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CAA News Today

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.

A World without Tenure? That’s a World without Shared Governance, Too

We’ve been reading arguments against tenure for a while, of course, but there’s a real corporatist edge to recent contributions to the genre. These broadsides envision an Orwellian campus where freedom is servitude—specifically, intellectual servitude to the whims of education technocrats holding up their forefingers to test the winds of supposed market forces. What the antitenure crowd fails to acknowledge is that higher education, as an “industry,” is unique. (Read more from Vitae.)

What Is a Page in the Digital Age?

What is a page? What is a book? These are just two of the questions facing the cohort of museums participating in the Getty Foundation’s Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI), which is helping the field move into online publishing. The Walker Art Center has launched its OSCI publication, On Performativity, which provides another spellbinding answer to the question driving this initiative: How can we rethink the museum catalogue for the digital age? (Read more from the Getty Iris.)

The Incorporated Woman

Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and a host of other big companies in today’s “data-driven economy” share one thing in common: they make a living from harvesting personal data. To regain some ownership and control of her data, Jennifer Lyn Morone decided to become Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc (JLM), registered like all savvy corporations in Delaware. And what started as an art project—her brief as part of a master’s degree at London’s Royal College of Art was to “design a protest”—is now transforming her into a humanoid/corporate hybrid. (Read more from the Economist.)

Autonomous Filing Cabinet Embodies Our Everlasting Data Trail

A filing cabinet is following people around the Royal College of Art to remind us that our data is everywhere—and it will follow us everywhere. I Know What You Did Last Summer is Jaap de Maat’s final-year project, the finale to a two-year-long MA in information experience design. And anyone visiting the college this weekend will certainly get a dose of that design experience, as the clunky metal cabinet trundles toward them, stalking their every move. (Read more from Ars Technica.)

Summer Boundaries

Historically, it has been relatively common for some faculty members, particularly those with lower-level administrative responsibilities, to be informally on the hook during the summer months, expected to respond to email and keep up with loose threads, but to go uncompensated for their work during that time period. In addition to being a form of de facto exploitation, such patterns contribute to the gradual but steady marginalization of academic labor across multiple fronts. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

#arthistory: Instagram and the Intro to Art History Course

From museum selfies to the digital humanities, Instagram has become a major force in the art world. Artists now cultivate “Instagram practices,” art institutions have thousands of followers, and hashtags like #monalisa have over 200,000 entries. People in their late teens and twenties—the age demographic that dominates Instagram—contribute the majority of these posts, yet the app is more likely to be banned from college classrooms than encouraged. In a period when educators are grappling with divergences between social media–driven forms of communication and academic communication, Instagram has potential to both enrich content and strengthen the discipline’s relevance for contemporary learners. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)

Building a Better Nonacademic Career Panel

Just last week, one of my graduate-school deans invited me to present on a nonacademic career panel with three other alumni. I’m happy to act as a resource for my alma mater—and for graduate students struggling to navigate their career options. But sometimes I wonder if I’m doing much good by showing up. I’m convinced that these panels do little to help their audiences explore, much less pursue, options outside the academy. (Read more from Vitae.)

The Pen Is Mightier Than the Brush? Looking at Six Famous American Male Artist-Critics

Artists have always had a complicated relationship with art criticism. “Do not be an art critic, but paint; therein lies salvation,” Paul Cézanne wrote to his fellow painter Émile Bernard in 1904. Eugène Delacroix wrote an entire essay on the subject in 1829 called “On Art Criticism,” in which he found that art critics—or “watchful dragons” as he called them—“have always presented difficulties.” If artists and art critics are such separate species, what are we to think of artists who themselves are art critics? (Read more from Artspace Magazine.)

Filed under: CAA News

Get involved in an issue that you care about! CAA invites members to apply for service on one of its nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees. These committees address critical issues in the visual arts in an attempt to deal with, and respond to, the pressing concerns of CAA’s members.

Communicating via listserv throughout the year, each committee takes on the objectives it has set for itself, which include: programming ARTspace at the Annual Conference; establishing best practices, standards, and guidelines; sharing and examining pedagogical practices; examining new and developing technologies; addressing issues critical to emerging professionals as well as concerns of diversity and gender; extending the reach of CAA internationally; and clarifying and debating matters of fair use, copyright, and open access. This vigorous exchange of information reveals common goals and leads to solutions that will help CAA members to weather their changing professional landscape.

