CAA News Today
Affiliated Society News for July 2014
posted by CAA — July 09, 2014
Association of Art Editors
Sponsored by the Association of Art Editors (AAE), the session “Did You Read That? Art Editing on the Web,” to be held at CAA’s 2015 Annual Conference in New York, will explore the current state of art editing on the web. Panelists will discuss the varying levels of work and practices involved in editing texts for publication online, from the mechanical and technical aspects (research, fact checking, making corrections after publishing) to larger conceptual and ethical matters (changing attitudes toward quality). Writers and editors today have access to a wide range of resources—from Google searches and Wikipedia to JSTOR and Oxford Art Online—that were unavailable (and even unimaginable) twenty or thirty years ago. How has the advent of such resources affected the editorial process?
This session, whose format will be a roundtable conversation, with the chair serving as an active interviewer rather than a passive moderator, will focus on specific examples and case studies rather than on generalizations and abstractions. Speakers, who may include authors, critics, editors, or publishers, will address personal and academic websites, online versions of printed publications, born-digital journals, and blogs; they may also consider the training of younger writers, critics, historians, and editors.
The chair seeks four participants for the session. Speakers are not required to present a paper prepared in advance, although a brief presentation of five to ten minutes can be accommodated. Please send a letter of interest, a CV, and your area(s) of professional interest and expertise to Christopher Howard. Deadline: July 31, 2014.
Community College Professors of Art and Art History
The Community College Professors of Art and Art History (CCPAAH) will host two sessions at conferences next year. “Foundations Flipped? Active Learning in Art History and the Studio” will be the topic of the 2015 session at the CAA Annual Conference in New York. Join CCPAAH for this session and its business meeting, which will be a “Project Exchange” that offers a chance to share best practices and ideas to use in your studio and art-history classes. “Beyond Good, Bad, and ‘I Like It’: A New Take on Critique” will be presented at next year’s Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) conference. For more details and to submit proposals, please see CCPAAH’s Facebook page. To become more involved in the organization, or if you have questions, please email ccpaah@gmail.com.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) will hold its fourth biennial symposium at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Ontario, from October 16 to 18, 2014. The HIAA conference, a forum to present and discuss papers on various aspects of Islamic art history, is open to all regardless of nationality or academic affiliation. The overarching symposium theme will be “Forms of Knowledge and Cultures of Learning in Islamic Art.”
International Association of Word and Image Studies
The 2014 conference of the International Association of Word and Image Studies / Association Internationale pour l’Etude des Rapports entre Texte et Image (IAWIS/AIERTI) will be hosted for the first time by the Scottish Word and Image Group, fronted by the University of Dundee’s English program in the School of Humanities, as well as the school’s Museum Services. The conference, whose theme is “Riddles of Form: Exploration and Discovery in Word and Image,” will examine representation of science and technology in text, poetry, art, popular culture, film, print and digital media, and more. Dundee has a particular history and reputation for both science and art and is thus an ideal venue for the theme. The conference will specifically invoke Dundee’s scientific and cultural history through the foundational work of D’Arcy Thompson and Patrick Geddes, both polymathic visual thinkers with international reputations. It will also showcase the city’s history of polar exploration and technological innovation. The conference’s approach to “science,” however, is in no sense limited to the Anglophone tradition—defining the discipline in the narrow sense of the natural sciences—but will restore and celebrate the full range of science’s original humanistic associations. Keynote lecturers will include Martin Kemp (University of Oxford) and Murdo McDonald (University of Dundee). For further details and a provisional program, please visit the website.
International Sculpture Center
The International Sculpture Center (ISC) has recently launched re:sculpt, the rebranded and expanded ISC Blog. Thirteen new writers from Europe, Canada, and the United States will continue to bring fresh and timely sculpture news to readers every month. New categories—such as Public Art, Art & Action, and Environmental Art—will broaden coverage of art and sculpture around the world. For two years, posts on ISC Blog have sparked conversations with readers from all corners of the world. The new authors are excited to join the team and bring their vibrant arts communities to you!
