CAA News

CAA invites interested participants to attend its first Humanities and Technology Camp (THATCamp) “unconference” on digital art history, taking place on the two days immediately preceding the Annual Conference: Monday, February 11, NOON–5:00 PM, and Tuesday, February 12, 9:00 AM–3:00 PM. The event will take place at Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York, located at 35 West 67th Street in Manhattan.

CAA’s THATCamp is free and open to graduate students and scholars at all career stages. The only requirements for attendance are an active interest in how digital technology is affecting the discipline of art history and the humanities in general and a willingness to share your questions and ideas. Space is limited! Register today to secure your place. Graduate students may apply for a limited number of fellowships funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to lessen the cost of travel expenses to New York.

The purpose of the CAA unconference is manifold: to increase awareness of existing digital projects in art history, architectural history, and archeology; to foster a community of scholars invested in digital art history; to identify digital tools that may be used to improve future CAA conferences; to facilitate technology workshops and training sessions; and to provide support for art-history professionals pursuing nontraditional career paths.

“Unconference” is a term that may be new to people in art and academia but has, in fact, been around since the late 1990s. It is used to describe a participant-driven meeting that in many respects is the opposite of a traditional academic conference. Formal presentations or a set program of speakers are not determined beforehand. Unconferences generate productive encounters among diverse groups of people, an experience that can be compared to being a member of an improvisational acting troupe.

THATCamp itself, however, is a recent invention, founded in 2008 at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as a meeting for technology and humanities professionals—including professors, librarians, and museum curators—to share ideas and collaborate on projects. The camps have since sprung up in locations across the United States and internationally.

CAA has joined JSTOR’s new Register & Read program, which offers free, read-online access to a wide-range of academic journals to independent scholars and researchers. The service is designed to make scholarship available to those not affiliated with a subscribing institution by allowing them to register for a MyJSTOR account.

CAA is pleased to contribute the full back run of The Art Bulletin and Art Journal, through 2008, to an expanding, eclectic list that includes BOMB Magazine, Film Quarterly, Modern Law Review, and American Journal of Sociology. All articles from The Art Bulletin and Art Journal during this time will be available for individuals to read and, in some instances, to download and purchase as a PDF file.

Since JSTOR launched Register & Read in January 2012, approximately forty publishers have contributed material from seventy-seven journals to the beta site. The user-friendly program mimics the experience of a library by allowing visitors to store up to three articles on a virtual shelf for two weeks before exchanging items. Feedback is key to improving the borrowing service that Register & Read provides. JSTOR plans to perfect the functionality of the program and enlarge its scope to meet the unique research needs of the scholarly community.

The Committee on Intellectual Property (CIP) is pleased to announce the posting of the revised and expanded Intellectual Property and the Arts pages on CAA’s website. CIP monitors and interprets copyright legislation for the benefit of CAA’s various constituencies. In so doing, it seeks to offer educational programs and opportunities for discussion and debate in response to copyright legislation affecting educators, scholars, museum professionals, and artists.

The section is divided into the following eight categories: US Copyright: Fundamentals & Documents; Visual Art/Visual Artists; Publishing in the Visual Arts; Libraries, Archives, and Museums; Image Sources and Rights Clearance Agencies; Fair Use Guidelines, Practices, and Policies; Copyright Outside the United States; and Legal Assistance.

Education is essential for informed communication. The committee hopes that the resources presented in the updated pages will answer your questions about intellectual property and inform your discussions and debates.

In accordance with CAA’s practice to regularly update its Standards and Guidelines in the fields of art and art history, the Board of Directors adopted two documents at its meeting on February 26, 2012, that address fair use of visual resources in teaching, scholarship, and libraries.

Christine Sundt, editor of the journal Visual Resources and cochair of CAA’s Committee on Intellectual Property, presented the Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study, authored and published by the Visual Resources Association (VRA) in 2011, and the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, produced by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in 2012.

Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study

Visual Resources Association: Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study is a helpful tool for educators and scholars who rely on images for teaching, research, publishing, and other academic work. The statement describes the six uses of images that fall within the doctrine of fair use according to United States copyright law: the use of images for the purpose of teaching; the preservation and transferring of images from one format to another; the creation of online image resources for students; the use of images by students in the context of the classroom; the sharing of images among cultural or educational institutions; and the inclusion of images in theses and dissertations.