Committees are active at the Annual Conference in February, where each presents one or two sessions on a subject of its choosing. These sessions, sometimes collaborations between committees and sometimes dealing with workforce issues, are meant to be of immediate value to CAA members. Also at the conference, the committees hold face-to-face business meetings and discuss the past year’s accomplishments while targeting ideas for future projects. Participation on a committee is an excellent and fruitful way to network with other CAA members; for some individuals it is a stepping-stone to service on the organization’s Board of Directors.

The public face of several CAA committees appears most visibly at the conference. The Services to Artists Committee, for example, conceives nearly all content and programming for ARTspace, ARTexchange, and the Media Lounge, while the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee organizes events on professional-development issues that take place in the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge during the conference.

Online, the Committee on Women in the Arts publishes the monthly CWA Picks of exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship, among other activities. CAA’s Museum Committee is currently reviewing several of CAA’s Standards and Guidelines as they relate to museums. This committee also organizes conference sessions on museum leadership and exhibition history and works to provide resources for professionals in academic art museums.

The International Committee warmly welcomed twenty travel-grant recipients from around the world at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago and will host fifteen travel-grant recipients at the 2015 conference in New York.

The Professional Practices Committee continues to study, develop, and revise CAA’s Standards and Guidelines, so that these documents, once approved by the CAA board, become authoritative, comprehensive documents for art-related disciplines. The Committee on Diversity Practices’ current projects include organizing a 2015 conference session called “Diversity and Pedagogy: The Global Factor,” overseeing the Resource Directory for Diversity Practices, and expanding CAA mentoring programs.

The Committee on Intellectual Property updated the Image Resources page on CAA’s website and continues to monitor the tricky terrain of copyright and fair use, which dramatically affects the work lives of artists and scholars. The Education Committee is currently launching new initiatives concerning curriculum, pedagogy, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. This committee especially seeks new members from studio art, design and/or museums.

Committee members serve three-year terms (2014–17), 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 2015:

CAA’s president, vice president for committees, and executive director review all candidates in early November 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. Deadline: October 17, 2014.

Filed under: Committees, Governance, Service

CAA seeks nominations and self-nominations from an architectural historian or an art historian with a specialization in Islamic, East Asian, or contemporary art to serve on the jury for the Millard Meiss Publication Fund for a four-year term, ending on June 30, 2018. Candidates must be actively publishing scholars with demonstrated seniority and achievement; institutional affiliation is not required.

The Meiss jury awards subsidies to support the publication of book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art and related subjects. Members review manuscripts and grant applications twice a year and meet in New York in the spring and fall to select the awardees. CAA reimburses jury members for travel and lodging expenses in accordance with its travel policy.

Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on another CAA editorial board or committee. Jury members may not themselves apply for a grant in this program during their term of service. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a letter describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and contact information to: Millard Meiss Publication Fund Jury, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or send all materials as email attachments to Alex Gershuny, CAA editorial manager. Deadline: July 22, 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.

AAMD Sanctions Delaware Art Museum

AAMD is deeply troubled and saddened that the Delaware Art Museum has deaccessioned and sold a work of art from its collection to pay outstanding debt and build its operating endowment. Art museums collect works of art for the benefit of present and future generations. Responsible stewardship of a museum’s collection and the conservation, exhibition, and study of these works are the heart of a museum’s commitment to its community and to the public. (Read more from the Association of Art Museum Directors.)

Delaware Art Museum Painting Brings $4.25 Million

The Delaware Art Museum’s first painting up for auction, William Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil, sold for $4.25 million last week, far short of Christie’s low estimate of $8.4 million. The 1868 work by the Pre-Raphaelite master sold within two minutes at Christie’s in London, with a starting bid of £1.9 million. (Read more from the Delaware News Journal.)

Humanities Funding Still in Recovery from Recession

Total funding for humanities research, education, and programs in the United States is still below prerecession levels, according to a new report released last week by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The report, The State of the Humanities: Funding 2014, gathers data on the array of funding sources, large and small, that underwrite the humanities, revealing that federal, state, and private support to the humanities are still recovering from the recession. (Read more from the National Endowment for the Humanities.)

Help Desk: To Apply Oneself

The annual application process for many residencies, fellowships, and publishing opportunities is tough. Should there be a limit on the number of times you apply for the same opportunity before you realize that they just aren’t interested in your practice? Or is it more valuable to demonstrate a little fortitude? (Read more from Daily Serving.)

