CAA News Today
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — September 21, 2016
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.
Chicago Professors Fire Back
Last week more than 150 faculty members at the University of Chicago published an open letter to freshmen in which they take a strikingly different approach from the official communication sent by a Chicago dean. Safe spaces and trigger warnings, the letter said, are legitimate topics for discussion and reflect the real needs of many students. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
On Art-Making after Tragedy
Public figures and Facebook users post responses, visual or verbal, immediately after tragedies and disasters occur. These easily created and intrinsically shareable responses raise important questions: Is this art created for social media? Is it created so quickly that its quality suffers? Is there something disingenuous about art making under such forced and mediated circumstances? (Read more from the Creators Project.)
Bill to Shield International Art Loans Gains in Senate
Legislation to safeguard international art loans will be taken up by the full Senate after years of criticism and complaints that the bill amounts to protection for plundered works. Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee, with bipartisan support, approved the Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act, which would extend added protections to shield works from seizure while on loan for exhibitions in the United States. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Public Opinion on Higher Education Is Waning
Americans are increasingly uncertain about the necessity of college for success in the workforce, according to Public Agenda’s recent survey, funded by the Kresge Foundation. For example, just 42 percent of Americans say college is necessary for workforce success, a 13 percent drop from 2009. (Read more from Public Agenda.)
Strategies to Maintain Focus while Writing Your Dissertation
Today, the internet and Google and social media are flashier and more distracting than ever before. Our professional and personal lives are strewn with interruptions as smart phones enable us to take our distractions with us wherever we go. This makes it incredibly challenging to maintain enough focus to write a book-length dissertation. (Read more from GradHacker.)
Is the Future of Fine Art in Hollywood’s Hands?
We might consider both Wes Anderson and Rashid Johnson to be artists, but traditionally the business dealings of a Hollywood director are handled by a mélange of agents, whereas the career of a fine artist is often managed by gallerists, dealers, and collectors. Josh Roth of United Talent Agency, however, wants to shake up any boundaries between Hollywood and the white cube. (Read more from Vice.)
On Not Reading
The activity of nonreading is something that scholars rarely discuss. When they—or others whose identities are bound up with books—do so, the discussions tend to have a shamefaced quality. Blame “cultural capital”—the sense of superiority associated with laying claim to books that mark one’s high social status. (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)
Is More Recognition the Key to Peer-Review Success?
Two contrasting concepts for peer reviewers are recognition and credit. Credit implies that a benefit is being given. Recognition may lead to a benefit but only passively. The importance of recognition is that others see the effort, and any benefit is happenstance. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — September 14, 2016
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.
The Most Relevant Art Today Is Taking Place outside the Art World
The central claim in Michael J. Lewis’s essay on the demise of art-as-culture is that “while the fine arts can survive a hostile or ignorant public, or even a fanatically prudish one, they cannot long survive an indifferent one.” The argument, however, ignores both the artists who have been historically marginalized from galleries and museums and the artists who are taking their practices outside those places. (Read more from Artsy.)
Art Demystified: The Gallery Breakdown
The art gallery remains one of the most important pillars of the art world today. It is where artists are first introduced and their careers are launched, and where the discourse is started. But what goes on behind the heavy doors of these often secretive empires? And what are the roles of those who work there? (Read more from Artnet News.)
President Obama’s Arts Focus Was National, Not Local
It should come as no surprise that where the arts were concerned, the Obamas didn’t just ignore the Pennsylvania Avenue playbook—they wrote their own script. They established dynamic programs and raised considerable money for arts initiatives. They also sometimes drifted away from the traditions of the past, which could leave locals frustrated and impatient. (Read more from the Chicago Tribune.)
Balancing the Books at Yale University Press in London
A letter signed by over 290 academics, curators, and writers expressed a “sense of shock at the restructuring of Yale University Press in London, particularly as it affects the renowned art books department.” Having learned that two commissioning editors were to be made redundant, the signatories asked for reassurance about Yale’s commitment to scholarly art publishing and for the rationale for the changes. (Read more from Apollo.)
Publish or Be Damned
The London office of Yale University Press has been a leading publisher of art history in the English language. When we heard of a new book planned by a leading scholar in the field, we expected to learn that Yale had pledged to publish it. When a bright graduate finished his or her dissertation, we hoped that Yale would publish it. (Read more from the Burlington Magazine.)
How Much Does Publishing Cost?