National Art Education Association
The National Art Education Association (NAEA) offers practical curriculum resources and texts for your classes, including Exploration in Virtual Worlds: New Digital Multi-Media Literacy Investigations for Art Educators; Including Difference: A Communitarian Approach to Art Education in the Least Restrictive Environment; Practice Theory: Seeing the Power of Art Teacher Researchers; and Purposes, Principles, and Standards for School Art Programs. Visit the NAEA’s online bookstore to learn more about these titles.
The National Core Arts Standards are intended to be voluntary standards for adoption or adaption by states or districts. They consist of resources in relation to five artistic disciplines: Dance, Media Arts, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts. The 2014 standards are web-based and include a series of supporting documents such as the Conceptual Framework for Arts Standards and Research by the College Board.
New Media Caucus
Artist Organized Art has published a conversation in which Pat Badani and Joshua Selman discuss proceedings from New Media Caucus (NMC) participation at the 2014 CAA Annual Conference as it applies to Media-N Journal, the NMC’s scholarly publication. The discussion relates to NMC panels and activities at the Hilton Chicago, as well as special NMC offsite events and exhibitions concurrent with the conference. Selman is president of Artist Organized Art, and Badani is NMC’s executive board officer and editor-in-chief of Media-N Journal.
Public Art Dialogue
The winter 2014 issue of the Public Art Dialogue Newsletter is now online and contains an interview with Public Art Dialogue (PAD) award recipient, Jack Becker, by Natasha Khandekar, as well as Marisa Lerer’s article “Staying In and Out of the Loop: Chicago’s Public Art.”
Volume four of PAD’s journal Public Art Dialogue, a special issue on murals, has been guest edited by Sarah Schrank and Sally Webster. It features the following articles: Kathryn E. O’Rourke, “Science and Sex in Diego Rivera’s Health Ministry Murals”; Monica Jovanovich-Kelley, “The Apotheosis of Power: Corporate Mural Commissions in Los Angeles during the 1930s”; Andrew Wasserman, “Beyond the Wall: Redefining City Walls’ ‘Gateway to Soho’”; Carolyn Loeb, “West Berlin Walls: Public Art and the Right to the City”; Rachel Heidenry, “The Murals of El Salvador: Reconstruction, Historical Memory, and Whitewashing”; Lu Pan, “Writing at the End of History: Reflections on Two Cases of Graffiti in Hong King”; Sierra Rooney, “What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation”; and Patricia C. Phillips, “Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information.”
Society for Photographic Education
Society for Photographic Education (SPE) seeks curators, professors, gallerists, art historians, and scholars to review student and/or professional member portfolios at SPE’s fifty-second national conference, taking place March 12–15, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Portfolio reviewers receive discounted admission to the four-day event in exchange for their participation. For more information on the conference offerings, visit the SPE website. To express interest in serving as a portfolio reviewer, please send a message to info@spenational.org.
Society of Architectural Historians
The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) elected board officers during the organization’s recent annual conference, which took place April 9–13, 2014, in Austin, Texas. Ken Breisch, assistant professor in the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture, is SAH president. Ken Oshima, associate professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, is first vice president. Sandy Isenstadt, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Art History Department at the University of Delaware, has become second vice president. The new secretary is Gail Fenske, a professor in the School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation at Roger Williams University. Jan M. Grayson will serve as treasurer.
SAH has also appointed board members to serve 2014–17 terms: Christopher D. Armstrong, assistant professor and director of architectural studies, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh; Luis M. Castañeda, assistant professor, Syracuse University; R. Scott Gill, PhD student, University of Texas at Austin; Greg Hise, professor of history, University of Nevada; and Cynthia Weese of Weese, Langley, Weese Architects.
