CAA News Today
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted Jul 25, 2014
In its periodic list of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, historians, teachers, curators, dealers, philanthropists, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. Of special note is a text on a distinguished scholar of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russian art, Grigorii Iurevich Sternin.
- Roger Ackling, a British sculptor who was a contemporary of Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, and other artists who graduated from Saint Martins School of Art in the 1960s, died on June 5, 2014. He was 66 years old
- Jack Agüeros, a writer, activist, and the former director of El Museo del Barrio in New York, died on May 4, 2014. He was 79
- Eppie Archuleta, a New Mexican weaver who worked in fiber and fabric, passed away on April 11, 2014, age 92. In 1985 she received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts
- Gordon Bennett, a pioneering Australian artist whose work challenged race, power, history, and social conventions, died on June 3, 2014. He was 58 years old
- Tito Enrique Canepa Jiménez, a Dominican painter who lived and worked in New York after immigrating there in the 1930s, died on February 11, 2014. He was 97
- Lynne Cohen, an award-winning Canadian photographer who had taught at the University of Ottawa from 1974 to 2005, passed away on May 12, 2014. She was 69
- Deborah Deery, an art educator and academic administrator at Moore College of Art and Design, died on August 19, 2013. She was 49 years old
- Joseph Doyle, an artist and teacher based in Houston, Texas, died on July 9, 2014, at age 54
- Lee MacCormick Edwards, a philanthropist as well as a lecturer in art history, a photographer, and an author, passed away on April 19, 2014. She was 76
- John Clovis Fontaine, chairman emeritus for both the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, died on September 23, 2013. He was 81 years old
- Edythe Goodridge, a curator and the former director of visual arts for the Canada Council, died on June 4, 2014. She was 77
- Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi art dealer who secretly hoarded millions of dollars’ worth of modern art for decades, died on May 6, 2014. He was 81
- Anne Hollander, a celebrated author and a historian of fashion and costume, died on July 6, 2014. She was 83 years old
- Hans Hollein, an Austrian architect and educator who won the Pritzker Prize in 1985, passed away on April 24, 2014. He was 80
- On Kawara, a Conceptual artist and painter whose work addressed the passage of time, died in late June 2014. He was 81 years old
- Maria Lassnig, an Austrian figurative painter whose retrospective is on view at MoMA PS1, died on May 6, 2014, age 94
- Stanley Marsh, an eccentric Texan millionare who commissioned the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, died on June 17, 2014. He was 76
- Cynthia Mills, the executive editor of the Smithsonian Institution’s journal American Art, died on May 1, 2014. She was 67 years old
- Robert Olsen, a Los Angeles–based painter of outdoor urban scenes, died on April 14, 2014. He was 44.
- Jennifer Wynne Reeves, an abstract painter based in New York, passed away on June 22, 2014. She was 51
- Nan Rosenthal, a curator for the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on April 27, 2014, at the age of 76
- Jerry Rothman, a Los Angeles–based sculptor who was a member of a ceramics movement called Otis Clay, died on June 5, 2014, at age 80
- Frederic Schwartz, an architect, city planner, and the designer of several memorials for September 11, died on April 28, 2014. He was 63
- Claude Simard, a cofounder and director of Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, died on June 24, 2014, at the age of 57. Simard was also an artist and performer
- Grigorii Iurevich Sternin, a distinguished scholar of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russian art, died on November 23, 2013, age 86. CAA has published a special text on Sternin
- Massimi Vignelli, an Italian-born graphic designer who created the 1970s map for New York’s subway system, died on May 27, 2014. He was 83
- Ultra Violet, an artist, actor, author, and Andy Warhol superstar, passed away on June 14, 2014. She was 78
- Melvin J. Wachowiak Jr., a senior conservator for the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute, died on May 28, 2014. He was 56
- Khin Maung Yin, an influential modernist Burmese artist who painted colorful portraits, passed away on June 10, 2014, age 76
Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jul 23, 2014
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.
