CAA News Today
caa.reviews Seeks Field Editors for Books and Exhibitions
posted Jan 28, 2013
CAA invites nominations and self-nominations for six individuals to join the caa.reviews Council of Field Editors, which commissions reviews within an area of expertise or geographic region, for a three-year term: July 1, 2013–June 30, 2016. An online journal, caa.reviews is devoted to the peer review of new books, museum exhibitions, and projects relevant to art history, visual studies, and the arts.
The journal seeks four field editors for books in four areas: African art, theory and historiography, Egyptian and ancient Near Eastern art, and American art. In addition, two field editors are needed for exhibitions in two areas: on the West Coast covering art after 1800 and in New York and internationally, covering exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. Candidates may be artists, art historians, critics, curators, educators, or other professionals in the visual arts; institutional affiliation is not required.
Working with the caa.reviews editor-in-chief, the caa.reviews Editorial Board, and CAA’s staff editor, each field editor selects content to be reviewed, commissions reviewers, and reviews manuscripts for publication. Field editors for books are expected to keep abreast of newly published and important books and related media in his or her field of expertise, and those field editors for exhibitions should be aware of current and upcoming exhibitions (and other related projects) in their geographic regions.
The Council of Field Editors meets annually at the CAA Annual Conference. Field editors must pay travel and lodging expenses to attend the conference. Members of all CAA committees and editorial boards volunteer their services without compensation.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and your contact information to: caa.reviews Editorial Board, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or email the documents to Alyssa Pavley, CAA editorial assistant. Deadline: April 15, 2013.
CAA Seeks Publications Committee Member
posted Jan 25, 2013
CAA invites nominations and self-nominations for one member at large to serve on its Publications Committee for a three-year term, July 1, 2013–June 30, 2016. Candidates, who must possess expertise appropriate to the committee’s work, may be artists, art historians, critics, curators, educators, or other professionals in the visual arts; institutional affiliation is not required.
Meeting three times a year, the Publications Committee is a consultative body that advises the CAA Publications Department staff and the CAA Board of Directors on publishing projects. It provides oversight for the editorial boards of The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, and caa.reviews, as well as the juries for CAA’s book grants; sponsors a practicum session at the Annual Conference; and, with the CAA vice president for publications, serves as liaison to the board, membership, editorial boards, book-grant juries, and other CAA committees.
The Publications Committee meets three times a year: twice in New York in the spring and fall and once at the CAA Annual Conference in February. CAA reimburses members for travel and lodging expenses for the two New York meetings in accordance with its travel policy, but members pay these expenses to attend the conference. Members of all CAA committees volunteer their services without compensation.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on another CAA editorial board or committee. In addition, they may not be individuals who have served as members of a CAA editorial board within the past five years. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Appointments are made by the CAA president in consultation with the vice president for publications. Please send a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and your contact information to: Publications Committee, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or email the documents to Alyssa Pavley, CAA editorial assistant. Deadline: April 15, 2013.
Directory for Diversity Practices
posted Jan 24, 2013
CAA’s Committee on Diversity Practices would like to introduce the Directory for Diversity Practices and to invite CAA members to submit syllabi and recommend additional material for it. The Directory for Diversity Practices has been developed to provide a range of updated documents, texts, and links related to ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, disability, and aging for use in the classroom. It is accessible via the CAA website under the tab marked Resources.
The directory is divided into five user-friendly sections:
- Getting Started
- Classroom and Curricula
- Diversity in Academe
- Images and Documents of Art and Culture
- Syllabi
The Committee on Diversity Practices is dedicated to building a useful and evolving resource for teaching the visual arts and art history. CAA encourages you to visit the site and to let the committee know how it can add to the directory in order for it to be more useful. The committee regards this directory as a work in process and seeks comments and submissions (emails below) from the CAA community at large.
Submissions Guide
Suggestions for any of the five areas are welcome and will be added as appropriate. Material included in its entirety must be in the public domain, contributed by the authors or copyright owners who have given permission to publish it on the CAA website, and/or otherwise publicly available. Contributions should be relevant, applicable, and up to date. Older material will be selected on its continuing relevance.