The statement is intended to instill confidence in the scholarly community by clarifying the many educational and academic contexts to which fair use can be applied. The statement, reviewed by a committee of legal experts and copyright scholars who have determined the accuracy of each example of fair use, is by no means exhaustive on the subject of fair use, and it only addresses copyright laws within the United States.

Fair Use of Images for Academic and Research Libraries

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (2012) describes eight examples of common library practices that are affected by the rules of copyright and fair use. Because the prevalence of digital technologies in higher education has changed the way in which students and faculty use libraries and offer access to academic coursework, the code urges institutions to clarify and update research database systems and to transfer archive material deemed as “at risk items” into a digital format. The code also discusses the need to reproduce library material for disabled students and faculty without bias.

Like the VRA statement, the ARL code does not claim to cover the topic of fair use exhaustively. Rather, its objective is to expand understanding and engagement with copyright laws for librarians and library users. The code was created through the process of interviewing sixty-five librarians across the United States who represented a wide spectrum of academic and research libraries.

In 2013, Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation intends to publish a special issue dedicated to the topic of “Digital Art History.” For full details on the issue, please visit the Taylor and Francis webpage for the journal.

At present, the field of art history has amassed considerable knowledge concerning how to digitize texts and images and make them widely available in well-structured formats. However, the state of the field with respect to scholarship in the digital age is less clear. Visual Resources seek to answer the following questions and more:

• What kind of art-historical scholarship is now possible in the digital environment that could not be done before?
• What new types of questions can be posed now?
• How might digitized resources (texts and images) be used to produce innovative scholarship?
• How might the digital environment allow scholars to address existing or “traditional” questions with new evidence or conclusions?

While exploring what is now possible, it is also important to consider the challenges that the field of art history still faces with respect to scholarship in the digital age. Contributors might also ask what prevents the field of art history from widespread adoption of the new research tools and techniques associated with the digital humanities.

Visual Resources invites researchers and educators in art history and visual studies to submit proposals for this special issue. Abstracts should be 750 words in length and be accompanied by a one-page CV that includes up-to-date contact information for the proposed contributor(s). Abstracts and CVs should be sent to Murtha Baca and Anne Helmreich, coeditors for this special issue. Deadline: March 23, 2012 (5:00 PM PST).

Meet Baca, Helmreich, and representatives from Taylor and Francis at the upcoming CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, February 24, 2012, 2:30 PM, at the Routledge booth in the Book and Trade Fair. Refreshments will be served at the booth.

CAA encourages you to look into a handful of free and low-cost smart-phone apps to help you navigate museums, galleries, and other art-related events, enhancing your conference experience in Los Angeles. Most of the apps, which offer an abundance of exhibition information for the Hammer and Fowler Museums and for Pacific Standard Time, are designed for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches; several work with mobile devices using Android. A few of these apps assist with travel and transportation around the city, and with finding restaurants. The apps are available in the iTunes Store and in the Android Market.

Art Openings and Events

ArtConcierge is a free guide to galleries, art fairs, and art-related exhibits, including programming for the Getty Center’s Pacific Standard Time and to independently organized events. GPS navigation is available for all selections. ArtConcierge is produced by Fabrik Media Group, which publishes the magazine Fabrik.

Artcards gives you free instant access to a comprehensive list of current art openings, talks, performances, screenings, and related events in greater Los Angeles. Galleries are grouped by neighborhood or city. Artcards provides names of artists, titles of shows, event day and time, and links to maps and to each gallery’s website.

The free LA Weekly app offers content from the printed newspaper and its website. Updated events listings include: live music, art openings, comedy clubs, theater, and dining options. Search for a particular event or use a GPS device to find events near you. More than two thousand restaurant listings and write-ups by the celebrated food critic Jonathan Gold. Get it for Apple or Android devices.