No One Sits Here Anymore: How Spikes and Fences Erase Communal Life

Since the day it first opened, the windows of my neighborhood gym have been a gathering point for neighbors. They’re right at street level, and they’re big. Lots of us had sat on their deep windowsills for many years, most of all the Pakistanis who live in the surrounding area. Note that I wrote, “had sat,” because ever since Barcelona’s City Hall installed some giant metal plates, no one sits there anymore. The gatherings and chitchats are over. (Read more from Creative Time Reports.)

How Cities Use Design to Drive Homeless People Away

Earlier this month, someone tweeted a picture of a series of metal spikes built into the ground outside a London apartment building. The spikes were intended to discourage homeless people from sleeping in the area, and their presence sparked a public outcry. London’s mayor called the spikes “ugly, self defeating & stupid,” and the mayor of Montreal called similar spikes in his own city “unacceptable!!!!” Protesters poured concrete over a set of spikes outside a Tesco supermarket. Then, after a petition was signed by nearly 130,000 people, the spikes were removed from the London apartment building, the Tesco, and downtown Montreal. (Read more from the Atlantic.)

Should I Go to Art School?

You’ve sent me a tricky one, my dear. There are many personal factors that must be carefully considered by each individual, working in any artistic discipline, who is grappling with this question. While I have no way of knowing your personal capacities, I can certainly give you my general opinion … and you know I love doing that. (Read more from KCET.)

Hemingway: A Simple Online Tool for Better Short-Form Writing (Museum 2.0)

Exhibit labels. Promotional text. Grant proposals. For many arts and museum professionals, writing one-hundred-word chunks of text is a daily activity. Unfortunately, much of that writing is lousy. We have great references for better art writing but don’t always use them. Instead we pack sentences with highfalutin vocabulary, pepper them with clauses, and wrap them up in insider language. Recently, I discovered an online tool called Hemingway that can change that. Its intent is “to make your writing bold and clear.” (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)

Filed under: CAA News

Professors Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi are now in the second phase of CAA’s Fair Use Initiative. The first phase, begun in January 2013, involved interviews with visual arts professionals regarding the use of third-party materials in their creative work and publications. The interviews were summarized by Aufderheide and Jaszi and published by CAA earlier this year: https://www.collegeart.org/news/2014/01/29/caa-publishes-fair-use-issues-report/

This week, Aufderheide and Jaszi completed the last of ten discussion group meetings held over the past few weeks in New York, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles, in which visual arts professionals explored various situations where fair use can be invoked when using third-party materials and images. Each discussion group consisted of ten to twelve artists, art historians, museum directors, curators, and editors, who were presented with hypothetical scenarios based on the Issues Report. The ensuing discussions have been intense and extremely valuable, providing insights into broadly shared standards for relying on fair use when using copyrighted material.

In the third phase of the project Aufderheide and Jaszi will use the results of the discussion groups to synthesize a code of best practices. A preliminary draft will be reviewed by the Task Force on Fair Use, the Committee on Intellectual Property, the project advisors, and a Legal Advisory Committee before a final version is presented to the CAA Board of Directors for approval.

CAA is pleased to announce the appointment of new advisors to the Fair Use Initiative. Chris Sundt, Editor, Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation and past chair of the CAA Committee on Intellectual Property; and Paul Catanese, Director of Interdisciplinary Arts & Media MFA Program, Columbia College Chicago and past chair of the CAA New Media Caucus have agreed to serve in this capacity. The advisors will contribute to the review of the draft code, propose possible candidates for the legal review committee and assist in the dissemination of the code once the CAA Board of Directors has approved it.

A report on the Fair Use Initiative will be presented at the Annual Conference in New York in February 2015.

Filed under: Copyright, Intellectual Property

The president of CAA’s Board of Directors, DeWitt Godfrey, has made appointments to the editorial boards of CAA’s three scholarly journals, in consultation with the editorial boards and the vice president for publications, Suzanne Preston Blier. The appointments take effect on July 1, 2014.

Art Journal

Two new members-at-large have joined the Art Journal Editorial Board. Tirza True Latimer is an associate professor at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and chair of its graduate program in visual and critical studies. Janet Kraynak is an associate professor of contemporary art history at the New School in New York, with joint appointment at Parsons the New School for Design and Eugene Lang College. The terms for Latimer and Kraynak extend until June 30, 2018.

