CAA News Today
Free Wi-Fi at the Conference
posted by Christopher Howard — January 29, 2013
For the first time, CAA will offer free wireless internet at the Hilton New York to all 2013 Annual Conference attendees from Tuesday, February 12, to Sunday, February 17. Service will be available in all session rooms, the Interview Hall, the Book and Trade Fair, and Career Services, including the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge.
Officially, coverage will encompass the entire Concourse Level, Second Floor, Third Floor, and the Americas Halls 1 and 2. The Hilton’s lobby, restaurants, and bar, however, may not be covered. To connect, use your laptop or mobile device to find the wireless network called CAA WiFi and enter the password “arts2013” (without quotes) into the WPA2 encryption key. The password is case sensitive and must be in lowercase.
Connecting to the internet at the conference is essential, whether you are searching for a job, contacting friends and colleagues in New York, or communicating with your school or institution back home. The following information below may be subject to change but should be reliable.
Hilton New York
The Hilton New York offers two tiers of wireless internet service in rooms to its guests and thus has two prices: $14.99 and $18.99 per twenty-four hours. The hotel, though, was not able to confirm the exact download speed for each. For full details in advance, please contact the Hilton, not CAA. While onsite, ask a hotel representative from the concierge or check-in desk for more information.
Sheraton New York
The Sheraton New York is generously offering free high-speed internet access in rooms to all guests who are attending the conference (a value of $14.95 per day). When you check in, tell the hotel representative that you are here for CAA and ask for the log-in information. The Sheraton also provides free Wi-Fi inside the hotel lobby to anyone—you need not be a guest. To gain access, simply request the password from the concierge or check-in desk, as you cannot automatically connect just by opening a browser. For more information in advance, please contact the Sheraton, not CAA. While onsite, ask a hotel representative for more information.
Park Central Hotel
The Park Central Hotel, the conference hotel for students, charges $14.10 for twenty-four-hour access to its wireless connection, which can be used by guests throughout the building. For full details in advance, please contact the Park Central, not CAA. While onsite, ask a hotel representative at the concierge or check-in desk for more information. A Starbucks with free Wi-Fi is located next door to the Park Central, and sometimes its internet bleeds into the hotel lobby.
Candidate Center
As part of the conference’s Career Services, the Candidate Center—located in Concourse A, Concourse Level, Hilton New York—houses a bank of computers that CAA members may use only for the Online Career Center. No other internet use is allowed on these computers. Hours are Wednesday, February 13–Friday, February 15, 9:00 AM–7:00 PM. You must have a CAA membership card to enter the Candidate Center.
Starbucks
Bottoms up, coffee drinkers! A smallish Starbucks—located directly across the street from the Hilton, at the northeast corner of Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) and West Fifty-Third Street—offers free wireless internet to its guests. No special password is needed—just connect when you open a browser. This location is usually open from 6:00 AM to 9:00 PM during the week, and from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM on Saturday and Sunday, according to the company.
A handful of other Starbucks are within a few blocks of the conference. Use OpenWiFiSpots (below) or download the free Starbucks smart-phone app for Apple or Android devices for the locations.
Other Area Hot Spots
OpenWiFiSpots, which calls itself a comprehensive directory of free wireless hot spots, lists sixty-four free sources near the Hilton in midtown Manhattan, including hotels, cafés, and restaurants. This list, however, may not be completely up to date.
Directory for Diversity Practices
posted by CAA — January 24, 2013
CAA’s Committee on Diversity Practices would like to introduce the Directory for Diversity Practices and to invite CAA members to submit syllabi and recommend additional material for it. The Directory for Diversity Practices has been developed to provide a range of updated documents, texts, and links related to ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, disability, and aging for use in the classroom. It is accessible via the CAA website under the tab marked Resources.
The directory is divided into five user-friendly sections:
- Getting Started
- Classroom and Curricula
- Diversity in Academe
- Images and Documents of Art and Culture
- Syllabi
The Committee on Diversity Practices is dedicated to building a useful and evolving resource for teaching the visual arts and art history. CAA encourages you to visit the site and to let the committee know how it can add to the directory in order for it to be more useful. The committee regards this directory as a work in process and seeks comments and submissions (emails below) from the CAA community at large.
Submissions Guide
Suggestions for any of the five areas are welcome and will be added as appropriate. Material included in its entirety must be in the public domain, contributed by the authors or copyright owners who have given permission to publish it on the CAA website, and/or otherwise publicly available. Contributions should be relevant, applicable, and up to date. Older material will be selected on its continuing relevance.
The committee welcomes the submission of syllabi addressing issues and topics related to diversity and art. It hopes to significantly expand this section, which promises to be a valuable resource for anyone seeking current models for inclusive curricula. Kindly send your syllabus as a Word file. Please remove any references to the specific details of the class (dates, name of institution, office hours and location, etc.). Professors retain the copyright for their work.
