CAA News Today

Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.

Interview with NEA Chief of Staff Jamie Bennett

With Rocco Landesman’s announcement to step down from the chairmanship of the NEA, can you reflect on the major accomplishments of his and your tenure and assess the impact—current and future—on the field? What do you see as unfinished business at the agency? (Read more at Barry’s Blog.)

Artists in Egypt Work in a Tense Atmosphere

The Muslim women in Marwa Adel’s photographs are shadows, repressed by custom, religion, marriage, and regret. While nude, the figures are obscured by sepia scrims, scrawled upon with stifling words—as if their true selves may never be known. Like their creator, a single mother edging at the bounds of artistic freedom in a patriarchal society, the images are at once vulnerable and defiant. (Read more in the Los Angeles Times.)

Decompressing Salaries

It’s a dilemma many universities face: how to attract new, top faculty with competitive salaries without being unfair to senior professors, whose salaries often are tied to a pay scale or plan that hasn’t kept up with the outside market. Weighing recruiting needs against a desire to alleviate the morale-busting effect of salary compression on faculty, one Midwest university has launched a series of initiatives to address it. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)

In Search of a Good Critique

From the hiring side of the table, we’ve all seen job candidates who seem to be doing well only to fall flat in one venue: they ace the teaching demo and the dinner meeting but stumble during the research talk. Perhaps the candidate was disorganized, too strident, or just long winded and boring. Whatever the cause, the outcome is a strong negative ding when it comes time to vote on the hire. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Less Is More: The Rise of the Very Limited Edition

Good design used to be a simple matter. Was the object easy to use? Simple in appearance? Made from high-quality materials? Value for money? Those were the important questions. But today design is significantly more complex. Before a product ever gets to a consumer, it has usually been subjected to investment analysis, prototype development, focus-group discussion, and advertising campaigns. (Read more in the Art Newspaper.)

Why It’s Time for Galleries to Dump the Jargon

Do you like nature, and art? If so, you might like something called On Vanishing Land, produced by the British “sound artists and theorists” Mark Fisher and Justin Barton. What they’ve produced, which will be in an art gallery called the Showroom, is “a new form of sonic fiction from the dreamings, gleamings, and prefigurations that pervade the Suffolk coast.” Themes “of incursion” by “unnameable forces, geological sentience, or temporary anomaly” will, apparently, “recur throughout.” (Read more in the Independent.)

Help Desk: A Uniform Presentation

My question concerns the issue of a “signature style” and the importance of projecting an image of consistency, particularly on one’s personal website. I’ve done a lot of different things and tend to work in the medium that I feel best expresses what I am trying to communicate. As a result, I’ve got a real mix of things: photos, text-based pieces, assemblages/sculptures, some video work. While I can personally see the threads of consistency running through the work, I’ve been cautioned that I need to “grow up, pick one thing, and get known for it.” (Read more at Daily Serving.)

The Price of a Bad Review

Librarian questions quality of a publishing house. Librarian publicly criticizes said press on his personal blog. Two years later, librarian and current employer get sued for libel and damages in excess of $4 million. That’s been the progression of events for Dale Askey, associate university librarian at McMaster University in Ontario, where he’s been working since 2011. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)

Dear Victoria Scott:

We would like to address the concerns about CAA presented in the undated essay titled “The Art History Guild” that was forwarded to us today https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwQRmvZJxL9zUzBnQWhrLUlXd3M/edit .

• CAA statistics and finances: CAA presents an annual report including achievements, statistics and finances at the Annual Members Business Meeting held every year at the Annual Conference. This year it will be held on Friday, February 15^th at 5:30 PMin the Rendezvous Trianon Ballroom on the 3^rd Floor of the New York Hilton. This report is summarized and published in the CAA News following the meeting.

