides them into disciplinary categories (e.g., Architectural History/Historic Preservation, Oceanic/Australian Art, and Critical Theory/Gender Studies/Visual Studies). Recent Books in the Arts is not only useful to the reviews editors of CAA’s three journals, but it’s also a great way to gauge the state of publishing in the arts.
Early concerns about the ephemeral nature of digital publishing and broader access to non-CAA readers will be met when the journal becomes available on JSTOR. The journal will initially be archived through Portico, an archiving service for scholarly electronic journals, and then be presented through the JSTOR platform, probably by early 2009. Broader access to caa.reviews is also available through institutional subscriptions, which authenticate users seamlessly through an institution’s website. And all reviews published since 1998 can still be accessed on the caa.reviews website by individual members using their CAA user ID and password.
A Digital Future
Many daily and weekly newspapers are cutting art and culture staff and decreasing column inches devoted to book reviews and arts features. The New York Times seldom reviews art books at all, even in its Christmas gift issue, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review just ceased publication. Though publications like caa.reviews, the Art Book, Bookforum, and the reviews section of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, another born-digital journal, continue to carry the torch, this alarming shift indicates something about our current larger intellectual culture. The importance of the book and exhibition review is just as crucial in 2008 as it was in 1998.
Silver said: “When even the New York Times continues to call its Sunday section ‘Arts and Leisure,’ we know where review of exhibitions stand in terms of priority. And I have always lamented the absence of feuilleton sections, where scholars could communicate about exhibitions or books of wider interest to a larger public through serious newspapers, as they do in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. And why is it that museum reviews are done by John Updike in the New York Review of Books? Perhaps art scholars should review novels in exchange.”
“caa.reviews is much more than a review journal for art books,” Asher noted. “As we approach CAA’s centenary, all of us will be thinking about how the art disciplines have developed and matured. We can think historiographically by looking at the published work produced over the past century. And by ‘published’ I mean published in any venue, print or internet.”
At the time, Larry Silver was at Northwestern University and Robert Nelson was at the University of Chicago.
Katherine Haskins, now project development officer for Yale University’s library system, remains the journal’s technical advisor.
New AAM Standards on Cultural Property
posted by Christopher Howard — Sep 04, 2008
The American Association of Museums (AAM) has established new standards for the museum acquisition of archaeological material and ancient art that emphasize proper provenance of such objects and complete transparency on the part of the acquiring institutions. The product of two years of concerted research and vetting from the museum field, the Standards Regarding Archaeological Material and Ancient Art provide clear ethical guidance on collecting such material to discourage illicit excavation of archaeological sites and monuments. The standards also require museums to create a publicly available collections policy that sets institutional standards for provenance when acquiring archaeological material and ancient art.
CAA has also established Standards and Guidelines on similar topics, including the Resolution Concerning the Acquisition of Cultural Properties Originating in Foreign Countries (1973) and the Statement on the Importance of Documenting the Historical Context of Objects and Sites (2004).
Survey on Library and Museum Digitization Published
posted by Christopher Howard — Sep 04, 2008
Research and Markets, a publisher of international marketing and research data based in Dublin, Ireland, has just produced The International Survey of Library and Museum Digitization Projects. The study presents and summarizes data on digitization programs at academic, public, and government libraries and museums in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and more. Discussed are issues related to staffing, training, funding, outsourcing, permissions and copyright clearance, cataloguing, software and applications selection, and marketing. The International Survey is available for sale on the Research and Markets website.
CAA Award Recipients Featured in Art in America
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 25, 2008
Art in America’s 2008 Annual Guide to Galleries, Museums, and Artists hit newsstands earlier this month, with museum previews for the 2008–9 season as well as a look back at notable events and people of the past year. The “People in Review” section features Yoko Ono, Robert L. Herbert, Chris Kraus, and Sylvia Sleigh as honored recipients of CAA Awards for Distinction. The awards were presented in February 2008 at the CAA Annual Conference in Dallas–Fort Worth.
Download the Art in America feature; also, see the full list of 2008 award recipients.
CAA at Arts Advocacy Day
posted by Christopher Howard — May 01, 2008
Andrea Kirsh is an independent curator and scholar and an adjunct faculty member at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. She is also a member of the CAA Board of Directors.
I don’t usually hang around with the likes of Robert Redford, John Legend, and Peter Yarrow, but last month I did. With Nia Page, CAA director of membership, development, and marketing, and Sara Hines, CAA marketing and development assistant, I joined these performers and other arts advocates at the House Office Building in Washington, DC, as part of Arts Advocacy Day. Held March 31-April 1, 2008, the event was the twenty-first year that Americans for the Arts has brought together grassroots advocates from across the country to lobby Congress for arts-friendly legislation. CAA has been a longtime cosponsor of these important days for American arts and culture.
More than five-hundred-plus individuals from institutions and locations all over the country descended on Capitol Hill to raise awareness about funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Department of Education, along with specific bills under consideration in the Senate and House of Representatives concerning tax laws, Federal Communications Commission regulations, and foreign exchange policy.
Redford, Legend, Yarrow, and the rest of us were among a coalition of representatives from the NEA and Americas for the Arts who addressed the House Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations in the first congressional hearing in over a decade dedicated to the importance of federal arts funding. We were outside the hearing room with an overflow crowd of more than two hundred that lined an entire third-floor hallway.
