CAA News Today
Serve as a Mentor at the Chicago Conference
posted Sep 10, 2013
For the 102nd Annual Conference, taking place February 12–15, 2014, in Chicago, CAA seeks established professionals in the visual arts to volunteer as mentors for two Career Services programs: the Artists’ Portfolio Review and Career Development Mentoring. Participating as a mentor is an excellent way to serve the field and to assist the professional growth of the next generation of artists and scholars.
Art historians and studio artists must be tenured; critics, museum educators, and curators must have five years’ experience. Curators and educators must be currently employed by a museum or university gallery.
Artists’ Portfolio Review
CAA seeks artists, critics, curators, and educators to serve in the Artists’ Portfolio Review. In this program, mentors review and provide feedback on digital images or DVDs of work by artist members in personal twenty-minute consultations. Whenever possible, CAA matches artists and mentors based on medium or discipline. Mentors provide an important service to artists, enabling them to receive professional criticism of their work.
Interested candidates must be current CAA members and prepared to give five successive twenty-minute critiques in a two-hour period on one of the two days of the review: Thursday, February 13, and Friday, February 14, 2014, 8:00 AM–NOON and 1:00–5:00 PM each day. Conference registration, while encouraged, is not required to be a mentor. Please send your CV and a brief letter of interest to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs. Deadline: December 13, 2013.
Career Development Mentoring
CAA seeks mentors from all areas of studio art, art history, art education, film and video, graphic design, the museum professions, and other related fields to serve in Career Development Mentoring. In this program, mentors give valuable advice to emerging and midcareer professionals, reviewing cover letters, CVs, digital images, and other pertinent job-search materials in personal twenty-minute consultations. Whenever possible, CAA matches participants and mentors based on medium or discipline.
Interested candidates must be current CAA members and prepared to give five successive twenty-minute critiques in a two-hour period on one of the two days of the review: Thursday, February 13, and Friday, February 14, 2014, 8:00 AM–NOON and 1:00–5:00 PM each day. Conference registration, while encouraged, is not required to be a mentor. Please send your CV and a brief letter of interest to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs. Deadline: December 13, 2013.
Career Development Mentoring is not intended as a screening process by institutions seeking new hires. CAA does not accept applications from individuals whose departments are conducting a faculty search in the field in which they are mentoring. Mentors should not be attending the conference as candidates for positions in the same field in which mentees may be applying.
Affiliated Society News for September 2013
posted Sep 09, 2013
American Council for Southern Asian Art
The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) will hold its sixteenth biennial meeting at the University of California, Los Angeles, from November 7 to 10, 2013. The conference program and registration information can be found on the ACSAA website or as a PDF.
American Institute for Conservation
The forty-second meeting of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) will take place May 28–31, 2014, in San Francisco, California. The event, whose theme is “Conscientious Conservation: Sustainable Choices in Collection Care,” will showcase current practice, projects, tools, and ideas in sustainable preventive conservation and collection care. Conservation and collection-care professionals routinely incorporate preventive measures into the guardianship of cultural heritage. Coupled with the awareness that this work takes place within the larger context of an increasingly interconnected and vulnerable global society, economy, and environment, conservators have become more dedicated to sustainability. The new AIC Collection Care Network and the AIC Sustainability Committee are combining forces to develop a program for 2014 that explores how these two concepts—preventative measures and sustainability—are changing the way conservation is practiced.
Association of Art Editors
The newly revised Association of Art Editors Style Guide is now available. The 2013 revision of the online-only style guide, first published by the Association of Art Editors (AAE) in 2006, was created with a dual aim: to bring the document into alignment with sixteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style; and to make it reflect changes in manuscript preparation, editing, and publishing that have occurred since 2006—mainly due to evolving technologies. There’s a new Electronic Media and Devices section, and the sections for Photographs and Artwork and for Manuscript Preparation contain much fresh material. The former Reference Books section has been renamed Reference Sources, because of its mix of print and online resources. Technology-related terms have been added to the Words and Terms list and woven into various other sections. The Bibliography section has been reorganized to display more clearly the two systems of citation (notes and bibliography, author-date), while the Notes section has been substantially updated. Other sections underwent less extensive but equally necessary updates. In tandem with the revision, an extensive chart, Handy Guide to Metric Conversions with Fractions, has been added to the AAE website (see Helpful Links).
