CAA News Today
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — April 12, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Artists Are Luring Their Peers and Predecessors Out of Obscurity and Back into the Spotlight
Beyond the economy of galleries, fairs, and auction rooms, there is an alternative artist-to-artist network rooted in relationships based on aesthetic influences and mutual appreciation. In recent years, artists with some degree of success and visibility have gone out of their way to bring attention to lesser-known peers and predecessors. (Read more from ARTnews.)
Eleven Female Art Professors and Teachers on Their Favorite Women Artists
Continuing the Cut’s series celebrating women in the arts and expanding on the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ social-media campaign to get their followers to name #5WomenArtists, New York has asked female art professors and teachers to name the woman artist they admire the most. (Read more from New York.)
How Art Has Depicted the Ideal Male Body throughout History
In the history of masculinity, it is money rather than muscle that tends to be articulated. Class or status has been the determining factor in the defining of male exemplars. Be it in the East or West, the epitome of a handsome man has generally been an idealized version of an upper-class individual, an archetype that has itself changed over time. (Read more from Artsy.)
Art History’s Image Problem
“If you are going to study sixteenth-century French art, more power to you. I support the arts … but you are not going to get a job,” declared Sam Clovis, Donald Trump’s campaign cochair in an interview last May. Clovis was outlining the would-be president’s education policy, and art history served as a prime example of the kind of major that student loans, he argued, should not underwrite. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
More Vibrant Tales of Obsolete Pigments
After its first installment on obsolete pigments, Hyperallergic had only hit the tip of the curious history of vanished colors. Below are a few more pigments that have mostly gone out of favor, due to them being hazardous to the health of their manufacturers or artists, having a shortage of their weird material, or advances in technology replacing them with synthetics. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
How a Browser Extension Could Shake Up Academic Publishing
The Gates Foundation started its own open-access publishing platform, which the European Commission may replicate. The Open Access Button, a tool that helps researchers gain free access to articles, will be integrated into existing interlibrary-loan arrangements. Another initiative, called Unpaywall, is a simple browser extension that could help alter the status quo of scholarly publishing. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Understanding Our Strengths and Weaknesses as Teachers
Every teacher has strengths and weaknesses. Have you ever tried to list yours? Doing so is a worthwhile activity. I’d recommend doing it in private with a favorite libation—only one, because there is a need to be thoughtful and honest. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)
Interviewing for New Hires
Because our organizations are small, vertical promotion is often difficult, if not impossible. Today, it is more common for younger people to expect to have multiple jobs at an ever earlier stage of their careers. Finding the right people for open positions in a highly competitive job market is critical to our success as organizations. (Read more from Barry’s Blog.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — April 05, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Live Drawing Videos on Instagram Are Giving Users a Peek into the Creative Process
With the capability to create and share livestreams, sixty-second videos, and Stories, creatives have a new world of opportunity to demystify artmaking, to facilitate virtual studio visits, and to grow their followings. Moreover, artists can set themselves up for commissions and projects—and drawing is proving to be a ripe medium through which to accomplish this. (Read more from Artsy.)
The Exhilarating Return
Having recently returned from my own sabbatical, I wonder whether there are some downsides to the sabbatical’s luster—in particular, the larger view that it obscures. In our efforts to reverence sabbatical, we may fail to give proper due to its mighty counterpart, the return. This is a mistake. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Community-College Side Hustle
“Side hustle” is a term I had never heard until a few months ago, and now suddenly I’m seeing it everywhere, most recently in an advertisement for Uber drivers. It refers to having a second source of income in addition to one’s main job. That’s a concept professors have embraced, probably ever since there have been professors. (Read more from Vitae.)
The Art of “No”
Early in my career, I struggled to say no. I was asked to serve on committee after committee, to evaluate fistfuls of manuscripts and grants, and to perform dozens of other tasks, large and small. I said yes, often because of genuine interest but other times out of a sense of guilt or obligation—and sometimes out of fear of reprisal if I refused. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Penn Museum Shows Artifacts Curators Are Fighting to Save in Syria and Iraq
Many American museums have been closely monitoring the ongoing destruction of heritage sites in Syria and Iraq, but few have had boots on the ground. Curators and researchers at the Penn Museum have been on the frontlines of the battle to safeguard cultural heritage in conflict zones; they recently organized an exhibition illustrating how high the stakes are. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
A Hushed Departure at the Met Museum Reveals Entrenched Management Culture
The recent discovery of a looming $40 million deficit that forced the Metropolitan Museum of Art to cut staff, trim its exhibition schedule, and postpone a heralded $600 million expansion are signs that the system is showing cracks. Now, details about dysfunction in the digital-media department reveal additional consequences of the museum turning a blind eye to problems. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Paper Warping When Painting with Acrylics
When water is applied to paper, the fibers can soak up liquid and expand. This may create the infamous buckles and cockles that can be the bane—or joy—of those who paint with water media. (Read more from Just Paint.)
