CAA News Today
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — April 09, 2009
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, and architects. Of special note is Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and June Hargrove’s obituary for CAA on the Swiss art historian Hans A. Lüthy.
- Robert Delford Brown, an artist who helped create Happenings in the early 1960s, was found dead in Wilmington, North Carolina, on March 24, 2009. He was 78
- Hanne Darboven, a German artist who was a major figure in Conceptual art, died on March 9, 2009, near Hamburg. She was 67
- Johnny Donnels, a New Orleans photographer, died on March 19, 2009, at the age of 84
- Lorenz Eitner, a professor who rebuilt the Stanford University Art Department and directed the school’s museum, died on March 11, 2009. He was 89
- Sverre Fehn, a Norwegian architect who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, died on February 23, 2009, at age 84
- Mary Hambleton, an artist, teacher, and Guggenheim fellow, died on January 9, 2009. She was 56
- Helen Levitt, an American photographer whose first solo exhibition was at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, died on March 29, 2009, in New York. She was 95
- Hans A. Lüthy, a Swiss art historian, died on March 8, 2009
- Stephen M. Panella, an artist based in Aurora, Illinois, died on November 29, 2008, at the age of 34
- Susan Peterson, a ceramic artist, writer, and professor, died on March 26, 2009, in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was 83
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Vigils for Anniversary of Iraq Museum Looting
posted by Christopher Howard — April 08, 2009
April 10–12, 2009, is the sixth anniversary of the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad and the subsequent pillaging of archeological sites across Iraq. In the years since 2003, Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) has held, and has encouraged others to hold, global candlelight vigils in commemoration of the tragic loss suffered by the ransacking of the museum and the looting of artworks and artifacts there—many of which are still missing despite the recent reopening of seven museum galleries.
In New York, a gathering is taking place on April 11, 6:00–7:30 PM, in Washington Square Park. For those living in or near New York, please join the vigil. Donny George, former director of the Iraq Museum, is scheduled to speak.
Elsewhere in the United States, lectures, discussions, and SAFE-related vigils are being held at institutions in Fairbanks, Alaska; St. Paul, Minnesota; Eugene, Oregon; Ceres, California; and Amherst, Massachusetts. Please see the full list of vigil times and locations. You may also host a vigil in your own area.
To show additional support, please light a virtual candle on the SAFE website. By completing a simple form, your name and location will be displayed on your personal candle page and will also be listed on the main virtual-candle page.
For a review of the tragic events of 2003, read an interview with Donny George, conducted by Zainab Bahrani, in the September 2007 CAA News, as well as his detailed talk prepared for the 2008 Annual Conference in the May 2008 issue.
SAFE is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving cultural heritage worldwide. Its mission is to raise public awareness about the irreversible damage that results from looting, smuggling, and trading illicit antiquities. SAFE promotes respect for the laws and treaties that enable nations to protect their cultural property and preserve humanity’s most precious nonrenewable resource: the intact evidence of our undiscovered past. While the impetus to found SAFE was the ransacking of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in April 2003, its efforts are global. SAFE has no political affiliations.
VIGILS FOR ANNIVERSARY OF IRAQ MUSEUM LOOTING
posted by Christopher Howard — April 08, 2009
April 10–12, 2009, is the sixth anniversary of the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad and the subsequent pillaging of archeological sites across Iraq. In the years since 2003, Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) has held, and has encouraged others to hold, global candlelight vigils in commemoration of the tragic loss suffered by the ransacking of the museum and the looting of artworks and artifacts there—many of which are still missing despite the recent reopening of seven museum galleries.
In New York, a gathering is taking place on April 11, 6:00–7:30 PM, in Washington Square Park. For those living in or near New York, please join the vigil. Donny George, former director of the Iraq Museum, is scheduled to speak.
Elsewhere in the United States, lectures, discussions, and SAFE-related vigils are being held at institutions in Fairbanks, Alaska; St. Paul, Minnesota; Eugene, Oregon; Ceres, California; and Amherst, Massachusetts. Please see the full listof vigil times and locations. You may also host a vigil in your own area.
To show additional support, please light a virtual candle on the SAFE website. By completing a simple form, your name and location will be displayed on your personal candle page and will also be listed on the main virtual-candle page.
