CAA News Today
‘Massacre of the Innocents’
posted Sep 09, 2015
Musarrat Hasan is an advisor to the Institute of Art and Design and professor of art history at Lahore College Women’s University in Lahore, Pakistan. She was a 2013 participant in the CAA-Getty International Program.
In Pakistan, the Taliban and many other militant groups have carried out terrorist activities for the last several years, killing thousands of people through suicide bombings and other horrific attacks. Their aggression has now been greatly curtailed through the joint efforts of the military and the citizens of Pakistan. However, on December 16, 2014, seven gunmen affiliated with the Taliban conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. They entered the school and fired on school staff, teachers, and children, killing 145 people, including 132 schoolchildren between eight and eighteen years of age.
Worldwide protest and expressions of horror at this outrage followed immediately. The artists of Pakistan, like their fellow citizens, were greatly shaken by the brutal event. Through their national organization, the Artists’ Association, they decided to make their outrage public. During a meeting of the organization’s executive committee, under the leadership of Mian Ijaz ul Hassan, the group condemned the Peshawar attack and voted to devote the upcoming annual exhibition to artistic responses to this violence. The organization sent out a notice to members and all other artists in universities, cultural bodies, and international members, announcing that the annual show would be postponed by about three weeks so that all members and other artists could participate. The title for the exhibition would be ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ and it would be about the suffering of innocents all over the world.
Although Pakistani artists have previously responded to national and international events of tragic and human significance, I do not recall a collective public response to current events by artists carried out with such immediacy. There have been instances of commissioned murals years after the event, but this sort of action was unprecedented.
At the Lahore College Women’s University, the faculty members were also motivated to participate and decided to collectively produce the mural that is illustrated here. They pooled funds to buy oil paints, panels of stretched canvas, and other materials required for the mural. I was honored to supervise the creation of this work from conception to completion. We decided not to dwell on the gruesome murders but instead to celebrate the bravery and sacrifice of the headmistress who faced the Taliban with courage and gained time for hundreds of students to escape, even though she herself was killed in the process.
The final mural is 8 x 13 feet and demonstrates the painting skills and commitment of fourteen young faculty members who worked on weekdays and late into the night, putting their hearts and souls into the timely completion. The faculty members of the Lahore College Women’s University who worked on this project were Rifaat Dar, Aasma Majeed, Amber Muneer, Aqsa Rehan, Sadia Murtaza, Samina Naseem, Farah Khan, Ghazala Anjum Shirazi, Nighat Mahboob, Rehana Salman, Rabia Yaseen, and Maryam Baber.
The exhibition at Lahore was a great success. It stirred the community and also inspired many other artists to participate in a subsequent exhibition held at the National Art Gallery in Islamabad. The Shakir Ali Museum in Lahore collaborated with the Artists’ Association in this endeavor. The exhibition is scheduled to travel to other major cities such as Peshawar and Karachi later this year.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Sep 09, 2015
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.
The Great Debate: Why Galleries Could Take Even More Money from Their Artists
The cultural researcher and Larry’s List cofounder Magnus Resch concluded, based on a survey of eight thousand art galleries in the US, UK, and Germany, that running an art gallery is tough, with more than half turning over less than $200,000 a year and 30 percent running in the red. It’s his solutions—many of them classic business techniques—that have whipped up the debate. None more so than the suggestion that most artists should be paid only 30 percent of sales, not the traditional 50/50 split. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Fixing Grad School
Talk about graduate school being broken is beginning to sound like a broken record. Yes, it’s too focused on preparing students to become the tenure-track professors that populate academe’s endangered-species list. Yes, the better part of a decade is probably too long to spend as an apprentice, forgoing a living wage and likely accruing debt. And yes, too many people never finish. So now what? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Clearing Up Ambiguity
So what is it about ambiguity that it has to be praised to high heaven by all and sundry? Above all, how did it come to take on, at least for some, a cloak of liberal righteousness, to shift from being an aesthetic to a moral virtue, as if the text that wasn’t clear, that didn’t state its preferences clearly, were ethically superior to the text that does. In every other sphere of expression, ambiguity is a flaw. (Read more from the New York Review of Books.)
Part of Your World: On the Arts and Well-Being
What’s the most important issue in the arts? Is it declining audiences? The fact that it’s so hard to make a living as an artist? Changing demographics and cultural equity? Unsustainable business models? New technologies? Government funding? Arts education? Gentrification? Creative place-making? Spend any time reading up on arts policy and philanthropy or attending conferences in the arts and you’ll see plenty of attention devoted to all of these topics and more. (Read more from Createquity.)