Was Banksy Caught on Camera at a Mall in Israel?
Several British tabloids ran stories last weekend showing footage captured with a mobile phone camera by an anonymous woman who claims to have caught the elusive Bristol-born artist in action, working on a show that’s slated to open to the public inside a mall in Herzlyia, Israel. (Read more from Artnet News.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — March 29, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Women’s Movement Impacts Spending on Art Supplies
The week before the Women’s March, sales of poster boards in the US were up 33 percent and foam boards by 42 percent versus the same week last year. Sales of easel pads/flip charts also grew, as did tools used to assist in making the poster messages, including paint markers, specialty markers, and permanent markers. (Read more from NPD Group.)
Gender Gap Persists at Largest Museums
When the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art steps down in June, the top job at the biggest art museum in the US will be up for grabs. A woman faces long odds of landing that job, to judge from a study from the Association of Art Museum Directors. “The Ongoing Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships” shows that just one of the nation’s thirteen largest museums is led by a woman. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Meet Art Girl Army, a Group of Female Creatives Fighting for Equal Opportunity
When Sydney Lowe invited a few girlfriends over to her small Brooklyn apartment in 2014, she didn’t know she was starting an army. Today she is the founder of Art Girl Army, a fast-growing collective of women creatives—including those who are gender nonconforming, transgender, and genderqueer—who make art, films, graphics, and music. And while they might not be armed with weapons, they certainly have missions. (Read more from Artsy.)
Seeking Grants: More Than Money
The need to succeed at getting grants is a continuing part of faculty life at research institutions. Watching the process leaves some graduate students and postdocs convinced that they want no part of it. The stakes seem so high. But bringing in outside funding is the only way to sustain an independent research-driven career in an academic setting. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Virtual Reality in the Art-History Classroom
I recently become fascinated with virtual reality and the realism I experience by viewing through a small boxlike device—in this case, Google Cardboard. I wondered if there could be connections made between virtual reality and my art-history survey course for students at Mount Saint Mary College. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
The American Government Is Searching for Its Own Lost Art
They are not America’s art police. There are no midnight raids, covert surveillance, or undercover operations. Most everything is done through cordial emails, polite phone calls, and, if necessary, civil court. While glamour is not top priority, make no mistake—the United States government wants its art back. (Read more from Atlas Obscura.)
Art Attack: Why Do People Try to Destroy Museum Masterpieces?
On March 18, a man “with no fixed abode” slashed Thomas Gainsborough’s The Morning Walk with a screwdriver at London’s National Gallery. He was quickly detained and the damage appears to be fixable—the paint was cut, but the screwdriver did not pierce the supporting canvas. Conservators are brilliant surgeons, and the scars should be invisible by the time they are done. (Read more from Salon.)
Dealing with Disrupters
As obstructionist protests of controversial speakers spread, some say the future of the trend depends on how colleges and universities respond—namely what, if any, disciplinary action they take against participants. But just what action to take, and when, is tricky business. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — March 22, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Could Blockchain Put Money Back in Artists’ Hands?
By registering artworks with blockchain to establish authenticity and create property rights which can then be split off and traded, argues Amy Whitaker, artists can retain an “equity share” in their works, much like the founder of a startup retains an ownership stake that grows in value as the company expands. (Read more from Artsy.)
Report from the 2016 Craft Think Tank
Last June the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design convened a two-day, special-topic Craft Think Tank, bringing together experts across disciplines to assess the state of craft in academia. The group discussed and made recommendations concerning the content, format, approach, audience, and resources needed to create a relevant and successful program. (Read more from the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design.)
Detroit Exits Bankruptcy, Thanks to Its Art Museum
A federal judge approved Detroit’s bankruptcy plan, allowing the city government to hit the reset button after years of financial mismanagement. The bankruptcy could have been far lengthier, and even more painful for retirees, had it not been for an unusual deal designed to save the Detroit Institute of Arts while minimizing cuts to pensions. (Read more from Slate.)
