CAA News Today
2016 Annual Conference Website Is Live
posted by Christopher Howard — October 08, 2015
The website for the 104th Annual Conference in Washington, DC, to be held from Wednesday, February 3 to Saturday, February 6, 2016, at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, is live today. Get a taste of conference highlights and discover the benefits of registration, including access to all program sessions and admission to the Book and Trade Fair.
The dynamic energy of Washington, DC—known for its world-class museums and as an international destination for American history and culture—provides the backdrop for our annual gathering of more than four thousand artists, art historians, museum directors and curators, arts administrators, scholars, and educators. Look forward to the best in new scholarship, innovative art, and in-depth discussion of issues in the visual arts today.
Highlights of this year’s conference include the presentation of CAA’s 2016 Awards for Distinction, an opening reception at the Katzen Arts Center at American University, and the sixteenth annual Distinguished Scholar Session honoring Richard J. Powell of Duke University. The two Distinguished Artists’ Interviews will feature the sculptor Joyce Scott, speaking to the curator George Ciscle.
Among the highly anticipated sessions are: “South to North: Latin American Artists in the United States, 1820s–1890s,” chaired by Katherine E. Manthorne; “Transforming Japonisme: International Japonisme in an Age of Industrialization and Visual Commerce,” led by Gabriel P. Weisberg; and the two-part “Formalism before Clement Greenberg,” chaired by Katherine M. Kuenzli and Marnin Young. Other exciting session topics range from art as adventure to the Hudson River School, from digital cultural heritage to algorithms and data in contemporary art, and from diversity in curatorial work to staging design in museums.
Online registration for individuals and institutions is now open. In addition, you can book your hotel reservations and make your travel arrangements—don’t forget to use the exclusive CAA discount codes to save money! Register before the early deadline, December 21, 2015, to get the lowest rate and to ensure your place in the Directory of Attendees. You may also purchase tickets for special events and for a place in one of eleven professional-development workshops on a variety of topics for artists and scholars.
CAA will regularly update the conference website in the months leading up to the four-day event, so please be sure to check back often. Averaging more than 40,000 unique visitors per month, the conference website is the essential source for up-to-the-minute updates regarding registration, session listings, and hotel and travel discounts. Visit the Advertising section to learn more about reaching CAA membership and conference attendees.
We look forward to seeing you in Washington, DC!
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — October 07, 2015
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.
US Has Funded Artists and Intellectuals for Half a Century, but It’s a Perennial Fight
As the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts celebrate their fiftieth anniversaries, they are still trying to climb out of the cellar, at least financially. While their endurance reflects an ongoing commitment to the arts and humanities, their struggles show that the government’s adherence to that promise can be fickle. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
Does the Public Have a Right to Culture?
What do we mean when we say that artists and their heirs have a right to remuneration for the artist’s creativity? Conversely, what do we mean when we say that the public has a right to culture? Which public? Which culture? And is this “right” or “non-right” to be mediated solely through the law? (Read more from Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.)
Museum Directors Release Plan to Help Provide Safe Havens for Endangered Antiquities
Amid the wanton destruction of antiquities in Syria and elsewhere, the Association of Art Museum Directors, a group that represents museum directors, proposed a set of protocols to help cultural institutions understand how they can provide safe haven for valuable works of art and archaeological relics that are at risk of being damaged, destroyed, or looted. (Read more from the New York Times.)
The Informal Economy and the Global Art Market
It is difficult to imagine a reason to keep artworks in a free port unless there is speculation going on. If you are a collector of fine art, you want to be able to see and to appreciate what you own. But if you are a speculator, all you need is storage since you are betting that the work is going to increase in value. (Read more from SFAQ.)
Solving the Solvents
Solvents are used in oil painting for various reasons. In the first layers they are frequently meant to make the paint washier—often a necessary step in the painting process for some artists. With thinner and more fluid paint, one is able to sketch or conjure the gesture that breathes life into a blank canvas and informs the subsequent layers. (Read more from Just Paint.)
Why the Visual Artists Rights Act Is Failing
The federal Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), enacted in 1990 in the wake of the removal of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, was supposed to remedy a long series of conflicts between property owners and artists. The law grants artists the rights to prevent intentional modification to their art and the destruction of a work of “recognized stature.” But how effective is it? (Read more from Artsy.)
Humanities Majors’ Salaries
Major in English and expect to live with Mom and Dad for life. That’s the stereotype constantly reinforced by reports on the hot job prospects for nurses or code writers or various other positions for which practical training is seen as the route to economic success. But a new report shows that graduates with degrees in the humanities earn much more than the average for all American workers, challenging those who suggest that a degree in the humanities is a waste, at least financially. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
On the Academic Job Market, Does Patience Pay Off?
