CAA News

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that Thomas P. Campbell—an accomplished curator with a specialty in European tapestry who has worked at the museum since 1995—has been elected its next director and chief executive officer, succeeding Philippe de Montebello, who announced in January his intention to retire from the Metropolitan Museum at the end of this year.

Campbell organized the groundbreaking and widely acclaimed exhibitions Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002), whose catalogue won CAA’s Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award in 2003, and Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor (2007). Currently curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts as well as supervising curator of the museum’s Antonio Ratti Textile Center, Campbell was elected at yesterday’s meeting of the board of trustees and will assume the directorship of the Metropolitan Museum on January 1, 2009.

Image: Thomas P. Campbell (left) and Philippe de Montebello (photograph by Don Pollard and provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

CAA awards grants to publishers to support the publications of books in art history, visual studies, and related subjects. Millard Meiss Publications Grants are given twice annually, and Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grants are awarded in the fall.

Millard Meiss Publication Grants

CAA awards Millard Meiss Publication Grants to support book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher on their merits but cannot be published in the most desirable form with­out a subsidy. For complete guidelines, application forms, and grant description, please visit www.collegeart.org/meiss or write to publications@collegeart.org. Deadline: October 1, 2008.

Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant

Thanks to a second generous three-year grant from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, CAA awards a publication grant to support book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art and related subjects. Books eligible for the Wyeth Grant have been accepted by a publisher on their merits but cannot be published in the most desirable form without a subsidy. For complete guidelines, application forms, and grant description, please visit www.collegeart.org/wyeth or write to publications@collegeart.org. Deadline: October 1, 2008.

The Education and Labor Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities in the US House of Representatives is scheduled to hold an informational hearing on museums and libraries at 9:30 AM EST on Thursday, September 11, 2008. The subcommittee will be examining how museums and libraries help to strengthen communities and will specifically focus on programs where museums partner with local government entities to solve community problems. One such program expected to be highlighted is a children’s museum that uses an IMLS grant to support a collaborative initiative between the museum, the county’s child welfare agency, and the family court system.

“Museums and libraries are playing such a vital role in communities around the nation,” said Ford W. Bell, president of the American Association of Museums (AAM). “I commend Chairwoman Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Ranking Member Todd Platts (R-PA) for calling this hearing to explore the exceptional work that museums and libraries are doing to strengthen communities.”  He added, “I hope the museum field will be able to listen in on the Committee proceedings.”

The witness list for the hearing includes: Anne-Imelda M. Radice, director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, DC; Suzanne LeBlanc, executive director of the Long Island Children’s Museum in New York; Mary Clare Zales, deputy secretary of education and commissioner for libraries in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Anna Nunez, executive director of the Arizona Health Science Library at the University of Arizona in Tucson; and Eric Jolly, president of the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul, Minnesota.

For additional information about museum advocacy, visit AAM’s Museum Advocacy Action Center, Speak Up for Museums, or email AAM’s grassroots manager, Ember Farber. Please keep in mind that all Congressional action is subject to change, and the committee website will usually reflect any changes.

Inside Higher Ed reports that a new study from the Council of Graduate Schools reveals that significant gaps exist—by demographic groups and academic disciplines—in who finishes PhD programs. Generally, foreign, male, and white students are more likely to earn their doctorates after ten years than are their counterparts who are American, female, or minority. The study is part of the council’s PhD Completion Project, a seven-year, grant-funded initiative that addresses the issues surrounding PhD completion and attrition.

The report, PhD Completion and Attrition: Analysis of Baseline Demographic Data from the PhD Completion Project,  is the second in a series of monographs from the council. It focuses on ten-year and seven-year completion rates by demographic characteristics (gender, citizenship, and race/ethnicity) based on data, submitted by twenty-four institutions, on students who entered their PhD programs in academic years 1992–93 through 2003–4. The report presents cumulative and annual completion rates from various perspectives: overall, by field, by institution type, and by time of entry into the PhD program. Completion between years seven and ten is also discussed.

Policymakers have underestimated the critical role of arts learning in supporting a vibrant nonprofit cultural sector, according to a RAND Corporation report just published. The study, written by Laura Zakaras and Julia F. Lowell and entitled Cultivating Demand for the Arts: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement, and State Arts Policy, was commissioned by the Wallace Foundation and conducted by RAND.

Despite decades of effort to make high-quality works of art available to Americans, demand for the arts has failed to keep pace with supply. Audiences for classical music, jazz, opera, theater, and the visual arts have declined as a percentage of the population, and the percentage of these audiences age thirty and younger has fallen even more.

“For decades, public funding of the arts has focused on building supply and expanding access to the arts, but it has neglected the cultivation of audiences capable of appreciating the arts,” said the coauthor Laura Zakaras, an arts researcher at RAND. “If we are not teaching the young how to engage with works of art, they are not likely to become involved in the arts as adults.”

Calling on evidence that experiencing and studying the arts in childhood increase the likelihood of arts participation later in life, the study recommends policymakers in both the arts and education to devote greater attention to cultivating demand for the arts by supporting more and better arts education.