Association of Art Historians
The Association of Art Historians (AAH) has announced that Christine Riding is the organization’s new chair-elect. She will start her three-year term in April 2014, when AAH will be celebrating its fortieth anniversary. Riding is senior curator and head of art at the Royal Museums Greenwich. She was previously curator of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art at Tate Britain and has held curatorial positions at the Palace of Westminster, the Museum of London, and the Wallace Collection, as well as being the former deputy editor of the association’s journal, Art History. AAH looks forward to working with Riding on its development as the United Kingdom–based organization responsible for promoting the professional practice and public understanding of art history.
Historians of British Art
The Historians of British Art (HBA) offers a travel grant to a graduate student who will be presenting a paper on British art or visual culture at an academic conference in 2014. The award of $750 is intended to offset travel costs. Applicants must be current members of HBA. To apply, send a letter of request, a copy of the letter of acceptance from the organizer of the conference session, an abstract of the paper to be presented, a budget of estimated expenses (noting what items may be covered by other resources), and a CV to Renate Dohmen, HBA Prize Committee Chair. Deadline: September 15, 2013.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) will hold a majlis (meeting) with four presentations on October 10 in conjunction with the 2013 conference of the Middle East Studies Association in New Orleans, Louisiana. HIAA is also pleased to announce that its fourth biennial symposium will take place October 16–18, 2014, at the new Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Ontario. The call for papers and further symposium information are available on the HIAA website. The deadline for proposals is October 18, 2013.
International Association of Word and Image Studies
The Max Nänny Prize for the Best Article in Word and Image Studies (€500) is awarded every three years on the occasion of the triennial conference of the International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS/AIERTI). IAWIS membership is not required. Articles submitted must have been already published. The date of publication should not be earlier than three years before the submission deadline. Articles should be sent in triplicate to IAWIS/AIERTI’s secretary: Catriona MacLeod, Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania, 745 Williams Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305. The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2013.
International Sculpture Center
The International Sculpture Center (ISC) is accepting nominations for the 2014 Outstanding Educator Award, which recognizes individual artist-educators who have excelled at teaching sculpture in institutions of higher learning. Candidates for this award are masters of sculptural processes and techniques who have devoted their careers to the education of the next generation and to the advancement of the field of sculpture as a whole. Nominations for the Outstanding Educator Award will be accepted through October 25, 2013. Anyone can nominate a qualified educator: submissions are not limited to participants in the United States; international submissions are welcomed and encouraged. Award recipients receive benefits such as a featured article in Sculpture magazine, a lifetime ISC professional-level membership, and an award ceremony to be held at their academic institution. Educational institutions of awardees also receive benefits, including recognition in Sculpture and a one-year ISC university-level membership.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) seeks proposals for papers for the annual IAS-Kress Lecture Series in Italy, which will take place in Pisa on May 29 or June 16, 2014 (deadline: January 4, 2014). The distinguished scholar selected to present will speak on a topic related to the art of any period from Pisa or Tuscany and will receive an honorarium and supplementary lecture allowance. IAS is also pleased to provide travel grants to graduate students and recent PhD recipients presenting conference papers about the art and architecture of Italy (deadline: November 1, 2013). The second annual IAS research and publication grant will be offered to a scholar of Italian art seeking support for costs related to research and publication (deadline: November 1, 2013). It is more worthwhile than ever to join IAS. For details on the application requirements for the lecture series and for the travel and publication grants, please visit the IAS website. Members can contribute news items and articles for the IAS newsletter: please contact newsletter@italianartsociety.org. IAS has a new Italian art blog on Tumblr created by the IAS webmaster, Anne Leader. To stay current, visit the website, like IAS on Facebook, and follow IAS on Twitter.
New Media Caucus
Media-N, the journal of the New Media Caucus (NMC), has published its summer issue, “CAA Conference Edition 2013,” an annual publication showcasing NMC-sponsored conference proceedings. At CAA in New York, NMS held two panels and two events. The new edition includes essays by panel members Jenny Vogel, David Stout, David Schwartz, Nadar Assor, Clark Shaffer Stoecklet, Micha Maya Cárdenas, Zach Blas, Pinar Yoldas, Jacob Gaboury, and Alison Reed. It also includes artist statements from event participants Margaret Dolinsky, Belinda Haikes, Arthur Liou, James Morgan, Ed Osborn, Linda Post, Elia Vargas, Valentina Vella, Doo-Sung Yoo, Meredith Drum, Meredith Hoy, Paul Johson, Carolyn Kane, Leslie Raymond, Nicolas Ruley, and Ellen Wetmore.