Inquiry: Art History for All
That an art history–trained graduate has highly desirable and eminently transferable skills across a range of art and nonart professions ought to be good news for art history going forward, especially as there is evidence that the areas of the UK economy related to culture are growing faster than others, and outperforming the economy as a whole. (Read more from Apollo.)
The ABC of Art Criticism: Some Recent How Tos
It has often been said that writing about art is like dancing about architecture. Nearly as often, it has also been said: But I’m going to do it anyway. Whether or not the dance analogy captures all the futilities and elations of the endeavor, writing about art, experience proves, is an activity unlikely to abate. Indeed, as art’s institutional and popular reach has grown ever more expansive in the early twenty-first century, the proliferation of adjunct written discourses has perhaps never been greater. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
The Meaning of “Inclusiveness” in a Job Ad
Lots of job ads for faculty positions include a sentence along these lines: “Inclusiveness and diversity are academic imperatives and thus are university goals, and your letter should articulate how you will cultivate diversity on our campus.” Does that mean the search is only open to minority candidates? (Read more from Vitae.)
How to Be an Adjunct (and Also a Cliché)
Understand that behind the hierarchical sense of superiority there is a cowering insecurity among the tenured who are beginning to see themselves as the minority they are. Hear them throw around the phrases “student-centered learning” and “student concerns.” Figure out “student-centered learning” is a euphemism for “good customer service,” and “student concerns” means “faculty gossip.” Realize all this language increasingly dehumanizes adjuncts and students. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
CAA’s Fair Use Code Receives a Key Endorsement
posted Sep 04, 2015
On September 3, the Visual Resources Association announced its endorsement of CAA’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, bringing to seven the number of leading associations to support this work. (https://www.collegeart.org/news/2015/07/13/caas-fair-use-code-receives-important-new-endorsements/) In its expression of support, VRA stated: “The Visual Resources Association (VRA) heartily endorses the College Art Association’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts. This code attempts to find consensus across varied constituencies working in the field of visual arts, offering useful models for bridging the divide between those who produce works of art, those who study works of art in academic settings, and those who preserve and provide access to the work produced by the first two groups…. To visual resource and allied image professionals, a key strength of the CAA Code lies in its codification of the historically scrupulous nature of our community of practitioners. In its recommendation that practitioners continue to follow accepted professional standards for metadata, privacy and confidentiality, and the consistent use of terms and conditions, the CAA Code provides a resolute assertion on behalf of our community of practice that courts may refer to when considering fair use parameters.”
Founded in 1982, the Visual Resources Association is a multi-disciplinary organization dedicated to furthering research and education in the field of image and media management within the educational, cultural heritage, and commercial environments. The Association is committed to providing leadership in the visual resources field, developing and advocating standards, and offering educational tools and opportunities for the benefit of the community at large. VRA implements these goals through publication programs and educational activities. For more information about the association, see http://vraweb.org/.
CAA welcomes other endorsements, and encourages organizations in the field to recommend the Code to members. CAA representatives are happy to address questions and to make educational presentations. To make arrangements for a presentation, whether by webinar, conference call, or in person, please contact me at jlanday@collegeart.org. The Code and supporting materials are available at www.collegeart.org/fair-use.
The creation of CAA’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Sep 02, 2015
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.
Director at Uzbekistan Museum Is Dismissed and Accused of Crimes
A significant trove of modern Russian art, preserved not least by its obscure location, was engulfed in controversy last week after its longstanding director was summarily dismissed on accusations of forgery and theft. Marinika M. Babanazarova, director of the Savitsky Collection in Nukus, Karakalpakstan, said she learned that she was being forced out after running the museum since 1984. (Read more at the New York Times.)
Tips for New Teaching Assistants
This time each year, at universities like mine, hundreds of new teaching assistants prepare to teach undergraduates for the first time. Here are three principles that underscored my presentation to the graduate students this year, in hopes that they will be helpful to new teachers elsewhere. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)
Will Artist Royalty Rights Go Global?
A delegation of art world, copyright, and government experts from eight countries, plus European Union representatives, have called for an international review of royalty rights for artists following a conference at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva. The issue was officially added to the organization’s agenda on July 3, and the topic is due to be debated in December. (Read more at the Art Newspaper.)