At the public school level, researchers note, arts content standards have been almost universally mandated by the states and are broadening teaching practices, but state, local, and district policies are not providing the resources or time in the school day to implement these standards. In fact, there is evidence that high-stakes standardized testing has led to reduced class time for the arts and humanities in the past five years, according to the study. Arts organizations and colleges have been helpful in complementing school-based arts education, but it is not enough to fill the void.

Analyzing grant-making data, researchers show that state arts agencies, which have historically focused on providing grants to arts organizations, have directed less than 10 percent of their grants over the last twenty years toward activities that target arts learning. In most states, grants are not part of a comprehensive strategy to promote youth or adult arts learning.

However, some state arts agencies are bucking this trend. Rhode Island and New Jersey, for example, have forged relationships with their state departments of education, other state agencies, and members of the arts community to develop comprehensive statewide plans for improving arts education in public schools.

In New Jersey, the state’s arts agency helped develop a survey of arts education that has raised awareness of the inadequacy of its provision in the schools. Concerned residents are now pushing for the adoption of a number of new policies, including inclusion of per-pupil arts spending in New Jersey’s Comparative Spending Guide for public schools. In Rhode Island, the state arts agency was instrumental in successful efforts to adopt a standards-based high school graduation requirement in the arts.

Based on these findings, the authors recommend that state arts agencies and policymakers gauge how well their states are doing by conducting surveys of arts education; developing specific high school graduation requirements in the arts; recognizing and publicizing arts learning programs considered exceptional by experts in the field; and advocating for changes in state policy that increase the amount and breadth of arts learning opportunities. According to the authors, a healthy demand for the arts is critical to a vibrant nonprofit arts sector. Policies that focus on supporting the supply of the arts and broadening access to the arts are not sufficient for building that demand.

Participating as a mentor in CAA’s two Career Services mentoring programs—the Artists’ Portfolio Review and Career Development Mentoring—is an excellent way to serve the field while assisting the professional growth of the next generation of artists and scholars.

Artists’ Portfolio Review
CAA seeks curators and critics to participate in the Artists’ Portfolio Review during the 2009 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. This program provides an opportunity for artists to have slides, VHS videos, digital images, or DVDs of their work critiqued by professionals; member artists are paired with a critic, curator, or educator for twenty-minute appointments. Whenever possible, artists are matched with mentors based on medium or discipline. Volunteer mentors provide an important service to artists, enabling them to receive professional criticism of their work. Art historians and studio artists must be tenured; critics, museum educators, and curators must have five years’ experience. Curators and educators must have current employment with a museum or university gallery.

Interested candidates must be current CAA members, register for the conference, and be willing to provide at least five successive twenty-minute critiques in a two-hour period on one of the two days of the review: Thursday, February 26, and Friday, February 27, 8:00 AM–NOON and 1:00–5:00 PM each day.

Send your CV and a brief letter of interest to: Lauren Stark, Artists’ Portfolio Review, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001; or email them to lstark@collegeart.org. Deadline: December 12, 2008.

Career Development Mentoring
CAA seeks mentors from all areas of art history, studio art, art education, film and video, graphic design, the museum professions, and other related fields to serve in CAA’s Career Development Mentoring. Mentors give valuable advice to emerging and midcareer professionals, reviewing cover letters, CVs, slides, and other pertinent job-search materials in twenty-minute sessions.

Interested candidates must be current CAA members, register for the conference, and be prepared to give five successive twenty-minute critiques in a two-hour period on one of the two days of the session: Thursday, February 26, and Friday, February 27, 8:00 AM–NOON and 1:00–5:00 PM each day. Art historians and studio artists must be tenured; critics, museum educators, and curators must have five years’ experience. Curators and educators must have current employment with a museum or university gallery.

This mentoring session is not intended as a screening process by institutions seeking new hires. Applications are not accepted from individuals whose departments are conducting a faculty search in the field in which they are mentoring. Mentors should not attend as candidates for positions in the same field in which workshop candidates may be applying.

Please send your CV and a brief letter of interest to: Lauren Stark, Career Development Mentoring, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001; or email them to lstark@collegeart.org. Deadline: December 12, 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).

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.

This year, the British contemporary-art magazine Art Monthly has been addressing issues in art education in the United Kingdom. Articles and editorials appearing in their pages have taken on the corporatization of the art school, the rise of the creative industries, educational Taylorism, levels of satisfaction in and radical improvements for UK educational institutions, and more.

In advance of two panel debates taking place September 27 at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London and October 6 at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, Art Monthly has made their essays and letters on art education available online. Please visit the magazine’s website for more information about the debates, to read the articles, and to join the debate.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York has announced that Ann Temkin will succeed John Elderfield as chief curator of painting and sculpture. Temkin, who served for thirteen years at the Philadephia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania, has been a curator at MoMA for five years. Among her exhibitions there are Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today (2008) and Against the Grain: Contemporary Art from the Edward R. Broida Collection (2006).

The New York Times has the story. Photograph by Robin Holland and provided by the Museum of Modern Art.