For a review of the tragic events of 2003, read an interview with Donny George, conducted by Zainab Bahrani, in the September 2007 CAA News, as well as his detailed talk prepared for the 2008 Annual Conference in the May 2008 issue.
SAFE is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving cultural heritage worldwide. Its mission is to raise public awareness about the irreversible damage that results from looting, smuggling, and trading illicit antiquities. SAFE promotes respect for the laws and treaties that enable nations to protect their cultural property and preserve humanity’s most precious nonrenewable resource: the intact evidence of our undiscovered past. While the impetus to found SAFE was the ransacking of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in April 2003, its efforts are global. SAFE has no political affiliations.
Google Book Settlement Opt-Out Deadline Approaching
posted by Christopher Howard — April 07, 2009
The deadline for authors and publishers to opt out of a recent class-action settlement regarding the scanning and electronic distributing of in-copyright books by Google is May 5, 2009.
Last October, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google announced a settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the United States from the collections of a number of major US libraries participating in Google Book Search.
For full details on the settlement and to opt out, please visit www.googlebooksettlement.
Schools Nationwide Reducing PhD Admissions
posted by Christopher Howard — March 31, 2009
Top research schools nationwide—including Emory University, Columbia University, Brown University, and the University of South Carolina—are reducing admissions to their PhD programs. Because of the recession, reports Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed, “some universities’ doctoral classes will be taking a significant hit, with potential ramifications down the road for the academic job market, the availability of teaching assistants, and the education of new professors.”
Reining in stipends and fellowships is one leading factor for limiting admissions, as is the need to cut program budgets. Some believe things will return to normal when the economy picks up, but the recent breadth of graduates compared with a shrinking labor market and dearth of teaching jobs may see admission reductions stay.
In related news, Fay Hansen of Workforce Management analyzes recent surveys by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute and CollegeGrad.com about hiring statistics and practices for freshly minted undergraduates, which “reflect a long-term trend toward producing more college graduates than labor markets can absorb.”
The article—which describes the current situation where “1.5 million undergraduates [who] will receive their bachelor’s degrees this year . . . will collide with 1.85 million workers with bachelor’s degrees or higher who are currently unemployed”—is far from encouraging. Some findings include:
- Some companies are retreating from hiring experienced candidates in favor of new college graduates, “primarily because of costs”
- The disparity between undergraduate majors and available jobs has been exacerbated by the recession. For example, 83,297 students graduated with visual and performing art degrees, and 88,134 in psychology, but only 67,045 and 47,480 students received degrees in engineering and computer and information sciences, respectively. The mismatch continues at the graduate level, with humanities master’s degrees earned outnumbering those in sciences
- Recruiters are pressuring for direct access to professors about the best students, bypassing schools’ own career-services programs
Most troubling for art and art history is that 6 percent of those employers surveyed by CollegeGrad.com are seeking liberal arts and humanities graduates, compared to 36 percent for engineering and 18 percent for computer science.
March 2009 Issue of The Art Bulletin Published
posted by Christopher Howard — March 20, 2009
The March 2009 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, has been published and was mailed to CAA members earlier this month.
Special to this issue is the publication of Picasso’s Closet, a play by the Chilean American writer and Duke University professor Ariel Dorfman, which examines Pablo Picasso’s thorny politics and raises questions about the role of an artist during wartime. The art historians Pepe Karmel and Patricia Leighton and the theorist Mieke Bal respond.
Two essays examine on art and culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France. Judy Sund reads Antoine Watteau’s Les charmes de la vie as a commentary on the ways that nature was domesticated and aestheticized for wealthy Parisians, with the artist standing as mediator between the realms of culture and nature. Meanwhile, Jennifer Olmsted considers how Eugène Delacroix’s The Sultan of Morocco and His Entourage was at odds with the triumphalist paintings of French domination over North Africa that were also on view at the Salon of 1845 in Paris.
This issue of The Art Bulletin also contains four book reviews on Roman visuality, the Buddhist afterlife in art, the Psalter of Saint Louis, and African architecture. Please read the full table of contents for more details.
