CAA News Today
caa.reviews Seeks Field Editors for Books and Exhibitions
posted Aug 10, 2015
caa.reviews invites nominations and self-nominations for ten individuals to join its Council of Field Editors, which commissions reviews within an area of expertise or geographic region, for a three-year term, through June 30, 2018. An online journal, caa.reviews is devoted to the peer review of new books, museum exhibitions, and projects relevant to art history, visual studies, and the arts.
The journal seeks field editors for books in the following subject areas: Medieval Art, Early Modern Iberian and Colonial Latin American Art, Contemporary Art, South/Southeast Asian Art, Pre-Columbian Art, Islamic Art, and Museum Studies and Practice. The journal also seeks three field editors to commission reviews of exhibitions on the West Coast pre-1800, in Europe pre-1900, and in New York and the Northeast. Candidates may be artists, art historians, critics, curators, or other professionals in the visual arts; institutional affiliation is not required.
Working with the caa.reviews editor-in-chief, the editorial board, and CAA’s staff editor, each field editor selects content to be reviewed, commissions reviewers, and reviews manuscripts for publication. Field editors for books are expected to keep abreast of newly published and important books and related media in their fields of expertise, and field editors for exhibitions should be aware of current and upcoming exhibitions (and other related projects) in their geographic regions. The Council of Field Editors meets annually at the CAA Annual Conference. Field editors must pay travel and lodging expenses to attend the conference.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not currently serve on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and your contact information to: caa.reviews Editorial Board, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or email the documents to Deidre Thompson, CAA publications assistant. Deadline: September 16, 2015.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Aug 05, 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.
Six Dos and Don’ts for Gallery Representation
The road to getting into a gallery can seem impossibly rocky with obstacles at every turn. How do you know if you’re choosing the right path and using the right approach? We chatted with a veteran gallery owner and turned to the experts for six important dos and don’ts to achieving gallery representation. (Read more from Artwork Archive.)
Why Do So Many Galleries Lose Money?
Management of Art Galleries, a slim, Day-Glo orange book, caused a furor when it was published in Germany last year. Written by a 31-year-old German entrepreneur, professor, and art adviser named Magnus Resch, the book argues that most galleries are undercapitalized and inefficient, but, with McKinseylike business strategies, the entire art market could be turned into a profit-generating machine. (Read more from Bloomberg.)
Leading Art Publications in the US Join Forces
ARTnews and Art in America, two of the largest and most widely read art magazines in the US, are merging. Artnews SA—which operates ARTnews, the Polish magazine Art and Business, and the online art market research outlet Skate’s—has acquired Brant Publications’ entire art publishing portfolio, including Art in America. In exchange, Brant Publications, owned by the collector and newsprint magnate Peter Brant, has become the majority shareholder of Artnews SA. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Uncle Sam Wants YOU to Read “Popular” Scholarly Books
If all goes as planned, there’s a fascinating book about Diderot in your future—and one about the history of photographic detection and another one about the economics of addiction. The Public Scholar program, a major new initiative from the NEH, is designed to promote the publication of scholarly nonfiction books for a general audience, and the first round of grants has just been announced: a total of $1.7 million to 36 writers across a broad collection of disciplines. (Read more from the Washington Post.)
Libraries Are the Future of Manufacturing in the United States
Public libraries are becoming a one-stop shop for manufacturing in the digital age. Because libraries are investing in machines like 3D printers, someday soon everyone with access to a public library could become an inventor or create something. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
Looking at How Performers Are Paid for Performance Art
On the heels of protesters descending upon the Guggenheim Museum in May, calling for improved conditions for the workers who will build a future branch of the museum in Abu Dhabi, the artists Gerard and Kelly have partnered with the Guggenheim to hammer out fair labor standards for themselves and the other performers in Timelining, part of Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim. (Read more from the New York Times.)
That “Useless” Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket
Stewart Butterfield, Slack Technologies’ cofounder and CEO, proudly holds an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Canada’s University of Victoria and a master’s degree from Cambridge in philosophy and the history of science. “Studying philosophy taught me two things,” says Butterfield. “I learned how to write really clearly. I learned how to follow an argument all the way down, which is invaluable in running meetings.” (Read more from Forbes.)
