CAA News Today
Panel Discusses CAA Guidelines for Authentications and Attributions
posted by Christopher Howard — January 04, 2010
The Appraisers Association of America and CAA cordially invite you to a presentation of “Authenticating Art: Current Problems and Proposed Solutions,” which will include a discussion of CAA’s recently published guidelines on Authentication and Attributions. The panel will be held at the Levin Institute in New York (116 East 55th Street in Manhattan) on Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 6:00–9:00 PM; it can also be seen via live webcast.
When it comes to art, “Is it real?” is a question that interests everyone from casual museum-goers to arts professionals. Answering the question can involve historical research, connoisseurship, sophisticated scientific analysis, and more. The question, however, is not only an academic or philosophical one. (Is a Warhol a “Warhol” if the artist himself never touched it?) In an art market where millions—and sometimes tens of millions—can hang in the balance, who is willing to risk being wrong in offering an opinion about authenticity? For those who do offer opinions and even warranties, what are they risking, and what—if anything—should they be risking? What of those who create fakes?
Please join our expert panel of appraisers, attorneys, conservators, and scientists in a frank and lively discussion of these issues. Speakers include: John Cahill of Lynn & Cahill; Jane C. H. Jacob of the Appraisers Association of America and Jacob Fine Art; James S. Martin of Orion Analytical; and Jane Levine of Sotheby’s. Michele Marincola of New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts is the moderator.
This program may interest appraisers, artists, attorneys, dealers, auction specialists, collectors, conservators, curators, financial advisors, insurers, scholars, and others in, or interested in, the art world.
Seating is limited; advance registration is required for both formats. Kindly RSVP to 212-889-5404, ext. 11. Cost is $25 per person for live attendance or streaming video. To complete the process, download and submit the registration form. Deadline: January 13, 2010.
New CAA Standards and Guidelines
posted by Mary-Ann Milford-Lutzker — December 07, 2009
Mary-Ann Milford-Lutzker is CAA’s vice president for committees. She is also professor of Asian art history, Carver Chair in East Asian Studies, and provost and dean of the faculty at Mills College in Oakland, California.
In line with CAA’s practice to update $500 payday loans online same day regularly its Standards and Guidelines for professional practices in the fields of art and art history, the Board of Directors approved three revised guidelines for art historians and a new one for academic art administrators at its meeting on October 25, 2009. This work was carried out by four task forces, established by CAA’s president Paul B. Jaskot and executive director Linda Downs, that were overseen by the Professional Practices Committee.
Professional Practices for Art Historians
Authentications and Attributions (2009): The task force appointed by President Jaskot established the need for a stand-alone and separate document for art historians regarding authentications and attributions of works of art. It was determined that no other issue is more urgent for, and its consequences so specific to, the welfare of the profession than dealing with inauthenticity and false attributions. Not only is the integrity of artists and collections at stake, but the economic well-being of art historians who engage in trying to separate the false from the true is also endangered.
Information about authentications and attributions formerly appeared in A Code of Ethics for Art Historians and Guidelines for the Professional Practice of Art History.
Guidelines for Curatorial-Studies Programs (2009): A growing number of colleges and universities across the country have instituted programs in curatorial studies. The revisions for the document, first published in 2004, are intended to help art departments and administrators organizing curricula and to aid faculty advisors and students determining which curatorial-studies programs are appropriate for an individual’s specific interests, abilities, and career goals.
Standards for Retention and Tenure of Art Historians (2009): This guideline, last revised in 2005, has been amended to embrace community and two-year colleges. Inclusion of community colleges into these standards will make this document relevant for art-history faculty who attempt to achieve the highest stands of professional practices in such institutions. It will also help to validate the objectives of professionals who have few peers to support them in their efforts to improve the practice of art history at their institutions.
Professional Practices for Academic Art Administrators
Standards and Guidelines for Academic Art Administrators (2009): This document will serve as a resource for emerging, new, and current academic art administrators, as well as benefiting other CAA members seeking guidance regarding the role of academic art administrators operating in a visual-arts context. The task force was made up of administrators from diverse geographical regions and varied professional experiences that included program directors, chairs and division heads, directors of schools of art, associate deans, deans, and vice presidents http://loans-cash.net/how-it-works.php .
Acknowledgments
I want to thank all the members of the four task forces (listed respectively on the webpages of their Standards and Guidelines), who worked together to revise and create these Standards and Guidelines. In particular I want to acknowledge the work of Maxine Payne, chair of the Professional Practices Committee, who so diligently worked on all this material and encouraged each task force along the way.
MLA and HASTAC Developing Tenure Guidelines for Digital Scholarship
posted by Christopher Howard — May 27, 2009
“Even as the use of electronic media has become common across fields for research and teaching,” reports Scott Jaschik at Insider Higher Ed, “what is taken for granted among young scholars is still foreign to many of those who sit on tenure and promotion committees.”
