CAA News Today
An Open Letter to: Mr. Kevyn Orr, Emergency Manager, City of Detroit
posted by Linda Downs — May 28, 2013
An Open Letter to:
Mr. Kevyn Orr, Emergency Manager
City of Detroit
2 Woodward Avenue
Detroit, Michigan 48226
Dear Mr. Orr:
On behalf of the College Art Association that represents over 14,000 art historians, artists, curators, art educators and art conservators we express our shock and concern upon reading The Detroit Free Press article today, “DIA’s Collection Could Face Sell-Off to Satisfy Detroit’s Creditors.”
The Detroit Institute of Arts is one of the greatest art museums in the country that represents the finest creative achievements throughout the history of the world. The DIA is not only a great treasure but one of the very few places in Detroit where all people can enjoy, contemplate and study art and its many related concepts. The DIA has developed itself as a public educational institution and has been a leader in the profession at engaging with all segments of the community.
The CAA adheres to the principle that public art museums are held in the public trust and as such are to be protected for the public good. It also supports the Alliance of Museums Code of Ethics and the Association of Art Museum Directors’ Policy on Deaccessioning that states that the sale of art museum collections to support operating expenses is unethical.
We appeal to your higher judgment in assessing the true value of the DIA and its critical role for the public good of the city, state and the country in deliberating on the future of this great collection.
Sincerely yours,
Anne Collins Goodyear
President
Linda Downs
Executive Director
August Update
On August 26, 2013, the Executive Committee of the CAA Board of Directors has agreed to promote this petition, initiated by Jeffrey Hamburger of Harvard University, regarding the potential sale of the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Spring 2013 Meiss Winners
posted by Christopher Howard — May 28, 2013
This spring, CAA awarded grants to the publishers of six books in art history and visual culture through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund. Thanks to the generous bequest of the late Prof. Millard Meiss, CAA gives these grants twice a year to support the publication of scholarly books in art history and related fields.
The grantees for spring 2013 are:
- Claudia Brown, Great Qing: Painting in China, 1644–1911, University of Washington Press
- James M. Cordova, The Art of Professing in Bourbon Mexico: Crowned-Nun Portraits and Reform in the Convents, University of Texas Press
- Elina Gertsman, Fragments, Ruptures, Imprints, Play: The Shrine Madonna in the Late Middle Ages, Pennsylvania State University Press
- Jeanette F. Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe: From the Black Madonna to the Queen of the Americas, University of Texas Press
- Victoria L. Rovine, African Fashion, Global Style, Indiana University Press
- Karl Whittington, Body-Worlds: Opicinus de Canistris and the Medieval Cartographic Imagination, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
Books eligible for Meiss grants must already be under contract with a publisher and on a subject in the visual arts or art history. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information. Deadline for fall applications: September 15, 2013.
Updated Directory of Affiliated Societies
posted by Lauren Stark — May 23, 2013
The Directory of Affiliated Societies, a comprehensive list of all seventy-six groups that have joined CAA as affiliate members, has just been updated. Please visit the directory to view a single webpage that includes the following information for each group: name, date of founding, size of membership, and annual dues; a brief statement on the society’s nature or purpose; and the names of officers and/or contacts for you to get more details about the groups or to join them. In addition, CAA links directly to each affiliated society’s homepage.
Promoting Creativity and Public Access to the Arts
posted by Linda Downs — May 23, 2013
The following document, called “Promoting Creativity and Public Access to the Arts,” contains talking points to help American citizens to advocate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
National Endowment for the Arts: Promoting Creativity and Public Access to the Arts
We urge Congress to support a budget of $155 million for the NEA in the fiscal year 2014 (FY 2014) Interior Appropriations bill to preserve citizen access to the cultural, educational, and economic benefits of the arts and to advance creativity and innovation in communities across the United States.