Museums and Exhibitions

Learn all about the Los Angeles art world from the 1940s to today with The Getty: Art in LA, Pacific Standard Time at the Getty Center. This free app for both Apple and Android devices highlights all four Pacific Standard Time exhibitions held at the Getty Center. See paintings, sculptures, photographs, and archival material, listen to audio, and read the stories behind the artworks.

Getty Goggles will help you explore and learn more about paintings in the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Simply photograph a work of art you are interested in and click the Getty result to hear insightful commentary from artists, curators, and conservators. Getty Goggles works with Apple products and mobile devices using Android.

This free app for Apple and Android can help you plan a visit to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In addition to learning about the museum’s collection, you can reserve tickets for film screenings, concerts, lectures, and gallery talks. Video interviews with artists and curators are also available. The museum has also created an Apple-only app for its exhibition, California Design, 1930–1965: “Living in a Modern Way.”

Use the free Hammer Museum app to plan your visit and to experience in-depth content about the Hammer’s exhibitions and collections. Features include: interviews with artists and curators discussing specific works of art, videos of artists describing their practices, and excerpts from exhibition catalogues. The Hammer app is compatible with Apple products and mobile devices using Android.

The free Fowler Museum Guide app provides visitors with a tour of the Fowler Museum’s permanent collection of more than 150,000 art and ethnographic objects and 600,000 archaeological objects representing ancient, traditional, and contemporary cultures of Africa, Native and Latin America, and Asia and the Pacific. The app also gives information on temporary exhibitions.

Designed to help you learn more about the Norton Simon Museum’s current and upcoming exhibitions and events, this free app lets you browse the collections, listen to podcasts and audio stops, watch videos, and learn about the museum’s history. The app also lists the museum’s hours, admission fees, and directions.

Listen to the award-winning Norton Simon Museum Audio Tour. More than four hundred stops are featured in English and Spanish, including tours for adults and children. Look for the audio-tour icon and stop number on the labels of many of the museum’s artworks.

Navigating the City

Mappity Los Angeles, available for $.99, offers a map of Los Angeles with features such as street-level map details and custom mapping for door-to-door travel.

 

The free Beat the Traffic app for Apple, Android, and BlackBerry tells you about the road and traffic conditions in your desired city. Its features include: real-time traffic maps, GPS displays of traffic jams in your area, and weather information. Beat the Traffic HD Plus+ is an ad-free version that is available for $4.99 in the iTunes Store and $3.99 in the Android Market.

The California Traffic Report, a free app produced by the University of California, San Diego, delivers real-time traffic reports, including approximate commute time, traffic speeds, and maps. It covers greater Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and San Diego.

Yes, public transportation does exist in Los Angeles. Use the free Go-Metro Los Angeles app to help you navigate the city’s bus system. Features include: maps, timetables, fare information, and a trip planner.

 

Eat Like a Native

The Los Angeles Street Food app ($1.99) covers cheap eats in the city, from Vietnamese pho houses to Mexican taco stands to grilled-cheese food trucks. The interactive maps will help you navigate the city, while listings are organized into categories and publish in-depth reviews, Twitter links, and picture slideshows. This app, though, does not track food trucks.

Vegan Los Angeles supports a healthy vegan lifestyle in Los Angeles. Find recipes and vegan restaurants and watch cooking demonstrations using this free app for Apple and Android mobile devices.

 

Revised on February 16, 2012.

Please visit the website for the 100th Annual Conference in Los Angeles for complete details about obtaining access to wireless-internet connections at the Los Angeles Convention Center and the four conference hotels.

CAA’s future depends on strong leadership. For the past several years, the organization has offered members the option to vote online in the annual Board of Directors election—and the majority of you have done so. Only a few voters (1.57 percent) use paper ballots sent by mail. Thus the board determined at its February 2011 meeting that future CAA elections will only be conducted online.

In November, CAA will notify you by email when it publishes the statements and biographies for the six candidates participating in the 2012–16 board election. To make sure you receive this message, log into your CAA account to add or update your email address. When the polls open in December, all members can vote by logging into their CAA account.

Federal Judge Denny Chin rejected the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement, better known as the Google Book Settlement, on March 22, 2011. Citing copyright, antitrust, and other concerns, he stated that the settlement went too far and would have granted Google a monopoly over information without the permission of copyright owners. The US Justice Department and other groups were similarly concerned that the settlement would have given Google exclusive rights to profit from so-called orphan works, books whose right holders are unknown or cannot be found. Download a PDF of Chin’s ruling.