Media-N publishes thematic editions in the fall and spring of each year in addition to the conference edition. As part of an ongoing commitment to examining new-media works and their present theoretical frameworks; the spring 2013 issue dealt with “Tracing/New/Media/Feminisms.” This provocative edition mapped the topic by way of twelve international contributors: Faith Wilding; Morehshin Allahyari and Jennifer Way; Annina Rüst; Kim Sawchuk (Studio XX) and Stéphanie Lagueux (Matricules) in conversation with Media-N; Meighan Ellis; Colleen Keough; Eleanor Dare; and Laura Gemini and Federica Timeto in conversation with Lynn Hershman Leeson.
National Art Education Association
The National Art Education Association (NAEA) is now publishing its academic journal, Studies in Art Education, in both print and digital format. The first digital issue (vol. 54, no. 4), posted on the organization’s website for free access, is a special issue on underserved populations. The forthcoming September issue of Studies in Art Education will focus on street art and include three visual essays by graffiti artists.
NAEA has just published a new research book, Teaching and Learning Emergent Research Methodologies in Art Education, edited by Candace Jesse Stout. The authors explore innovative ways to conceptualize what research in art, education, and human experience might be, what it might mean, and what it might do.
Public Art Dialogue
The spring 2013 issue of Public Art Dialogue, published by Taylor and Francis, has been edited by Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie. This special issue, called “Memorials 2: The Culture of Remembrance,” features seven articles: “L’Oiseau lunaire: Joan Miró’s to 45 rue Blomet” by Scott D. Juall; “Careless Talk Costs Lives: Beth Derbyshire’s Public Art in the London Underground” by Katherine Ingrey; “Competing for Memory: Argentina’s Parque de la memoria” by Marisa M. Lerer; “Commemorating the Oklahoma City Bombing: Reframing Tragedy as Triumph” by Harriet F. Senie; “Ground Floor Memorial” by Judith Shea; “Response: Louise Bourgeois’ The Touch of Jane Addams” by Mary Jane Jacob; and “Border Memorial: Frontera de los muertos” by John Craig Freeman. The journal also includes two book reviews: one by Cameron Cartiere of This One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context by Grant Kester; and a second by Janet Zweig of Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art, edited by Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty. Public Art Dialogue is a membership benefit of the organization.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) offers student scholarships to offset the cost of attending the next national conference, to be held March 6–9, 2014, in Baltimore, Maryland. Each award includes a $500 travel stipend, a conference fee waiver, and a one-year SPE membership. Deadline: November 1, 2013.
Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
The Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has launched a new website featuring information about the organization, a news blog, member research, and a resources page with over one hundred listings and links to museums, online resources, and more. Prospective members may now join SHERA online through a secure PayPal system. Please contact SHERA’s officers to provide comments and suggestions about the website and to send contributions to the news blog and the resources page. The website was designed and built by Adam Snetman, founder of Starting Now, with input from SHERA’s officers. Special thanks are due to Kathleen Duff and Anna Sokolina for their outstanding contributions to the resources page. SHERA will continue to use its listserv for questions and discussion. You may subscribe to the listserv at http://lists.oakland.edu/mailman/listinfo/shera. Sending an email to shera@lists.oakland.edu will post your message to all list subscribers.
SHERA welcomes two new institutional members: the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, which houses over 750 works of Russian art, many of them from the collection of Thomas P. Whitney; and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in New York, one of the world’s leading academic institutions devoted to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies.
Southeastern College Art Conference
The Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) will hold its sixty-ninth annual meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, October 30–November 2, 2013, at the Sheraton Greensboro at Four Seasons and Koury Convention Center. The University of North Carolina, Greensboro, will host; Lawrence Jenkens is the conference director. The internationally renowned artist and North Carolina resident Mel Chin has agreed to deliver the conference’s keynote address. Art in Odd Places (AiOP), which presents visual and performance art in unexpected places, will host AiOP Greensboro 2013 during the conference. Approximately 140 sessions and panels and the SECAC 2013 Juried Exhibition will be conference highlights.