Artist Resale Rights Gain Support in US Congress
A bill that would bring droit de suite, also known as artist resale royalty rights, to the United States is gaining momentum in Congress. The bill has gained six cosponsors in the past three weeks, including Representatives Sam Farr of California and Janice Schakowsky of Illinois. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Arts Companies Must Adapt to Changes at Facebook, Report Reveals
For some time now, marketers in the arts and culture sector have been worrying that updates to Facebook have resulted in their messages reaching fewer and fewer people. A new report released by the digital consultancy firm One Further reveals that these fears are justified and that a new approach to Facebook page management may be necessary. However, it’s not all doom and gloom: opportunities still exist, and arts marketers are adapting accordingly. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Revise and Resubmit!
I’m sure you’ve heard the adage “publish or perish.” In order to get tenure—or, as the abysmal job market begets hyperprofessionalization, to be considered for a job at all—a scholar must have a certain amount of articles appear in “peer-reviewed” academic journals. These journals—Obscure Subfield Quarterly, One-Word Pretentious Greek Thing, etc.—usually have a circulation of about three hundred, and those articles upon which careers depend are usually read by exactly three people. (Read more from Slate.)
How Abstract Art Can Change the Way You See Waste and Consumption in America
Abstract artwork is sometimes misinterpreted as being flatly indiscernible, when in fact it’s often simply enchanting and destabilizing, requiring a moment of contemplation from the viewer. This exhibition seeks not only to demystify abstract art but also consumption, a term that, despite its looming unwieldy aura, can be combatted in the comforts of your home, and in the confines of your humble garbage bin. (Read more from Huffington Post.)
How Much Are Curators Really Paid?
Many in the art world were staggered by recent reports that the Italian curator Germano Celant is being paid €750,000 to organize a pavilion for the Milan Expo 2015. Celant’s fee—and the incredulity it provoked—raises questions about how much curators are typically paid for organizing biennials and large-scale international exhibitions. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
The Digital Art Historian’s Toolkit
Lists of tools like this one invariably age poorly. For an always-up-to-date, much more comprehensive list of useful digital tools, see the excellent DiRT Directory. However, we felt it might be useful to our participants to have a snapshot of tools that could be useful to art historians specifically. We’ve focused here on free, off-the-shelf tools that don’t require programming knowledge and might be particularly interesting to people who work with a lot of images. (Read more from Beyond the Digital Slide Library.)
Blaming the Victim: Ladder Faculty and the Lack of Adjunct Activism
The adjunct labor movement has necessarily prioritized the working conditions of part-time faculty, many of whom are living below the poverty line. But adjuncts need not be card-carrying union members to benefit from these victories, which have transformed academia’s once-invisible underclass into its most vocal majority. The inequalities in academic employment may still be firmly in place, but thanks to these unionization efforts, contingent faculty are now active participants in the national conversation about the future of higher education. (Read more from Vitae.)
A Banker, a Scholar, and the Invention of Art History: The Story of the Warburg Brothers
Emily J. Levine’s new book details the contradictions and confusions of Jewish life in Hamburg, with ancient religious traditions vying with modern currents of thought, and ancient caution competing with tentative hopes when Jews at last began to breach the barriers of anti-Semitism in German society. Focusing on Aby Warburg’s library and two of its most illustrious users, the philosopher Ernst Cassirer and the art historian Erwin Panofsky, she reveals the ways in which the distinctive qualities of a single place conditioned the development of ideas in a larger sense to create a “Hamburg School” of thought, a school intimately connected with Jewish experience in Imperial and Weimar Germany. (Read more from the New Republic.)
2015 Awards for Distinction Nominations
posted Jul 21, 2014
CAA has begun accepting nominations for the 2015 Awards for Distinction, which will be announced in January and presented at the 103rd Annual Conference, taking place February 11–14, 2015, in New York. Please review the guidelines below to familiarize yourself with the nomination process and to download, complete, and submit the requested materials. Deadline: July 31, 2014, for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Awards; August 31, 2014, for all others.