The committee welcomes the submission of syllabi addressing issues and topics related to diversity and art. It hopes to significantly expand this section, which promises to be a valuable resource for anyone seeking current models for inclusive curricula. Kindly send your syllabus as a Word file. Please remove any references to the specific details of the class (dates, name of institution, office hours and location, etc.). Professors retain the copyright for their work.
Please visit the directory and send your comments and contributions to both Zoya Kocur, Middlesex University, and Yasmin Ramirez, Hunter College, City University of New York.
Mellon Foundation Helps CAA Initiate a Publishing Award for Emerging Scholars
posted Jan 23, 2013
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the College Art Association (CAA) a one-year grant of $60,000 to administer the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award. The award is a temporary measure to provide financial relief to early-career scholars in art history and visual studies who are responsible for paying for rights and permissions for images in their publications. The Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award will provide grants directly to emerging scholars to offset the high costs of image acquisition. Recipients will be selected on the basis of the quality and financial need of their project, and awards will be made twice during the year (in the spring and fall) in conjunction with CAA’s Millard Meiss Publication Fund awards to publishers. CAA anticipates awarding between eight and ten Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Awards in 2013.
The Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award supports image rights and reproduction costs for books on topics in art history and visual studies. The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) also received one year of funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and will award grants to emerging scholars who are publishing monographs on the built environment. Both the CAA and SAH awards will provide leading authors in the early stages of their careers with the financial resources to acquire images for scholarly publications. For information about the SAH award, visit www.sah.org or contact Beth Eifrig at info@sah.org.
Applications for the first round of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award are now being accepted. The deadline for submission is March 15, 2013, with a second round of applications due on September 15, 2013. CAA will administer the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award according to guidelines developed for the Millard Meiss Publication Fund grant, an award established in 1975 by a generous bequest from the late Professor Millard Meiss. The jury for the award, comprising distinguished, mid-career or senior scholars whose specializations cover a broad range of art scholarship, has discretion over the number of and size of the awards. For further information about the award and to apply, please visit www.collegeart.org/meissmellon.
CAA seeks to alleviate high reproductions rights costs related to publishing in the arts. With funding from a separate grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CAA recently initiated a project to explore the overall impact of copyright on the arts and how different understandings of copyright affect creative and scholarly choices in the visual arts. Over a four-year period, from 2013–2016, CAA will produce an issues report and a code of best practices for fair use in the creation and curation of artworks and scholarly publishing in the visual arts.
For further information please contact Virginia Reinhart, CAA marketing and communications associate, at vreinhart@collegeart.org or 212-392-4426. For information on applying to the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award, please contact Alex Gershuny, CAA editorial associate, at agershuny@collegeart.org or 212-392-4424.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jan 23, 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.
Erwin Panofsky’s Newly Discovered Thesis on Michelangelo and Raphael Will Be Published
Next year De Gruyter will publish a previously unknown thesis by the influential art historian Erwin Panofsky, titled “The Creative Principles of Michelangelo, particularly in relation to those of Raphael.” The document was discovered in the archives of Munich’s Central Institute for Art History last June. (Read more at Blouin Artinfo).
Hundreds of Lost William Blake Etchings Discovered at a Manchester Library
Researchers at the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library have stumbled upon a treasure trove of works by the poet and artist William Blake. After two years of work, a group students, overseen by the art historian Colin Trodd, found about 350 engraved plates designed by Blake in the collection. (Read more at the Independent).
How Art Can Bridge the Digital “Divide”
Like writers embracing digital platforms, musicians embracing digital music, or photographers embracing digital photography, art based on new media often just did—and still does—old things in new ways. The art critic Claire Bishop also made this observation on the “digital divide” in art, further noting that: “While many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital? (Read more at Wired).
Brooklyn Museum Finds Some Problematic Gifts Can’t Be Returned
The Brooklyn Museum seemed to have garnered a bonanza in 1932 when it received a large bequest from the estate of Col. Michael Friedsam, president of the elegant retail emporium B. Altman. But eight decades later that cache of Dutch and Renaissance paintings, Chinese porcelains, jewelry, and furniture has become something of a burden. A quarter of the 926 works have turned out to be fakes, misattributions, or of poor quality, and the museum potentially faces a hefty bill to store the 229 pieces it no longer wants. (Read more at the New York Times).