SECAC has announced the results of its board election. Elected to a first term: Laura Amrhein, University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Reelected to a second term: Amy Broderick, Florida International University; Vida Hull, East Tennessee State University; Benjamin Harvey, Mississippi State University; Kurt Pitluga, Slippery Rock University (at-large); and Beth Mulvaney, Meredith College (secretary/treasurer). Richard Doubleday of Louisiana State University has been appointed to fill the Louisiana seat.
The latest issue of Southeastern College Art Conference Review (vol. 45, no. 2) is now available.
Women’s Caucus for Art
The International Caucus of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has created a global opportunity for women in a project called Half the Sky: Intersections in Social Practice Art. WCA is fortunate to offer an unprecedented art-based cultural exchange for American women artists and essayists to exhibit and share their work with women artists in China at the LuXun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, China. The academy is interested in providing an opportunity for Chinese women artists to interact with artists from the United States, to learn more about feminist art history in the West, and to share their art with American artists. The exhibition will run from April 15 to 30, 2014, at the academy’s gallery; essays will be included in the exhibition catalogue. The submission deadline for art is October 6, 2013, and October 13, 2013 for essays. Calls for submission are open to all self-identified women in the US. A limited number of delegates may be selected from those whose works are accepted into Half the Sky. For more details and to apply, go to http://wcainternationalcaucus.weebly.com/half-the-sky-2014shenyang-china.html.
Show Your Work in ARTexchange at the Chicago Conference
posted Sep 09, 2013
CAA’s Services to Artists Committee invites artist members to participate in ARTexchange, an open forum for sharing work at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago. Free and open to the public, ARTexchange will be held on Friday, February 14, 5:30–7:30 PM, in a central location at the Hilton Chicago. A cash bar will be available.
ARTexchange is an annual event showcasing the art of CAA members, who can exhibit their paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, and digital works using the space on, above, and beneath a six-foot folding table. Artists may also construct temporary mini-installations and conduct performance, sound, and spoken-word pieces in their space. In the past, many ARTexchange participants found the event to be their favorite part of the conference, with the table parameter sparking creative displays.
To be considered for ARTexchange in Chicago, please send your full name, your CAA member number, a brief description of the work you want to exhibit (no more than 150 words), and a link to your website to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs. Artists presenting performance or sound art, spoken word, or technology-based work, including laptop presentations, must add a few sentences about their plans. Such performance pieces must significantly limit volume and action so as not to disrupt the other ARTexchange participants. Accepted participants will receive an email confirmation. Because ARTexchange is a popular venue with limited space, early applicants will be given preference. Deadline: December 13, 2013.
Participants are responsible for their work; CAA is not liable for losses or damages. Sale of work is not permitted. Participants may not hang artworks on walls or run power cords from laptops or other electronic devices to outlets—bring fully charged batteries.
Image Caption
The artists Jeff Schmuki and Wendy DesChene, founders of PlantBot Genetics, demonstrate their products during ARTexchange at the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles (photograph by Bradley Marks).
Projectionists and Room Monitors at the Chicago Conference
posted Sep 06, 2013
CAA is no longer taking applications for projectionists and room monitors.
Working as a projectionist or room monitor at the 102nd Annual Conference, taking place February 12–15, 2014, in Chicago, is a great way to save on conference expenses. All candidates must be US citizens or permanent US residents. CAA encourages students and emerging professionals—especially those in the Chicago area—to apply for service.
Projectionists
CAA seeks applications for projectionists for conference program sessions. Successful applicants are paid $12 per hour and receive complimentary conference registration. Projectionists are required to work a minimum of four 2½-hour program sessions, from Wednesday, February 12 to Saturday, February 15; they must also attend a training meeting on Wednesday morning at 7:30 AM. Projectionists must be familiar with digital projectors. Please send a brief letter of interest to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs.
Room Monitors
CAA needs room monitors for two Career Services mentoring programs (the Artists’ Portfolio Review and Career Development Mentoring), several offsite sessions, and other conference events, to be held from Wednesday, February 12 to Saturday, February 15; they must also attend a training meeting on Thursday morning at 7:30 AM. Successful candidates are paid $12 per hour and receive complimentary conference registration. Room monitors are required to work a minimum of eight hours, checking in participants and facilitating the work of the mentors. Please send a brief letter of interest to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs.