General Guidelines
In your letter, state who you are; how you know (of) the nominee; how the nominee and/or his or her work or publication has affected your practice or studies and the pursuit of your career; and why you think this person (or, in a collaboration, these people) deserves to be recognized. We also urge you to contact up to five colleagues, students, peers, collaborators, and/or coworkers of the nominee to write letters; no more than five letters are considered. Letters of support are important for reference, but the awards decisions are the responsibilities of the juries based on their expert assessment of the qualifications of the nominees.
Nominations for book and exhibition awards should be for authors of books published or works exhibited or staged between September 1, 2013, and August 31, 2014. Books published posthumously are not eligible. Letters of support are not required for the Morey and Barr awards. All submissions must include a completed 2015 nomination form and one copy of the nominee’s CV (limit: two pages); book-award nominations do not require a CV (see below for the appropriate forms for the Morey and Barr awards and the Porter Prize).
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
To give the jury full opportunity to evaluate each submission fairly, submit materials well before the deadline. Please review the following nomination guidelines:
- A publisher may submit no more than five titles. In addition, CAA accepts nominations from its membership, jury members, reviews editors for The Art Bulletin and Art Journal, and field editors from caa.reviews
- Publishers may not submit the same title for the Morey and Barr awards. The Morey jury does not accept exhibition catalogues
- Eligible books must have been published between September 1, 2013, and August 31, 2014
- Books published posthumously are not eligible
- CAA and each jury member must receive a copy of the nominated book. A total of six copies of the book must be sent. To receive the mailing addresses for the jury, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs
- Complete and submit the Morey nominaton form
- Letters of support are not required
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
To give the jury full opportunity to evaluate each submission fairly, submit materials well before the deadline. Please review the following nomination guidelines:
- A publisher may submit no more than five titles. In addition, CAA accepts nominations from its membership, jury members, reviews editors for The Art Bulletin and Art Journal, and field editors from caa.reviews
- Publishers may not submit the same title for the Morey and Barr awards. The Morey jury does not accept exhibition catalogues
- Eligible books must have been published between September 1, 2013, and August 31, 2014
- Books published posthumously are not eligible
- CAA and each jury member must receive a copy of the nominated book. A total of six copies of the book must be sent. To receive the mailing addresses for the jury, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs
- Complete and submit the Barr nomination form
- Letters of support are not required
Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
To determine eligibility, authors of articles in The Art Bulletin must complete the Porter nomination form.
Frank Jewett Mather Award
Please submit copies of critical writings, which may be website links and printouts, photocopies or scanned pages of newspapers or magazines, and more. If the writing is contained in a single volume (such as a book), please provide the publication information.
Distinguished Teaching of Art and Art History Awards
Letters for these two awards are particularly important for the juries because of the personal contact involved in successful teaching.
Contact
Please write to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, for more information about the nomination process. Visit the Awards section of the CAA website to learn more about the individual awards.
June 2014 Issue of The Art Bulletin
posted Jul 18, 2014
The June 2014 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, leads off with an essay by Parul Dave Mukherji, who explores the promise of postethnic art history in “Whither Art History in a Globalizing World.”
Also in the June issue, Hallie Franks investigates domestic mosaics in ancient Greece through travel metaphors associated with the symposium. In “Casts, Imprints, and the Deathliness of Things,” Marcia Pointon examines the materiality of death masks produced in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe to excavate their meanings, past and present. Next, Sugata Ray analyzes the architecture of the 1887 Jaipur Economic and Industrial Museum as destabilizing the imperial aspirations of colonial museology. Finally, Joseph Siry considers how Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kalita Humphreys Theater in Dallas realized the architect’s ambition to rethink the ideal building form for drama.
In the Reviews section, Wei-Cheng Lin considers Megan E. O’Neil’s book Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, Paul Barolsky reviews Michael W. Cole’s study Ambitious Forms: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence, and Joanne Rappaport examines Daniela Bleichmar’s Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment.