The Skillful Curator: A Case Study in Curatorial Pedagogy and Collective Exhibition-Making
For a recent CAA panel on pedagogy, feminism, and activism, I presented a graduate curatorial practice course I developed at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, for which I organized an exhibition alongside sixteen students, as a case study. While the curatorial field is considered hospitable to women, the curator’s role often operates within structures that reinforce patriarchy and inequality. How? (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
Midcareer Faculty: Five Great Things about Those Long Years in the Middle
In a recent post on tired teaching I identified the major challenge of the midcareer stretch—keeping your teaching fresh and keeping yourself engaged, enthusiastic, and instructionally moving forward. On the other hand, special opportunities are afforded by that long stretch in the middle. The question is whether we’re taking full advantage of them. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)
The Sculpture of a Fearless Girl on Wall Street Is Fake Corporate Feminism
Fearless Girl features a branded plaque at its base. The companies that installed it had a permit. They are the advertising firm McCann New York—whose leadership team has only three women among eleven people, or 27 percent women—and the asset manager SSGA—whose leadership team has five women among twenty-eight people, or 18 percent women. SSGA is a division of State Street, which has a board of directors that includes only 27 percent women. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
Dispute on Cultural Appropriation Leads to Assault Charges
Last week a Hampshire College student was in a Massachusetts court to face charges that she assaulted a member of the women’s basketball team of Central Maine Community College when, at a January game, the woman refused to take out braids that she had in her hair—braids that Carmen Figueroa, the student facing charges, demanded be removed because they are an example of cultural appropriation. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Did ISIS Inadvertently Uncover the Secret to the “Lost” Hanging Gardens of Babylon?
To the surprise of the archaeologists, upon examining the reconquered Iraqi city of Mosul, they found evidence that when ISIS blew up parts of the Nebi Yunus shrine, the militants unveiled a major discovery: a palace that predated the tomb of the Prophet Jonah and had been buried beneath it—unseen for thousands of years. (Read more from Salon.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — March 15, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Can .art Domain Give the Art Business an Online Boost?
London’s Institute of Contemporary Art adopted the new .art suffix last week, a sign that the art and culture business may be coming to terms with its future in the digital realm. The ICA ditched its fusty ica.org.uk domain for the streamlined and descriptive ica.art, and the move may soon be followed at other prestigious art institutions around the world. (Read more from the Guardian.)
BHQFU on How to Run a Free Art School with the “Worst” Business Model
If there’s one thing that sets US education apart from education in other nations, it’s student debt. For art students with vague graduate degrees that don’t offer much job security, the cost of tuition has left many of them worse off after graduating than they were before becoming a student. What can be done? (Read more from Artspace Magazine.)
What Happens to Whitney Biennial Curators after the Show’s Over?
Inclusion in the Whitney Biennial—the influential and sometimes controversial snapshot of contemporary American art that takes place every two years—has launched or resuscitated many an artist’s career. But those tapped to do the selecting have experienced their own professional transformation, as this year’s organizers Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks may well discover. (Read more from Artsy Editorial.)
Trigger Warning: Academic Standards Apply
“I don’t like this whole idea of academic standards. Ever since I was in grade school, they’ve made me feel pressured and stressed out. I think academic standards are bullying. Whenever I deal with them, they bring back all these old bad memories. It’s like PTSD or something.” So declared a student from one of my courses at California State University, Fresno. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
New Travel Ban Still Sows Chaos and Confusion
A long-anticipated executive order restricting travelers from a half-dozen predominantly Muslim countries is likely to bring little certainty to American college campuses. The new order imposes a ninety-day ban on issuance of new visas, including student visas, to citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Museums Chart a Response to Political Upheaval
As President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Inauguration Day approached, hundreds of artists, critics, and others asked American museums, galleries, and other institutions to close their doors in protest. They wanted museums to show that they are “places where resistant forms of thinking, seeing, feeling, and acting can be produced,” the organizers wrote in a petition for a J20 Art Strike. (Read more from the New York Times.)
When the Private Sector Funds the Arts
I recently wrote a piece defending the NEA, a grant-making organization that is somehow such a drag on the economy that it is now on the chopping block for the federal 2017 budget. This move makes perfect sense for Donald Trump the businessman, according to GOP enablers, because if the arts and so-called free expression are so worthy, the private sector will step in and fund them. (Read more from the Millions.)