Whenever someone talks about the cost of publishing, the conversation seems to take place in a vacuum. Step inside a publishing company and ask this question: Where is the greatest amount of energy expended? The answer is in finding the best authors. Publishing, in other words, is about the relentless pursuit of the best content for a particular program. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)
Why the Hammer Museum’s New Free Digital Archives Are a Game Changer
Museum archives are historically places that draw only the most dedicated researchers to poke through boxes of files, trays of objects, and piles of ephemera generated by exhibitions. But the Hammer Museum is aiming to change the way museum archives are accessed and organized. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
Valuing Intellectual Property in an AIA World
Whether one celebrates or decries the fifth anniversary of the America Invents Act, this much is clear: the law has had a dramatic impact on the value of US patents and, in turn, the broader US economy. A cloud of uncertainty hanging over patents has depressed their value and may have broader ramifications that are yet to be seen. (Read more from IP Watchdog.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — September 07, 2016
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.
Know Your Rights: A Tool for Artists
Creative Capital spoke with Joy Garnett from the Arts Advocacy Project at the National Coalition against Censorship about a new educational tool, Artist Rights, which was created to address questions that artists may have about their rights under the First Amendment. (Read more from Creative Capital.)
Is Getting an MFA Worth the Price?
In the 2000s, the MFA was pitched as a Golden Ticket, with an ever more youth-oriented art market generating rumors of dealers snapping up artists right out of school. A degree that was originally designed to allow you to teach became seen as the pathway to a gallery career. In more recent years, angst about art school has become entangled with the political debate about student debt’s crushing toll. (Read more from Artnet News.)
Notes for a New Faculty Member
When I first started teaching more than twenty years ago, I was a TA, nervous, excited, and preoccupied by technical details that suddenly seemed important. There were assignments to draft, grading techniques to practice, readings to master, departmental policies to incorporate into syllabi, and training sessions to attend. It was easy, in those overwhelming days, to forget why I wanted to be in the classroom to begin with. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
How Men Benefit from Family-Friendly Tenure Policies
Academics are well aware that gender gaps continue to exist on American campuses. It is true that female students now outnumber male students, and also that more women earn professional degrees compared to men. But it is also true that only 28 percent of tenured faculty are women. (Read more from the Conversation.)
Fair Use and the Future of Art
Twenty-five years ago, in a seminal article in the Harvard Law Review, Judge Pierre Leval changed the course of copyright jurisprudence by introducing the concept of “transformativeness” into fair-use law. Soon thereafter, the Supreme Court embraced Leval’s new creation, calling the transformative inquiry the “heart of the fair use” doctrine. Yet the transformative test has failed art, and this article shows why and what to do about it. (Read more from the New York University Law Review.)
Organizations with Staying Power
As we strive to ensure that our arts organizations have a sustainable future, management teams across the UK are focusing on income and diversifying business models as key drivers for resilience. Resilience is the buzzword at the moment and was the subject of a session at the Arts Fundraising Summer School at the University of Leeds. (Read more from Art Professional.)
A Brief Guide to the Battle over Trigger Warnings
The University of Chicago’s dean of students recently sent a strongly worded letter to incoming freshmen declaring that the institution didn’t endorse “trigger warnings” or “intellectual safe spaces.” The message touched off a debate both inside and outside academe about the use of such terms on college campuses. Here’s a look at how professors view the warnings—and at how widespread they really are. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
How Trigger Warnings Silence Religious Students
Last week, the University of Chicago’s dean of students sent a welcome letter to freshmen decrying trigger warnings and safe spaces—ways for students to be warned about and opt out of exposure to potentially challenging material. While some supported the school’s actions, arguing that these practices threaten free speech and the purpose of higher education, the note also led to widespread outrage. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — August 31, 2016
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.
Academic Work Is Labor, Not Romance
The National Labor Relations Board delivered a win for labor this month, ruling that graduate students at private colleges are also employees. The action overturned a 2004 decision involving Brown University that until now allowed administrations to insist that collective bargaining would imperil students’ academic pursuits. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
You Can Be a Mother and Still Be a Successful Artist
“There’s an old-fashioned myth that having a baby is going to make it impossible to work,” says the painter Nikki Maloof. “I had just started gaining a lot of momentum in my career when I found out I was pregnant, so it was scary.” Maloof’s fear could apply to any number of career-oriented women across numerous industries. (Read more from Artsy.)
Does Advertising Make Sense for Artists?