NEA Annual Appropriations, FY 1992 to present (in millions of dollars)
|
FY |
’92 |
’93 |
’94 |
’95 |
’96/’97 |
’98/’99 |
’00 |
’01 |
’02 |
’03 |
’04 |
’05 |
’06/’07 |
’08 |
’09 |
’10 |
’11 |
’12 |
’13 |
|
$ |
176 |
174.5 |
170.2 |
162.3 |
99.5 |
98 |
97.6 |
104.8 |
115.2 |
115.7 |
121 |
121.3 |
124.4 |
144.7 |
155 |
167.5 |
155 |
146 |
138.4* |
* FY13 reflects a 5 percent cut mandated by sequestration, applied to the CR budget from FY12. The figures above are not adjusted for inflation. (Source: NEA)
Talking Points
The NEA budget has been reduced in previous years to a level that threatens the agency’s ability to make grants in every congressional district.
- Due to recent congressional budget cuts, the NEA had to decrease funding to state arts agencies and cut more than 175 direct grants to arts organizations
- Restoring the NEA to $155 million will help maintain grant support to arts organizations and partnerships in communities across the country
The NEA contributes to the economic growth and development of communities nationwide.
- The arts put people to work. More than 905,000 US businesses are involved in the creation or distribution of the arts, employing 3.35 million people: visual artists, performing artists, managers, marketers, technicians, teachers, designers, carpenters, and a variety of other trades and professions—jobs that pay mortgages and send children to college. Artists are a larger workforce group than the legal profession, medical doctors, or agricultural workers. (Sources: Americans for the Arts, Creative Industries, 2012; NEA, Artists in the Workforce, 2008)
- The arts are a business magnet. A strong arts sector stimulates business activity, attracting companies that want to offer employees and clients a creative climate and a community with high amenity value. The arts are a successful strategy for revitalizing rural areas and inner cities. Arts organizations purchase goods and services that help local merchants thrive. Arts organizations spend money—more than $61 billion—on salaries, local products, and professional and skilled trade services that boost local economies. (Source: Americans for the Arts, Arts and Economic Prosperity IV (AEPIV) study, 2012). In 2013, the American creative sector will be measured by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The BEA and NEA will develop an “Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account,” which will identify and calculate the arts and culture sector’s contributions to the gross domestic product (GDP)
- The arts help communities prosper in a diversified twenty-first-century economy. Nonprofit arts organizations, along with creative enterprises, contribute to state and local economies, generating employment and tax revenues and providing goods and services demanded by the public. The nonprofit arts industry generates $135.2 billion annually in economic activity, supports 4.13 million full-time equivalent jobs in the arts and related industries, and returns $9.59 billion in federal income taxes. (Source: AEPIV study)
- The arts attract tourism revenue. Cultural tourism accounts for 78 percent of US travelers—some 118 million tourists—who include arts and heritage in their trips each year. They stay longer and spend 36 percent more money than other kinds of travelers do, contributing more than $192 billion annually to the US economy. (Source: US Cultural and Heritage Tourism Marketing Council, US Department of Commerce, Cultural and Heritage Traveler Research, 2009)
- Federal funding for the arts leverages private funding. The NEA requires at least a one-to-one match of federal funds from all grant recipients—a match far exceeded by most grantees. On average, each NEA grant leverages at least $8 from other state, local, and private sources. Private support cannot match the leveraging role of government cultural funding
Talking Points (Continued)
The NEA improves access to the arts; supports artistic excellence; and fosters lifelong learning in the arts through grants, partnerships, research, and national initiatives.
- NEA funds spread across the country and expand arts access. Every US congressional district benefits from an NEA grant, leveraging additional support from a diverse range of private sources to combine funding from government, business, foundation, and individual donors. The NEA awarded more than 2,200 grants in 2012, totaling more than $108 million in appropriated funds. A listing of these grants is online at www.AmericansForTheArts.org/go/NEAgrants
- State arts agencies extend the reach of federal arts dollars. Forty percent of all NEA program funds—approximately $46 million in FY 2013—are regranted through state arts agencies. In partnership with the NEA, state arts agencies awarded more than 22,000 grants to organizations, schools, and artists in 5,000 communities across the US (Source: National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, Summary Report: 2011 Funding and Grant Making, 2011)
- NEA grants support a range of educational projects. Arts education in school and participation in arts lessons are the most significant predictors of arts participation later in life. The NEA funds school- and community-based programs that help children and youth acquire knowledge and skills in the arts. The NEA also supports educational programs for adults, collaborations between state arts agencies and state education agencies, and partnerships between arts institutions and K–12 and college/university educators. (Source: NEA, Arts Education in America: What the Declines Mean for Arts Participation, 2011)
- Rural and underserved communities benefit from the Challenge America Fast-Track category, which offers support to small and midsized organizations for projects that extend the reach of the arts to populations whose opportunities to experience the arts are limited by geography, ethnicity, economics, or disability. The Lawton Philharmonic Orchestra in Lawton, Oklahoma, for instance, received funding for an original work paying tribute to Native American themes in a concert that drew 250 Native American guests from the surrounding tribal nations
- The NEA has supported military families by partnering with Blue Star Families to present Blue Star Museums, offering free admission to active-duty military and their families, and a similar effort to launch Blue Star Theatres. Other NEA programs for the military have included Operation Homecoming; Great American Voices Military Base Tour; and Shakespeare in American Communities Military Base Tour.