CAA sends The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and to those individuals who choose to receive the journal as a benefit of their membership. The digital version at Taylor & Francis Online is currently available to all CAA individual members.
The next issue of the quarterly publication, to appear in September 2014, will feature a third “Whither Art History?” piece, by Claudia Valladão de Mattos, and essays on the memorializing function of Jan van Eyck’s van der Paele Virgin, the moral and phenomenological implications of a monstrous visage in Hans Burgkmair’s Crucifixion, modern interiority in Watteau’s fêtes galantes, and several exhibitions associated with the Festival of India in the United States. The issue will also include reviews on painting in early modern Japan, photography in nineteenth-century India, and the politics and power of Mughal architecture.
Chair a 2016 Annual Conference Session in Washington, DC
posted Jul 17, 2014
The CAA 104th Annual Conference will take place February 3–6, 2016, in Washington, DC. The Annual Conference Committee invites session proposals that cover the breadth of current thought and research in art, art and architectural history, theory and criticism, pedagogical issues, museum and curatorial practice, conservation, and developments in technology. Deadline: Friday, September 12, 2014.
In order to submit a proposal, you must be a current CAA member. For full details on the submission process for the conference, please review the information published below.
Open Formats
This category encourages experimental and alternative formats that transcend the traditional panel, with presentations whose content extends to serve the areas of contemporary issues, studio art, historical studies, and educational and professional practices. Proposals may experiment with session hierarchies, length, technology, and modes of participation. Open Formats are the only sessions that may be preformed, with participants chosen in advance by session chairs. These sessions require advance planning by the chair.
Historical Studies
This category broadly embraces all art-historical proposals up to the third quarter of the twentieth century. Historical Studies session proposals may not be submitted as preformed panels with a list of speakers.
Contemporary Issues/Studio Art
This category is intended for studio-art proposals, as well as those concerned with contemporary art and theory, criticism, and visual culture. Contemporary Issues/Studio Art session proposals may not be submitted as preformed panels with a list of speakers.
Educational and Professional Practices
This category pertains to session proposals that develop along more practical lines and address the educational and professional concerns of CAA members as teachers, practicing artists and critics, or museum curators. Educational and Professional Practices session proposals may not be submitted as preformed panels with a list of speakers.
Affiliated Societies
Each CAA affiliated society may submit one proposal that follows the guidelines outlined b elow. A letter of support from the society or committee must accompany the submission. The Annual Conference Committee considers it, along with the other submissions, on the basis of merit.
Committees
Each CAA committee may submit one proposal that follows the guidelines outlined below. A letter of support from the society or committee must accompany the submission. The Annual Conference Committee considers it, along with the other submissions, on the basis of merit.
Proposal Submission Guidelines
All session proposals are completed and submitted online; paper forms and postal mailings are not required. Prospective chairs must include the following in their proposal:
- The Annual Conference Committee considers proposals from individual CAA members only. Once selected, session chairs must remain current members through 2016. No one may chair a session more than once in a three-year period. (That is, individuals who chaired sessions in 2014 or 2015 may not chair a session in 2016.) The committee seeks topics that have not been addressed in recent conferences or areas that have traditionally been underrepresented as well as formats that explore new modes of dialogue
- A completed session proposal made through an online database
- If you have prior approval from a CAA affiliated society or committee to submit an application for a sponsored session, an official letter of support from the society or committee uploaded as a PDF or Word file. If you are not submitting an application for a sponsored session, please skip this step
- Your CV and, if applicable, the CV of your cochair; no more than two pages in length each, uploaded as a PDF or Word file (both CVs in one document)
The committee makes its selection solely on the basis of merit. Where proposals overlap, CAA reserves the right to select the most considered version or, in some cases, to suggest a fusion of two or more versions from among the proposals submitted. The submission process must be completed online. Deadline: Friday, September 12, 2014.