While junior professors lament the exclusion or diminution from tenure reviews of their born-digital work, whether publication or project, the Modern Language Association (MLA) and a group called the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) are tackling the issue head on with new guides that offer tenure committees help in properly evaluating digital scholarship. MLA’s Information Technology Committee is developing these guides through a wiki, which publishes both finished and in-progress work.
In his article, “Tenure in a Digital Era,” Jaschik examines the many perceptions and problems at issue, including peer review; digital and print publications; and work that crosses traditional categories of research, teaching, and service.
Career Services Guide Published
posted by Christopher Howard — December 18, 2008
The Career Services Guide is designed to inform job seekers and employers about career services that are available at the 2009 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. Examine this guide carefully so that you will know what to expect from conference interviewing and how best to prepare for a successful experience.
The Career Services Guide will also be published in the January 2009 issue of CAA News as a colored-paper insert; copies will also be available at Orientation and in the Candidate’s Center at the conference.
All Career Services will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, California. For more information about job searching, visit the Career Services section of the conference website.
MFA Standards Updated
posted by Christopher Howard — November 13, 2008
Last month, the CAA Board of Directors approved revisions to the MFA Standards, one of the organization’s many Standards and Guidelines for visual-art professionals. The revised document, prepared by a subcommittee of the Professional Practices Committee (PPC), is now published to the CAA website.
During summer and fall 2008, Jean Miller, chair of the PPC-MFA Standards Review Committee, and Charles Wright, a PPC member who is also leading a discussion about the doctorate in studio art, worked on a draft of a revised MFA Standards. Last revised and approved in 1991, the document was submitted to the board by Maxine Payne, PPC chair.
The PPC-MFA Committee contacted art and design colleagues across the nation throughout the revision process to gather ideas for changes. The response was very good, with certain themes or points reoccurring. Many of those queried thought that the idea of the MFA as the terminal degree in art and design needed to be reinforced. Others found the language in the 1991 standards to be dated, so it was rewritten throughout to reflect present-day issues and concerns.
Contemporary and evolving studio practices, interpretation of ideas, and the role of art and design in innovation were all thought to be important concepts. Information about technology and experimental media, collaborative works, and interdisciplinary applications of art and design were also considered to be critical to current art practices for students in MFA programs.
Some respondents advocated for robust and comprehensive educational curricula that include critical studies, art history, and visual culture. The inclusion of statements about diversity and how curriculum must support non-Western and Western cultures was important to all.
The PPC thanks everyone who helped in the revision, in particular, Carmon Colangelo, Patricia Olynyk, Nora Sturges, Judith Thorpe, and Jim Hopfensperger.
Federal Agencies Collaborate on Digitization Guidelines
posted by Christopher Howard — October 09, 2008
A dozen federal agencies are launching an initiative, the Federal Agencies Still Image Digitization Working Group, to establish a common set of guidelines for digitizing historical materials. Basing its efforts on a combination of collaborative research and combined experience, the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative will address a variety of issues related to the complex activities involved in the digitization of cultural-heritage items.
Two working groups have been formed, one addressing content that can be captured in still images, the other involved with content categorizing sound, video, or motion-picture film. The initiative includes a just-launched website.
The Federal Agencies Still Image Digitization Working Group will focus its efforts on content such as books, manuscripts, maps, and photographic prints and negatives. Its members include the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, the National Agricultural Library, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Library of Medicine, the National Technical Information Service, the National Transportation Library, the Smithsonian Institution, the US Geological Survey, and the US Government Printing Office. An advisory board of technical experts from industry and academia will also contribute to the initiative.
The Federal Agencies Audio-Visual Working Group, which will address standards and practices for sound, video, and motion-picture film, includes the Defense Visual Information Directorate of the Department of Defense, the Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Library of Medicine, the Smithsonian Institution, the Government Printing Office, and the Voice of America.
The agencies began meeting in 2007 to identify common practices for digitizing cultural-heritage materials in a sustainable way. Establishing guidelines is expected to increase the quality and consistency of digitized documents and media that are made available to the public, streamline workflows and reduce costs, promote the exchange of research, and encourage collaboration across agencies. The guidelines will also provide common benchmarks for digitization service providers and manufacturers.
The website currently features two documents developed by the Still Image Digitization Working Group that are open for comment until mid-November. The first proposes a minimal set of embedded TIFF metadata for use in historical and cultural-heritage digital imaging. The second two-part document presents a taxonomy of digital-image characteristics and provides corresponding metrics and criteria to describe and validate imaging performance and quality. The website also provides a glossary of digitization terms and concepts and presents digitization-related news and events on the subject from the participating agencies.
This collaborative effort initially formed under the sponsorship of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), a Library of Congress–led program initiated by Congress in December 2000 to develop a national strategy to collect and preserve digital content.