- When public arts funding is lost, private dollars do not reliably pick up the slack. Tough economic conditions mean less revenue from public, private, and corporate sources. Loss of support to arts organizations across the country during the recent recession has meant cuts in administrative costs and cuts to programs. Programs for lower‐income populations and at‐risk children are typically hit hard because a larger majority of their funding comes from public sources
Background
America’s arts infrastructure, supported by a combination of government, business, foundation, and individual donors, is critical to the nation’s well-being and economic vitality. In a striking example of federal/state partnership, the NEA distributes 40 percent of its program dollars to state arts agencies, with each state devoting its own appropriated funds to support arts programs throughout the state. This partnership ensures that each state has a stable source of arts funding and policy. These grants, combined with state legislative appropriations and other dollars, are distributed widely to strengthen arts infrastructures and ensure broad access to the arts.
For close to fifty years, the NEA has provided strategic leadership and investment in the arts through its core programs, including those for dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, local arts agencies, media arts, multidisciplinary arts, music, theater, visual arts, and other programs. Among the proudest accomplishments of the NEA is the growth of arts activity in areas of the nation that were previously underserved or not served at all, especially in rural and inner-city communities. Americans can now see professional productions and exhibitions of high quality in their own hometowns.
The FY 2013 NEA appropriation reflects a 5 percent cut mandated by sequestration, applied to the continuing resolution budget allocation of $146 million from FY 2012, despite the president requesting an increase to $154.3 million and the Senate Appropriations Committee proposing an equal amount. The administration’s FY 2014 budget proposes $154.466 million for the NEA, which would nearly restore the agency to FY 2011 funding levels and would provide support to a healthy nonprofit arts sector in communities nationwide. Current funding amounts to just 47 cents per capita, as compared to 70 cents per capita in 1992.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — May 22, 2013
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.
What’s the Point of Art School?
As changes to the school curriculum and university funding undermine the arts education system, industry experts gathered at Central Saint Martin’s art school to discuss what the future holds for the field. Are you studying creative arts or design? Share an image or video that captures why you love art school. (Read more in the Guardian.)
It’s Time to Rethink and Expand Art History for the Digital Age
Continuing a conversation on Getty Voices about rethinking art history, the art historian Nuria Rodríguez Ortega, a recent participant in the Digital Art History Lab, argues that we must reestablish digital art history on a new ground, both adapting the field to the new web landscape and broadening its scope to include the full spectrum of human attempts to make meaning of art. (Read more in the Getty Iris.)
To Profit or Not? How Art Galleries Make Money in Chicago, and Why Some Choose Not To
More than once I have heard a Chicago art dealer joke that their commercial gallery is really a not-for-profit because, well, their business makes no profit. Despite that appraisal, nonprofit fundraising techniques are finding their way into the business models of some for-profit startups. Traditionally, commercial galleries have been run as shops that sell products with negotiable price tags. Now, some are experimenting with fundraising and sponsorships as strategies for growth. Oppositely, a couple of nonprofit art organizations are incorporating commercial aspects into their practices, such as selling art and organizing an art fair. (Read more in the New City.)