An Ignored Conflict of Interest
Conflicts of interest are inherent in faculty control over curriculum. When not addressed, these conflicts can result in faculty behavior that is neither in the best interest of their students nor of their colleges and universities. Our proposed approach for mitigating such conflicts involves shared governance, with faculty and administrators facing, and mitigating, potential conflicts together. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Call for Applicants to PIPS Committees
posted Aug 04, 2015
The Professional Interests, Practices and Standards (PIPS) committees address critical concerns of CAA’s members set out in the goals of CAA’s Strategic Plan. CAA invites members to apply for service on one of these PIPS working groups.
Committee on Diversity Practices
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/diversity
The Committee on Diversity Practices supports the development of global perspectives on art and visual culture. The committee promotes artistic, curatorial, scholarly and institutional practices that deepen appreciation of political and cultural heterogeneity, as educational and professional values. To that end, the committee assesses and evaluates the development and implementation of curricular innovation, new research methods, curatorial and pedagogical strategies, and hiring practices that contribute to the realization of these goals.
Committee on Intellectual Property
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/ip
The Committee on Intellectual Property 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 that affects educators, scholars, museum professionals, and artists.
Committee on Women in the Arts
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/women
The Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) promotes the scholarly study and recognition of women’s contributions to the visual arts and to critical and art-historical studies; advocates for feminist scholarship and activism in art; develops partnerships with organizations with compatible missions; monitors the status of women in the visual-arts professions; provides historical and current resources on feminist issues; and supports emerging artists and scholars in their careers.
Education Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/education
The Education Committee promotes the visual arts as essential human activity; as a creative Endeavor and subject of cultural and historical inquiry and critical appreciative activity, and encourages excellence in teaching at all levels. Its focus is on pedagogy at the higher education level in art history, visual culture, studio, aesthetics, and art criticism, and on the interface between arts teaching and learning research and practice.
International Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/international
The International Committee seeks to foster an international community of artists, scholars and critics within CAA; to provide forums in which to exchange ideas and make connections; to encourage engagement with the international student community; to develop relationships between CAA and organizations outside the United States with comparable goals and activities; and to assist the CAA Board of Directors by identifying and recommending advocacy issues that involve CAA and cross national borders.
Museum Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/museum
The Museum Committee provides a bridge between scholars and arts professionals in the academic and museum fields. It offers a forum for the discussion of issues of mutual interest and promotes museum advocacy issues within CAA. The committee lends support and mentorship for both seasoned and emerging professionals to protect and interpret the arts within museums.
Professional Practices Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/professional
The Professional Practices Committee responds to specific concerns of the membership in relation to areas such as job placement and recruitment, tenure and promotion procedures, scholarly standards and ethics, studio health and safety, and artists’ practices. The Professional Practices Committee also oversees CAA’s Standards and Guidelines.
Services to Artists Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/services
The Services to Artists Committee (SAC) was formed by the CAA Board of Directors to seek broader participation by artists and designers in the organization and the Annual Conference. SAC identifies and addresses concerns facing artists and designers; creates and implements programs and events at the conference and beyond; explores ways to encourage greater participation and leadership in CAA; and identifies ways to establish closer ties with other arts professionals and institutions. To this end, committee members are responsible for the programming of ARTspace and its related events.
Student and Emerging Professionals Committee
http://www.collegeart.org/committees/student
Established in February 1998, the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee is comprised of CAA members who are students, recent graduates, and experienced arts professionals with the intention of better representing students and emerging professionals within the larger CAA and academic framework.