The Art Bulletin

The Art Bulletin has announced its next reviews editor: Nancy Um, associate professor in the Department of Art History at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and a scholar of Islamic art and visual culture. For the past year, Um has been a scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. From 2011 to 2014, she served as the inaugural reviews editor of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. Um is the author of The Merchant Houses of Mocha: Trade and Architecture in an Indian Ocean Port (University of Washington Press, 2009), as well as many essays and book chapters. Um will succeed Rachael DeLue of Princeton University, beginning a three-year-term as reviews editor on July 1, 2015, with the preceding year as reviews editor designate.

caa.reviews

The caa.reviews Editorial Board welcomes two new members-at-large: Meredith Cohen and Suzanne Hudson. Cohen is a historian of the art, architecture, and urbanism of medieval Europe and an assistant professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Hudson is an assistant professor of art history and fine arts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and currently serves as the caa.reviews field editor for exhibitions of modern and contemporary art on the West Coast. Both Cohen and Hudson will serve four-year terms on the editorial board, from July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2018.

The caa.reviews Council of Field Editors has four new members. Phillip Bloom, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Indiana in Bloomington and a visiting researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo for 2013–14, will commission reviews of books on Chinese art. Edward A. Vazquez, assistant professor of history of art and architecture at Middlebury College in Vermont, will be the field editor for exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in the northeastern United States. Megan Cifarelli, an associate professor at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and chair of her school’s program in art history, will assign reviews of books on ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern art for the journal. Finally, Pamela M. Fletcher, a professor of art history and codirector of the Digital and Computational Studies Initiative at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, joins caa.reviews to oversee reviews of digital projects in the visual arts.

See when and where CAA members are exhibiting their art, and view images of their work.

Solo Exhibitions by Artist Members is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.

June 2014

Mid-Atlantic

Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern. Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Gallery, Summit, New Jersey, May 9–June 29, 2014. #BaroqueTechStyle: Portraits by Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern. Oil painting and digital printmaking.

Michelle Handelman. Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 9–November 16, 2014. Beware the Lily Law. Installation.

Midwest

Victoria Fu. Document, Chicago, Illinois, January 31–March 8, 2014. Crossbar Radical-Tick Scoop Star. Installation, video, projection, and photography.

Northeast

Victoria Fu. Simon Preston Gallery, New York, May 4–June 7, 2014. Belle Captive. Installation, video, projection, and photography.

Sue Karnet. BBLA Gallery, Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, New York, April 2–29, 2014. Perceptions. Painting.

Lorna Ritz. French Cultural Center, Boston, Massachusetts, March 1–31, 2014. A Travelogue in Color. Painting.

Jo Sandman. Gallery Kayafas, Boston, Massachusetts, April 18–May 24, 2014. Transmissions. Transparent images.

Leigh Tarentino. Mixed Greens Gallery, New York, March 20–May 23, 2014. The Night Hours. Window installation.

West

Wynne Greenwood. Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, April 5–June 15, 2014. Wynne Greenwood: Notes on Tracy + the Plastics. Video archive.

CAA endorses the Association of Art Museum Directors sanction against the Delaware Art Museum for selling an object from their permanent collection to address financial challenges. The work in question is William Holman Hunt’s  Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1868) sold at Christie’s this week for a final hammer price of $4.25 million, half the amount estimated.

The sanction will result in the Delaware Art Museum not receiving loans of works of art from the AAMD member museums: http://galleristny.com/2014/06/aamd-sanctions-delaware-art-museum/. This sale is unethical and a breach of fiduciary responsibility according to the collection policies of Association of American Museums, AAMD and CAA. Museum collections are held in the public trust, and proceeds of sales of works from permanent collections are to be used for future growth of collections.

Image: William Holman Hunt, Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1868, oil on canvas, 74 x 46 in. (artwork in the public domain)

The Strategic Plan 2015-2020 was approved by the directors and the following priorities were established by the new president, DeWitt Godfrey:

  • Advocate for workforce issues particularly for part-time faculty;
  • Review the Professional Interests, Practices and Standards committees to ensure addressing critical issues in the visual arts field;
  • Increase membership nationally, internationally and in terms of diversity; increase communication with members, including social communication;
  • Find ways of extending the annual conference to a larger group of members; and
  • Enhance utilization of digital capabilities by journal authors and promote digital expertise.

The directors are grateful to the Strategic Planning Task Force chaired by president emerita Anne Collins Goodyear and all the members who contributed to the development of this new plan.

The directors gratefully approved the endowment gift by Mary Douglas Edwards of $50,000 to support travel and registration to attend the CAA annual conference by women who are emerging scholars pursuing a doctoral degree or who have received their Ph.D. within two years prior to the submission of the application for the award of the grant and who will present research papers at an art history session at the conference with strong preference for papers on any topic pertaining to the art of ancient Greece or Rome, Medieval Europe from 400 – 1400, or Europe and North American from 1400 – 1950.