Herb & Dorothy 50×50 Premieres in New York
posted Sep 05, 2013
The new art documentary film Herb & Dorothy 50×50, the sequel to the beloved Herb & Dorothy, opens on September 13, 2013, at IFC Center in New York. Join Fine Line Media on the opening weekend for special appearances and postscreening Q&As by the director Megumi Sasaki, the art collector Dorothy Vogel, and prominent contemporary artists in the Vogel Collection.
Herb and Dorothy Vogel were two ordinary New Yorkers—a postal worker and librarian, respectively—who built a world-class collection of modern and contemporary art with their modest salaries and then donated it, in its entirety, to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. They never sold a piece for profit, and when the collection grew too large even for the National Gallery, the Vogels launched an unprecedented gift project that distributed fifty works of art to one museum in each of the fifty states in America—a total of 2,500 works.
Early-bird tickets for the screening of Herb & Dorothy 50×50 at IFC Theater can be purchased in advance. Use Facebook and Twitter to keep up with the film’s activities.
Following the New York premiere, the film will screen in forty theaters and museums across the United States; please see the full theater list for a location close to you. Fine Line Media would love to reach out to colleges and universities near these venues to see if there might be the possibility of joining forces to promote the film. Fine Line Media would also deeply appreciate the chance to connect with schools that do not have a screening planned near them to discuss the possibility of showing Herb & Dorothy 50×50 at their institution.
Watch the Trailer
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Sep 04, 2013
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.
Higher-Ed Associations Form Joint Steering Group to Build Federated System for Publicly Funded Research
The Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American Universities, and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities have announced the formation of a joint steering group to advance a proposed network of digital repositories at universities, libraries, and other research institutions across the United States that will provide long-term public access to federally funded research articles and data. (Read more from the Association of Research Libraries.)
Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology
Online education arguably came of age in the last year, with the explosion of massive open online courses driving the public’s (and politicians’) interest in digitally delivered courses and contributing to the perception that they represent not only higher education’s future, but its present. Faculty members, by and large, still aren’t buying—and they are particularly skeptical about the value of MOOCs, Inside Higher Ed’s new Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology suggests. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Berlin Decision: Old Masters Stay Put
Jeffrey Hamburger, the Harvard professor behind the petition, now more than a year old, asking Prussian authorities to reconsider their plan to mothball half of Berlin’s collection of old masters so they could place a modern art collection in the Gemäldegalerie, its current home, is declaring victory. And, true, the old-master paintings will not move from their current location. (Read more in Real Clear Arts.)
Insider Tips from the Art World’s Social-Media Pros
Just a few years ago most major museums’ social-media strategy consisted of a sporadically updated Facebook page and little else. Today, social media is a key aspect of art organizations’ outreach. Many institutions maintain profiles on multiple platforms, from Tumblr and Twitter to Instagram and YouTube, updating each one multiple times throughout the day. But with this expansion in the volume of content and the number of channels through which it’s posted has also come a better understanding of the role social media can play in helping museums and art organizations accomplish their goals. (Read more from Blouin Artinfo.)
A Conversation with an Artist/Nonprofit Worker about Her Money
I’m 29. I work in the communications department at a nonprofit in Manhattan and live in Brooklyn. Currently my salary is $39,750. Benefits include health insurance, life insurance (which is free via the health insurance), optional dental and vision, and 401(k). Public transit, parking, and childcare can be put on a prepaid card pre-tax. My office doesn’t participate in any federally available tax breaks for reimbursing bike expenses, which irks me since I mostly bike there. There’s also an FSA card for healthcare costs not covered by insurance, like copays and glasses. (Read more in the Billfold.)
Discovering Open-Access Art History
This article evaluates the indexing of open-access art journals in four frequently used art indexes: Art Full Text, ARTBibliographies Modern, Art and Architecture Complete, and Bibliography of the History of Art/International Bibliography of Art. The authors also compare the indexing of open-access journals in Google Scholar to that in the traditional indexes mentioned above and demonstrate that the content coverage from commercial indexes currently lags behind that of Google Scholar. This article argues that increased indexing of open-access art journals in the traditional, subject-specific indexes will be integral to their acceptance within the discipline of art history. (Read more in the Serials Librarian via Alex Watkins 123)
Help Desk: Art Fairs Everywhere
I may be in an enviable position, but it is a sticky one nonetheless. I’m getting to the position where I may be represented by multiple galleries that want to show my work at art fairs. With the rise of the art fair as a way of selling and promoting artists, how might I go about deciding which gallery will show my work at a fair? (Read more in Daily Serving.)