In the past year the Committee on Diversity has addressed how CAA as an association can positively address diversity awareness, training and implementation and developed a site for resources on diversity practices: http://www.collegeart.org/diversity/; the Committee on Intellectual Property has organized conference sessions on the new Fair Use Code and maintains a resource cite on intellectual property: http://www.collegeart.org/ip/; the Committee on Women in the Arts provides CWA Picks: http://www.collegeart.org/committees/picks and supports scholarship on women in the arts; the Education Committee has organized conference panels on issues in education; the International Committee promotes interactions between scholars on a global basis and has supported the CAA/Getty International Travel program that brings international scholars to the annual conference; the Museum Committee focuses on the history and theory of art museums and academia and has initiated a new project—Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals that has support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Professional Practices Committee updates and develops guidelines for the profession; Services to Artists Committee plans and organizes ArtSpace at the annual conference that presents prominent artists and designers, discussions on artist/designer concerns from safety in the workplace to professional development; the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee organizes panels related to emerging professionals and holds mentoring and mock job interviews at the conference. All committees are seeking new members with expertise in these areas.
This year the Board of Directors has established a Task Force on Committees to strengthen and streamline the important work of CAA’s nine Professional Interest, Practices and Standards committees. The nine PIPS committees are working with the Task Force to determine the future focus and structure of the committees with the goal of better serving the visual arts field.
At the Annual Conference in February each committee presents one or two sessions on a subject related to their committee charge.
Committee members serve three-year terms (2016–2019), with at least one new member rotating onto a committee each year. Candidates must be current CAA members and possess expertise appropriate to the committee’s work. Members of all committees volunteer their services without compensation. Committee work is not for the faint of heart; it is expected that once appointed to a committee, a member will involve himself or herself in an active and serious way.
The following vacancies are open for terms beginning in February 2016:
- Committee on Diversity Practices: 2–3 members
- Committee on Intellectual Property: 4 members
- Committee on Women in the Arts: 3 members
- Education Committee: 6 members
- International Committee: 5 members
- Museum Committee: 0 members
- Professional Practices Committee: 3 members
- Services to Artists Committee: 5 members
- Student and Emerging Professionals Committee: 2–3 members
CAA’s president, vice president for committees, and executive director review all candidates in the fall and make appointments in December, prior to the Annual Conference. New members are introduced to their committees during their respective business meetings at the conference.
Nominations and self-nominations should include a brief statement (no more than 150 words) describing your qualifications and experience and an abbreviated CV (no more than 2–3 pages). Please send all materials to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison at vjalet@collegeart.org. Deadline: October 16, 2015.). Kindly enter subject line in email: 2016 PIPS Applicant.
Summer 2015 Recipients of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award
posted Aug 03, 2015
CAA has announced the five recipients of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award for summer 2015. Thanks to a grant of $60,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CAA is supporting the work of emerging authors who are publishing monographs on the history of art and related subjects.
The five Meiss/Mellon grantees for summer 2015 are:
- Elise Archias, The Concrete Body—Rainer, Schneemann, Acconci, Yale University Press
- Molly Brunson, Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840–1890, Northern Illinois University Press
- Jeehee Hong, Theater of the Dead: A Social Turn in Chinese Funerary Art, 1000–1400, University of Hawai‘i Press
- Susan Rosenberg, Trisha Brown: Choreography as Visual Art (1962–1987), Wesleyan University Press
- Christina Bryan Rosenberger, Drawing the Line: The Early Works of Agnes Martin, University of California Press
The purpose of the Meiss/Mellon subventions is to reduce the financial burden that authors carry when acquiring images for publication, including licensing and reproduction fees for both print and online publications.
CAA Executive Director Linda Downs Announces Retirement
posted Jul 31, 2015
Linda Downs, executive director and chief executive officer of the College Art Association (CAA), has announced her retirement, effective February 2016. Under her direction during her nine-year tenure, CAA celebrated its Centennial with a new visual identity and reestablished itself as the largest and most active association in the academic and museum visual-arts field. CAA has been a strong advocate on critical issues in the field, including workforce issues such as equity for part-time faculty, changing the restrictions on visas for international scholars and artists, and state and federal support for visual-arts higher education. CAA has made major improvements to its publications: current and archived issues of The Art Bulletin and Art Journal are now available online as a result of a copublishing partnership with Taylor & Francis; caa.reviews became a fully open-access online journal with an increased readership; and the Art Journal Open website was established, with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, to focus more on artists and to complement Art Journal articles in print.