Investing in one’s career is often touted as a sound business move, an act of confidence in the future, the cost of doing business, and taking responsibility. But which career investments actually give you a return? Many artists would agree that school tuition was a vital expense, as are art supplies, a studio rental, and the cost of creating a website. Other forms of investment are more debatable. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
University of Chicago Strikes Back against Campus Political Correctness
The anodyne welcome letter to incoming freshmen is a college staple, but the University of Chicago took a different approach: it sent new students a blunt statement opposing some hallmarks of campus political correctness, drawing thousands of impassioned responses, for and against, as it caromed around cyberspace. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Computers and Robots Don’t Count
Copyright has a weird relationship with computers. Sometimes it completely freaks out about them; sometimes it pretends it can’t see them at all. The contrast tells us a lot about copyright—and even more about how we relate to new technologies. (Read more from Slate.)
Finding Your Footing in a New Position
Particularly for faculty moving into administration—or for administrators moving into a new position—it really pays to “start smart” and to be as strategic as possible in your first days and weeks on the job. Although it is tempting to put the stresses of the search entirely behind you, I urge people to extend that heightened inner zeitgeist as long as possible. (Read more from Vitae.)
Judge Rules Famous Artist Did Not Paint Landscape at Center of Lawsuit
Stamping an emphatic end to a legal case that drew the attention of the international art world, a federal judge ruled that a painting owned by a Canadian man was not made by Peter Doig, whose works sell for millions of dollars. Doig “absolutely did not paint the disputed work,” said a US district judge, adding that the testimony and documents presented at a seven-day trial “conclusively” show the artist did not create the desert scene in 1976. (Read more from the Chicago Tribune.)
Five Ways Artists and Creatives Can Get Over Their Fear of Selling
If I had the opportunity to meet you face to face and ask you how selling makes you feel, what would your response be? Would you want to run and hide from the conversation, or would you gladly jump in? If you are like most artists I know, selling is not your forte. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — August 24, 2016
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.
Defining the Relationship
Dear Students: I think it’s time we had the talk. You know, the one couples who have been together for a while sometimes have to review boundaries and expectations? Your generation calls this DTR—short for “defining the relationship.” (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
What Went Wrong with the Macon Social Practice Residency?
It should have been a dream-come-true artist residency and a template for responsible and holistic community redevelopment. But an apparent breakdown in communication and trust between the Macon Arts Alliance and the artists Ed Woodham and Samantha Hill led to the artists being terminated from their contracts on July 26, just a few weeks into their three- and four-month residencies. (Read more from Burnaway.)
Art World Wants US to Better Protect Artifacts in Iraq and Syria
Art-market experts want the Defense Department to get more involved in preventing the destruction and looting of cultural artifacts in Iraq and Syria, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The recommendation was one of seven suggestions experts gave for ways the United States can better protect artifacts from the Islamic State and other groups. (Read more from the Hill.)
Understanding the Techniques of Pouring Acrylics
While the practice of pouring is certainly not a new way to apply paint, achieving consistent results can be frustrating and costly. Therefore it is vital to the process to conduct experiments to gain the knowledge of what are the most critical controlling factors that preside over paint pours. (Read more from Just Paint.)
In Search of the Lost Empire of the Maya
The ancient city of Holmul isn’t much to look at. To the casual observer it’s just a series of steep, forested hills in the middle of the jungle in northern Guatemala, near the Mexican border. The jungle here in the Petén Basin is thick and warm but drier than you might expect. And silent, except for the drum of cicadas and the occasional calls of howler monkeys. (Read more from National Geographic.)
Seven Vanishing Technologies Making a Comeback through Art
The scope of digital technology has made many things obsolete, from traditional black-and-white film to the homemade cassette mixtape, but it also prevents them from ever disappearing completely. Enthusiasts can congregate online, exploring, preserving, and sharing information on dwindling technologies before they’re ever truly lost. (Read more from Artsy.)
Are Replicas Changing the Way We Experience Art?
Digital reproductions do not have to be copies of existing works. Recently, the Next Rembrandt project saw scientists develop a brand-new painting, complete with an original subject and composition, digitally designed and printed to look like a lost work by Rembrandt. Aesthetically, when viewed on a computer or television screen, it convinces. (Read more from Zócalo Public Square.)
Toward an Art History for Video Games
If video games possess an “official history,” it is predicated primarily on the advancement of technology, the shifting of markets, and the consolidation of multinational corporations. This history prioritizes technological advancement, from computer gaming’s rise as the product of quiet dissent among the engineers of military computers at MIT to the clinking of arcade machines and the ensuing success of the home console. (Read more from Rhizome.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — August 17, 2016
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.