Randall Mason, chair of the graduate program in historic preservation at the University of Pennsylvania, has agreed to chair the SAH Heritage Conservation Committee. Patricia Morton, associate professor and chair of the Department of the History of Art at the University of California, Riverside, is editor designate of JSAH.
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) invites proposals for its session, titled “Infiltrating the Pedagogical Canon,” for CAA’s 2015 Annual Conference in New York. As researcher-educators in specialized fields, how do we effectively incorporate the content of our scholarly work into our everyday teaching? In many art-history departments, opportunities to teach upper-division courses focused on our research are rare. This session invites papers on incorporating culturally specific art into standard art-history curricula, practical examples of curricular innovations involving global and transnational perspectives, and case studies of noncanonical objects or contexts that encourage discussions of both local and global perspectives. Submissions may deal with any chronological period. Submit abstracts of 500 words or less with a CV of 1–2 pages via email to Marie Gasper-Hulvat of Kent State University in Stark by July 14, 2014.
SHERA’s board now offers sponsored memberships for up to twenty students and unaffiliated scholars (such as retirees) from Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Russia. Sponsored memberships were established thanks to a generous initiative from a SHERA member that has been matched by funds from SHERA. To join at this level, go to the organization’s website, click “Join SHERA,” and scroll down to the line that says Sponsored Member.
William “Bro” Adams Confirmed as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities
posted by Christopher Howard — July 09, 2014
The United States Senate today voted to confirm William D. “Bro” Adams as the 10th chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Adams is expected to begin as Chairman in the coming days.
Founded in 1965, the National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent grant-making institution of the United States government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities.
Adams, president of Colby College in Waterville, Maine from 2000 until his retirement on June 30, 2014, is a committed advocate for liberal arts education and brings to the Endowment a long record of leadership in higher education and the humanities.
A native of Birmingham, Michigan, and son of an auto industry executive, Adams earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Colorado College and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz History of Consciousness Program. He studied in France as a Fulbright Scholar before beginning his career in higher education with appointments to teach political philosophy at Santa Clara University in California and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He went on to coordinate the Great Works in Western Culture program at Stanford University and to serve as vice president and Secretary of Wesleyan University. He became president of Bucknell University in 1995 and president of Colby College in 2000.
Adams’s formal education was interrupted by three years of service in the Army, including one year in Vietnam. It was partly that experience, he says, that motivated him to study and teach in the humanities. “It made me serious in a certain way,” he says. “And as a 20-year-old combat infantry advisor, I came face to face, acutely, with questions that writers, artists, philosophers, and musicians examine in their work — starting with, ‘What does it mean to be human?’”
In each of his professional roles, Adams has demonstrated a deep understanding of and commitment to the humanities as essential to education and to civic life. At Colby, for example, he led a $376-million capital campaign – the largest in Maine history – that included expansion of the Colby College Museum of Art and the gift of the $100-million Lunder Collection of American Art, the creation of a center for arts and humanities and a film studies program, and expansion of the College’s curriculum in creative writing and writing across the curriculum. He also spearheaded formal collaboration of the college with the Maine Film Center and chaired the Waterville Regional Arts and Community Center.
As senior president of the prestigious New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), Adams has been at the center of the national conversation on the cost and value of liberal arts education. “I see the power of what is happening on our campuses and among the alumni I meet across the country and around the world,” he says. “People who engage in a profound way with a broad range of disciplines – including, and in some cases especially, with the humanities — are preparing to engage the challenges of life. They are creative and flexible thinkers; they acquire the habits of mind needed to find solutions to important problems; they can even appreciate the value of making mistakes and changing their minds. I am convinced that this kind of study is not merely defensible but critical to our national welfare.”
Adams, nicknamed Bro by his father in honor of a friend who died in World War Two, is married to Lauren Sterling, philanthropy specialist at Educare Central Maine and has a daughter and a stepson. He currently resides in Falmouth, Maine.
Deputy Chairman Carole Watson has served as Acting Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities since the departure of former Chairman James A. Leach.