Over thirty professional guidelines and standards were developed through the expertise of the Professional Practices Committee. A task force supported by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation was established to develop the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, which has greatly clarified what fair use is and how to utilize it for third-party images and materials in creative and scholarly work. CAA has changed its journal author contracts accordingly. Book and author subventions increased to approximately sixteen per year through the support of the Mellon Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, and Wyeth Foundation for American Art. International membership increased through the CAA/Getty International Program, which supported attendance and seminars on international issues at the past four Annual Conferences. The Professional Development Fellowships for Art Historians and Artists was reinstated. A new project, Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals, that was initiated by the Museum Committee and funded by the Mellon Foundation will establish a social community forum to promote the exchange of information related to the integration of academic art museums into various academic disciplines of study. Following CAA’s strategic plan, task forces have been established to review the structure of the nine Professional Interest, Practices, and Standards Committees, provide guidelines for digital art and architectural history in promotion and tenure, transform and extend the Annual Conference, review the governance structure, and address greater inclusion and attention to design in programs and publications. CAA has laid the groundwork for transforming itself in directions that are critical to the support of the visual-arts field.
The CAA Board of Directors has expressed its admiration for Downs’s outstanding leadership. DeWitt Godfrey, board president, stated, “Linda has brought CAA to a new professional level of service to members and the visual-arts field. We wish her well in retirement and thank her for her dedicated service.”
CAA has organized a search committee and will retain a search firm to seek a new Executive Director.
About CAA
The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions, nationally and internationally, by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other programs, services, and events. CAA focuses on a wide range of advocacy issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching. Learn more about CAA at www.collegeart.org.
For more information, please contact Nia Page, CAA director of membership, development, and marketing.
CAA Receives Mellon Grant to Support Online Resource for Academic Art Museums
posted Jul 30, 2015
The College Art Association (CAA) has been awarded a $132,600 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the development of Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals (RAAMP), a free, publicly accessible website that will collect, store, and share resources for professionals in academic art museums. RAAMP will promote scholarship, advocacy, and discussion related to academic art museums and their contributions to the educational mission of their parent institutions. CAA and its Museum Committee will develop RAAMP and manage its peer-generated content with the assistance of project partners, which include the Association for Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) and the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC).
Linda Downs, CAA executive director, said, “The RAAMP project was initiated by the CAA Museum Committee members N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University of Richmond and Celka Straughn, Andrew W. Mellon Director of Academic Programs at the Spencer Museum of Art who recognized the professional needs of academic art museum to share resources in order to better integrate museum collections into interdisciplinary study through a social community system. CAA is excited about this important initiative that will provide a prototype for similar forums.”
“Through its College and University Art Museums program, the Mellon Foundation has been a long-term supporter of the integration of college and university art museums into the curriculum and research cultures of their host institutions,” said Mariët Westermann, vice president of the Mellon Foundation. “We are therefore pleased to provide a grant to CAA for the creation of an online repository and exchange hub that will further strengthen the collaboration between academic museums and their campus communities.”
RAAMP aims to strengthen the educational mission of academic museums and their parent institutions by providing a dynamic repository of resources, by functioning as a site for news and information, and by supporting public discussion through online forums. The anticipated primary users of RAAMP include academic museum staff: administrators, educators, curators, directors, and conservators. The site would also be a significant asset for university and college administrators, faculty and staff in art and art-history departments, undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars of academic museums. Because RAAMP’s content addresses particular demographic groups—higher education and the visual arts—that are also served by nonacademic museums, the project would be valuable to museum professionals from any institution or background.
RAAMP would specifically benefit users seeking publications, information, research, case studies, professional development, and networking opportunities. Support from the Mellon Foundation will help CAA to determine types of content that would be most beneficial to RAAMP’s audience and contributors, how best to deliver and share this content, and how to facilitate dialogue related to the project’s mission.
DeWitt Godfrey, CAA president and professor of art and art history at Colgate University, said, “This is an important step for the Association to strengthen ties with academic art museums throughout the United States.”