From Palate to Palette: Can Food Be Art?
Last night, I cooked broccoli rabe with caramelized onions and vegan fennel sausage, along with a creamy parmesan polenta and a crusty whole wheat rosemary bread made from the Camaldoli sourdough culture that I feed flour to each day. Like many artists I know, I love to cook and often spend between one and two hours making dinner each night. I once felt guilty about this—worried that my time would be better spent in my studio drawing or printing or otherwise making art—but then I came to see that making food—combining textures, flavors, scents, and colors—is also creative. (Read more at Createquity).
Social Media Play Fresh Role in the Arts
The profound effect of social-media use on the arts community is becoming clear, with a recent study providing a first view of how arts organizations large and small are using online platforms. In the Sacramento region, some small organizations, such as the fledgling Classical Revolution, rely completely on social-media sites, while larger presenters, like the Mondavi Center, are using them as a tool to attract new and younger audiences. (Read more at the Sacramento Bee).
Copyright Suit Pits Fair Use against Unlicensed Distribution
Digital civil-rights groups asked a federal court in New York to reject what they call an attempt by the Associated Press to restrict fair use of content on the internet. “If adopted by this or any other court, this view would sharply curtail the essential role fair use plays in facilitating online innovation and expression, restricting the use and development of services that allow users to find, organize, and share public information, services that depend on making intermediate copies, and even personal consumer uses such as time-shifting,” argues an amicus brief filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society. (Read more at PC World).
Multinational MOOCs
The rapid expansion of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has left many in international higher education asking how they can compete. With elite American universities dominating the emerging market, will foreign institutions be left behind? (Read more at Inside Higher Ed).
Last Chance to Buy Advance Tickets to Guggenheim Reception
posted Jan 22, 2013
CAA is selling advance tickets to the opening reception of the 101st Annual Conference through Wednesday, January 23, 2013, at 5:00 PM EST. Admission to the event—which will take place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Wednesday evening, February 13, 7:00–9:00 PM—is $40 for CAA members and $55 for nonmembers.
Please contact CAA’s Member Services at membership@collegeart.org or 212-691-1051, ext. 1, to purchase your ticket today. In New York, tickets will be sold at Registration at the Hilton New York but not at the museum. Avoid the rush for tickets at the Hilton by purchasing yours in advance.
At the museum, attendees may preview Gutai: Splendid Playground, the first North American exhibition devoted to Gutai, the influential artistic collective in postwar Japan and one of the most important avant-garde movements of the 1950s and 1960s.
The Guggenheim is located at 1071 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. To get there from the conference hotels, take the 4, 5, or 6 train to 86th Street. Walk west on 86th Street, turn right at Fifth Avenue, and proceed north to 88th Street. To reach the museum by bus, take the uptown M1, M2, M3, or M4 bus on Madison Avenue.
Image: Murakami Saburō, Passing Through, 1956, performance view at the 2nd Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan, Tokyo, ca. October 11–17, 1956 (photograph © Makiko Murakami and the former members of the Gutai Art Association and provided by the Museum of Osaka University)
Register for 2013 Advocacy Days
posted Jan 22, 2013
CAA encourages you to register and take part in three upcoming events this winter and spring in Washington, DC: Arts Advocacy Day, Humanities Advocacy Day, and Museums Advocacy Day. At each, participants meet their senators and representatives in person to advocate increased federal support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
Previous lobbying experience isn’t necessary. Training sessions and practice talks take place the day before the main events—that’s why, for example, Arts Advocacy Day is actually two days, not one. Participants are also prepped on the critical issues and the range of funding requested of Congress to support these federal agencies. It is at these training sessions where you meet—and network with—other advocates from your states. The main sponsoring organization for each event makes congressional appointments for you.
You may have mailed a letter or sent a prewritten email to your congressperson or senator before, but legislators have an algorithm of interest for pressing issues, in which a personal visit tops all other forms of communication. As citizen lobbyists, it’s also important to have a few specific examples about how arts funding has affected you: don’t be afraid to name-drop major cultural institutions—such as your city’s best-known museum or nonprofit art center—in your examples of why the visual arts matter in your state.