Please join the conversation and offer your congratulations to Adams with #NEHBroAdams.
Arts Action Fund Breaking News 7-9-14
posted by CAA — July 09, 2014
The following email from Nina Ozlu Tunceli, executive director of Americans for the Arts, was sent on Wednesday, July 9, 2014.
Arts Action Fund Breaking News 7-9-14
Today, U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), the new House Chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, set the initial funding levels for the nation’s cultural agencies’ budgets for FY 2015. The chairman was able to assign small increases to the Smithsonian and National Gallery of Art, but also made some cuts to each of the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities, as well as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
We now look to the Senate to restore these proposed cuts and hopefully provide an increase to each of these federal cultural agencies. We’ve already prepared an easy-to-customize, pre-written letter for you to e-mail to your two Senators and House Representative. Please take two minutes to help us get the word out.
With your help, I am optimistic that we will be able to secure higher funding levels in the Senate, which coincidentally is voting to confirm new National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Bo Adams today.
Act Now! Proposed Cuts Would Bring NEH’s Funding to Its Lowest Level since 1972
posted by CAA — July 09, 2014
The following email from Stephen Kidd, executive director of the National Humanities Alliance, was sent on Tuesday, July 8, 2014.
Act Now! Proposed Cuts Would Bring NEH’s Funding to Its Lowest Level since 1972
Dear Humanities Advocate,
This morning, the House subcommittee that oversees funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities proposed to fund NEH at its lowest level since 1972. If enacted, this $8 million cut would bring NEH’s funding level to just $138 million for 2015.
It is time to stop the steady erosion of NEH’s capacity!
The subcommittee will be voting on the proposed cuts tomorrrow, so it is essential that you act now. Please contact your Member of Congress and urge them to oppose the proposed cut to the NEH.
Click here to send our message to your Representative today. They are waiting to hear from you.
Thanks for your help!
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — July 09, 2014
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.
Who Ought to Underwrite Publishing Scholars’ Books?
At almost any gathering of academic publishers or librarians, you’ll hear someone float the idea—sometimes phrased as a question—that the model for publishing scholarly monographs is broken. Two sets of ideas aired at the Association of American University Presses’ recent annual meeting don’t say the model is damaged beyond repair. But the proposals, both from groups outside the university-press community, suggest that it needs to be retrofitted, at the least. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
We Should Allow Failing Arts Organizations to Die
Arts organizations are already dying. In Detroit, in New York City, in the United Kingdom. From operas to art galleries. This is no longer an urban versus rural debate. A nonprofit versus for profit debate. A “one discipline is dying” but “others are inexplicably thriving” debate. This is a simple acknowledgement that the industry is in decline. And I think that not only should we allow it, we should encourage it. (Read more from Medium.)
Race, Gender, and Academic Jobs
I am currently the lowest-paid tenure-track faculty member in my department and was told by the man paid to manage me that if I wanted a raise I would probably need to get a new job or at least an offer that might prompt a counteroffer. So I went on the job market and was lucky enough to score a campus interview for an assistant professor position at a liberal arts college in an ideal location. Let’s just call this place Rich Liberal Arts College. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Does the Mojave Desert Need an Artist-Built Swimming Pool? Maybe
The art world loves a work of art that requires trekking to a remote location. There’s Spiral Jetty, one of the most iconic pieces of land art in existence, on the northern shores of the Great Salt Lake. New Mexico has Lightning Field, Walter de Maria’s installation of four hundred stainless-steel poles that serves as Minimal sculpture at most times and a veritable light show during lightning storms. These experiences are about long journeys, landscape, and meditation. Now there’s another piece to add to this list: Social Pool by the Austrian artist Alfredo Barsuglia, who was a resident at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
At Mellon, Signs of Change
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has a reputation for moving in mysterious ways. For forty-five years, it has steadily handed out money—lots of it—to sustain the humanities and the performing arts. As times have gotten tougher, Mellon’s deep pockets have become increasingly important. The foundation tends to attract an unusual level of anxiety and interest, like a rich uncle whose quirks and whims keep poorer relations on their toes. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
When Copy and Paste Reigned in the Age of Scrapbooking
Cutting, pasting, collating—this feels like a new behavior, a desperate attempt to cope with a radical case of information overload. But it’s actually a quite venerable urge. Indeed, back in the nineteenth century we had a similarly intense media barrage, and we used a very similar technology to handle it: the scrapbook. (Read more from the Smithsonian.)