The directors approved the IRS Form 990 for Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2013.

The directors approved CAA joining the Partner Program of the Society of Architectural Historians.

The directors also approved the Resolution to commend the Women’s Art Journal requested by the Committee on Women in the Arts for the maintenance of high quality scholarship that serves as a forum for re-examining feminist concerns of the women’s art movement. A letter of commendation was sent to Joan Marter, Professor of Art History, Rutgers University and Editor, Women’s Art Journal.

The directors established a Task Force on Design, chaired by Debra Riley Parr, , to investigate and make recommendations to the directors on 1) tenure and promotion standards for designers; 2) CV guidelines for designers; 3) representation of design fields in all the professional committees; and 4) scheduling sessions at the annual conference on design issues.

The directors decided to evaluate the Professional- Development Fellowships in Art History and Visual Arts in light of the current job market and in the context of the Strategic Plan 2015-2020 and to temporarily suspend the program.

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 World’s Most Influential MFA Programs, Part 2

You may have noticed that our recent survey of ten of the world’s most influential MFA programs was heavily focused on the United States. That’s because we’re patriots. But numerous other art schools around the world have also made enormous impacts on the history of art, yielding generations of exalted alumni, boasting world-class faculty, and operating on a totally different scale and historical timeframe than schools of the US model. (Read more from Artspace Magazine.)

Foundations Add $13 Million to Grand Bargain Pot for DIA, Pensions

Two more leading national charitable foundations have pledged a combined $13 million to help the Detroit Institute of Arts reach its $100-million commitment to the grand bargain, which would protect the city-owned museum from having to sell its treasures while easing cuts to city pensioners in Detroit’s bankruptcy. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)

Detroit, DIA, in Preparation for Court Battle, Hire Art Advising Firm

As legal jockeying continues in Detroit’s bankruptcy, the city and the Detroit Institute of Arts have jointly hired a New York art investment firm whose personnel could be called as expert witnesses to push back against creditors trying to force a sale of art in court. Artvest Partners, a company that advises attorneys, dealers, insurers, and collectors, has been engaged to provide a price range for the entire 66,000-piece collection at the city-owned museum and assess the viability and practicality of selling art or otherwise monetizing the collection. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)

Shopkeepers of the World Unite

One evening last summer, far from New York City, I was cornered by a senior curator from a prestigious arts institution. The woman, who was urbane, stylish, and in her late thirties, had a pressing question. “You live in Los Angeles,” she noted. “Can you tell me, is Petra Cortright a feminist?” I squirmed as I considered how to avoid falling into this trap. (Read more from Artforum.)

Applying Rules of All Markets to Art

There’s a sentiment afloat in this frothy art market that rampant flipping and other practices among the creators, buyers, and sellers of art that were perhaps previously considered questionable are in fact entirely ethically neutral. This fairly widespread sentiment, that ethics don’t come into this matter, relies heavily on the assertion that such practices are entirely in line with the well-established rules of any market, and that art is no different from any other commodity and never has been. (Read more from Edward Winkleman.)

A Dereliction of Duty

In London, on June 17, Christie’s, the international auction house, will be offering for sale a painting by the English Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt. Entitled Isabella and the Pot of Basil, it carries a presale estimate of $8.4 million to $13.4 million. Such sales—and such prices—are commonplace in today’s overheated art market. This one, however, is different because the seller, the Delaware Art Museum, is an institution that holds one of the finest collections of Pre-Raphaelite art outside Britain. Why would it choose to part with a work of such quality? (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)

A Study Shows How Audiences Are Changing, but Should Data Guide Artistic Decisions?

No facet of society—not even the arts—is immune to the conversation about metrics, measurement, and big data. Last week in downtown Los Angeles, museum administrators, marketers, and cultural leaders gathered at the Walt Disney Concert Hall for the presentation of “Culture Track 14,” hosted by the Music Center. Billed as revealing a “dramatically changed cultural landscape,” the 2014 study—and the conversations around it—drove home many particulars that audience members already assumed and other dynamics long at play. (Read more from the LA Weekly.)

Starbucks College Achievement Plan

Starbucks believes in the promise and pursuit of the American Dream. This fall, the company will make it possible for thousands of part- and full-time US partners to complete a college degree. In a first of its kind collaboration with Arizona State University, Starbucks will offer partners the opportunity to finish their bachelor’s degree with full tuition reimbursement. Partners may choose from forty undergraduate degree programs through Arizona State’s research driven and top-ranked program, delivered online. (Read more from Starbucks.)

 

Filed under: CAA News