Rhizome Releases First Public Version of Webrecorder
Current digital preservation solutions involve complex, automated processes that were designed for a web made from relatively static documents. Webrecorder, in contrast, can capture social media and other dynamic content, such as embedded video and complex JavaScript, while putting the user at the center of the archiving process. (Read more from Rhizome.)
Does Technological Analysis Destroy the Romance of Art History?
In 2012, a linguist at the University of Southern California decoded a famous medieval manuscript written in a cypher with software designed to translate remote languages and based on algorithms that matched the frequency of unknown sounds with the frequency of word-use in known tongues. Meanwhile, archaeologists use satellite photographs to identify unexcavated sites in Egypt and map terrorist looting in the Middle East. (Read more from Aeon.)
Black Art Incubator Aims to Invert Art-World Normal
The Black Art Incubator takes blackness—and everything this racial identifier suggests about what a person might know or feel—as a given. The project isn’t so much oppositional as an inversion of what we tend to expect. “Most art institutions are rooted in whiteness, but it’s implied, it’s this normalized thing,” Kim Drew says. With the project, “we’re normalizing being rooted in blackness without beating people over the head with it.” (Read more from the Village Voice.)
What Artists Need to Understand about Privacy
Artists regularly include identifiable figures in their work, and calling this work “art” won’t always suffice to keep them out of trouble. Artists aren’t being hauled into court every time they include a recognizable face in their work, but the growing sense that one’s likeness is a “property” that can be commercially exploited has led many artists to feel less secure in pursuing realistic figurative images. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Five Strategies Successful Artists Follow to Thrive in Their Careers
As a gallery owner, I’ve been particularly interested in watching the careers of artists who have built strong sales of their work. These artists are able to generate sales that allow them to devote all of their time to their art. They have found ways to make a successful living while at the same time pursuing their passion. (Read more from Red Dot Blog.)
The Unintended Consequences of Seeking Tenure
Originally established to protect scholars from reprisals for advancing new ideas in research or in the classroom, tenure now comes under regular fire for limiting how quickly institutions can respond to change in the short term and for tying up budgets in the long term. Another important yet unintended consequence receives comparatively little discussion: the limitations that the pursuit of tenure has on the contributions assistant professors can make to their own institutions. (Read more from Vitae.)
Stress and Student Success
I’ve spent a decade teaching college success strategies to mostly nontraditional first-year students. At times I would stare at my course roster, hoping that an answer to the success riddle would appear. “Why do you leave?” I’d ask. “What else can I do to help you?” While I use countless teaching strategies in my courses, I’ve been tracking something more fundamental: a unified field theory for student success in higher education. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Hands Off My Smiley Face: Emoji Become Corporate Tools
Apple’s new emoji feature seems more likely to impede a different kind of skill: creating surprising, figurative, and subversive forms of individual expression from the digital ephemera that populate our devices. In a rush to harness the power of the web’s most evocative cultural units—emoji and their hyperactive cousins, GIFs—tech companies, corporate brands, and social-media stars could inadvertently risk flattening the creative world that’s sprung up around them. (Read more from the New York Times.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — August 10, 2016
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.
How to Finish Your Dissertation
I was hoping to finish my dissertation last year and graduate in May. But it’s August. I’m heading back for another year on campus and nowhere near finishing my degree. I would like to complete my dissertation and yet am not making any progress. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Back to Art School: Grayson Perry and Gillian Wearing Meet Tomorrow’s Stars
They are the art stars of tomorrow. So what are they making? Slime fountains and love machines, find the British artists Grayson Perry and Gillian Wearing as they visit two degree shows and recall their own student days. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Is Culture-Borrowing Always Theft?
American music has always been a great and complex exchange, but who gets to borrow from whom—and under what conditions—has become increasingly controversial. Paul Simon’s Graceland was criticized at the time of its release for his use of “African” musical elements. Now it’s almost impossible to imagine a white musician attempting a similar experiment. (Read more from Vulture.)
Artist Launches Reparations Website and “Social Experiment” on White Privilege
Launched as a modest project on Facebook in mid-July but soon expanded to a standalone website, Reparations is drawing international attention for its brazen approach to race relations, including condemnation from those who see it as a racially divisive tool that exploits white liberal guilt. But the Seattle-based artist Natasha Marin defended her project as a social experiment intended to explore “white privilege.” (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
The More Art Changes, the More Urgent a VARA Update Is
The 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act narrowly defines the type of art that is protected as paintings, sculptures, drawings, and graphic and photographic prints. But what if your medium is ceramics, graffiti, tattoos, tapestries, wildflowers, or something else that gives the feeling associated with art but doesn’t fit the legal definition? (Read more from the New York Observer.)