By Design
There are toxic words in every field and, when it comes to design, two of the most ominous are “sculptural” and “artistic.” Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with design projects exhibiting either quality, but those that are described as doing so seldom do. Instead, they are likely to be any or all of the following: bland, silly, blingy, pretentious, shoddy, derivative, ugly, ridiculous, or unjustifiably expensive. (Read more from Frieze.)
Make Sure the Artists Are on Board
The artist-trustees at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles—John Baldessari, Catherine Opie, Barbara Kruger, and Ed Ruscha—went from filling what could have been seen as symbolic posts, demonstrating the museum’s commitment to living artists, to playing a critical role in the museum’s recent public-relations crisis and its recovery-in-progress. Other contemporary art museums are also making space for at least one artist on their boards. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
NEA Selects Wendy Clark as Director of Museums, Visual Arts, and Indemnity
posted by Christopher Howard — July 08, 2014
The National Endowment for the Arts is pleased to announce the appointment of Wendy Clark as director of Museums, Visual Arts, and Indemnity. Clark has served as acting director of Museums, Visual Arts, and Indemnity since November 2012 and will continue to manage the NEA’s grantmaking in this area, as well as the program’s special initiatives, such as Blue Star Museums.
NEA Deputy Chairman Patrice Walker Powell noted “Ms. Clark brings to this leadership position a wealth of knowledge and experience with the people and institutions that comprise the visual arts and museum field. She is an asset to our organization, an advocate for the field, and a long-term NEA leader.”
Clark has more than 20 years of experience managing various federal grant programs and special initiatives at the NEA in the fields of museums, visual arts, and design, including the Mayor’s Institute on City Design, Your Town, the American Masterpieces/Visual Arts Touring Program, the Rosa Parks Sculpture Competition for the Architect of the Capitol, and the Renna Scholarship Grants Program. Prior to her role as acting director, she was the museum specialist, working primarily on Art Works grants and special initiatives and advising hundreds of museums annually seeking funding for exhibitions, conservation, commissions, care of collections, educational outreach, and reinstallation projects. She has represented the agency annually at the American Alliance of Museums conference as both a presenter and exhibitor. Clark is a member of ArtTable, an organization dedicated to advancing women’s leadership in the visual arts field.
“I’m thrilled to help the nation’s museums and visual arts organizations—with their aligned missions and divergent needs—continue to present the work of excellent artists to the American people. To be part of this community is an honor,” said Clark. “Museums have a tall and challenging order, increasingly called upon to be civic anchor, community gathering place, and stewards of our most prized cultural heritage. I remain energized and fulfilled by public service.”
Prior to coming to the NEA, Clark held positions at the Illinois Arts Council in public affairs, visual arts, and design. There she worked on a traveling exhibition program initiative, and a cultural facilities planning and design grant program called Building by Design, which was awarded a Federal Design Achievement Award by the NEA’s Presidential Design Awards jury. She was an NEA Fellow in arts administration, and was the chairman of the Design Review Committee for the Civic Association of Hollin Hills, a mid-century modern residential development designed by architect Charles Goodman and landscape architect Dan Kiley.
Clark has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and studied Elizabethan history, art, and literature at New College, Oxford University. She is originally from Dayton, Ohio.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — July 02, 2014
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.