General Proposal Information
The process of fashioning the conference is a delicate balancing act. The 2016 program is shaped by four broad submission categories: Open Formats, Historical Studies, Contemporary Issues/Studio Art, and Educational and Professional Practices. Also included in the mix are sessions by CAA’s affiliated societies and committees.
The Annual Conference Committee welcomes session proposals from established artists and scholars, along with those from younger scholars, emerging and midcareer artists, and graduate students. Particularly welcome are proposals that highlight interdisciplinary work. Artists are especially encouraged to propose sessions appropriate to dialogue and information exchange relevant to artists.
Sessions selected by the Annual Conference Committee for the 2016 conference are considered regular program sessions; that is, they are 2½-hours long, are scheduled during the eight regular program time slots during the four days of the conference, and require a conference badge for admission. With the exception of the Open Formats category, CAA session proposals may not be submitted as preformed panels with a list of speakers. Proposals for papers for the 2016 conference are solicited through the 2016 Call for Participation, to be published in March 2015.
Contact
For more information about session proposals for the 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, DC, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, at 212-392-4405.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jul 16, 2014
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 History That! A Manifesto for the Future of a Discipline
The future of art history has much to offer and much at stake. Recent references to the discipline in popular media have encouraged a critical assessment of the so-called humanities crisis, revealing it to be a red herring for the more systemic ailments that afflict higher education. Art history has a role to play in changing the conversation about the arts and humanities in society as a whole. In an effort to spur this change, this essay describes and contextualizes Art History That, a crowd-sourced manifesto for the future of the discipline. (Read more from Visual Resources.)
Detroit’s Art May Be Worth Billions, Report Says
A new expert appraisal of the Detroit Institute of Arts’ collection, which some creditors are demanding be sold to help pay municipal debts in the city’s bankruptcy case, has found that the works could be worth $2.7 to $4.6 billion. The appraisal, commissioned by the city and the museum in advance of a federal bankruptcy trial in August, also added that such a price tag would never be attained at sale, for reasons including donor lawsuits that would delay or prevent the sale of many valuable works, weakness in the market for some kinds of paintings, and lower sale prices because of the sheer bulk that would flood into the market at once. (Read more from the New York Times.)
After Decades in Storage, Damaged Rothko Murals Get High-Tech Restoration
Paintings by Mark Rothko are highly coveted—in May one of his works sold at auction in London for $50 million. But oddly enough, Harvard University has had a handful of Rothkos—faded by sunlight and splattered with food and drink—in storage. Now, new technology has led to a potentially controversial restoration. (Read more from National Public Radio.)
Scholarly Journal Retracts Sixty Articles, Smashes “Peer Review Ring”
Every now and then a scholarly journal retracts an article because of errors or outright fraud. In academic circles, and sometimes beyond, each retraction is a big deal. Now comes word of a journal retracting sixty articles at once. The reason for the mass retraction is mind-blowing: a “peer review and citation ring” was apparently rigging the review process to get articles published. (Read more from the Washington Post.)
Confronting Art-World Sexism
In New York, Sperone Westwater comes in at 91 versus 9. Team Gallery at 85 versus 15, Matthew Marks at 84 versus 16, and Mary Boone at 83 versus 17. Some of the top galleries in Los Angeles tell a similar story: Blum and Poe is 89 versus 11; Prism is 88 versus 12; Thomas Solomon is 85 to 15, and Patrick Painter is 83 to 17. These numbers, as you might have guessed, reflect the percentages of male versus female artists represented by each gallery. They’re also the impetus for a new internet-driven, open-source feminist art project, Gallery Tally, organized by the Los Angeles artist and educator Micol Hebron. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Why the World’s Most Talked-About New Art Dealer Is Instagram
Standing before Marc Quinn’s looming Myth Venus sculpture in front of Christie’s Rockefeller headquarters was a masked protester holding a large poster that read F*** U. It was a parody of Wade Guyton’s 2005 Untitled that sold for $3.52 million just hours later at the live-streamed “If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday” auction, which included thirty-five contemporary artworks from blue-chip names such as Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Martin Kippenberger, and Alex Israel, all handpicked by the contemporary art expert Loic Gouzer, with the majority of the production on his—and Christie’s—Instagram accounts. (Read more from Vogue.)