• CAA now is able to provide accurate statistics on the total number of members (currently at 12,233 individuals and 1,792 universities and libraries). However, only those members who enter their demographics can be counted according to disciplines. Currently 1,760 members do not enter this information. As of February 1, 2013:

• Administrator	353 (some of whom are art historians)
  Architect	22
  Art Educator	1,152
  Art/Architectural Historian	4,273
  Artist	3,111
  Conservator	26
  Critic	54
  Dealer/Gallerist	29
  Designer	126
  Editor	37
  Librarian	72
  Museum Educator	40
  Other	670

CAA has in the past two years published directories of graduate programs in art history (as well as many other disciplines in the visual arts) http://www.collegeart.org/directories/  This is as comprehensive a compilation of art history programs throughout the US and in English speaking countries as we are aware exists. The directories information is based on only those universities and schools that chose to participate in this publication.

The U.S. Department of Education does not keep separate statistics on art historians. Nor is there Department of Education statistics on most of the humanities disciplines.  This issue was addressed by the National Humanities Alliance in cooperation with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences by developing the Humanities Indicators Project. CAA is an active participant in this project by providing the graduate directories information. Please see Part III. Workforce for information on art historians nationally: http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIII.aspx  When the Humanities Indicators was published the information was published in the CAA News and posted on the website: https://www.collegeart.org/news/2009/01/07/academy-of-arts-and-sciences-launches-humanities-indicators-prototype/  The Humanities Indicators is now being updated and the information will be published and distributed to members when it is available.

CAA would like to hire a statistician as the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association have on staff. We are currently beginning to work on a new strategic plan and this will be an opportunity to add this in the future. It was a good reminder that we should be more diligent in posting statistical information that we do have or have access to.

The current annual budget of CAA is $4.7 million which supports The Art Bulletin the Art Journal, caa.reviews, the Art Journal website, CAA News, the directories of graduate programs, the list of dissertations in art history; the annual conference programming, national workshops for artists, international travel program, the Meiss Publications grants, the Meiss Mellon Authors’ grants, Fellowships for Art Historians, Fellowships for Artists, the Code of Fair Use in Creative Work and Scholarly Publishing project, distinguished achievement awards juries, as well as task forces, Professional Interest Practices and Standards Committees, and advocacy for the visual arts such as visits to Congress and the participation in the Coalition for the Academic Workforce. There are currently 30 full-time and part-time staff members and over 400 members who contribute their expertise and time to association committee work each year.

• CAA Online Career Center: Position listings are available for anyone to view. The detailed position listings are a benefit of membership: http://careercenter.collegeart.org/jobs

• Contingent Faculty Standards: CAA is an active participant of the Coalition for the Academic Workforce that carried out the very first survey of contingent faculty in an effort to gather statistics that will be useful in advocacy efforts: http://www.academicworkforce.org/ and https://www.collegeart.org/news/2012/06/20/survey-results-on-contingent-faculty-in-higher-education/

• CAA Standards and Guidelines are developed by experienced faculty through the CAA Professional Practices Committee. http://www.collegeart.org/guidelines/ This committee is in charge of seeking individuals with expertise in various areas of the visual arts to both update existing standards and create new ones. Contingent Faculty Standards are on the agenda to be developed. Jim Hopfensperger, Western Michigan University is currently chair. Please contact him if you are able to serve on the Contingent Faculty Standards development subcommittee: jim.hopfensperger@wmich.edu.

• CAA Guidelines for Interviewers: CAA does not condone interviewing candidates in hotel bedrooms. CAA provides interview tables and booths at every conference and most universities use these spaces. A few universities rent hotel suites for interviews which provide neutral spaces outside of bedrooms. In reviewing the guidelines http://www.collegeart.org/guidelines/etiquette we find that they do not explicitly say that hotel bedrooms should not be used for interviews. We will refer this to the Professional Practices Committee for revision.  Thank you for pointing this out.

We would like to thank you for your concern about the association and can assure you that the CAA Board and staff take all criticisms seriously and will rectify them. Please contact us directly if you have any further concerns or questions regarding the association: goodyeara@si.edu or ldowns@collegeart.org

Sincerely yours,

Anne Collins Goodyear, President                                                      Linda Downs, Executive Director