CAA News Today
NEA Appoints New Director of Design
posted by Christopher Howard — April 16, 2010
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced on April 14, 2010, that Jason Schupbach will join the endowment as director of design at the end of May.
Schupbach brings to the NEA an impressive background of support for the creative economy and the design field, along with experience working with local, state, and federal agencies. He currently serves as the creative economy industry director for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where one of his primary focuses is the growth and support of all types of design businesses. Schupbach has also worked as capital projects manager for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and director of Boston’s ArtistLink, an organization that creates a stable environment for Massachusetts artists as they seek workspace and housing.
Schupbach will manage the NEA’s grantmaking for design and its design initiatives, such as the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, as well as the proposed Our Town, which is part of the NEA fiscal year 2011 budget request and would provide funding in recognition of the role that the arts can play in economic revitalization and in creating livable, sustainable communities.
After receiving his BS in public health from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Schupbach earned his master’s degree in city planning with an urban-design certificate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Read more about him on the NEA website. Judith H. Dobrzynski of the ArtsJournal blog Real Clear Arts worries that his appointment is leading toward a more commercialized NEA.
US News and World Report Publishes Rankings of MFA Programs
posted by Christopher Howard — April 16, 2010
The magazine US News and World Report has just published its rankings of graduate programs in the visual arts, among other fields. The MFA rankings, completed in 2008 but only released this week, are tallied from a “peer assessment survey” of deans and high-ranking academics (two per school) administered in fall 2007. Two hundred twenty programs were analyzed on “academic quality” on a scale of one to five, one being marginal and five being outstanding. (Read more about the methodology.) US News and World Report received a 39 percent response rate from the art schools and programs it surveyed.
The top-ten schools ranked the best overall are:
1. Rhode Island School of Design
2. Yale University
3. School of the Art Institute of Chicago
4. Cranbook Academy of Art
4. Maryland Institute College of Art
4. Virginia Commonwealth University
7. California Institute of the Arts
7. Carnegie Mellon University
7. University of California, Los Angeles
10. Alfred University, New York State College of Ceramics
Read the complete list of the top twenty-five graduate schools in the visual arts and beyond.
Survey results also break down schools and programs into twelve specialties by medium, based on up to ten nominations per institution from administrators and top academics. (It is suggested but not entirely clear if lower-level educators gave the nominated schools a numerical rating for specialties.)
Here are the top-ranking schools for each specialty. Click on the specialty name to see the full ranking for that category:
- Ceramics: Alfred University, New York State College of Ceramics
- Fiber Arts: Cranbrook Academy of Art
- Glass: Rhode Island School of Design
- Graphic Design: Rhode Island School of Design
- Industrial Design: Art Center College of Design
- Interior Design: Pratt Institute
- Metals/Jewelry: State University of New York, New Paltz
- Multimedia/Visual Communications: Carnegie Mellon University
- Painting/Drawing: Yale University
- Photography: Yale University
- Printmaking: University of Wisconsin, Madison
- Sculpture: Virginia Commonwealth University
Since the survey was taken in fall 2007 and compiled the next year, one wonders why it took so long to publish the results. Also, the survey’s criterion of “academic quality” is not defined in the methodology. Further, the impact of the current global economic crisis on higher education (through enrollment, teaching loads for professors, and other issues) seems not to have been considered. Have prospective MFA students, for example, been favoring public institutions over expensive private schools? The survey does not say.
In addition, US News and World Report failed to include graduate programs in art history in its section on social sciences and the humanities—a grievous, unfortunate oversight.
CAA recommends that interested people consult its two directories, Graduate Programs in the Visual Arts and Graduate Programs in Art History, both of which are available for purchase today.
Propose a Paper or Presentation for the 2011 Annual Conference
posted by Lauren Stark — April 14, 2010
The 99th Annual Conference in New York—which kicks off CAA’s centennial year—takes place February 9–12, 2011. Listing more than 120 sessions, the 2011 Call for Participation arrived in the mailboxes of all CAA members earlier this month; you can also download a PDF of the publication from the CAA website immediately.
This publication describes many of next year’s panels and presentations. CAA and session chairs invite your participation: please follow the instructions in the booklet to submit a proposal for a paper. This publication also includes a call for Poster Session proposals and describes the Open Forms sessions.
In addition to attending and participating in the wide-ranging panels on art history, studio art, contemporary issues, and professional and educational practices, CAA expects participation from many area schools, museums, galleries, and other art institutions. The Hilton New York is the conference hotel, holding most sessions and panels, Career Services and the Book and Trade Fair, receptions and special events, and more. Deadline for proposals: May 3, 2010.
The Art History Newsletter Seeks Contributors
posted by Christopher Howard — April 14, 2010
The Art History Newsletter, a website that has “endeavored to synopsize news and opinion of interest to art historians and to provide original reporting on conferences, lectures, and other special events,” seeks contributors to expand its content.
Since 2006, Jonathan Lackman, a doctoral student at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, has run a mostly one-person blog with weekly posts, with added writers covering the CAA Annual Conference, among other events. Now that expanded coverage may appear year round.
For more information, visit the Art History Newsletter. To become a contributor, please write to Jonathan Lackman.