RAAMP was conceived during a 2013 CAA Annual Conference session organized by the Museum Committee, titled “The Position of Academic Programs in Campus Art Museums: What, Why, Who, and Where To?” Session attendees expressed the need to better and more efficiently share information, strategies, and best practices for communicating academic museums’ educational contributions to their parent institutions. Many museums have created innovative programs and practices to serve their campus communities and fully integrate their collections and activities into the academic mission of their college or university. Museums have also worked to apply quantitative and qualitative metrics for mission success.
Leading the project as principal investigators will be: N. Elizabeth Schlatter, deputy director and curator of exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums in Virginia and a member of CAA’s Museum Committee; and Celka Straughn, Andrew W. Mellon Director of Academic Programs at the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum of Art and a member of CAA’s Museum Committee. “We are excited to work with colleagues to further develop this accessible resource that reflects that many innovative activities happening at academic museums today. We hope it will serve academic art museums to promote collaboration and demonstrate their educational and scholarly contributions.”
About CAA
The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other programs, services, and events. CAA focuses on a wide range of advocacy issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching. Learn more about CAA at www.collegeart.org.
For more information please contact Nia Page, CAA director of membership, development, and marketing.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jul 29, 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.
Questions to Ask before Applying to an Artist Opportunity
Breaking into the art world is a difficult task, but it doesn’t have to be. To be a successful artist, you must be determined, hardworking, and passionate about your field of work. It also helps to understand how the art world does business: how to find the opportunity that is the best fit for you, how to avoid predatory scams, and how to build your résumé for the future. (Read more from the New York Foundation for the Arts.)
Before Applying to an Artist Opportunity: Beware the Ides of Arts
One of the biggest problems facing artists today is the multitude of scams and schemes, especially those on the internet. And no, it’s not just the foreign princes looking to transfer money. Every artist wants to be discovered and make it big, but that doesn’t mean you should hastily leap into opportunity without looking first. (Read more from the New York Foundation for the Arts.)
Is It Okay to Haggle with an Art Gallery?
There’s a painting that I’d like to purchase from a smaller gallery here in town, but it’s out of my budget. Not by much, but in order to buy it, the price needs to come down. Can I try to negotiate with the gallery? I come from the business side of things, so that’s a normal practice for my realm, but I don’t want to anger anyone, or seem rude. (Read more from Burnaway.)
Grant Dispute Throws an Unwritten Rule of Academic Poaching out the Window
Among research universities a longstanding gentlemen’s agreement has held that a scientist who moves from one institution to another is allowed to carry any grant support along to his or her new home. Now, with universities counting every dollar, that bit of protocol may become a quaint courtesy of days gone by. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Saying Yes
While it’s true that new hires need to learn to say no so they don’t get overwhelmed and fall behind on their scholarship, it’s also important to decide which opportunities to accept or decline. What are the offers worth saying yes to? When might saying no really be declining a valuable opportunity? Are there ways that saying yes to certain opportunities might help to advance, rather than take time away from, your own research agenda? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Where Does Innovative Teaching Come From?
There’s a long-standing tradition of informal sharing of pedagogical innovation among K–12 teachers and a whole line of research on this phenomenon, which is known as teacher leadership. The same type of informal faculty leadership exists in higher education as well, but there is very little research on this topic, according to Pete Turner, education faculty member and director of the Teacher Education Institute at Estrella Mountain Community College. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)
Why Collect Artist’s Books and Zines?
The Brooklyn-based publisher Blonde Art Books recently organized its third annual Bushwick Art Book and Zine Fair (BABZ), a three-day event featuring a few dozen independent publishers, alongside workshops and performances. The presence of something like BABZ is not particularly surprising: a market for do-it-yourself printed matter still exists, whether at art-book fairs, at stores like Printed Matter, or in university library collections. What drives collectors to keep these venues running? What, or who, fuels the market? (Read more from Artslant.)
In Conversation: Peter Schjeldahl with Jarrett Earnest
In the pantheon of art writers, Peter Schjeldahl holds a special place as one of the greatest living critics. As an art critic for the New Yorker since 1998, he is alive to the nuanced movements of his own feelings, which he charts over the course of each review. This summer he met with the Rail’s Jarrett Earnest to discuss the interconnections between seeing, feeling, and writing. (Read more from the Brooklyn Rail.)