If you cannot attend the three advocacy days in person, please send an email or fax to your representatives expressing your concern about continued and increased funding for the visual arts. If you don’t know your representative or senators, you can look them up at www.congress.org.
Museums Advocacy Day
Join fellow advocates in Washington, DC, for Museums Advocacy Day, taking place February 25–26, 2013, and help make the case that museums are essential—as education providers and economic drivers—in every community. If museums are not at the table, they could be on the table. Registration is open through January 25.
Humanities Advocacy Day
Registration for the annual meeting of the National Humanities Alliance (March 18) and Humanities Advocacy Day (March 19) will help you to connect with a growing network of humanities leaders, to communicate the value of the humanities to members of Congress, and to become a year-round advocate for the humanities. The advance deadline for registration is January 31, 2013.
Arts Advocacy Day
The 2012 election made a dramatic impact on Congress, with more than eighty new members taking office this month. The House and Senate will renew the focus on reducing the federal deficit and creating jobs, and it is imperative that arts advocates work together to craft a policy agenda that supports the nonprofit arts sector and arts education. CAA encourages you to register for Arts Advocacy Day, which takes place April 8–9, 2013, in Washington, DC, to help the cause. Register by the advance deadline to participate: March 25, 2013.
New Podcasts for Artists on Budgeting, Administrating, Fundraising, and Mentorship
posted Jan 17, 2013
CAA has added four new podcasts to its growing series of audio recordings devoted to professional-development topics for artists.
In “Artistic Budgeting,” Elaine Grogan Luttrull, a certified public accountant and the founding owner of Minerva Financial Arts, outlines five basics steps to help individual artists with managing their finances. She also provides a PDF of an example budget for reference as you listen to the podcast.
“The Artist as Administrator,” presented by Thomas Berding, associate professor of studio art at Michigan State University, explores various issues artists may consider when pondering and operating within administrative roles, including how administrative assignments can both borrow from and complement one’s studio activity.
Edwin Torres, associate director for the Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Opportunities Fund, talks about “Innovations in Fundraising,” sharing fresh models that artists have developed to create new works.
Finally, the artist and professor Amy Broderick presents “The Importance of Mentorship and Advocacy,” a podcast on how mentoring and advocacy can enhance the career of professionals in the visual arts.
Evolving from the National Professional-Development Workshops and now produced in tandem with them, the podcast series is ongoing, with new audio added on a regular basis. While the initial focus is on artists, CAA hopes to develop podcasts for art historians, curators, nonprofit art professionals, and other constituencies in the future.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jan 16, 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.
Digital Art History Symposium at the Institute of Fine Arts
Under the heading “Mellon Research Initiative: Digital Art History,” the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University has posted video recordings from its recent conference on digital art history, which took place November 30–December 1, 2012. (Read more at THATCamp CAA.)
Help Desk: Ready for Representation?
When is an artist ready to approach galleries? I’ve been exhibiting my art for about five years, with a couple decent solo shows and a few big sales. It’s not an extensive track record, but I’m dedicated and need to increase sales if I want to keep making art. I keep thinking I’m “almost” ready and don’t want to waste my time or the gallerist’s—or risk making a poor first impression with him or her by jumping the gun. I’ve read different advice in books but still feel unsure about this important step. (Read more at Daily Serving.)
As the Battle for the Online Art World Sharpens, How the Players Are Adapting
Over the last five years, investors have funneled tens of millions of dollars into fledgling websites that help users buy, sell, borrow, and learn about art online. Backers range from flush art-world figures like Dasha Zhukova to successful venture capitalists such as Jack Dorsey, a founder of Twitter, and Peter Thiel, a former PayPal executive. But can a cultural sector that typically relies on exclusivity, personal contact, and (often) opacity make an effective transition to the web? (Read more at Art and Auction.