Take a Center for Curatorial Leadership Survey on “the Two Art Histories”
posted by Christopher Howard — April 13, 2010
The Center for Curatorial Leadership is conducting a research project that seeks basic information on the educational and career choices made by art historians working in the United States who enter the museum and academic professions.
While sometimes regarded as “the two art histories,” museum and academic careers share a common starting point in college and graduate studies. In order to understand how the Center for Curatorial Leadership might mentor young art historians and form bonds between disciplines more effectively, it has assembled a brief survey. Comments and any suggestions are welcome as well.
The survey should take approximately ten minutes to complete. Deadline: Monday, April 19, 2010.
In the Chronicle: The Realities of Employment in the Humanities
posted by Christopher Howard — April 07, 2010
Peter Conn of the University of Pennsylvania writes a dense article for the Chronicle Review on the realities of unemployment in the humanities. Deftly sifting through various studies on employment, attrition, and other factors, this professor of English and education considers the situation from several points of view and offers possible and pragmatic solutions.
It’s no surprise to hear that full-time tenured and tenure-track jobs in the humanities have been shrinking over the past decade in both public and private institutions. Conn widens the field of inquiry, for example, by looking at how the for-profit University of Phoenix—with more than 400,000 undergrads and 78,000 graduate students nationwide and internationally—has expanded the field of education while perhaps exacerbating the rise of part-time and adjunct professors. In addition, the number of humanities doctorates produced has increased almost 50 percent during the last twenty years, but the job market has remained flat or declined.
Conn notes that the federal ban on mandatory retirement in 1994 has contributed to an aging workforce that is reluctant to retire, especially in the present recession. Also, the “star system” that attracts well-known and thus higher-paid professors negatively impacts the lower ranks. Attrition is another concern: 43 percent of students never finish their PhD. Thus they linger in higher education longer than they should, drain resources, and add to the part-time workforce. Even if they finished they’d be consigned to a “dysfunctional job market.”
While Conn argues for fewer students admitted to doctoral programs, he recognizes that current professors would object because, on the whole, they enjoy teaching graduates over undergraduates, and those undergraduates still need their survey classes, which are often staffed by graduate students. He lists several other objections to his proposal of smaller programs, including the unfortunate situation of denying education to those who want it.
Other recommendations include having graduate programs give realistic pictures of postdoctoral professional life, whether that’s offering classes on the subject, maintaining an informational job-placement webpage (listing past successes), or promoting careers outside academia. Of the latter Conn writes, with admittedly soft data: “These women and men found somewhat more job satisfaction than did members of their cohorts who continued in academic careers, in part because they ended up in locations of their choice, and in part because they tended to make more money.” But at the same time, “My own conversations with graduate students over several decades indicate that most of them do not find the idea of nonacademic careers particularly appealing.”
Photographers’ Group Files New Class-Action Lawsuit against Google
posted by Christopher Howard — April 07, 2010
Several organizations, including the American Society of Media Photographers, the Professional Photographers of America, and the Graphic Artists Guild, have filed a class-action lawsuit against Google, claiming that by scanning millions of books the internet company has infringed on their members’ copyrights and failed to compensate them for their work.
According to Miguel Helft of the New York Times, the new lawsuit is separate from the Google Book Settlement between the company and a consortium of individuals and authors’ organizations. That decision is pending in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Helft writes, “Google’s settlement with authors and publishers largely excluded photographs and other visual works. Legal experts said it was not unexpected that Google would face claims from groups that were not part of the original case and are not covered by it.”
Getty Task Force on Art Bibliography Will Hold Public Meeting on April 20
posted by Christopher Howard — April 06, 2010
The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California, has received a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to convene an international task force of art librarians, scholars, and information specialists from Europe and the United States to discuss the future of art bibliography. Recent events, including discussions of art-library closures, scant funding resources for ongoing support of art libraries and projects internationally, and the cessation of the Getty’s support for the continuation of the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) provide the catalyst to review current practices, take stock of changes, and seriously consider developing more sustainable and collaborative ways of supporting the bibliography of art history in the future.
The organizers of the task force—Kathleen Salomon of the Getty Research Institute; Rüdiger Hoyer from the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich; and Jan Simane of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and chair of the Art Libraries Section of International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)—invite the art-historical community to participate in a discussion to be held on Tuesday, April 20, 2010, in New York. The meeting will take place 1:00–5:30 PM at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (courtesy of Kenneth Soehner). Two panels presenting “thoughts from the field” will be followed by an open discussion.
The issues that come forward in the meeting will help lay the groundwork for the subsequent meeting of the smaller task force that will address what is and is not feasible for art bibliography in the future. The outcomes of the meeting and next steps will be posted and shared with the wider art-historical community.
Seating for the meeting is limited and must be reserved ahead of time: please RSVP to Diane Lazar by April 12. If you are unable to attend, there will be a recap and discussion session at the annual conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America in Boston, Massachusetts, on Sunday, April 25, 2:30–3:30 PM, as well as at the Art Libraries Section meeting of IFLA‘s general conference and assembly, to be held in August in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Spring Obituaries in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — April 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 — April 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.