How long am I marketable? It’s one of the most difficult questions an academic job seeker can face. And it’s one of the most important questions we hope our Academic JobTracker project can help answer. If you don’t get a job in your first year on the market, should you stay the course and take another swing next hiring season? Or is it already time to explore other career options? (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Participants Selected for 2016 CAA–Getty International Program
posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — October 07, 2015
CAA is pleased to announce this year’s participants in the CAA–Getty International Program. In an effort to promote greater interaction and exchange between U.S. and international art historians, CAA will bring colleagues from around the world to its Annual Conference, this year to be held in Washington, D.C. from February 3–6, 2016. This is the fifth year of the program, which has been generously supported by a grant from the Getty Foundation since its inception. The participants—professors of art history, curators, and artists who teach art history—were selected by a jury of CAA members from a highly competitive group of applicants. In addition to covering travel expenses, hotel accommodations, and per diems, participants in the CAA–Getty International Program also receive complimentary conference registration and a one-year CAA membership.
The participants’ activities begin with a one-day preconference colloquium on international issues in art history, during which they meet with U.S.-based CAA members to discuss common interests and challenges. They are assisted throughout the conference by CAA member hosts, who recommend relevant panel sessions and introduce them to colleagues who share their interests. Members of CAA’s International Committee have agreed to serve as hosts, along with representatives from several of CAA’s Affiliated Societies.
CAA hopes that this program will not only increase international participation in the organization’s activities, but will also expand international networking and the exchange of ideas both during and after the conference. CAA currently includes members from 70 countries around the world; see the International Desk on CAA’s website for news about international activities and opportunities. The CAA–Getty International Program supplements CAA’s regular program of Annual Conference Travel Grants for graduate students and international artists and scholars. We look forward to welcoming the following participants at the next Annual Conference in Washington, DC.
2016 Participants in the CAA-Getty International Program
Sarena Abdullah, Senior Lecturer, School of the Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang
Abiodun Akande, Principal Lecturer, Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo State, Nigeria
María Isabel Baldasarre, Associate Professor, Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Danielle Becker, Lecturer in Art History and Visual Studies, University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Heloisa Espada, Postdoctoral Researcher, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of Saõ Paulo, Brazil
Ildikó Fehér, Associate Professor, Art History Department, University of Fine Arts of Hungary, Budapest, Hungary
Peyvand Firouzeh, Post-doctoral Fellow, Museum fur Islamische Kunst, Berlin, Germany
Lev Maciel, Associate Professor, National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Bui Thi Thanh Mai, Lecturer of Art History, Head of Department of Academic Research Management and International relations, Vietnam University of Fine Arts, Ha Noi, Vietnam
Emmanuel Moutafov, Associate Professor, Director, Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
Ceren Ozpinar, Lecturer, Isik University and Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey
Horacio Ramos, Associate Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
Olaya Sanfuentes, Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Paulo Silveira, Professor, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Sandra Uskokovic, Assistant Professor, University of Dubrovnik, Arts & Restoration Department, Croatia
Presentation of CAA’s Fair-Use Code in New York
posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — October 01, 2015
“CAA’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts: How Will It Help the Visual Arts Community?” is the name of a free presentation by Peter Jaszi, lead principal investigator of CAA’s fair-use project, that will take place at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) in Brooklyn on Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 6:00–7:30 PM. Jaszi will explain how the Code works, how it was created, and why it’s reliable. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A.
When can an artist or art historian use a photo she snapped in a museum for teaching? Can a museum reproduce an image from an exhibition of contemporary art in a related brochure without licensing it? How can fair use simplify the permissions process in publications? Can an archive put images from its collection online—and if so, with what restrictions? The copyright doctrine of fair use, which permits use of unlicensed copyrighted material, has great utility in the visual arts. But for too long, it’s been hard to understand how to interpret this rather abstract part of the law. The newly created Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, produced by CAA, makes it much easier to employ fair use to do scholarship in the visual arts, art practice, teaching, exhibitions, digital displays, and more.
The event will be held at NYFA’s office at 20 Jay Street, Suite 740, Brooklyn, NY 11201 (F train to York Street Station or A train to High Street/Brooklyn Bridge Station). The talk is free and open to the public but requires an RSVP via Eventbrite. The event is made possible by CAA, with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
About the Presenter
Peter Jaszi is a professor of law at American University’s Washington College of Law, where he teaches copyright law and courses in law and cinema. He also supervises students in the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, which he helped to established, along with the Program on Intellectual Property and Information Justice. Jaszi has served as a trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA and is a member of the editorial board of its journal. A graduate of Harvard Law School (JD) and Harvard University (AB), he has written about copyright history and theory and coauthored Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) with Patricia Aufderheide.