How Standup Comedy Became the New Performance Art
Why is the art world suddenly taking comedy so seriously? Artist and “concrete comedian” Sean Patrick Carney, who has led seminars on and written about the intersection of art and comedy, identifies art’s recent comedic turn with a renewed sense of political urgency: “People are frustrated and pissed off, justifiably so, about multiple social issues around race, economics, misogyny—you name it.” (Read more at Artspace Magazine.)
Will the Candidate Stay?
I am from a large city in the Northeast and received two on-campus interviews at small, teaching-centered public institutions in the Midwest and the West. Both jobs ultimately went to candidates who were from the area where the schools were located—they received their PhDs from a university in the area and/or adjuncted at a school in the region. What can candidates do to overcome a hiring committee’s concerns over whether they will stay in a position once hired? (Read more at Vitae.)
We Took a Tour of the Abandoned College Campuses of Second Life
Once upon a time, in the year 2007, people were really excited about Second Life. Businessweek ran a cover story with the headline “Virtual World, Real Money.” Brands opened stores in Second Life malls. Many universities set up their own private islands to engage students; some even held classes there. Most of these virtual universities are gone—it costs almost $300 per month to host your own island—but it turns out a handful remain as ghost towns. (Read more at Fusion.)
See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me: Museums Need Tech Entrepreneurs
According to the NEA, overall museum attendance fell from 2002 to 2012. More alarming still, museumgoers 75 and older were the only demographic to increase over that same period. Clearly, the museum world has a millennial challenge—namely, how can the world’s great institutions engage a twenty-first century, screen-addicted generation? How do you integrate new technology into something as classic and physical as the museum-going experience? (Read more at Entrepreneur.)
Developing Adjuncts
Non-tenure-track faculty members are the majority of the teaching force, so how are colleges and universities helping them to develop as teachers? As for many issues related to adjuncts, there’s a significant data gap on the topic, in part because adjuncts are diverse and decentralized, making them hard to study. But a new survey seeks to close the gap, and early responses provide insight into how colleges and universities’ teaching and learning centers are supporting their part-time faculty members—or not. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)
Exhibitor and Advertiser Prospectus for the 2016 Annual Conference
posted Aug 27, 2015
The Exhibitor and Advertiser Prospectus for the 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, DC, is now available for download. Featuring essential details for participation in the Book and Trade Fair, the booklet also contains options for sponsorship opportunities and advertisements in the Conference Program and on the conference website.
The Exhibitor and Advertiser Prospectus will help you reach a core audience of artists, art historians, educators, students, and administrators, who will converge in our nation’s capital for CAA’s 104th Annual Conference, taking place February 3–6, 2016. With three days of exhibit time, the Book and Trade Fair will be centrally located in the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. CAA offers several options for booths and tables that can help you to connect with conference attendees in person. The priority deadline for Book and Trade Fair applications is Friday, October 30, 2015; the final deadline for all applications and full payments is Monday, December 7, 2015.
In addition, sponsorship packages will allow you to maintain a high profile throughout the conference. Companies, organizations, and publishers may choose one of four visibility packages, sponsor specific areas, events, and objects (such as the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge and hotel room keys), or work with CAA staff to design a custom package. Advertising possibilities include the Conference Program, distributed to over four thousand registrants and press contacts in the conference tote bag, and the conference website, seen by tens of thousands more. The deadline for sponsorships and advertisements in the Conference Program is Friday, December 4, 2015; web ads are taken on a rolling basis.
Questions about the 2016 Book and Trade Fair? Please contact Paul Skiff, CAA assistant director for Annual Conference, at 212-392-4412. For sponsorship and advertising queries, speak to Anna Cline, CAA development and marketing assistant, at 212-392-4426.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Aug 26, 2015
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.
Black Arts: The $800 Million Family Selling Art Degrees and False Hopes
Behind the shiny façade at Academy of Art University in San Francisco is a less than lustrous business: luring starry-eyed art students into taking on massive amounts of debt based on the “revolutionary principle” that anyone can make a career as a professional artist. No observable talent is required to gain admission: the school will accept anyone who has a high school diploma and is willing to pay the $22,000 annual tuition (excluding room and board), no art portfolio required. (Read more from Forbes.)
Authors, Keep Your Copyrights. You Earned Them
Most trade publishers do not ask for an outright assignment of all exclusive rights under copyright; their contracts usually call for copyright to be in the author’s name. But it’s another story in the world of university presses. Most scholarly publishers routinely present their authors with the single most draconian, unfair clause we routinely encounter—taking all the exclusive rights to an author’s work as if the press itself authored the work. (Read more from the Authors Guild.)