Andy Warhol and His Foundation: The Questions
After Andy Warhol died in 1987, his will directed that a foundation should be set up in his name, funded with proceeds from the sale of some 95,000 pictures, prints, sculptures, drawings, and photographs left in his estate. As well as creating and endowing the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts provides financial support to artists and scholars, galleries, publications, and educational projects. Warhol’s bequest made no provision for the authentication of his artwork. But in 1994 the foundation initiated work on a multivolume catalogue raisonné of Warhol’s art, in part because the project would “contribute to the stabilization of the market for Warhol works over time, thus having a direct benefit to the Foundation’s longterm goal of converting its Warhol works to cash at favorable prices.” (Read more in the New York Review of Books.)
The New Rules of Engagement
Predictably, the recession uncovered fundamental operational and structural weaknesses in American higher education. Few institutions managed to be as nimble as they should have been in responding to the depressed economy. Even fewer presidents had the courage to call on their boards of trustees to think strategically, make bold plans, innovate, and invest. The harsh truth is that the culture into which “change” presidents are placed commonly accepts limited programmatic innovation, except when it emerges from the faculty, and is intolerant of structural innovation. The culprits are not usually the faculty. (Read more in Academe.)
The Neoliberal Assault on Academia
Lost amid the fetishization of information technology and the pathos of the struggle over proper working conditions for adjunct faculty is the deeper crisis of the academic profession occasioned by neoliberalism. This crisis is connected to the economics of higher education but it is not primarily about that. The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition fee hikes and budget cuts. (Read more in Al Jazeera.)
Career Services Must Die
Well, not die, exactly. Transform. “The term ‘career services’ has been a phrase that has been used for several decades to describe what colleges have been doing,” says Andy Chan, vice president for personal and career development at Wake Forest University. “It’s not working.” Chan coedited the new report, A Roadmap for Transforming the College-to-Career Experience. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)
The Library’s Future Is Not an Open Book
Talk about imposing: the ceremonial stone stair leading to bronze gates and carved doors; the frieze of inspiring names; and the vaulted hall that seems the very definition of hallowed. And the books, bound portals opening to anywhere imaginable, available to all comers. In cities across the United States, the central public library came into being when the country was young and striving to impress. Architecturally grand, the central library was both beacon and monumental tribute to learning and civic pride; a people’s palace with knowledge freely available to all. But, really, when was the last time you spent any time there? (Read more in the Wall Street Journal.)
Members of the 2013–14 Nominating Committee
posted by Vanessa Jalet — May 21, 2013
CAA is pleased to announce the members of the 2013–14 Nominating Committee, which is charged with identifying and interviewing potential candidates for the Board of Directors and selecting the final slate of candidates for the membership’s vote. The committee members, their institutional affiliations, and their positions are:
- DeWitt Godfrey, Colgate University, Vice President for Committees and Chair
- Dina Bangdel, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar and Member at Large
- Leslie Bellavance, Alfred University and CAA Board Liaison
- Kevin Hamilton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Member at Large
- Beauvais Lyons, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Member at Large
- Denise Mullen, Oregon College of Art and Craft and CAA Board Liaison
- Sabina Ott, Columbia College Chicago and CAA Board Liaison
- Melissa Potter, Columbia College Chicago and Member at Large
- Linda Downs, CAA Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer (ex officio)
The 2012–13 Nominating Committee chose the new members of the committee at its recent business meeting, held during the 2013 Annual Conference in New York in February. The Board of Directors also appointed three liaisons. CAA publishes a call for nominations and self-nominations for Nominating Committee service on the website in late fall of every year and publicizes it in CAA News. Please direct all queries regarding the committee to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison.
Designing a Better Future: A Participatory Platform for Exchange
posted by Christopher Howard — May 16, 2013
Jacki Apple and Mat Rappaport, the producers of a 2014 ARTspace session, seek your participation for “Designing a Better Future: A Participatory Platform for Exchange,” taking place at the 102nd CAA Annual Conference in Chicago on Saturday, February 15, 10:00 AM–2:00 PM. Deadline for proposals: June 1, 2013; notification of selection: June 20, 2013.
Designing a Better Future: A Participatory Platform for Exchange
Artists and designers operating as thinkers and communicators, visualizers and producers, can be leaders in changing how we think, live, and act in order to make a better world. Are we ready to discuss cultural production and the arts as viable and meaningful practices beyond the established system of commodity trading? What potential models of an effective creative practice can we envision and develop?