Help Desk: Friends with Benefits
A few months ago I tried to collaborate with a good friend, but we didn’t complete any work. It’s not that we spent the time just hanging out—we worked, but it just didn’t go anywhere. But I really like my friend’s work and think that we could make something great together. Should we try again? If we do, how can we make something happen? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
Room for Creativity?
“Room for Creativity?” raises the question of how adjuncts try to balance their own creative and/or scholarly interests with teaching demands. I asked the participants—two English professors—to cover how they’ve both balanced (or tried to balance) their interests in poetry and other creative work with what they’ve been allowed as adjuncts to teach in the name of “course coverage.” (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Rep. Nadler on the ART Act, Hearing on Artists’ Resale Rights
posted Jul 16, 2014
Yesterday, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-10), the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, delivered an opening statement at the subcommittee’s hearing of “Moral Rights, Termination Rights, Resale Royalty, and Copyright Term.” Congressman Nadler introduced the American Royalties Too (ART) Act, which will be discussed at the hearing, in order to ensure visual artists are compensated when their original artwork is resold. His legislation would bring fairness to American artists who, unlike their fellow visual artists in 70 countries, do not receive any compensation when their works are resold at public auction.
“I firmly believe that the time has come for us to establish a resale royalty right here in the United States. By adopting a resale royalty, the United States would join the rest of the world in recognizing this important right. The ART act would ensure that American artists also benefit whenever and wherever their works are sold, whether in New York, London, or Paris,” said Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). “I thank Chairman Coble and Chairman Goodlatte for including this issue as part of the Subcommittee’s review of the Copyright Act.”
The following is the full text of Congressman Nadler’s opening statement (as prepared for delivery):
“Today we consider a broad range of existing legal protections for artists and creators, including the moral rights of attribution and integrity, the right to terminate a transfer or license of one’s works, and the copyright term. Congress has taken some steps to address these issues, and I welcome this opportunity to hear from our witnesses about how our current laws are working and what, if any, changes might be necessary and appropriate.
“I also welcome this chance to examine resale royalties for visual artists. To date, Congress has failed to adopt a resale royalty right, which would grant visual artists a percentage of the proceeds each time their work is resold. Unlike other artists – including, for example, songwriters and performing artists who may receive some royalties whenever their works are reproduced or performed – our visual artists currently benefit only from the original sale of their artwork. This means that the artist receives no part of the long-term financial success of a work. For example, if a young artist sells a work of art for $500 at the beginning of his or her career, and the same work is later sold for $50,000, the original artist gets nothing. It is the purchaser, not the artist, who benefits whenever the value of the artist’s work increases.
“The Berne Convention, to which the United States is a signatory, makes adoption of the resale royalty right optional, but does not allow artists in any country that fails to adopt this right to benefit from resale royalties in any other country. Because we do not provide this right, U.S. artists are prevented from recovering any royalties generated from the resale of their works in countries that have resale rights.
“Seventy other countries now provide this right, including the entire European Union.
“Concerned about this lack of fairness for American artists, I have introduced a bill – H.R. 4103, the American Royalties Too (or ART) Act – to correct this deficiency, and injustice, in the law. The ART Act provides for a resale royalty of 5 percent to be paid to the artist for every work of visual art sold for more than $5,000 at public auction. The royalty would be capped at $35,000 for works of art that sell for more than $700,000. The royalty right is limited to works of fine art that are not created for the purpose of mass reproduction. Covered artworks include paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and photographs in the original embodiment or in a limited edition. Small auction houses with annual sales of less than $1 million are exempt.