Academy Fight Song
This essay starts with utopia—the utopia known as the American university. It is the finest educational institution in the world, everyone tells us. Indeed, to judge by the praise that is heaped upon it, the American university may be our best institution, period. With its peaceful quadrangles and prosperity-bringing innovation, the university is more spiritually satisfying than the church, more nurturing than the family, more productive than any industry. (Read more in the Baffler.)
US Patents and Trademarks Office Issues “Green Paper” on Copyright in the Digital Age
posted Aug 30, 2013
The following text is from a blog post by Shira Perlmutter, director of the United States Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO).
We Want to Hear from You on Copyright Policies in the Digital Economy
The Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force (IPTF) last week issued a green paper on copyright, and I’d like to take a moment to highlight the paper’s core content and goals. The paper, titled Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy (Green Paper), represents the most thorough and comprehensive analysis of digital copyright policy issued by any administration since 1995. Along with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the USPTO played a key role in its production, from gathering public comments starting in 2010 through the paper’s drafting and release.
The Green Paper calls for new public input on critical policy issues that are central to our nation’s economic growth, cultural development, and job creation. It is intended to serve as a reference for stakeholders, a blueprint for further action, and a contribution to global copyright debates. As promised in the paper, we will soon be reaching out to the public for views on a variety of topics. Please stay tuned for announcements about how to share your thoughts, insights, and recommendations.
STAFF SPOTLIGHT: ALAN GILBERT
posted Aug 29, 2013
Alan Gilbert in Marfa, Texas
Alan Gilbert (photograph by Nina Subin)
A poet and a critic, Alan Gilbert has been staff editor of caa.reviews since 2005. He recently spent three weeks in Marfa, Texas, as a Lannan Foundation writer-in-residence. Gilbert is the author of the poetry books The Treatment of Monuments (2012) and Late in the Antenna Fields (2011), as well as a collection of writings on contemporary poetry and art entitled Another Future: Poetry and Art in a Postmodern Twilight (2006). CAA spoke with him recently about his residency experience.
How did the Lannan Foundation residency come about?
The residency is by nomination only, and I was thrilled to receive an email back in January saying I could come any time during the next year for up to eight weeks. I ended up choosing the first three weeks in July.
What did you work on during your residency?
I was able to finish a new manuscript of poems and prepare it to send out to potential publishers.
How does Marfa compare to New York and did it have an effect of your work?
The primary thing I noticed about Marfa was the silence. There are quieter parts of New York, but it’s still difficult to avoid the sounds of sirens, buses, car horns, stereos, neighbors, et cetera. My house and street in Marfa were incredibly quiet. Some afternoons, a car wouldn’t drive by for hours. I’m not sure of the effect it had on my work, but the effect it had on my psyche and physiology felt transformative, especially after living in New York for fifteen years. More mundanely, I had extended, uninterrupted time to write, which can be harder and harder to find.
Did you come to art from poetry? If so, why?
I did come to art from poetry, but I came to both poetry and art from a larger history of the twentieth-century avant-garde, whether literature, art, music, or film. (Stan Brakhage was one of my teachers when I was an undergraduate.) Also, the current critical discourse around contemporary visual art is much more advanced than the one around poetry, and so I was intrigued to figure out what I could learn from it and take back to poetry and other art forms.
How did your reading at the Marfa Book Company on July 13 go?
It was great. It was part of the series of readings given by Lannan residents, and so the audience has an informed and wide-ranging knowledge of contemporary writing. For example, the writer who read two weeks before me was the acclaimed novelist Colson Whitehead.
What was the sense of community, if any, at Marfa? Did you collaborate with anyone or make new contacts?
In fact, the best thing about Marfa is precisely this sense of community. Otherwise, it’s just a tiny, fairly impoverished town (pop. 2,000) in the West Texas desert, three hours from the nearest major airport in El Paso. Of course it also has some great art. The Marfa Book Company owner, Tim Johnson, is incredibly energetic and supportive and widely loved. His partner, Caitlin Murray, who works at the Judd Foundation in Marfa and writes about Donald Judd and his contemporaries, is wonderful. Fairfax Dorn, who cofounded Ballroom Marfa, has an expansive vision for art. Hamilton Fish V, who helped revive The Nation in the 1970s and is a film producer and much more, has a house there. He was great to talk to. There are easily a half dozen other inspired people I could name and spent time with.