Artists, designers, media producers, photographers, filmmakers, architects, writers, theorists, educators, and cultural historians are invited to submit proposals for presentation and discussion that will inspire others to join them in imagining, inventing, and actualizing a more sustainable and enlightened possible future, whether it be local or global.
What would you do to effect change? What would that look like? Do aesthetics matter?
We seek provocative and challenging theoretical concepts and/or models for practical application. Encouraged are visionary, daring, and unconventional ideas and collaborations across fields in the arts, sciences, and humanities that conceive different ways to address social, economic, and environmental realities.
General topics and themes to consider may include:
- Climate change, the environment, and sustainable living: consumption, energy, waste, food, water, air, and economic and social consequences
- The culture of violence: all its social, political, cultural, and economic manifestations
- Technology and human rights: biological, political, intellectual, and spiritual
Presentation Format
The format for presentation will be an interactive forum of exchange between speakers and audience. There will be no podium. Speakers will be placed within the audience. Presentations may include visuals such as images, texts, charts, etc.
Each speaker will be given seven minutes to present his or her proposal. The audience will then have equal time—seven minutes—to respond and discuss. Time may be slightly less or more depending on the number of outstanding proposals selected.
Submission Instructions
Please send a description of your topic and the theoretical concepts and/or model that you intend to propose in approximately three hundred words, plus a brief biography or CV of no more than two pages. The written proposal must include a title, name(s) of author(s), address, email, and phone number. Please submit all proposal files as PDF documents to studio@meme01.com. Deadline for proposals: June 1, 2013; notification of selection: June 20, 2013.
2013 Candlelight Vigil for Global Heritage
posted by CAA — May 16, 2013
Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) invites CAA members to join the 2013 Candlelight Vigil for Global Heritage, marking the tenth anniversary of the looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. This year, SAFE encourages individuals and institutions to light a candle and share their remembrances and thoughts on the current situation, contemplate the future, and take the opportunity to announce their related projects and programs related to preserving our shared cultural heritage. Whether you are an expert or an “ordinary” concerned citizen, SAFE wishes to hear from you.
To observe the vigil, SAFE has launched a three-month global awareness campaign, 10 Years After, from April 10 to July 1, 2013 (also on Facebook). The organization is highlighting the efforts of individuals and institutions dedicated to global-heritage preservation; the global concern of looting and the illicit antiquities trade; how public awareness can contribute to the solution; and the many ways you participated in the Global Candlelight Vigil around the world.
These comments and reflections will be posted on SAFE’s website and disseminated via social media. Furthering the group’s commitment to raising public awareness about the global concern of looting and the illicit antiquities trade, SAFE will gather these reflections in a memorial booklet as a public statement of concern and as a tribute to all those who safeguard the future of our past.
As a nonprofit dedicated to preserving cultural heritage worldwide, SAFE initiated the Global Candlelight Vigil for the Iraq museum in 2007 with Donny George, the museum’s former director, to commemorate the looting of the museum, which became the impetus for the founding of the organization. Individuals and institutions from around the world hosted and attended lectures and candle-lighting ceremonies. A video of these events was compiled to mark the fifth anniversary. In 2011, the vigil was renamed to honor the memory of George, who died that year.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — May 15, 2013
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.
Cultivating Partnerships in the Digital Humanities
As academics we can be too snug in our institutional silos. We sometimes think of one another as competitors for students, and as a result we duplicate scarce resources in mutually damaging ways. Without more coordinated programs, will we go on teaching the way we have since the Industrial Revolution? Will our students, knowing it doesn’t have to be that way and worried about their future, lose patience with us? The digital humanities provide a context for facing those questions head-on. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
What We’re Not Arguing About
The solutions to the crisis in higher education are still a subject of fierce debate, and I’m happy to see people from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds adding their voices to the conversation. At the same time, I think it’s important to clarify what academics and former academics are and aren’t arguing about. (Read more at Adventures in (Post) Gradland.)
How Long Is the Average Dissertation?
The best part about writing a dissertation is finding clever ways to procrastinate. The motivation for this blog comes from one of the more creative ways I’ve found to keep myself from writing. I’ve posted about data mining in the past, and this post follows up on those ideas using a topic that is relevant to anyone that has ever considered getting, or has successfully completed, their PhD. (Read more at R Is My Friend.)