A World without Tenure? That’s a World without Shared Governance, Too
We’ve been reading arguments against tenure for a while, of course, but there’s a real corporatist edge to recent contributions to the genre. These broadsides envision an Orwellian campus where freedom is servitude—specifically, intellectual servitude to the whims of education technocrats holding up their forefingers to test the winds of supposed market forces. What the antitenure crowd fails to acknowledge is that higher education, as an “industry,” is unique. (Read more from Vitae.)
What Is a Page in the Digital Age?
What is a page? What is a book? These are just two of the questions facing the cohort of museums participating in the Getty Foundation’s Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI), which is helping the field move into online publishing. The Walker Art Center has launched its OSCI publication, On Performativity, which provides another spellbinding answer to the question driving this initiative: How can we rethink the museum catalogue for the digital age? (Read more from the Getty Iris.)
The Incorporated Woman
Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and a host of other big companies in today’s “data-driven economy” share one thing in common: they make a living from harvesting personal data. To regain some ownership and control of her data, Jennifer Lyn Morone decided to become Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc (JLM), registered like all savvy corporations in Delaware. And what started as an art project—her brief as part of a master’s degree at London’s Royal College of Art was to “design a protest”—is now transforming her into a humanoid/corporate hybrid. (Read more from the Economist.)
Autonomous Filing Cabinet Embodies Our Everlasting Data Trail
A filing cabinet is following people around the Royal College of Art to remind us that our data is everywhere—and it will follow us everywhere. I Know What You Did Last Summer is Jaap de Maat’s final-year project, the finale to a two-year-long MA in information experience design. And anyone visiting the college this weekend will certainly get a dose of that design experience, as the clunky metal cabinet trundles toward them, stalking their every move. (Read more from Ars Technica.)
Summer Boundaries
Historically, it has been relatively common for some faculty members, particularly those with lower-level administrative responsibilities, to be informally on the hook during the summer months, expected to respond to email and keep up with loose threads, but to go uncompensated for their work during that time period. In addition to being a form of de facto exploitation, such patterns contribute to the gradual but steady marginalization of academic labor across multiple fronts. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
#arthistory: Instagram and the Intro to Art History Course
From museum selfies to the digital humanities, Instagram has become a major force in the art world. Artists now cultivate “Instagram practices,” art institutions have thousands of followers, and hashtags like #monalisa have over 200,000 entries. People in their late teens and twenties—the age demographic that dominates Instagram—contribute the majority of these posts, yet the app is more likely to be banned from college classrooms than encouraged. In a period when educators are grappling with divergences between social media–driven forms of communication and academic communication, Instagram has potential to both enrich content and strengthen the discipline’s relevance for contemporary learners. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
Building a Better Nonacademic Career Panel
Just last week, one of my graduate-school deans invited me to present on a nonacademic career panel with three other alumni. I’m happy to act as a resource for my alma mater—and for graduate students struggling to navigate their career options. But sometimes I wonder if I’m doing much good by showing up. I’m convinced that these panels do little to help their audiences explore, much less pursue, options outside the academy. (Read more from Vitae.)
The Pen Is Mightier Than the Brush? Looking at Six Famous American Male Artist-Critics
Artists have always had a complicated relationship with art criticism. “Do not be an art critic, but paint; therein lies salvation,” Paul Cézanne wrote to his fellow painter Émile Bernard in 1904. Eugène Delacroix wrote an entire essay on the subject in 1829 called “On Art Criticism,” in which he found that art critics—or “watchful dragons” as he called them—“have always presented difficulties.” If artists and art critics are such separate species, what are we to think of artists who themselves are art critics? (Read more from Artspace Magazine.)
CAA Seeks Members for Its Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committee
posted by Vanessa Jalet — July 01, 2014
Get involved in an issue that you care about! CAA invites members to apply for service on one of its nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees. These committees address critical issues in the visual arts in an attempt to deal with, and respond to, the pressing concerns of CAA’s members.