Please visit the directory and send your comments and contributions to both Zoya Kocur, Middlesex University, and Yasmin Ramirez, Hunter College, City University of New York.
New Podcasts for Artists on Budgeting, Administrating, Fundraising, and Mentorship
posted by Michael Fahlund — January 17, 2013
CAA has added four new podcasts to its growing series of audio recordings devoted to professional-development topics for artists.
In “Artistic Budgeting,” Elaine Grogan Luttrull, a certified public accountant and the founding owner of Minerva Financial Arts, outlines five basics steps to help individual artists with managing their finances. She also provides a PDF of an example budget for reference as you listen to the podcast.
“The Artist as Administrator,” presented by Thomas Berding, associate professor of studio art at Michigan State University, explores various issues artists may consider when pondering and operating within administrative roles, including how administrative assignments can both borrow from and complement one’s studio activity.
Edwin Torres, associate director for the Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Opportunities Fund, talks about “Innovations in Fundraising,” sharing fresh models that artists have developed to create new works.
Finally, the artist and professor Amy Broderick presents “The Importance of Mentorship and Advocacy,” a podcast on how mentoring and advocacy can enhance the career of professionals in the visual arts.
Evolving from the National Professional-Development Workshops and now produced in tandem with them, the podcast series is ongoing, with new audio added on a regular basis. While the initial focus is on artists, CAA hopes to develop podcasts for art historians, curators, nonprofit art professionals, and other constituencies in the future.
THATCamp CAA: An Unconference on Digital Art History
posted by Christopher Howard — October 17, 2012
Registration for CAA’s THATCamp has now closed.
CAA invites interested participants to attend its first Humanities and Technology Camp (THATCamp) “unconference” on digital art history, taking place on the two days immediately preceding the Annual Conference: Monday, February 11, NOON–5:00 PM, and Tuesday, February 12, 9:00 AM–3:00 PM. The event will take place at Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York, located at 35 West 67th Street in Manhattan.
CAA’s THATCamp is free and open to graduate students and scholars at all career stages. The only requirements for attendance are an active interest in how digital technology is affecting the discipline of art history and the humanities in general and a willingness to share your questions and ideas. Space is limited! Register today to secure your place. Graduate students may apply for a limited number of fellowships funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to lessen the cost of travel expenses to New York.
The purpose of the CAA unconference is manifold: to increase awareness of existing digital projects in art history, architectural history, and archeology; to foster a community of scholars invested in digital art history; to identify digital tools that may be used to improve future CAA conferences; to facilitate technology workshops and training sessions; and to provide support for art-history professionals pursuing nontraditional career paths.
“Unconference” is a term that may be new to people in art and academia but has, in fact, been around since the late 1990s. It is used to describe a participant-driven meeting that in many respects is the opposite of a traditional academic conference. Formal presentations or a set program of speakers are not determined beforehand. Unconferences generate productive encounters among diverse groups of people, an experience that can be compared to being a member of an improvisational acting troupe.
THATCamp itself, however, is a recent invention, founded in 2008 at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as a meeting for technology and humanities professionals—including professors, librarians, and museum curators—to share ideas and collaborate on projects. The camps have since sprung up in locations across the United States and internationally.
Revised Directory of Affiliated Societies
posted by Lauren Stark — July 17, 2012
The Directory of Affiliated Societies, a comprehensive list of all seventy-four groups that have joined CAA as affiliate members, has just been updated. Please visit the directory to view a single webpage that includes the following information for each group: name, date of founding, size of membership, and annual dues; a brief statement on the society’s nature or purpose; and the names of officers and/or contacts for you to get more details about the groups or to join them. In addition, CAA links directly to each affiliated society’s homepage.
CAA Joins JSTOR Register & Read Program
posted by Christopher Howard — July 02, 2012
CAA has joined JSTOR’s new Register & Read program, which offers free, read-online access to a wide-range of academic journals to independent scholars and researchers. The service is designed to make scholarship available to those not affiliated with a subscribing institution by allowing them to register for a MyJSTOR account.
CAA is pleased to contribute the full back run of The Art Bulletin and Art Journal, through 2008, to an expanding, eclectic list that includes BOMB Magazine, Film Quarterly, Modern Law Review, and American Journal of Sociology. All articles from The Art Bulletin and Art Journal during this time will be available for individuals to read and, in some instances, to download and purchase as a PDF file.