Labor Mural Gets a New Home in Augusta
The controversial labor mural that once hung in the lobby of the Maine Department of Labor in Augusta—and became the subject of a lawsuit when Governor Paul LePage ordered it removed—has found a new home. The mural will reside for at least the next three years in the Cultural Building atrium that serves as the entryway to the Maine State Museum in Augusta. (Read more at the Morning Sentinel.)
Adjunct Project Reveals Wide Range in Pay
Over the past year, adjuncts across the nation have been turning to the Adjunct Project, a crowdsourcing effort that started last February when Joshua A. Boldt, a writing instructor in Georgia, put online a publicly editable spreadsheet. Nearly two thousand entries have already been made on adjuncts’ pay and working conditions, and a clearer national picture is emerging. Now, to increase participation and collect ever-more-comprehensive information, Boldt and the Chronicle are expanding the project. (Read more at the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Making the Case for Adjuncts
By now, it’s hard to imagine that many people in academe haven’t heard about how most adjuncts work for years at low pay and under conditions that hinder their efforts to help students. So why hasn’t the issue received more attention on a wider scale, and what will it take to achieve real change? Adjunct advocates and higher-education experts are counting on a new, targeted focus on students and educational value, and gathering of more data about their employment, to force reform. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)
Opportunity Costs: The True Price of Internships
Every summer, thousands of interns descend on New York City in order to work for nothing. They flow into empty dorm rooms or onto friends’ sofas to sleep, burrow unnoticed into illegal sublets, and surf couches longterm. At work, they occupy desks and offices recently vacated by laid-offs. They file papers, get coffee, and try to make themselves noticed, but not too much so. No one knows how many of these interns there are, partly because much of their unsalaried work is illegal and therefore covert. (Read more at Dissent.)
Court Decision Shows Why Copyright Assignments Should Be Precisely Worded
The parties in a recent case engaged in expensive litigation they could have avoided if the language governing transfer of copyright had been more precise. The decision serves to remind how good drafting in development agreements—whether for software, content, or, as in this case, t-shirt designs—can enhance business efficiencies. (Read more at Information Law Group.)
Art of Turkey: Special Tour for CAA Members
posted Jan 15, 2013
CAA has partnered with Tutku Tours to provide an exclusive offer for its members to spend thirteen days exploring the ancient and contemporary sides of Turkey, from April 26 to May 10, 2013. Highlights of the Art of Turkey trip include stops in Istanbul, Izmir, Cappadocia, Troy, Ephesus, and Pamukkale. The tour begins with three full days in Istanbul—the “city located on two continents”—where travelers will visit the major attractions, including the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, and also get to know the city’s vibrant street life and local art scene.
Next, the tour will visit the ancient city of Troy and the Pergamum acropolis, and also the less-trodden destination of Ayvalık, a small town on the northwestern Aegean coast of Turkey. After several days of immersion in the ancient world, the group will pay a visit to the second International Izmir Art Biennial, one of the largest international art events in the country that will include more than three hundred artists; Seba Uğurtan, the biennial’s founder, will give tour participants an exclusive overview of the exhibition.
The Art of Turkey Tour will also provide CAA members with time for rest and relaxation. It will stop at the port city of Ephesus to visit a carpet school, along with an overnight stay at a spa hotel at the Pamukkale hot springs. The trip will conclude with a full day in Cappadocia, where travelers will explore the Goreme Open Air Museum, a vast collection of painted cave-churches dating from 1000 AD.
Getting There: Turkish Airlines provides nonstop, direct flights from the United States and Canada, leaving from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Toronto.
Land and Air Rates: $3,990 per person for a double room; $4,780 per person for a single room.
The Art of Turkey Tour features include:
- International flight from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, or Toronto
- Thirteen nights in superior hotels
- Meals (thirteen dinners, four lunches, daily breakfasts)
- All entry fees to museums and sites, including the Izmir Art Biennial
- Transportation and tour guide
- Hot-air balloon flight and a whirling-dervishes ceremony in Cappadocia
For a detailed, day-by-day tour itinerary, please download and review the Art of Turkey brochure. Tutku Tours will host demonstrations and lectures on art in Turkey at its exhibit booth (#100) in the Book and Trade Fair at CAA’s 2013 Annual Conference in New York.