Smarthistory Seeks Short Essays
posted Jul 27, 2015
Smarthistory is working to provide essays and videos on the 250 objects that are part of the new AP art-history curriculum, launching fall 2015. We have eighteen objects left ranging from prehistoric to contemporary work. If you are interested in contributing a brief introductory essay on one of these, please drop us an email: drszucker@gmail.com and beth.harris@gmail.com.
Here’s what missing (images can be found on this list):
- Apollo 11 Cave Stones (State Museum Namibia)
- Running horned woman, 6000–4000 BCE, Algeria
- Hall of the Bulls, Lascaux, France, 15,000–13,000 BCE
- Anthropomorphic stele (El-Maakir-Qaryat al-Kaafa), fourth millennium BCE (Riyadh)
- Terracotta fragment, Lapita, Solomon Islands, Reef Islands, 1000 BCE (University of Auckland
- Michel Tuffery, Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000), 1994 (MNZM/Museum of New Zealand)
- Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 1997
- Magdalena Abakanowicz, Androgyne III, 1985, burlap, resin, wood, nails, and string (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
- Portrait mask (Mblo), Baule peoples (Côte d’Ivoire), late nineteenth or early twentieth century
- Lukasa (memory board), Mbudye Society, Luba peoples, (DR Congo), ca. nineteenth or early twentieth century
- Night Attack on the Sanjô Palace, Kamakura Period, Japan, ca. 1250–1300 CE (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
- Ambum Stone, Papua New Guinea, ca. 1500 BCE (National Gallery of Australia)
- Nan Madol, Pohnpei, Micronesia, Saudeleur Dynasty. ca. 700–1600 CE
- ‘Ahu ‘ula (feather cape), Hawaiian, late eighteenth century
- Tamati Waka Nene, Gottfried Lindauer, 1890 CE, oil on canvas
- Malagan display and mask, New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, ca. twentieth century (University Museum, Pennsylvania)
We are also looking for contributions from art historians on other broadly taught topics.
Piotr Piotrowski: In Memoriam
posted Jul 22, 2015
Amy Bryzgel is lecturer in history of art in the School of Divinity, History, and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
The field of art history and culture in Central and Eastern Europe mourns the loss of its unofficial cultural ambassador: the art historian, curator, and critic Piotr Piotrowski, who died on May 3, 2015, at the age of 63. The author of numerous publications, Piotrowski was a pioneer of new methods of study and approach to the art history of the region.
Piotrowski was professor ordinarius in the Department of Art History at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, where he was also chair of the department (1999–2008) and head of modern art history (1996–2009). He was director of the National Museum in Warsaw from 2009 to 2010 and served on a number of advisory boards, such as those for the National Gallery of Prague (academic board), Ars (Slovak Academy of Sciences), and Art Margins (MIT Press, editorial board). Piotrowski was also a permanent research fellow of the Graduate School for East and South-East European Studies, a program of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich and Regensburg University. In 2010 he was given the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory, which acknowledges the dedication of an arts and culture professional to deepening and broadening internationally the knowledge of visual art and culture in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe. He held numerous academic fellowships, from the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts (2009), CASVA in Washington, DC (1989–90), and most recently the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (2015). Piotrowski’s most recent books, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989 (Reaktion Books, 2009) and Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (Reaktion Books, 2012), have set the standard for comparative studies of modern and contemporary art in East Central Europe. Both are key texts not only in the field of Central and East European art history, but also for art history in general.
Piotrowski’s contributions to the field, however, go well beyond his substantial and impressive list of accomplishments. He was one of the guiding forces in the field of Central and Eastern European art history. His publications are at the forefront of the academic study and research of an area that had largely been neglected by Western scholars throughout the Cold War and is only recently expanding from its previously self-contained national histories. What’s more, Piotrowski’s project didn’t just unearth these practices and expose them to the West; in writing these histories he also criticized the so-called universal canon of art history, offering a view from “the margins” to “expose fractures within center,” to use his words. His project was to subvert the traditional geography of art, calling for a horizontal approach that would eventually contribute to the globalization of Eastern European art and help to develop a true global art history.