Communicating via listserv throughout the year, each committee takes on the objectives it has set for itself, which include: programming ARTspace at the Annual Conference; establishing best practices, standards, and guidelines; sharing and examining pedagogical practices; examining new and developing technologies; addressing issues critical to emerging professionals as well as concerns of diversity and gender; extending the reach of CAA internationally; and clarifying and debating matters of fair use, copyright, and open access. This vigorous exchange of information reveals common goals and leads to solutions that will help CAA members to weather their changing professional landscape.
Committees are active at the Annual Conference in February, where each presents one or two sessions on a subject of its choosing. These sessions, sometimes collaborations between committees and sometimes dealing with workforce issues, are meant to be of immediate value to CAA members. Also at the conference, the committees hold face-to-face business meetings and discuss the past year’s accomplishments while targeting ideas for future projects. Participation on a committee is an excellent and fruitful way to network with other CAA members; for some individuals it is a stepping-stone to service on the organization’s Board of Directors.
The public face of several CAA committees appears most visibly at the conference. The Services to Artists Committee, for example, conceives nearly all content and programming for ARTspace, ARTexchange, and the Media Lounge, while the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee organizes events on professional-development issues that take place in the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge during the conference.
Online, the Committee on Women in the Arts publishes the monthly CWA Picks of exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship, among other activities. CAA’s Museum Committee is currently reviewing several of CAA’s Standards and Guidelines as they relate to museums. This committee also organizes conference sessions on museum leadership and exhibition history and works to provide resources for professionals in academic art museums.
The International Committee warmly welcomed twenty travel-grant recipients from around the world at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago and will host fifteen travel-grant recipients at the 2015 conference in New York.
The Professional Practices Committee continues to study, develop, and revise CAA’s Standards and Guidelines, so that these documents, once approved by the CAA board, become authoritative, comprehensive documents for art-related disciplines. The Committee on Diversity Practices’ current projects include organizing a 2015 conference session called “Diversity and Pedagogy: The Global Factor,” overseeing the Resource Directory for Diversity Practices, and expanding CAA mentoring programs.
The Committee on Intellectual Property updated the Image Resources page on CAA’s website and continues to monitor the tricky terrain of copyright and fair use, which dramatically affects the work lives of artists and scholars. The Education Committee is currently launching new initiatives concerning curriculum, pedagogy, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. This committee especially seeks new members from studio art, design and/or museums.
Committee members serve three-year terms (2014–17), with at least one new member rotating onto a committee each year. Candidates must be current CAA members and possess expertise appropriate to the committee’s work. Members of all committees volunteer their services without compensation. Committee work is not for the faint of heart; it is expected that once appointed to a committee, a member will involve himself or herself in an active and serious way.
The following vacancies are open for terms beginning in February 2015:
- Committee on Diversity Practices: 3–4 members
- Committee on Intellectual Property: 3 members
- Committee on Women in the Arts: 6 members
- Education Committee: 2–3 members
- International Committee: 2 members
- Museum Committee: 4 members
- Professional Practices Committee: 5 members
- Services to Artists Committee: 5 members
- Student and Emerging Professionals Committee: 2–3 members
CAA’s president, vice president for committees, and executive director review all candidates in early November and make appointments in December, prior to the Annual Conference. New members are introduced to their committees during their respective business meetings at the conference.
Nominations and self-nominations should include a brief statement (no more than 150 words) describing your qualifications and experience and an abbreviated CV (no more than 2–3 pages). Please send all materials to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison. Deadline: October 17, 2014.
Juror Sought for the Millard Meiss Publication Fund
posted by CAA — June 30, 2014
CAA seeks nominations and self-nominations from an architectural historian or an art historian with a specialization in Islamic, East Asian, or contemporary art to serve on the jury for the Millard Meiss Publication Fund for a four-year term, ending on June 30, 2018. Candidates must be actively publishing scholars with demonstrated seniority and achievement; institutional affiliation is not required.