UK Copyright Extension on Designed Objects Is “Direct Assault” on 3D Printing
A recent extension of UK copyright for industrially manufactured artistic works represents “a direct assault on the 3D printing revolution,” says Rick Falkvinge. Last month the government extended copyright for designs from 25 years to the life of the designer plus 70 years. In practice, this is likely to mean a copyright term of over 100 years for furniture and other designed objects. (Read more from Ars Technica.)
Why Is Buying Art as an Investment Frowned Upon?
Using art as a means to make money or transfer assets isn’t new, but “investment” is almost a dirty word when used in the context of the art world. Why is it so frowned upon? Everybody working in the art market has to make a living, after all. (Read more from Artnet News.)
The Academic Advantages of Twitter
My mentor, who signed up for a Twitter account but admitted that he doesn’t really get it, may be near a tipping point: either ready to abandon the platform or just on the verge of getting it. Without wanting to sound like a hyped-up social-media evangelist, let me see if I can help. What can Twitter be for academics? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — August 03, 2016
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 Prized Stettheimer Painting, Sold under the Radar by a University
When Fisk University, the historically black school in Nashville, tried to sell two paintings several years ago from its storied Alfred Stieglitz art collection, a firestorm erupted. A drawn-out legal challenge ended in a compromise that allowed the school to share its collection with Crystal Bridges. What was not revealed at the time—and has only recently come to light—is that before the agreement was completed, the university’s president quietly sold two other paintings owned by Fisk. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Artiquette: Ten Mistakes Not to Make While Promoting Your Art
How do you make it in the art world? It’s a magical formula that involves, talent, drive, grit, and the ability to promote oneself. Unfortunately, talking up your own artwork, projects, and ideas can be a delicate balancing act. To help you walk that line, Artnet News has rounded up a list of mistakes to avoid in self-promotion. (Read more from Artnet News.)
Sharon Louden: Consultants, Careers, and Community
I frequently get pitches from art consultants who offer help securing exhibitions, grants, and publicity. I often wonder if their services are helpful, or whether the consultants are taking advantage of vulnerable underrecognized artists, so I contacted my friend and colleague Sharon Louden, a successful artist who gives professional-development webinars and lectures about sustaining a creative life. (Read more from Two Coats of Paint.)
Talking Art and Tech in Bay Area Living Rooms
The all-purpose status of the living room made it the ideal site for a series of events initiated two years ago by the artists Liat Berdugo and Elia Vargas. The duo used the living rooms of Bay Area artists and cultural producers to host monthly public conversations—on new media, digital art, creative works in progress, and artistic practices—that were attended by friends and strangers. (Read more from Rhizome.)
The Syllabus as a Contract
Whatever the professor’s intention, when students see a due date on the syllabus, they often assume that the assignment is due via online submission by midnight on that date. Technology has forced professors to be extremely specific on these details or else face inevitable challenges from students. It’s precisely when such challenges arise that professors and students look to the syllabus as a contract. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Are Acrylics as Durable as Oils?
If oil paint had to sell itself to the marketplace as a new medium, it would have a difficult time—especially because its list of problems would include yellowing, cracking, wrinkling, flaking, embrittlement, hydrolysis, fatty-acid crystallization, and protuberances and delamination caused by metallic soaps. This is not to say acrylics do not have their own challenges as well! (Read more from Just Paint.)
Why Books Are the Perfect Way to Spread Art to the Masses
Art is expensive, often ludicrously so. For many art lovers, books are the most viable means of supporting artists and beginning an art collection of their own. Carolyn Schoerner is the mind behind Books For All Press, a nonprofit publisher working with artists living with mental illness and developmental disabilities. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
For Scholarly Communications, Double-Dipping Is Double the Fun
Since commerce is inherently evil—and commerce connected to the academy even more so—it must be an exceedingly dastardly deed for a publisher to engage in double-dipping, in which the same content finds one audience in institutions and another among the authors who create it, sometimes in violation of an author’s contract. So how does double-dipping work? (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)
A Radical Change: An Interview with Irving Sandler
posted by Christopher Howard — July 29, 2016
The art critic and historian Irving Sandler was a regular contributor to ARTnews and other magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. He is best known for The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism (London: Pall Mall, 1970) and its follow-up, The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties (New York: Harper and Row, 1978). Born in New York in 1925, Sandler turned 91 years old on July 22.