What are your future publishing plans?
To find a publisher for the manuscript of poems I finished.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Aug 28, 2013
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.
Nineteen Lessons about Teaching
1. Teaching is a learning experience. Every time I teach a lesson, I learn the material in new and deeper way. I also always learn so much from my students. I learn from their own life experiences. I learn from their insights and reactions. They see aspects all the time in the sources we use that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise—and these are awesome teaching moments. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
New Infographic: Good News in Fair Use for Libraries
A new infographic from the Association of Research Libraries tells the story of library fair use and the Code of Best Practices in a clear and compelling way. There’s an embeddable PNG for your own blogs, and there’s also a print-ready 8½ x 11 inch version in case you need hardcopies to hand out at events. (Read more in ARL Policy Notes.)
Building Digital Humanities Projects for Everyone
Earlier this summer, the American Historical Association profiled a few recipients of National Endowment for the Humanities start-up grants to see what kinds of projects were emerging from the world of digital humanities with particular applications for historians. This month the organization caught up with a new cohort of implementation grantees, recently announced by the NEH Office of Digital Humanities. (Read more from the American Historical Association.)
Van Gogh in 3D? A Replica Could Be Yours for £22,000
A poster of one of Van Gogh’s sunflowers is one of the traditional adornments to a student bedroom. The rest of us hang our reproductions with the knowledge that even the good ones are far from faithful to the originals—for which the going rate is £24 million. But not anymore. The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam has developed high-quality 3D reproductions of some of its finest paintings, with what it describes as the most advanced copying technique ever seen. (Read more in the Guardian.)
The Real Neuroscience of Creativity
You know how the left brain is realistic, analytical, practical, organized, and logical, and the right brain is creative, passionate, sensual, tasteful, colorful, vivid, and poetic? Thoughtful cognitive neuroscientists such as Rex Jung, Darya Zabelina, Andreas Fink, and others are on the forefront of investigating what actually happens in the brain during the creative process. And their findings are overturning conventional notions surrounding the neuroscience of creativity. (Read more in Scientific America.)
The Benefits of Flipping Your Classroom
A small but growing number of faculty at major universities are experimenting with the inverted or flipped classroom. It’s an instructional model popularized by, among other influences, a Ted Talk by the Khan Academy founder Salman Khan, which has received more than 2.5 million views. Institutions as varied as Duke University’s School of Medicine, Boston University’s College of Engineering, and the University of Washington School of Business are experimenting with changing from in-class lectures to video lectures and using class time to explore the challenging and more difficult aspects of course content. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)
Another Digital Divide
More students are being disciplined for sharing incendiary remarks through social media, drawing outraged responses from peers who say online interactions don’t dictate offline behavior. Despite the conflicting ideas of how students should behave on the internet, social-media etiquette is almost never discussed during first-year orientation. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Do Critics Paint Women Artists Out of the Picture?
Is there a glass ceiling for women in the arts? A glance by a visiting alien would see twenty-first-century Britain as one of the best places and times ever for women working as artists. I went to Rome for my holidays and gorged on paintings, frescoes, and statues, from ancient Roman mosaics to Canova nudes. None of these great works of art of ages gone by is credited to a woman—which doesn’t mean there were no women artists at all before modern times. (Read more in the Guardian.)
Extended Deadline for 2015 Annual Conference Session Proposals
posted Aug 27, 2013
CAA invites individual members to propose a session for the 103rd Annual Conference, taking place February 11–14, 2015, in New York. Proposals should cover the breadth of current thought and research in visual art, art and architectural history, theory and criticism, pedagogical issues, museum and curatorial practice, conservation, and developments in technology. For full details on the submission process for the conference, please review the information published on the Chair a 2015 Annual Conference Session webpage.
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.
The submission process for the 2015 conference is now open. In order to submit a proposal, you must be a current CAA member. Deadline extended to Tuesday, September 10, 2013.
Image Caption
A. Major, Bird’s-Eye View of the Great New York and Brooklyn Bridge, and Grand Display of Fireworks on Opening Night … May 24, 1883, 1883, color lithograph, 18⅞ x 26¼ in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (artwork in the public domain).