“I firmly believe that the time has come for us to establish a resale royalty right here in the United States. I am not alone in this belief. The national arts advocacy organization Americans for the Arts supports this legislation. So does the Visual Artists’ Rights Coalition (VARC), which includes the Artists Rights Society, the Visual Artists and Galleries Association, the American Society of Illustrators Partnership, the National Cartoonists Society, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, and the Association of Medical Illustrators, among others.
“The United States Copyright Office, which once opposed adopting a resale royalty right, also now supports “Congressional consideration of a resale royalty right, or droit de suite, which would give artists a percentage of the amount paid for a work each time it is resold by another party.” In its report in December of last year – Resale Royalties: An Updated Analysis – the Copyright Office observed that visual artists operate at a disadvantage relative to other artists. It also noted that many more countries had adopted resale royalty laws since its 1992 report recommending against adoption of this right, and that the adverse market effects it feared might result from resale royalty laws have not materialized.
“I welcome and look forward to hearing more from Karyn Claggett, Associate Register of Copyrights and Director of Policy and International Affairs, who is testifying on resale royalty on behalf of the Copyright Office at the hearing today.
“By adopting a resale royalty, the United States would join the rest of the world in recognizing this important right. And because these other countries have reciprocal agreements, they would then pay U.S. artists for works resold in their countries. This would ensure that, in addition to resale royalties for works resold in this country, American artists would also benefit whenever and wherever their works are sold, whether in New York, London, or Paris.
“Serious consideration of a resale royalty right is long overdue, and I thank Chairman Coble and Chairman Goodlatte for including this issue as part of the Subcommittee’s review of the Copyright Act.
“With that, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and yield back the balance of my time.”
Arts Action Fund Breaking News 7-15-14
posted Jul 15, 2014
The following email from Nina Ozlu Tunceli, executive director of Americans for the Arts, was sent on Tuesday, July 15, 2014.
Arts Action Fund Breaking News 7-15-14
Once again, your advocacy voices made a difference. Last week, thousands of Arts Action Fund members sent letters to their Members of Congress in response to action taken by the House Subcommittee on the Interior. The Subcommittee had proposed an $8 million cut each from the FY 2015 budgets of the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
We’re really pleased to report that when this bill came before the Full Appropriations Committee today, the Interior Subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert (R-CA) announced that he had made some “manager’s amendments” to the bill. He restored the cuts to the two federal cultural agencies and now the bill moves to the House floor with a $146 million recommendation for the NEA and NEH each.
Appropriations Committee Rescinds Proposed Cut to NEH
posted Jul 15, 2014
The following email from Stephen Kidd, executive director of the National Humanities Alliance, was sent on Tuesday, July 15, 2014.
Appropriations Committee Rescinds Proposed Cut to NEH
Dear Humanities Advocate,
Today, the House Appropriations Committee passed an amendment that rescinds the proposed $8 million cut to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Thanks to the many of you who responded to last week’s action alert, the amendment passed with substantial bipartisan support.
This is a very important step in preserving NEH’s capacity. In the coming weeks, we may need to call on you to contact your elected officials again as this funding bill proceeds through Congress and faces additional challenges.
Thanks in advance for your continued support!
Grigorii Iurevich Sternin: In Memoriam
posted Jul 11, 2014
Alison Hilton is Wright Family Professor of Art History and director of the MA program in art and museum studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and Irina Karasik works at the State Russian Museum.
Grigorii Iurevich Sternin, a distinguished scholar of Russian nineteenth and early twentieth century art, chief scientific officer and senior researcher at the Institute of Art History of the Ministry of Culture, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts, died in Moscow on November 23, 2013. He was 86.
Sternin was among the most influential art historians of his generation, those who began their academic careers just after World War II, during the Cold War. Born in 1927, Sternin studied art history at Moscow State University, graduating in 1950, and continued his postgraduate work in the Department of Russian Art under the eminent professor A. A. Fedorov-Davydov. After defending his candidate’s dissertation on Russian book illustration of the 1840s in 1953, Sternin worked at one of Moscow’s leading art-history publishing houses, Iskusstvo (Art). He became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR in 1957.