The original lawsuit, Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc., had been settled in November 2008 with an amendment approved in November 2009, but this Amended Settlement Agreement will not go forward as stated. Chin left open the possibility for a revised settlement, suggesting that authors opt in rather than opt out. A second class-action suit for copyright infringement brought by visual artists, who had been excluded as plaintiffs in the first suit, is still pending.

Many print and online publications have discussed the decision, its effects, and possible next steps. A selection of recent news and opinion pieces published by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, and Inside Higher Ed, among others, can be found below. Several articles note that the judge’s decision gives Congress the opportunity to reconsider orphan-works legislation, which CAA has supported in the past. In addition, Roger Darnton, a librarian and professor at Harvard University, and others encourage the creation of a universal digital library, available to all.

Articles and Editorials

Jonathan Band, “A Guide for the Perplexed Part IV: The Rejection of the Google Books Settlement,” Library Copyright Alliance, March 31, 2011, http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/guideiv-final-1.pdf.

Robert Darnton, “A Library without Walls,” NYR Blog (blog), New York Review of Books, October 4, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/oct/04/library-without-walls/.

Robert Darnton, “Six Reasons Google Books Failed,” NYR Blog (blog), New York Review of Books, March 28, 2011, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/mar/28/six-reasons-google-books-failed/.

Editorial, “Google’s Book Deal,” New York Times, March 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/opinion/31thu2.html.

Amir Efrati and Jeffrey A. Tractenberg, “Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement,” Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216923562033348.html.

Miguel Helft, “Judge Rejects Google’s Deal to Digitize Books,” New York Times, March 23, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.html.

Miguel Helft, “Ruling Spurs Effort to Form Digital Public Library,” New York Times, April 3, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/technology/04library.html.

Jennifer Howard, “Judge Rejects Settlement in Google Books Case, Saying It Goes Too Far,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 22, 2011, http://chronicle.com/article/Judge-Rejects-Settlement-in/126864.

Steve Kolowich, “Google Who?”, Inside Higher Ed, March 28, 2011, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/03/28/usag.

Steve Kolowich, “Please Refine Your Search Terms,” Inside Higher Ed, March 23, 2011, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/03/23/judge_rejects_google_books_settlement.

Claire Cain Miller, “Book Ruling Cuts Options for Google,” New York Times, March 23, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/business/media/24google.html.

Jeffrey A. Tractenberg, “Google Book Deal Faces Big Hurdle,” Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703362904576218951641845230.html.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Google Block,” Slate, March 23, 2011, http://www.slate.com/id/2289155.

The official Google Book Settlement website recently posted an update that extends the deadline to file for an upfront payment in the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement. Authors whose works were scanned by Google on or before May 5, 2009, may be entitled to claim a cash payment once the amended settlement is approved. The former deadline was March 31, 2011. The new deadline is one year after the approval of the settlement—a date yet to be determined.

The lawsuit, titled Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc. (Case No. 05 CV 8136, S.D.N.Y.), was brought by authors and lawyers who claim that by scanning books still under copyright for the Google Books Library Project, Google violated the creators’ rights. The federal court originally approved a settlement to the lawsuit in November 2008, and then preliminarily approved an amended settlement in November 2009.

A second class-action suit for copyright infringement was brought against Google in April 2010 by visual artists excluded as plaintiffs in the first suit, including the American Society of Media Photographers, several other photography associations, the Graphic Artists Guild, and independent photographers and illustrators. The outcome of this case (No. 10 CV 2977, S.D.N.Y.) will be determined after the settlement of the first case.

What does the extended deadline mean for authors and publishers? According to the Google Book Settlement website, if “you did not previously opt out of the Original Settlement and do not opt out of the Amended Settlement, you are ‘in’ the Amended Settlement,” and you can claim your copyrighted material. The website contains all documents related to the settlement and forms and instructions for registering your work. The Authors Guild also publishes updates about the settlement.

CAA will publish an additional notice once the new deadline is established.