How to Spot a Fake: Art Forgery’s Secrets Revealed
Can you tell if someone’s lying? There are scientifically proven traits that most people exhibit when they’re cooking up a lie. Sweaty palms. Dry throat. Tight collar. Fidgety movements. But can you tell if an object is lying? You sure can. Studying how forgers have successfully pulled the wool over our eyes offers some revealing clues as to how to avoid being fooled in the future. (Read more from Salon.)
Open Letter on Precariat Fees
A large and growing portion of the academy is unemployed or underemployed, and we all must consider how we can address the situation. We are writing to ask that you move to a graduated pay scale to provide steeply discounted rates for graduate students, unemployed, and non-tenure-track faculty for both membership in your organization and attendance at conferences that you sponsor. (Read more from Material Collective.)
Soaring Art Market Attracts a New Breed of Advisers for Collectors
For decades, art advisers were a small club of professionals who personally helped build collections for clients, using their scholarship and connoisseurship. Their role was to consult and offer expertise, rarely to make deals. But the rapidly changing art market—characterized by soaring prices, high fees, and a host of wealthy new buyers—has prompted scores of new players to jump into the pool, from young art-world arrivistes to former auction-house executives with an abundance of expertise and connections. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Inertia vs. Freedom in Faculty Life
It happens like clockwork each semester. Two weeks after a course begins, I brace myself for a wave of student complaints about the daily workload of questions, reading quizzes, and recurring tasks. I never cave to their demands, for I know just as surely that the flood of protests will begin to wither and, by the fourth week of the term, will have disappeared entirely. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
New Study Argues Mellon Program Has No Effect on Minority PhD Degrees
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program—an initiative of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that works to boost the diversity of faculty at US colleges and universities—has “no significant effect” on PhD completion rates, according to a study by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. (Read more from Philanthropy News Digest.)
Italy’s Museums Honor Archaeologist Murdered by ISIL
Flags were flying at half-mast outside all museums and cultural institutions in Italy last week, and the archaeological museum of Milan, housed in a former Benedictine monastery, will change its name to commemorate Khaled Al-Asaad, the Syrian archaeologist murdered at Palmyra by ISIL on August 18. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Aug 19, 2015
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.
Making the Most of the Syllabus
On the first day of class, after a brief introduction to the class topic and my related background, I pass out the syllabus in hard copy. We then read the document together out loud. I ask a student to read the first paragraph. Then the next student reads the next paragraph, and so on. In addition to ensuring that every student reads the entire syllabus, I help students get over possible anxieties about hearing themselves speak in front of their peers. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
It’s the Little Things That Count in Teaching
Line up course readings. Plan the syllabus. Design lesson plans and homework assignments. Those are some of the big-picture elements that we all fret over as college instructors preparing for the fall semester. But as teachers of writing and rhetoric, we’ve come to realize the crucial role of the (often overlooked) “little” things. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
How Art Became Irrelevant
In terms of quantifiable data—prices spent on paintings and photographs and sculptures, visitors accommodated, funds raised, and square footage created at museums—the picture could hardly be rosier. Equally robust is the art market, to judge by a Christie’s auction on May 11 that set several records, including the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art. But quantifiable data can only describe the fiscal health of the fine arts, not their cultural health. Here the picture is not so rosy. (Read more from Commentary.)
Why Is Stolen Art So Hard to Find?
Twenty-five years ago, two thieves dressed as police officers bluffed their way into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made away with $500 million of artwork by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, and others. The thieves didn’t cover their faces and apparently didn’t know much about what they were stealing: they roughly cut the paintings from their frames and left more valuable works hanging on the walls. Despite the thieves’ apparent inexpertise and the ensuing media attention, no suspects were ever arrested and the art was never recovered. (Read more from Slate.)
Collectible after All: Christiane Paul on Net Art at the Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum artport has been an important institutional presence in net art and new media since its launch in 2002. Created and curated by Christiane Paul, artport features online commissions as well as documentation of new-media artworks from the museum’s exhibitions and collections. This year, artport as a whole was made an official part of the Whitney Museum collection; to mark this occasion, the artist Marisa Olson interviewed Paul about the program’s history and evolution over thirteen years. (Read more from Rhizome.)