He and his wife, Lucy Freedman Sandler, a historian of medieval art and an accomplished author in her own right, are CAA life members. Both scholars have a long involvement with CAA spanning several decades: Lucy served as president of the Board of Directors from 1981 to 1984 and organized the 1978 Annual Conference with her husband. Both have spoken many times at the conference; they have organized and moderated numerous panels and sessions as well. In addition, Irving was part of a group of CAA members who introduced a new format to Art Journal, back in 1979.
Sandler’s second book of memoirs, Swept Up by Art (Brooklyn: Rail Editions, 2015), follows his first, A Sweeper-Up after Artists (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003). Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, visited Sandler in May 2016 at his New York apartment to talk about his recent book and about his involvement with CAA over the years.
CAA: Let’s start with Art Journal. In the late 1970s you and a handful of others—Anne Coffin Hansen, Ellen Lanyon, George Sadek—got together to reinvent the publication.
Irving Sandler: That is pretty much it. We took the journal, which had become pretty moribund—it was sort of run by an old guard—and we turned it into something much more interesting by doing thematic issues, and also getting interesting editors to do it. It’s still working more or less that way.
Yes, it is. Editors have three-year terms—but they get a longer time span to take it over. You even produced one of those early issues, in Winter 1980, yourself.
Yes, I did. This issue was, to my knowledge, was the first issue on modernism and postmodernism, indicating the change that had been taking place in art, and in the art world as well. That was a very good issue.
You and your wife first joined CAA in 1954. How has the teaching of art and art history changed over the last sixty years?
Well, one of the things—the primary thing I believe—that’s changed would be the introduction of contemporary art into curricula. That simply wasn’t done. In places like the Institute of Fine Arts, you couldn’t write a dissertation on an artist who wasn’t dead for a century. And suddenly, not only do you have contemporary art, but the primary emphasis, in our art-history programs now, is on the contemporary. That’s a radical change to the entire approach to art.
A Radical Change: An Interview with Irving Sandler
posted by Christopher Howard — July 28, 2016
The art critic and historian Irving Sandler was a regular contributor to ARTnews and other magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. He is best known for The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism (London: Pall Mall, 1970) and its follow-up, The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties (New York: Harper and Row, 1978). Born in New York in 1925, Sandler turned 91 years old on July 22.
He and his wife, Lucy Freedman Sandler, a historian of medieval art and an accomplished author in her own right, are CAA life members. Both scholars have a long involvement with CAA spanning several decades: Lucy served as president of the Board of Directors from 1981 to 1984 and organized the 1978 Annual Conference with her husband. Both have spoken many times at the conference; they have organized and moderated numerous panels and sessions as well. In addition, Irving was part of a group of CAA members who introduced a new format to Art Journal, back in 1979.
Sandler’s second book of memoirs, Swept Up by Art (Brooklyn: Rail Editions, 2015), follows his first, A Sweeper-Up after Artists (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003). CAA visited Sandler in May 2016 at his New York apartment to talk about his recent book and about his involvement with CAA over the years.
CAA: Let’s start with Art Journal. In the late 1970s you and a handful of others—Anne Coffin Hansen, Ellen Lanyon, George Sadek—got together to reinvent the publication.
Irving Sandler: That is pretty much it. We took the journal, which had become pretty moribund—it was sort of run by an old guard—and we turned it into something much more interesting by doing thematic issues, and also getting interesting editors to do it. It’s still working more or less that way.
Yes, it is. Editors have three-year terms—but they get a longer time span to take it over. You even produced one of those early issues, in Winter 1980, yourself.
Yes, I did. This issue was, to my knowledge, was the first issue on modernism and postmodernism, indicating the change that had been taking place in art, and in the art world as well. That was a very good issue.
You and your wife first joined CAA in 1954. How has the teaching of art and art history changed over the last sixty years?
Well, one of the things—the primary thing I believe—that’s changed would be the introduction of contemporary art into curricula. That simply wasn’t done. In places like the Institute of Fine Arts, you couldn’t write a dissertation on an artist who wasn’t dead for a century. And suddenly, not only do you have contemporary art, but the primary emphasis, in our art-history programs now, is on the contemporary. That’s a radical change to the entire approach to art.