US Embassy Art Scheme Should Survive Trump
The Trump administration is considering cutting federal funding for the arts, among other spending programs, to reduce domestic spending. However, one US cultural initiative appears to be secure—the State Department’s Art in Embassies program, which places works by US artists in embassies and ambassadorial homes around the world. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — March 08, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
On Hiring and Diversity This Week
Many colleges and universities want to attract a more diverse workforce and foster greater inclusivity in their faculty and administrative ranks, but don’t know how. The Chronicle of Higher Education is helping by sharing stories, news, and data aimed at helping hiring managers and recruiters make better, more informed decisions about diversity hiring at their institutions and across higher education generally. (Read more from Vitae.)
How to Fix the Met: Connect Art to Life
With the precipitous decrease in art and history education in schools, much of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s encyclopedic collection now means little to younger viewers. It feels foreign and remote and unsociable in a way that contemporary art, with its familiar references, does not. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Russian and Syrian Forces Retake Palmyra from ISIL
Syrian government troops have retaken Palmyra from Islamic State forces, with help from Russian air support, the Syrian army said last week. Politicians in Russian welcomed the news as a triumph, as widely reported by the state’s media, but few details have emerged about the condition of the ancient site, where ISIL has previously wreaked large-scale destruction. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
The Earthquake in Amatrice, Norcia, and the Marche: A Cultural Emergency
This area of Italy—the Valnerina, the Appennine Marches, the Teramo region of the Abruzzo, and a segment of Lazio—has a distinguished cultural patrimony. There may be no large museums or significant art galleries, but in most cases the works of art are still in the buildings for which they were conceived, whether churches, convents, or tiny chapels in the mountains. (Read more from the Burlington Magazine.)
Very Serious Play: A Conversation with Jess Benjamin
The Nebraska-born sculptor Jess Benjamin creates work with an austere sensibility and eloquent narrative that is inextricably tied to the land—more specifically to the water—of her home state. The daughter of a rancher, she earned her BFA in ceramics from Hastings College before working as a studio assistant for Jun Kaneko, and then earning an MFA at Bowling Green State University. (Read more from Sculpture.)
SUPERFLEX’s Hospital Equipment: Context Is Everything
“Sometimes context is everything,” SUPERFLEX’s Jakob Fenger wrote, as he Instagrammed a photo of the latest installation of Hospital Equipment in a gallery in Switzerland. The Danish collaborative calls Hospital Equipment a “readymade upside down” because it pulls objects into an art context, only to send them on their way to a new context, as functional objects. (Read more from Greg.org.)
A Question of Resources
We hear regularly from arts funders and opinion formers about the need to diversify funding streams within the arts to protect future sustainability. And this is absolutely true. Any arts organization that finds itself over-reliant on government or statutory sources, or one single income stream that then dries up, can find itself in trouble. (Read more from Arts Professional.)
Identifying Quality in Scholarly Publishing: Not a Black-and-White Issue
Like every industry, publishing is open to scamming and deceptive behavior in many forms, and there are various influencing factors at play—including the pressure to publish that academics face. An abundance of unfamiliar new publications makes it difficult to know which can be trusted, and the merits of blacklisting or whitelisting publishers are being widely discussed. (Read more from the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — March 01, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
What NEA Supporters Can Learn from the Republicans Who Tried to Destroy It
How can we save the NEA? Since Republicans argue they are merely trimming the bloated federal budget, it is tempting to rely on the simple fact that eliminating the NEA will do little toward this goal. But this fiscal argument, while factually correct, won’t galvanize people to come out and support the agency. (Read more from Artsy.)
Why Small Grants from the Endangered NEA and NEH Matter
If quality of life and nourishment of intellect and spirit are as important to our national well-being as military might, then maintaining support for the arts is a no-brainer. Maybe the arts legions descending on Washington, DC, this month should try to seduce members of Congress with excerpts from performances and art displays that our tax dollars have helped to make possible. (Read more from CultureGrrl.)
Removal of Student Painting in Capital Leads to Federal Lawsuit
David Pulphus, a high school artist from Saint Louis, may never become a free-speech cause célèbre akin to Chris Ofili, the London artist who caused a furor in 1999. Still, Rep. William Lacy Clay from Missouri filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the removal of a work by Pulphus from the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC, violates the artist’s First Amendment rights. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Research Finds Career, Entrepreneurial Training Leads to Stronger Career Outcomes for Arts Graduates
Recent graduates with arts degrees have better career and entrepreneurial training than those who came before them, according to a report released by the Indiana University School of Education. The research, based on a survey of arts graduates, demonstrates that new approaches to arts education are helping prepare students for careers and give them tools they need to succeed. (Read more from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project.)