US Ratifies Treaty to Protect Cultural Property in Time of War
posted by Christopher Howard — October 02, 2008
On September 25, 2008, the United States Senate voted to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. This international convention regulates the conduct of nations during war and military occupation in order to assure the protection of cultural sites, monuments, and repositories, including museums, libraries, and archives. Written in the wake of the widespread cultural devastation perpetrated by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and modeled on instructions given by General Dwight Eisenhower to aid in the preservation of Europe’s cultural legacy, the Hague Convention is the oldest international agreement to address exclusively cultural-heritage preservation. The US now joins 121 other nations in becoming a party to this historic treaty. By taking this significant step, the US demonstrates its commitment to the preservation of the world’s cultural, artistic, religious, and historic legacy.
Although the US signed the convention soon after its writing, the Pentagon objected to ratification because of increasing cold-war tensions. Only with the collapse of the Soviet Union did the US military withdraw its objections, and President Bill Clinton transmitted the convention to the Senate in 1999. The public attention given to the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad in 2003 and the looting of archaeological sites in southern Iraq during the ensuing years revived interest in the convention, and the Senate finally voted to give its advice and consent to ratification last week.
A number of understandings were established in connection with the ratification, mostly to ensure that the convention does not interfere substantially with the US military’s ability to wage war. The final element of the ratification is a “declaration,” which states that the treaty, though self-executing: (a) does not require the US government to prosecute anyone who violates the convention (implicitly meaning that such prosecution is required only if a US law is also violated); and (b) does not give individual persons a right of redress in US courts.
Peter Tompa at the Cultural Property Observer provides a summary and commentary on what happened in the Senate. CAA has posted PDFs of both the introduction of the Hague Convention to the Senate by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the ratification of the treaty, from the Congressional Record.
Statements by Hague Convention Advocates
While US policy has been to follow the principles of the convention, ratification will raise the imperative of protecting cultural heritage during conflict, including the incorporation of heritage preservation into military planning; ratification will also clarify the United States’ obligations and encourage the training of military personnel in cultural-heritage preservation and the recruitment of cultural-heritage professionals into the military. Cori Wegener, president of the US Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS), noted that “Ratification of the Hague Convention provides a renewed opportunity to highlight cultural-property training for US military personnel at all levels, and to call attention to cultural-property considerations in the early stages of military planning. The US Committee of the Blue Shield will continue its commitment to offering cultural-property training and coordination with the US military and to increase public awareness about the 1954 Hague Convention and its international symbol, the Blue Shield.”
Patty Gerstenblith, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP), cited among the advantages of ratification, “Most importantly, it sends a clear signal to other nations that the United States respects their cultural heritage and will facilitate US cooperation with its allies and coalition partners in achieving more effective preservation efforts in areas of armed conflict.”
The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has advocated ratification of the Hague Convention for more than fifteen years. John Russell, AIA vice president for professional responsibilities, commented that “By ratifying the 1954 Hague Convention, the US has affirmed its commitment to protecting cultural property during armed conflict. The Archaeological Institute of America will continue to work with the Department of Defense to integrate the Convention’s provisions fully and consistently into the US military training curriculum at all levels.”
Since the founding of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation in 2004 and of the US Committee of the Blue Shield in 2006, ratification has been among their primary priorities. AIA, LCCHP, and USCBS formed a coalition of preservation organizations that submitted testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in support of ratification and worked with members of the Senate to achieve this historic step. The Statement in Support of US Ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention urging Senate ratification, joined by twelve other cultural preservation organizations, is available from LCCHP.
LCCHP acknowledges the additional assistance of the Society for American Archaeology and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in the effort to achieve ratification of the Hague Convention.
CAA Standards and Guidelines
CAA has advocated for the ratification of the convention for decades. CAA has also published its own Standards and Guidelines on issues related to international cultural heritage: the CAA Statement on the Importance of Documenting the Historical Context of Objects and Sites (2004), A Code of Ethics for Art Historians and Guidelines for the Professional Practice of Art History (1995), part of which addresses trafficking in works of art; and the Resolution Concerning the Acquisition of Cultural Properties Originating in Foreign Countries (1973).
New AAM Standards on Cultural Property
posted by Christopher Howard — September 04, 2008
The American Association of Museums (AAM) has established new standards for the museum acquisition of archaeological material and ancient art that emphasize proper provenance of such objects and complete transparency on the part of the acquiring institutions. The product of two years of concerted research and vetting from the museum field, the Standards Regarding Archaeological Material and Ancient Art provide clear ethical guidance on collecting such material to discourage illicit excavation of archaeological sites and monuments. The standards also require museums to create a publicly available collections policy that sets institutional standards for provenance when acquiring archaeological material and ancient art.
CAA has also established Standards and Guidelines on similar topics, including the Resolution Concerning the Acquisition of Cultural Properties Originating in Foreign Countries (1973) and the Statement on the Importance of Documenting the Historical Context of Objects and Sites (2004).