Sternin’s career is most closely connected with the Institute of Art History of the Ministry of Culture in Moscow, where he worked until the end of his life. He served as research scholar and head of the Sector on Fine Arts and Architecture of the Peoples of the USSR between 1962 and 1975, a difficult period marked by signs of liberalization that were not sustained, when artists, writers, and administrators of arts institutions faced obstacles that are hard to appreciate today. Perhaps as a way of finding a perspective on his own times, Sternin became interested in what made artistic innovation happen in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and this was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. “Artistic Life in Russia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries” explored the many elements, some crucial and some tangential, that made up “artistic culture” in a period of complex political and social change. Sternin earned his doctorate in 1973 (in Russia this signifies substantial scholarly achievement beyond the first, candidate’s degree; it is roughly equivalent to full professorship).
Much of Sternin’s research continued to probe the interrelationships among the arts and other aspects of Russian culture. His publications, more than two hundred books and articles, are noted for their breadth of conception and their scrupulous attention to detail; many include chronicles of events with citations from artists’ writings and contemporary periodicals. Among his major works are: Khudozhestvennaia Zhizn’ Rossii na rubezhe XIX – XX vekov (Artistic Life in Russia at the Turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, 1970); Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Rossii nachala XX veka (Artistic Life in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, 1976); Vzaimosviaz’ iskusstv v khudozhestvennom razvitii vtoroi poloviny XIX veka; ideinye printsipy, strukturnye osobennosti (Interconnections of the arts in the artistic evolution of the second half of the 19th century; conceptual principles, structural peculiarities, edited volume, 1982); Russkaia khudozhestvennaia kul’tura vtoroi poloviny XIX – nachala XX veka (Russian Artistic Culture of the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, 1984); Ilia Repin (with Elena Kirillina and others, 1985, 2011); Russkii modern (Russian Art Nouveau, with Elena Borisova, 1988); Khudozestvennaia Zhizn’ Rossii 1900-1910-kh godov (Artistic Life in Russia 1900–1910s, 1991); Khudozhestvennaia Zhizn’ Rossii vtoroi poloviny XIХ veka, 70-80-e gody (Artistic life in Russia in the second half of the 19th century: the 1870s-80s, 1997); Obrazy i liudi Serebrianogo veka (Images and People of the Silver Age, coauthored with L. S. Aleshina, 2002); Khudozhestvennaia Zhizn Rossii 30-40-kh godov 19-ogo veka (Artistic Life in Russia in the 1830s–40s, 2005), Dva veka: Ocherki russkoi khudozhestvennoi kul’tury (Two Centuries: Sketches of Russian Artistic Culture, 2007), Ot Repina do Grigor’eva (From Repin to Grigoriev, 2009). Sternin was an author and editor of the authoritative Istoriia Russkogo Iskusstva (History of Russian Art published by the Academy of Sciences, 1952–1964), specifically volume 10 on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; he was closely involved in the conception, editing, and writing of a new History of Russian Art (22 volumes planned) and was the editor of volume 14 on the first third of the nineteenth century, published in 2011.
The Russian scholarly community recognized Sternin’s contributions. He was named an Honored Artist of Russia in 1994, elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1997, and designated a Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in 2004. At the memorial service at the Institute of Art History in November 2013, colleagues and former students recalled his constant attention to human relationships, both as part of his approach to art history and in his daily life as a teacher and mentor. Generous in providing books, articles, and advice to his students and even to visiting researchers, he was also an astute critic. He could identify problems of interpretation and actively seek ways of finding solutions, without ever dictating or imposing his views. Sternin’s empathetic responsiveness to colleagues and students will be missed as much as his brilliance as a scholar.
He is survived by his wife, the art historian Liliia Stepanovna Aleshina.