To Raze or Not? MoMA Rethinks Plan
After impassioned protests from prominent architects, preservationists, and design critics, the Museum of Modern Art said that it would reconsider its decision to demolish its next-door neighbor, the former home of the American Folk Art Museum, to make room for an expansion. In a recent board meeting, the directors were told that a board committee had selected the design firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro to handle the expansion and to help determine whether to keep any of the existing structure. (Read more in the New York Times.)
Help Desk: Ideal Representation
I’ve been meeting with a commercial gallery in my city for some time, and they’ve extended me an offer to come aboard. I’m excited about the idea of professional representation, having a platform to promote myself to a larger audience and further opportunity for sale of work. Some of the work the gallery represents is totally not my style, which is to say, artwork that favors more commercially viable subject matter or style at the cost of exercising any real dynamic or conceptual verve. How much should this influence my decision to join the gallery? (Read more in Daily Serving.)
Thinking about Accreditation in a Rapidly Changing World
Enormous change is under way in higher education, driven by a perfect storm of crisis (around cost, access, quality, and funding), technological innovation and what that innovation makes possible, the growing presence and influence of for-profit providers, abuses (of various kinds), opportunity, and workforce-development needs in a global and technological context. Any one of those challenges might fill an agenda for a commissioners’ retreat or a small conference, but accreditors now wrestle with all of these various forces across a broad landscape of change and urgency. (Read more in Educause Review.)
Counting, Not Curtailing, Adjuncts’ Work
Nowhere does the Law of Unintended Consequences run more rampant than in the field of taxation. That was clearly demonstrated at the Internal Revenue Service’s rule-making hearing on April 23, in the agency’s attempts to craft regulations to impose a steep tax on employers who fail to provide employee health-care coverage required by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. While most of the twenty-five other witnesses at the hearing represented various employers or organizations, I testified in my personal capacity as an interested citizen who happens to be an adjunct faculty member and former IRS lawyer. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
How Prevalent Is Money Laundering in the Art World?
Recent federal charges against the New York dealer Helly Nahmad included that he worked “to launder tens of millions of dollars on behalf of the illegal gambling business.” While Nahmad has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in the indictment, the accusation raises the questions of whether (and if so why) art would be used in this way. Art lends itself to money laundering because the market’s lack of transparency means art can become what Judge Fausto Martin De Sanctiscalls an “invisible asset.” Values can be manipulated, and complex ownership schemes, with an emphasis on secrecy, are commonplace. (Read more in the Art Newspaper.)
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — May 14, 2013
In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, architects, photographers, filmmakers, publishers, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts.
- Les Blank, a documentary filmmaker whose Burden of Dreams (1982) chronicled the making of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, died on April 7, 2013. He was 77 years old. Blank also directed films on the musicians Lightning Hopkins, Dizzy Gillespie, and Clifton Chenier
- Ellen Cantor, an artist and filmmaker known for her ongoing work Pinochet Porn, passed away on April 21, 2013. She was 51 years old
- Bernard Cheese, a British painter, printmaker, and educator, died on March 15, 2013, at the age of 88. Cheese taught at Saint Martins School of Art (1950–68), Goldsmiths College (1970–78), and Central School of Art and Design, London (1980–89)
- Les Coleman, a London-based artist, writer of aphorisms, and “all-around rare bird,” died on January 17, 2013. He was 67
- Edward de Grazia, an American lawyer who fought censorship of Tropic of Cancer, Lysistrata, and The Naked Lunch, died on April 11, 2013, at age 86. De Grazia taught at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York for thirty years and was the author of Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius (1991)
- Dominic Elliott, the personal assistant of the artist David Hockney, died on March 17, 2013. He was 23 years old
- Nigel Glendinning, a scholar of Spanish art who was an expert on Francisco de Goya, passed away on February 23, 2013. He was 83 years old. Glendinning held various professorships and fellowships across the United Kingdom and Ireland
- Sidney Goodman, a figurative painter and emeritus professor of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, passed away on April 11, 2013. He was 77