Since JSTOR launched Register & Read in January 2012, approximately forty publishers have contributed material from seventy-seven journals to the beta site. The user-friendly program mimics the experience of a library by allowing visitors to store up to three articles on a virtual shelf for two weeks before exchanging items. Feedback is key to improving the borrowing service that Register & Read provides. JSTOR plans to perfect the functionality of the program and enlarge its scope to meet the unique research needs of the scholarly community.
Intellectual Property and the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — June 25, 2012
The Committee on Intellectual Property (CIP) is pleased to announce the posting of the revised and expanded Intellectual Property and the Arts pages on CAA’s website. CIP monitors and interprets copyright legislation for the benefit of CAA’s various constituencies. In so doing, it seeks to offer educational programs and opportunities for discussion and debate in response to copyright legislation affecting educators, scholars, museum professionals, and artists.
The section is divided into the following eight categories: US Copyright: Fundamentals & Documents; Visual Art/Visual Artists; Publishing in the Visual Arts; Libraries, Archives, and Museums; Image Sources and Rights Clearance Agencies; Fair Use Guidelines, Practices, and Policies; Copyright Outside the United States; and Legal Assistance.
Education is essential for informed communication. The committee hopes that the resources presented in the updated pages will answer your questions about intellectual property and inform your discussions and debates.
New CAA Standards and Guidelines on the Fair Use of Images
posted by Christopher Howard — April 17, 2012
In accordance with CAA’s practice to regularly update its Standards and Guidelines in the fields of art and art history, the Board of Directors adopted two documents at its meeting on February 26, 2012, that address fair use of visual resources in teaching, scholarship, and libraries.
Christine Sundt, editor of the journal Visual Resources and cochair of CAA’s Committee on Intellectual Property, presented the Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study, authored and published by the Visual Resources Association (VRA) in 2011, and the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, produced by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in 2012.
Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study
Visual Resources Association: Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study is a helpful tool for educators and scholars who rely on images for teaching, research, publishing, and other academic work. The statement describes the six uses of images that fall within the doctrine of fair use according to United States copyright law: the use of images for the purpose of teaching; the preservation and transferring of images from one format to another; the creation of online image resources for students; the use of images by students in the context of the classroom; the sharing of images among cultural or educational institutions; and the inclusion of images in theses and dissertations.
The statement is intended to instill confidence in the scholarly community by clarifying the many educational and academic contexts to which fair use can be applied. The statement, reviewed by a committee of legal experts and copyright scholars who have determined the accuracy of each example of fair use, is by no means exhaustive on the subject of fair use, and it only addresses copyright laws within the United States.
Fair Use of Images for Academic and Research Libraries
The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (2012) describes eight examples of common library practices that are affected by the rules of copyright and fair use. Because the prevalence of digital technologies in higher education has changed the way in which students and faculty use libraries and offer access to academic coursework, the code urges institutions to clarify and update research database systems and to transfer archive material deemed as “at risk items” into a digital format. The code also discusses the need to reproduce library material for disabled students and faculty without bias.
Like the VRA statement, the ARL code does not claim to cover the topic of fair use exhaustively. Rather, its objective is to expand understanding and engagement with copyright laws for librarians and library users. The code was created through the process of interviewing sixty-five librarians across the United States who represented a wide spectrum of academic and research libraries.
CAA Publishes an Updated Directory of Affiliated Societies
posted by Lauren Stark — July 20, 2011
The Directory of Affiliated Societies, a comprehensive list of information for all seventy-four groups that have joined CAA as affiliate members, has just been updated. Please visit the directory to view a single webpage that includes the following information for each group: name, date of founding, size of membership, and annual dues; a brief statement on the society’s nature or purpose; and the names and contact information for you to get more information or to join. In addition, CAA links directly to each affiliated society’s homepage.
Joining the list this year are four organizations whose applications the CAA Board of Directors approved at its February 2011 meeting: Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence (ALMSD); the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA); the Curator’s Network at Independent Curators International; and the National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (NAAHBCU).
CAA Launches Podcast Series on Topics in Professional Development
posted by Michael Fahlund — January 26, 2011
Today, CAA introduces a series of podcasts devoted to professional-development topics for artists. Evolving from the National Professional-Development Workshops for Artists and now produced in tandem with them, the series will continue throughout the year, with new audio to be added on a regular basis. While the initial focus is on artists, CAA hopes to develop podcasts for art historians, curators, nonprofit art professionals, and other constituencies in the future.
To download an MP3 file, please visit the Podcasts section and right click or control click on the podcast icon or title. To stream the audio, click the podcast icon or title; the audio will open in a new tab or window.
CAA is committed to assisting its members through a variety of means and at various stages in their careers. The podcasts join CAA’s other Career Services programs, which include workshops and mentoring sessions for artists and scholars at the Annual Conference, fellowships for graduate students, professional Standards and Guidelines, and the Online Career Center.