The Meiss jury awards subsidies to support the publication of book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art and related subjects. Members review manuscripts and grant applications twice a year and meet in New York in the spring and fall to select the awardees. CAA reimburses jury members for travel and lodging expenses in accordance with its travel policy.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on another CAA editorial board or committee. Jury members may not themselves apply for a grant in this program during their term of service. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a letter describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and contact information to: Millard Meiss Publication Fund Jury, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or send all materials as email attachments to Alex Gershuny, CAA editorial manager. Deadline: July 22, 2014.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — June 25, 2014
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.
AAMD Sanctions Delaware Art Museum
AAMD is deeply troubled and saddened that the Delaware Art Museum has deaccessioned and sold a work of art from its collection to pay outstanding debt and build its operating endowment. Art museums collect works of art for the benefit of present and future generations. Responsible stewardship of a museum’s collection and the conservation, exhibition, and study of these works are the heart of a museum’s commitment to its community and to the public. (Read more from the Association of Art Museum Directors.)
Delaware Art Museum Painting Brings $4.25 Million
The Delaware Art Museum’s first painting up for auction, William Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil, sold for $4.25 million last week, far short of Christie’s low estimate of $8.4 million. The 1868 work by the Pre-Raphaelite master sold within two minutes at Christie’s in London, with a starting bid of £1.9 million. (Read more from the Delaware News Journal.)
Humanities Funding Still in Recovery from Recession
Total funding for humanities research, education, and programs in the United States is still below prerecession levels, according to a new report released last week by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The report, The State of the Humanities: Funding 2014, gathers data on the array of funding sources, large and small, that underwrite the humanities, revealing that federal, state, and private support to the humanities are still recovering from the recession. (Read more from the National Endowment for the Humanities.)
Help Desk: To Apply Oneself
The annual application process for many residencies, fellowships, and publishing opportunities is tough. Should there be a limit on the number of times you apply for the same opportunity before you realize that they just aren’t interested in your practice? Or is it more valuable to demonstrate a little fortitude? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
No One Sits Here Anymore: How Spikes and Fences Erase Communal Life
Since the day it first opened, the windows of my neighborhood gym have been a gathering point for neighbors. They’re right at street level, and they’re big. Lots of us had sat on their deep windowsills for many years, most of all the Pakistanis who live in the surrounding area. Note that I wrote, “had sat,” because ever since Barcelona’s City Hall installed some giant metal plates, no one sits there anymore. The gatherings and chitchats are over. (Read more from Creative Time Reports.)
How Cities Use Design to Drive Homeless People Away
Earlier this month, someone tweeted a picture of a series of metal spikes built into the ground outside a London apartment building. The spikes were intended to discourage homeless people from sleeping in the area, and their presence sparked a public outcry. London’s mayor called the spikes “ugly, self defeating & stupid,” and the mayor of Montreal called similar spikes in his own city “unacceptable!!!!” Protesters poured concrete over a set of spikes outside a Tesco supermarket. Then, after a petition was signed by nearly 130,000 people, the spikes were removed from the London apartment building, the Tesco, and downtown Montreal. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
Should I Go to Art School?
You’ve sent me a tricky one, my dear. There are many personal factors that must be carefully considered by each individual, working in any artistic discipline, who is grappling with this question. While I have no way of knowing your personal capacities, I can certainly give you my general opinion … and you know I love doing that. (Read more from KCET.)
Hemingway: A Simple Online Tool for Better Short-Form Writing (Museum 2.0)
Exhibit labels. Promotional text. Grant proposals. For many arts and museum professionals, writing one-hundred-word chunks of text is a daily activity. Unfortunately, much of that writing is lousy. We have great references for better art writing but don’t always use them. Instead we pack sentences with highfalutin vocabulary, pepper them with clauses, and wrap them up in insider language. Recently, I discovered an online tool called Hemingway that can change that. Its intent is “to make your writing bold and clear.” (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