Some historical background: after the culture wars that followed the outcry against funding Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and others, the NEA’s budget was cut from $176 million in 1992 to $99.5 million the following year, with grants to individual artists completely eliminated and the endowment’s other grant programs sorely lacking support. During the past fifteen years, the agency has slowly been recovering, with an encouraging $20 million increase in 2007, bringing the current budget to $144.7 million. Still $30 million shy of the baseline goal to reach 1992 levels, the current presidential administration has now proposed a $16 million cut for 2009.
The United States is unusual among advanced democracies in having no federal department of culture; current arts legislation is spread over more than fourteen congressional committees, which also have responsibility for forest fires, homeland security, and the entire tax system. The current Congress is looking at funding for the NEA, NEH, Institute of Museum and Library Services, arts education, and State Department cultural exchanges; tax legislation allowing artists to take fair-market-value tax deductions for donations to museums; and the inclusion of arts education within No Child Left Behind legislation (as well as several issues affecting the performing arts).
I was among the thirty-four Pennsylvanians who met in Senator Arlen Spector’s office with his staff member, Mary Beth McGowan, to ask for support for arts-friendly bills and to tell stories of how federal funding has benefited the state. Spector is a member of the Senate Cultural Caucus and a long-time friend of the arts, but that doesn’t make such visits any less important. The group included fourteen students in Drexel University’s Arts Administration Program (who had raised their own funds for the trip) and Silagh White of ArtsLehigh, an initiative at Lehigh University to integrate arts throughout the curriculum and educate an enthusiastic audience; two Lehigh undergraduates joined her.
Page and Hines joined seventy-five New York art supporters who lobbied the offices of Representatives Charles Rangel, Carolyn Maloney, and Louise McIntosh Slaughter and Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, to name a few, urging Congress to support increased funding for the NEA and NEH and to cosponsor the Artist-Museum Partnership Act. They also urged Congress to appropriate $53 million for the US Department of Education’s Arts in Education programs in the fiscal year 2009 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill.
During a training session on the first day, we were told, “If you don’t get involved, your opponents will.” I can’t overemphasize the importance of such lobbying. If you can’t make the trip to DC, you can still phone, write, or e-mail your senators and representatives about arts issues. They want to hear from their constituents, and the more personal your stories about the impact of arts policies and federal funding–which includes federal monies channeled through state and local arts councils–the better. Any time an individual or organization receives a federal grant, it is appropriate to thank both senators and congressman. If the grant benefits a number of people, such as funded research, which has an impact on teaching, mention it. You can keep up with current legislation at the Americans for the Arts website; if you sign up for its e-list, the organization can supply boiler letters and e-mails to you when action is needed. The website also holds a wealth of information on voting records and other means of gauging your representative’s stance on cultural policy. Get involved today!
Participate in the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil
posted by Christopher Howard — Mar 15, 2008
Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) and Donny George, former director of the Iraq Museum and former president of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities, invite you to participate in the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2003 looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
In the five years since this terrible event, nearly half the missing works have been recovered. Yet thousands of Iraq Museum artifacts remain at large. Meanwhile, museums around the world are increasingly confronted by security challenges, and rampant looting at archaeological sites continues unabated around the world.
“Now is the time for people and museum professionals to gather together: to remember the events of 2003 and take steps to ensure that no museum in the world suffers a similar fate,” says George, who is now a visiting professor at Stony Brook University.
In a global call to action, George urges museum directors and staff, university faculty and students, and citizens around the world to use the fifth anniversary of the looting of the Iraq Museum as an opportunity to reenergize our efforts to protect the world’s cultural heritage.
Museums are encouraged to treat April 10-12, 2008, every year as a time to conduct security audits and update their internal risk management and due diligence practices. Likewise, universities are invited to use these three days every year for education and public awareness about the academic, ethical, and legal consequences of the destruction of cultural heritage with classroom projects, panel discussions, symposiums, or exhibitions.
The SAFE website offers suggestions for universities, museums, community groups, and others to plan an event of any size. SAFE Candlelight Vigil Kits offer a wealth of resources, including the DVD documentary Robbing the Cradle of Civilization: The Looting of Iraq’s Ancient Treasures (Canadian Broadcasting Company) or the documentary Thieves of Baghdad (Al Jazeera). Other relevant videos, such as a Charlie Rose interview with George from 2007, can be used, and SAFE also provides publicity tools.
Hosting a vigil in your community is easy:
• Choose a location and time on April 10, 11, or 12
• Schedule your event and post it to the Host a Vigil section of the SAFE website so that members of your community can learn of it and attend
• Use e-cards, customizable announcement flyers, buttons, posters, postcards, and the press-release template to help publicize your vigil
• Distribute the Candlelight Vigil brochure for distribution at your event. The brochure is being developed in conjunction with the exhibition Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago
• Gather with friends, family, colleagues, professors, and students. Pause for a moment of silence and light a candle. Discuss the destruction of cultural heritage and looting of ancient sites around the world, fueled by the global trade in illicit antiquities
• Document your vigil with digital photographs or video and send them to SAFE. We will use them in a compilation Video Memorial that includes gatherings from around the world
• You may also choose to light a virtual candle and add your name to the list of other supporters
For more information about the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil for the Iraq Museum, contact us. Also join our e-mail list to receive periodic newsletters about SAFE activities.
SAFE is a nonprofit organization that creates educational programs and media campaigns to raise public awareness about the importance of preserving cultural heritage worldwide. Having no political affiliations, SAFE is a coalition of professionals in communications, media, and advertising working alongside experts in the academic, legal, and law enforcement communities.