Professors and Politics: What the Research Says
When Betsy DeVos accused liberal faculty members of forcing their views on students, she infuriated many professors and won praise from conservatives. Most faculty members who weighed in on social media denied the indoctrination and unfairness charges. While not disputing her assertion that they are more likely than others to be liberal, they said it was unfair to say that this meant they were indoctrinating anyone. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Appalachian Identities and Photography as Social Commentary
Most of my students in art history and art appreciation are first-generation college students, and many of them come from the economically depressed counties within a short driving distance of my institution, Morehead State University in eastern Kentucky. Through in-class discussion and office-hour chats, I have learned that many of them feel strong ties to an Appalachian identity. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
Bice Curiger on Why Parkett Is Closing
“Young kids think everything has to be free,” said the curator and publisher Bice Curiger in a recent phone interview, shortly after the announcement that Parkett—the hefty, finger-on-the-pulse German-English magazine she cofounded some ninety-nine issues ago—would cease publication. “How can you survive?” (Read more from Artnet News.)
Thinking about Open Access and Library Subscriptions
Is there good reason to expect that open access is likely to lead libraries and other customers to cancel their paid journal subscriptions? The context in which we have to ask this question is, quite frankly, one of dire economic straits in many academic libraries. Of course, libraries have been saying this for years, even decades. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 22, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Popular Domestic Programs Face Ax under First Trump Budget
The White House budget office has drafted a hit list of programs that President Trump could eliminate to trim domestic spending, including longstanding conservative targets like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, AmeriCorps, and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Can Only Rich Kids Afford to Work in the Art World?
Two years ago, Naiomy Guerrero left her job in the art world. She hasn’t lost her passion for art and still blogs about it at GalleryGirl.nyc, but as the daughter of two immigrant parents she chose financial stability. Guerrero now works as a financial aid counselor, earning over 50 percent more than she did at her most recent art-related job. (Read more from Artsy.)
Habitat: Moonlighting—Artists’ Side Jobs
Most artists, unless they are selling a lot of work, need a good side job. For some, it’s just a way to pay the rent; for others, it’s a parallel passion. But whether they consider it a temporary solution or a career, a boon to their art or something entirely separate from it, the artists ARTnews interviewed all seem to find satisfaction in what they do for money. (Read more from ARTnews.)
“Our Women Have Always Carved”
On the West Coast, in the rich and diverse world of First Nations art, the master carvers responsible for the totem poles and myriad other monumental works are usually men. There are exceptions. And two exceptional women—trailblazing female First Nations artists who have carved their way into Canadian cultural history—are getting their due in two new exhibitions. (Read more from the Globe and Mail.)
The Red of Painters
For the most part, painters have always loved red, from the Paleolithic period to the most contemporary. Red’s palette offers a variety of shades and favors more diverse and subtle chromatic play than any other color. In red, artists found a means to construct pictorial space, distinguish areas and planes, create accents, produce effects of rhythm and movement, and highlight one figure or another. (Read more from the Paris Review.)
Academic Ethics: Rethinking the Justification of Tenure
Tenure for professors has been under pressure, and even the subject of outright attacks, for a long time. But the pace of the assault has accelerated lately, and there is no more significant canary in the coal mine than events in Wisconsin over the past two years. (Read more from Vitae.)
The Changing Monograph Market
The market for original humanities monographs may be shrinking, according to a report on the output of university presses. After remaining stable from 2009 to 2011, the number of original works in the humanities published by university presses fell both in 2012 and 2013, according to estimates from the two publishing consultants who wrote the report. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
An Activity That Promotes Engagement with Required Readings, Even in Large Classes
Encouraging students to complete the course readings is an age-old problem. On the first day of class, I often say something like this to my students: “Nothing floats my boat more than great discussion. Nothing promotes great discussion like having completed the readings. And nothing promotes completing the readings like having points attached to it.” (Read more from Faculty Focus.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 15, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Art under Threat in 2016: Presenting the Figures
Freemuse registered 1,028 attacks on artists and violations of their rights in 2016 across 78 countries, continuing a worrying trend of artistic freedom increasingly coming under threat. The number of cases registered in 2016 more than doubled the amount in 2015, increasing by 119 percent, rising from 469 attacks. (Read more from Freemuse.)
What You Need to Know about Hate Speech and Free Speech
Is there any way to curb speech if it discriminates against people’s identity, like race? And when does speech become punishable under the law? Here’s what you need to know about the freedom of speech and dealing with hate speech in the current political climate. (Read more from Teen Vogue.)