- Regina Granne, an artist based in New York whose drawings demonstrated creative interpretations of feminism, war, and politics, died on January 26, 2013. She was teaching most recently at Parsons the New School for Design
- Jene Highstein, a Postminimalist sculptor whose work was shown internationally, passed away on April 27, 2013, at the age of 70. Highstein was involved in the fabled exhibition space 112 Greene Street in the 1970s
- Jack Jaeger, a Dutch artist and curator known for coediting eight issues of ZAAP, a quarterly VHS video-art magazine, from 1994 to 1996, died on March 15, 2013. Born in 1937, he also worked as a cameraman, producer, director, and editor of television commercials and films
- L. Brent Kington, a professor of metalsmithing at Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 1961 to 1997 and former chairperson of its School of Art and Design, died on February 7, 2013, at age 78. A retrospective of his career, L. Brent Kington, Mythic Metalsmith, toured the United States from 2007 to 2011
- Martyl Langsdorf, the artist who created the Doomsday Clock image that symbolized the dangers of nuclear power during the Cold War, died on March 26, 2013. She was 96 years old
- Bert Long, a former chef who left the kitchen to become an artist, passed away on February 1, 2013, at age 72. The Houston-based Long, considered an outsider artist by some, won an NEA grant in 1987 and the Prix de Rome in 1990
- Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, a Russian artist and gay-rights icon, died in March 2013 at the age of 43. Known for his impersonations of Marilyn Monroe, Mamyshev-Monroe emerged as a performing and video artist in Saint Petersburg in the late 1980s
- Rick Mather, an American architect based in London who designed extensions to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, among other institutions, died on April 20, 2013, at age 75
- Walter Pierce, an American architect who designed the modernist houses of Peacock Farm, a subdivision in Lexington, Massachusetts, passed away on February 27, 2013. He was 93 years old
- Joe N. Prince, director of education for the National Endowment for the Arts from 1977 to 1985, died on February 23, 2013, at age 75. He also served as special assistant to the agency’s chairman for two years
- Ganesh Pyne, an Indian artist who was called the “painter of darkness” for his fantastical imagery in watercolor, gouache, and tempera, died on March 12, 2013, at age 76. Among his his influences ranged from the Bengal school of art (a forerunner to Indian modernism) to his personal experience as a child witnessing the Kolkata riots
- Daniel Reich, an unconventional art dealer based in New York, died on December 25, 2012. He was 39 years old
- Martin Rogers, a British printer, sculptor, and publisher who founded the Small Publishers Fair in London, has died. He was 61 years old
- Dorothy Sanders, a philanthropist who founded the Milwaukee Art Museum’s African-American Art Acquisition Committee, passed away on February 13, 2013. She was 96
- James Schell, an Atlanta artist and illustrator whose works were published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Sunday magazine, died on January 6, 2013, at age 94. He was the art director for Kirkland White and Schell Advertising, which he helped establish
- Shozo Shimamoto, a Japanese artist who was a member of the Gutai group, died on January 25, 2013, at the age of 85
- Merton D. Simpson, a painter, collector, and dealer in African art, died on March 9, 2013, at the age of 84. Simpson founded his gallery of African and tribal art in 1954, and his artwork became politicized in the early 1960s after joining the Spiral group, which counted Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff among its members
- Paolo Soleri, the innovative architect of an ecologically minded city in the Arizona desert called Arcosanti, passed away on April 9, 2013. He was 93
- Jack Stokes, the animation director of the Beatles’ film Yellow Submarine, died on March 20, 2013. He was 92. Stokes also worked on titles and inserts for Magical Mystery Tour
- Clinton Darlington Swingle, who oversaw the purchase, preservation, and restoration of the Fabric Workshop and Museum’s building in Philadelphia, died on January 27, 2013. He was 84
- Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, a Mexican architect who combined modern and Precolumbian forms, died on April 16, 2013, at age 94. His best-known buildings are the Basilica of Guadalupe, National Museum of Anthropology, and Azteca Stadium
- William Wilson, a former critic for the Los Angeles Times, died on April 20, 2013, at the age of 78. He began writing for the paper in 1965, contributing exhibition reviews through 2001
- Zao Wou-Ki, a Chinese artist whose work combined the traditional landscape painting of his country with European abstraction, died on April 9, 2013, age 92. He had lived and worked in Paris from 1948 to 2011
Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.