The Hell You Say
Half a century ago, the defense of free speech was closely identified with groups like the Free Speech Movement, a confederation of activists who came together at the University of California in Berkeley, after a student was arrested for setting up a table of civil-rights literature, in defiance of antisolicitation rules. But as the 1990s progressed, fights over obscenity subsided and fights over so-called political correctness intensified; “free speech” became a different kind of rallying cry, especially on college campuses. (Read more from the New Yorker.)
Thirteen Art History Emojis We Desperately Wish Were Real
This one goes out to all the art-savvy texters of the world, looking to add some of history’s finest manifestations of creative expression to their OMGs and LOLs. It’s been over two years since the glory days of #emojiarthistory, when the art world banded together to adapt art classics into emojis using the options available. What if, instead of using two dancing ballerinas to signify a Diane Arbus photo, there existed a whole realm of ready-made art emojis based on the canon of art history? (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Late Again?
It’s 9:30 AM, and the upper-level course I teach on mass communication is about to begin. Ten of my twenty-seven students are missing. Twenty minutes later, that number dwindles to just two, as eight students arrive, one by one, during my lecture. Frustration kicks in as I try not to let the latecomers derail my train of thought. Does any of that sound familiar? (Read more from Vitae.)
New Appointments to CAA’s Journals
posted Aug 14, 2015
The president of CAA’s Board of Directors, DeWitt Godfrey, has made appointments to the editorships and editorial boards of CAA’s three scholarly journals, in consultation with the editorial boards and the vice president for publications, Gail Feigenbaum. The appointments took effect on July 1, 2015.
The Art Bulletin
Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, professor emerita in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware in Newark, has been appointed the next editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin. She is a specialist in French art from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. In 2010 she published Théodore Géricault (Phaidon); other books have focused on Cézanne (University of Chicago Press, 2003) and Delacroix (Yale University Press, 1991). After a year as editor designate, Athanassoglou-Kallmyer will serve a three-year term, July 1, 2016–June 30, 2019. The March 2017 issue of The Art Bulletin will be her first issue. After her editorship, she will remain on the journal’s editorial board as past editor through June 30, 2020.
Two new at-large members have joined the Art Bulletin Editorial Board: Jonathan Reynolds is a scholar of modern Japanese art and architecture and a professor of art history at Barnard College and Columbia University in New York; Michael Schreffler, a specialist in early modern Latin American art, is an associate professor of art history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Their terms run through June 30, 2019.
Art Journal
Kirsten Swenson, an assistant professor of art history, contemporary art, and aesthetics at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, has been appointed reviews editor of Art Journal. Two books of her work will publish later this year: Irrational Judgments: Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, and 1960s New York (Yale University Press) and, coedited with Emily Eliza Scott, Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics (University of California Press). Swenson is serving as reviews editor designate for one year before her three-year term begins on July 1, 2016. Her first commissioned reviews will appear in the Spring 2017 issue.
Talinn Grigor, an associate professor of fine arts at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a new member of the Art Journal Editorial Board. Her area of expertise is modern and contemporary global art and architecture, with a focus on the art of Iran. Her term runs through June 30, 2019.
caa.reviews
The caa.reviews Editorial Board welcomes one new member-at-large, Ben Davis, an independent author and critic residing in New York. Davis is national art critic for Artnet News and the author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class (Haymarket Books, 2013). He will serve on the editorial board for a four-year term, through June 30, 2019.
New field editors of book reviews for the journal are: Gwen Allen, associate professor of art history at San Francisco State University in California, as field editor for artists’ books and books for artists; Lisa Florman, professor and chair of the Department of History of Art at Ohio State University in Columbus, as field editor for twentieth-century art; Angela Vanhaelen, associate professor of art history at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, as field editor for northern European art; and Helen Westgeest, assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history and of theory of photography at Leiden University in Leiden, the Netherlands, as field editor in photography.
New field editors for exhibition reviews are: Susan Best, professor of art history for the Queensland College of Art at Griffith University in South Bank, Australia, as field editor for modern and contemporary exhibitions in Australia and New Zealand; Natilee Harren, assistant professor of contemporary art history and critical studies in the School of Art at the University of Houston in Texas, as field editor for exhibitions in the Southwest; and Susan Richmond, associate professor of art history at Georgia State University in Atlanta, as field editor for exhibitions in the Southeast.
