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.

Art History That! A Manifesto for the Future of a Discipline

The future of art history has much to offer and much at stake. Recent references to the discipline in popular media have encouraged a critical assessment of the so-called humanities crisis, revealing it to be a red herring for the more systemic ailments that afflict higher education. Art history has a role to play in changing the conversation about the arts and humanities in society as a whole. In an effort to spur this change, this essay describes and contextualizes Art History That, a crowd-sourced manifesto for the future of the discipline. (Read more from Visual Resources.)

Detroit’s Art May Be Worth Billions, Report Says

A new expert appraisal of the Detroit Institute of Arts’ collection, which some creditors are demanding be sold to help pay municipal debts in the city’s bankruptcy case, has found that the works could be worth $2.7 to $4.6 billion. The appraisal, commissioned by the city and the museum in advance of a federal bankruptcy trial in August, also added that such a price tag would never be attained at sale, for reasons including donor lawsuits that would delay or prevent the sale of many valuable works, weakness in the market for some kinds of paintings, and lower sale prices because of the sheer bulk that would flood into the market at once. (Read more from the New York Times.)

After Decades in Storage, Damaged Rothko Murals Get High-Tech Restoration

Paintings by Mark Rothko are highly coveted—in May one of his works sold at auction in London for $50 million. But oddly enough, Harvard University has had a handful of Rothkos—faded by sunlight and splattered with food and drink—in storage. Now, new technology has led to a potentially controversial restoration. (Read more from National Public Radio.)

Scholarly Journal Retracts Sixty Articles, Smashes “Peer Review Ring”

Every now and then a scholarly journal retracts an article because of errors or outright fraud. In academic circles, and sometimes beyond, each retraction is a big deal. Now comes word of a journal retracting sixty articles at once. The reason for the mass retraction is mind-blowing: a “peer review and citation ring” was apparently rigging the review process to get articles published. (Read more from the Washington Post.)

Confronting Art-World Sexism

In New York, Sperone Westwater comes in at 91 versus 9. Team Gallery at 85 versus 15, Matthew Marks at 84 versus 16, and Mary Boone at 83 versus 17. Some of the top galleries in Los Angeles tell a similar story: Blum and Poe is 89 versus 11; Prism is 88 versus 12; Thomas Solomon is 85 to 15, and Patrick Painter is 83 to 17. These numbers, as you might have guessed, reflect the percentages of male versus female artists represented by each gallery. They’re also the impetus for a new internet-driven, open-source feminist art project, Gallery Tally, organized by the Los Angeles artist and educator Micol Hebron. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

Why the World’s Most Talked-About New Art Dealer Is Instagram

Standing before Marc Quinn’s looming Myth Venus sculpture in front of Christie’s Rockefeller headquarters was a masked protester holding a large poster that read F*** U. It was a parody of Wade Guyton’s 2005 Untitled that sold for $3.52 million just hours later at the live-streamed “If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday” auction, which included thirty-five contemporary artworks from blue-chip names such as Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Martin Kippenberger, and Alex Israel, all handpicked by the contemporary art expert Loic Gouzer, with the majority of the production on his—and Christie’s—Instagram accounts. (Read more from Vogue.)

Help Desk: Friends with Benefits

A few months ago I tried to collaborate with a good friend, but we didn’t complete any work. It’s not that we spent the time just hanging out—we worked, but it just didn’t go anywhere. But I really like my friend’s work and think that we could make something great together. Should we try again? If we do, how can we make something happen? (Read more from Daily Serving.)

Room for Creativity?

“Room for Creativity?” raises the question of how adjuncts try to balance their own creative and/or scholarly interests with teaching demands. I asked the participants—two English professors—to cover how they’ve both balanced (or tried to balance) their interests in poetry and other creative work with what they’ve been allowed as adjuncts to teach in the name of “course coverage.” (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)