Online Database Links Three Major Art Research Libraries
posted by Christopher Howard — March 19, 2009
Whether you’re researching ancient Egyptian art, provenance in Renaissance Italy, modern Latin American art, or contemporary artist’s books, three major New York–based institutions—the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick Collection, and the Brooklyn Museum—have joined forces to help you. The libraries and archives of these three museums recently launched Arcade, an online database that allows researchers worldwide to search their combined resources through a single interface.
Searches may be limited not only by library location—the MoMA library, for example, has two research sites in the city—but also by format specifications, including auction catalogues, artist’s books, primary-source and archival materials, and digital resources. For older users of these collections, Arcade provides specific searching using Dadabase (MoMA’s catalogue), FRESCO (Frick Research Catalog Online), and Brookmuse (the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives catalogue).
Other features include relevancy ranking of results, a searchable table-of-contents in thousands of records, book-jacket images, icons that identify categories of results, and links to Google Books files. RSS feeds provide up-to-date headlines of news in the art world. Featured lists present the collections in new ways. Links to recent acquisitions, finding aids, bibliographies, new digital collections, and library blogs are also offered in Arcade.
US Court Appeal May Overturn Ban on Foreign Scholar
posted by Christopher Howard — March 18, 2009
On Tuesday, March 23, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will reconsider the case of a Swiss professor and Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, who was banned from entering the country in 2004, reports John Schwartz of the New York Times. Based on a provision for ideological exclusion in the USA Patriot Act, Ramadan was declined a visa by the US government to travel to America and take a position at the University of Notre Dame.
The American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors, and PEN American Center all support the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging a 2007 ruling that upheld the government’s decision. Arguing for Americans’ First Amendment rights to hear Ramadan, this coalition is also calling on the new presidential administration to end ideological exclusion.
The Patriot Act allows the US to deny a visa to anyone whom it believes has endorsed or espoused terrorist activity or persuaded others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity. The ACLU, however, claims the government used the provision more broadly to deny entry to scholars, writers, and activists whose political views it disfavored. After the ACLU initially filed suit, Schwartz reports, the government asserted that Ramadan made contributions from 1998 to 2002 to a charity in Switzerland, called the Association de Secours Palestinien, which the Treasury Department had deemed a Hamas-affiliated terrorist organization.
New York Legislator Seeks to Curb Museum Sales
posted by Christopher Howard — March 18, 2009
A bill drafted by Richard L. Brodsky, an assemblyman in the New York State Legislature, aims to prevent museums from paying for general operating expenses with the sales of artworks. Brodsky collaborated with the New York State Board of Regents and the Museum Association of New York in response, in part, to a recent deaccession by the National Academy Museum and the planned sale of works from the upstate historic site Fort Ticonderoga, as well as the decision by Brandeis University to close the Rose Art Museum in Massachusetts.
Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times reports that the board of regents already has regulations on the sale of art in place, but that these rules were too general. The proposed bill would echo standards by the American Association of Museums and Association of Art Museum Directors, which state that sales of works may be used only to acquire more works.
US COURT APPEAL MAY OVERTURN BAN ON FOREIGN SCHOLAR
posted by Christopher Howard — March 18, 2009
On Tuesday, March 23, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will reconsider the case of a Swiss professor and Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, who was banned from entering the country in 2004, reports John Schwartz of theNew York Times. Based on a provision for ideological exclusion in the USA Patriot Act, Ramadan was declined a visa by the US government to travel to America and take a position at the University of Notre Dame.
The American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors, and PEN American Center all support the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging a 2007 ruling that upheld the government’s decision. Arguing for Americans’ First Amendment rights to hear Ramadan, this coalition is also calling on the new presidential administration to end ideological exclusion.
The Patriot Act allows the US to deny a visa to anyone whom it believes has endorsed or espoused terrorist activity or persuaded others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity. The ACLU, however, claims the government used the provision more broadly to deny entry to scholars, writers, and activists whose political views it disfavored. After the ACLU initially filed suit, Schwartz reports, the government asserted that Ramadan made contributions from 1998 to 2002 to a charity in Switzerland, called the Association de Secours Palestinien, which theTreasury Department had deemed a Hamas-affiliated terrorist organization.