Carolee Schneemann Focus of Art Journal Issue
posted Aug 13, 2015
The most recent issue of Art Journal, published several weeks ago, takes a special look at the work of the pioneering artist Carolee Schneemann. Over a fifty-year career, she has consistently been at the forefront of experimental art—as a filmmaker, a performance artist, a creator of media installations, and a feminist artist. The centerpiece of the issue is “The Kitch Portfolio,” for which the artist compiled thirty pages of previously unpublished artworks, photographs, journal entries, letters, and other archival texts pertaining to a central presence in her work from the mid-1950s through 1976, the feline artist and performer Kitch. Two essays on Schneemann’s work are also featured: Thyrza Nichols Goodeve’s “‘The Cat Is My Medium’: Notes on the Writing and Art of Carolee Schneemann,” and Kenneth White’s “Meat System in Cologne.” The issue also includes an essay by Kerr Houston on Richard Serra’s 1966 renunciation of painting, as well as reviews of books by Sharon Kivland, Sharon Louden, Stephen Wright, and Todd Cronan.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Aug 12, 2015
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.
Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey
The results of the Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey lead to a range of conclusions, many of which are perhaps best addressed by museums on the local level, as local and regional demographics tend to differ considerably across the continent. The headline is unsurprising: utilizing the categories employed by the 2000 US Census, 72 percent of AAMD staff is Non-Hispanic White, and 28 percent belongs to historically underrepresented minorities. (Read more from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.)
Women Take the Lead in US Museum Jobs, but Minorities Are Still Underrepresented
American museums have made significant progress toward gender equality but little headway in building ethnically diverse staff, according to a report from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The average museum’s curatorial, education, conservation, and top administrative staff members are 84 percent white. The report, based on a survey administered to 181 museums, was the first comprehensive study of the ethnic and gender makeup of US museum employees. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
The Guerrilla Girls, after Three Decades, Still Rattling Art World Cages
After three decades as masked crusaders for gender and racial equality in the art world—and increasingly, everywhere else—the Guerrilla Girls have lately been enjoying a victory lap. Last year, the Whitney Museum of American Art acquired the group’s portfolio of eighty-eight posters and ephemera from 1985 to 2012, documenting the number of women and minorities represented in galleries and institutions, including the Whitney itself. (Read more from the New York Times.)
A Sobering Look at How AIDS Changed Art in America
In the most literal way, AIDS left its mark on the art world. Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres are just a few of the well-known artists who died from illnesses related to the virus. And as a result, some of the art from the late 1980s and 1990s reflected the fear, mourning, and misunderstandings surrounding the epidemic. Art AIDS America, an exhibition that’s temporarily up in West Hollywood and opening in full at the Tacoma Art Museum in October, looks at how AIDS inserted itself into the art world’s conversation. (Read more from Wired.)
What’s at Stake in the Artist’s Resale Right Debate?
During the Scull auction of 1973, in which the collector Robert C. Scull sold some fifty iconic works of Pop and Minimalist art for $2.2 million, Robert Rauschenberg, whose work was represented prominently among the lots but who earned nothing from their sale, showed up to heckle the collector. Footage from the Scull auction was played to a packed house at Artists Space in New York, which hosted a panel of arts professionals that addressed resale rights for artists. (Read more from Artsy.)
Is the Copyright Office Inflating the Need for Orphan Works Legislation?
The issues and concerns surrounding orphan works emerged from the Copyright Act of 1976 when copyright protection became automatic and registration became optional. The Copyright Office has noted in its most recent report, Orphan Works and Mass Digitization, that the inability to locate the owners of these copyrighted but not registered works is “perhaps the single greatest impediment to creating new works.” But is it? (Read more from Clancco.)
Facing Facts: Artists Need an Entrepreneurial Mindset, Part 2
The attention generated by my first essay on artist entrepreneurship made me elated and depressed simultaneously. It was obviously hitting a nerve of many in the live arts whose training gave them no foundation for how to actually make a living. Although many college and university faculty members came forward in the comment section to demonstrate that there are, in fact, programs that prepare students for the marketplace, there is still a disconnect for most artists between their creative practice and the pragmatic skill set necessary to make a go of it in the real world. (Read more from HowlRound.)
Instagram Takes on Growing Role in the Art Market
Anyone in the art market who was not already paying attention to the social-media platform Instagram had to sit up and take notice in late April after the actor Pierce Brosnan visited the showroom of Phillips auction house in London. Brosnan snapped a selfie in front of a work he admired: the Lockheed Lounge, a space-age aluminum chaise longue by the industrial designer Marc Newson. Then he added the words “let the bidding commence” and posted it to the 164,000 followers of his Instagram feed. (Read more from the New York Times.)