Those who knew Piotrowski remember his warmth and generosity and his quick, infectious sense of humor. Regardless of the situation, his personality always shined through—despite being a man of considerable achievements, publications, and awards, he was incredibly humble. Furthermore, he was extremely dedicated to the field and to his work and uncompromising in his principles, regardless of the cost to him personally or professionally. In October 2014, he organized a large and very successful conference in Lublin, Poland, entitled “East European Art Seen from the Global Perspective: Past and Present,” and was working to produce the conference reader up until his death.
All who knew his work agree on one thing: Piotr Piotrowski left us far too soon. Most of us expected to look forward to many more years of his talks, publications, exhibitions, and projects. One small bright spot we can look forward to is his forthcoming publication, From Museum Critique to the Critical Museum, edited with Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius and published by Ashgate. Furthermore, it must be remembered that Piotrowski was a teacher—not only to his many undergraduate, postgraduate, and PhD students, but also to those who read his work and followed his example. Piotrowski taught us all very much, and in our future work, we can only hope to insure that his spirit will live on.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jul 22, 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.
Great Colleges to Work For 2015
This special issue features results of the Chronicle’s eighth annual Great Colleges to Work For survey, based on responses from nearly 44,000 campus employees. The survey found that at colleges recognized for a strong workplace culture, employees were more likely to feel acknowledged, supported, well informed by their leaders, and engaged in a common mission. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
UK Copyright Amendment Provokes Controversy in the Art and Design World
The British government has recently moved to repeal section 52 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Removing this section would increase the copyright duration for artistic designs—as opposed to traditional artistic works—from twenty-five years from the year the designs were first marketed to the more common term of life of the author plus seventy years. The new arrangement has stirred up controversy in the process. (Read more from Center for Art Law.)
Help Desk: Selling Out
Recently a design firm approached me about a project that involves artists painting on small refrigerators from which energy drinks will be sold. There will be a gallery exhibition of these fridges before they are distributed to various retail outlets in major cities around the country. The pay is pretty good, though not what I would ideally get for a painting of that size. Will I be committing an ethical transgression if I participate in this promotion? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
Peter J. Cohen Trumpets the Art of Amateur Photography
Waiting for a companion at a Chelsea flea market in New York in the early 1990s, Peter J. Cohen thumbed through a bin of bygone snapshots, torn out of discarded family albums. He didn’t know what attracted him to the images—he’d never been interested in vintage photography and wasn’t the type to reach for a camera to document his own life—but, on a whim, he purchased five of them for $8. When he got home and inspected the photographs more closely, he knew right away that he wanted to return to the flea market to buy more. (Read more from the Boston Globe.)
You Can’t Hurry Greatness
In 1990, the psychologist John Hayes proposed the “ten-year rule,” arguing that even someone with enormous creative potential needs to spend a decade working on his or her craft before producing work of lasting merit. In a newly published paper, Richard Hass of Philadelphia University and Robert Weisberg of Temple University reevaluate this rule by looking at the careers of some of America’s most enduringly popular artists: five composers from the Great American Songbook era. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
Mentoring as a Tenure Criterion
Purdue University, like most colleges and universities, evaluates faculty members up for tenure on their accomplishments in research, teaching, and service. Like most research universities, research has tended to be prominent. But university administrators recently told the Purdue board of plans to make significant changes in those criteria. Coming first will be an expectation that faculty members are active mentors to undergraduates, especially to at-risk students. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Museums’ Disturbing Transformation: Relentless Commercialization
For-profit art dealers are organizing shows for nonprofit museums. Museum professionals are organizing shows for commercial art fairs and galleries. Museum collections are being monetized, rented out for profit to other museums and private corporations. Corporations are co-organizing museum shows. In fact, so commonplace is the boundary-blurring that few any longer notice. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
Modeling the Behavior We Expect in Class
We should be thinking about social learning theory in the context of the college classroom. Although so-called observational learning now has widespread acceptance and a fair amount has been written about the benefits of modeling in the grade-school classroom, there is surprisingly little out there on the topic for college instructors. (Read more from Vitae.)