We Don’t Pay Visual Artists Properly—That Needs to Change
Jane is a typical artist trying to build and maintain her career. She has had reasonable success with her art thus far but needs to subsidize her income by taking on work as a graphic designer. Now she has decided to return to art school to get university qualifications and commit fully to her professional artistic practice. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Reports of the Death of Religious Art Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
When written in the same sentence, the terms “religion” and “art” tend to turn the contemporary secularized gaze back in time to Renaissance imagery. Those old, redolent, often pious pictures of Christ Child and Madonna are pleasing to look at, but these days their principal function is to confirm how religious art existed in ages past. Present-day artists can’t possibly be interested in that anymore. (Read more from the Los Angeles Review of Books.)
The Prestige Gap
Women earn 60 percent of baccalaureate degrees and 46 percent of doctoral degrees, excluding professional programs, according to 2015 data from the National Science Foundation, yet they’re still underrepresented in many disciplines. Why? A new study points to segregation by gender based on field of study and what it calls program prestige. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Importance of Female Friendship in Graduate School
Sometime in high school, when I was sixteen, living in the suburbs, and hopelessly devoted with the latest music, I was asked whether I prefer male or female singers. As I was answering—something about how men sang more interesting songs—it dawned on me: How many female-led bands had I heard? When was the last time a radio station played a song from an all-female band? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Metropolitan Museum Puts 375,000 Public-Domain Images in Creative Commons
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has placed 375,000 images of public-domain works in the Creative Commons. This major move by one of the world’s most important museums means that users can now access pictures of many of the Met’s holdings on Wikimedia, and that these images are now subject to free use, with no copyright restrictions. (Read more from ARTnews.)
The Value of Copyright: A Publisher’s Perspective
There is no one view of copyright that fits all publishers. The publisher of a poetry magazine will likely feel differently about aspects of copyright when compared to, say, the publisher of your local phone book. Indeed, even within scholarly publishing there is a range of attitudes toward copyright. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — February 08, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
MoMA Installs Works by Artists from Countries Targeted by Trump’s Travel Ban
In response to President Trump’s executive order temporarily banning immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, the Museum of Modern Art has replaced works in its permanent-collection galleries with eight by artists from the targeted nations. The rehang was instigated and executed by staff who wanted to react to unsettling political circumstances. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
The Battle to Save America’s Arts Endowment from Trump’s Cuts
The day before Donald Trump was installed as president, details of his administration’s plans for cuts to government spending came to light. Seemingly drawn from a blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation, the plans feature deep cuts to many vital federal programs, including the elimination of the NEA. (Read more from Apollo.)
What We Can Learn from the Brief Period When the Government Employed Artists
That the arts would be funded significantly by the federal government may raise an eyebrow today. But working under a subdivision of the Works Progress Administration known as the Federal Art Project, artists such as Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner helped the country recover from the Great Depression, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. (Read more from Artsy.)
State Spending on Higher Ed Continues Upward Trend
For the fourth year in a row, state spending on higher education is up nationwide. The annual “Grapevine” survey, conducted by the State Higher Education Executive Officers and the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University, shows a 3.4-percent average nationwide increase in spending over the 2016 fiscal year, although that figure could be changed by legislation pending in Illinois. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
The Met: A Great Museum in Decline?
The bad news had been building for months at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even as crowds poured into shows on Hellenistic kingdoms and high-tech fashion, the museum’s deficit was approaching $40 million and had forced the buyout or layoff of some ninety employees. An expansion into a satellite building cost millions of dollars more than expected. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Museums Celebrate the Decriminalization of Homosexuality
Museums across the UK are preparing exhibitions to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act, the legislation that partially decriminalized male homosexuality in England and Wales in 1967. In London, the National Portrait Gallery will present a special display on the city’s gay scene in the 1980s, while the first major exhibition dedicated to queer British art will open at Tate Britain. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Nobody Is Normal
While medical researchers might miss such fine points, philosophers of medicine have been parsing the nuances and striving to define “normal” for years. One thought experiment asks us to consider variations on the ends of the spectrum that we would not consider pathological: having green eyes, being color-blind, being extremely tall or short, having photographic memory, or being a supertaster. (Read more from Aeon.)
Brad Troemel, the Troll of Internet Art
Brad Troemel’s art plays with a central paradox of the internet: the technology that was supposed to liberate us from the dreary real world has inspired a whole new set of anxieties. For the growing number of artists who use the internet to distribute their work, a key problem has become how to stand out amid a torrent of information. (Read more from the New Yorker.)