CAA News Today
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Dec 19, 2012
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.
Project to Put UK’s Publicly Owned Artworks Online Catalogues 200,000 Paintings
The Public Catalogue Foundation collaborated with more than three thousand venues across the United Kingdom to archive 211,861 paintings, many of which have never been photographed before. Every oil painting in public ownership is available online at the Your Paintings website—most of which are not currently on public display. Andrew Ellis, the foundation’s director, said: “No country has ever embarked on such a monumental project to showcase its entire oil painting collection online.” (Read more from the Telegraph.)
Freelance Professors
“Self-employed professor” could soon be an actual job title, thanks to two companies that are helping a small group of college professors market their own online courses, set prices for them, and share the tuition revenue. In January, StraighterLine will launch fifteen professor-taught courses. This is new territory for the company, which currently offers forty-two low-cost and self-paced online courses. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Help Desk: Internship Woes
I wrote the blog for a gallery for over six months without having my name attached. The blog did very well and was picked up on by a local magazine that asked the gallery owner to contribute a regular guest column for their publication. I proceeded to plan and outline the next six months of art-related subject matter with the pretext that I would be getting paid as my internship was completed. After the internship had ended, I wrote three posts for the gallery’s blog before the owner told me it was no longer in his budget. I was never paid for those entries, and my ideas continue to be used thereafter. Where do we draw the line on our unpaid time and efforts while aspiring to get recognition for the work that we do? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
Harvard’s 3D-Printing Archaeologists Fix Ancient Artifacts
Indiana Jones practiced archaeology with a bullwhip and fedora. Joseph Greene and Adam Aja are using another unlikely tool: a 3D printer. Greene and Aja work at Harvard University’s Semitic Museum, using 3D printers and 3D scanning software to re-create a ceramic lion that was smashed three thousand years ago when Assyrians attacked the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nuzi, located in modern-day Iraq. (Read more from Wired.)
Are Curators a Vanishing Breed?
Strong support for California’s ambitious program to limit greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming was reconfirmed in a recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, showing once more the state’s celebrated environmental consciousness. So perhaps it’s time at least to ring a warning bell about a puzzling situation in Los Angeles’ cultural environment, rather than its natural one. At area art museums, the job of chief curator appears to be edging toward the endangered species list. Three notable chief curators have left their museum jobs in the past year. Successors are nowhere in sight. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
Friends and Rivals: Copley, West, Peale, Trumbull, and Stuart
The podcast of a lecture by Jules David Prown, recorded on October 15, 2003, presents the inaugural online offering of the Wyeth Lecture in American Art, a biennial event hosted by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and supported by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. (Read more from the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts.)
In the Thick of It
I remember September. I recall staring at the postings on H-Net and bemoaning the absence of jobs. Now it’s November, and oh, how I long for September. My friends who went on the market last year complained about applying to sixty or more jobs, but by late August I could count only fifteen or so that I could reasonably convince myself were suitable—not because the others were too far away, or the teaching load was too heavy, but because I couldn’t conceive of any way to assert that I was a good candidate. Where, I wondered, would those many additional job ads come from? (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
When Nasty Reviews Strike: What’s the Role of the Reviewer?
The question of the value of nasty reviews of cultural products has been in the news a lot lately, but it’s an issue that has been debated for as long as I can remember. I remember publishing in the Globe and Mail in about 1990 an article discouraging the writing of negative reviews of books from tiny local presses. I can’t remember exactly what my argument was, and it seems like a silly idea now. (Read more from the Globe and Mail.)
People in the News
posted Dec 17, 2012
People in the News lists new hires, positions, and promotions in three sections: Academe, Museums and Galleries, and Organizations and Publications.
The section 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.
December 2012
Academe
Jay Gould, a photographer and a member of the faculty at the Maine Media Workshops, has joined Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore as a full-time faculty member in photography for academic year 2012–13.
Anne D. HedemanAnne D. Hedeman has been appointed Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History in the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Prior to accepting the position, she was professor of art history and medieval studies at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Sonja Kelley, who has taught in the Department of Art and Art History at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, has been appointed a full-time faculty member in art history, theory, and criticism for academic year 2012–13 at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
Daniela Sandler, a scholar and professor from the University of California, Santa Cruz, has joined Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore as a full-time faculty member in art history, theory, and criticism for academic year 2012–13.
Dominic Terlizzi, an artist, has become a full-time faculty member in foundations for academic year 2012–13 at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
Allison Yasukawa, a visiting lecturer at the University of St. Frances in Joliet, Illinois, and a teaching artist with the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Chicago Artists Partnership in Education, has joined Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore as a full-time faculty member in humanistic studies for academic year 2012–13.
Museums and Galleries
Susan Ball (photograph by Kelly Merchant)Susan Ball, formerly interim director of programs at the New York Foundation for the Arts, has been appointed deputy director of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. Ball had served as CAA executive director from 1986 to 2005.
Ian Berry, curator and associate director of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, has been named director of his institution.
Sabine Breitwieser has left the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she had been curator of media and performance art, for the Museum der Moderne Salzburg in Germany, where she will serve as director.
Nicholas Capasso, deputy director for curatorial affairs at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, has been named the new director of the Fitchburg Art Museum in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
Mara Gladstone has been appointed assistant curator at the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Springs, California. She recently received her doctorate from the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York.
Katherine Hall, who recently earned a master’s degree in art history from the University of Georgia in Athens, has become curatorial fellow at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Texas. Her position is for three years.
Thomas Kren has been promoted to associate director of collections for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. He had served as acting associate director for collections at the museum since January 2010 and also as senior curator of manuscripts there.
Elizabeth Morrison has been appointed senior curator of manuscripts at J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, succeeding Thomas Kren. She had been acting senior curator of manuscripts at the museum since January 2012.
Elizabeth A. Williams (photograph provided by the Rhode Island School of Design)Elizabeth A. Williams, assistant curator of decorative arts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, has been appointed curator of decorative arts and design at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence. She will take up her position in January 2013.
Organizations and Publications
Brooke Davis Anderson, deputy director of curatorial planning at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, has been appointed executive director of Prospect New Orleans in Louisiana. She will work with the biennial’s artistic director and two curatorial advisors to organize Prospect.3.
Karin Higa, an independent scholar and curator and formerly senior curator at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California, has been selected as a cocurator of Made in L.A. 2014, the city’s next biennial art exhibition.
Institutional News
posted Dec 17, 2012
Read about the latest news from institutional members.
Institutional News 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.
December 2012
The Dallas Museum of Art in Texas has accepted a $94,681 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to create a Learning Lab, described as a space for young people to interact with mentors and peers using new media and traditional materials, with the goal of having museum visitors create content as well as consume it.
The Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has won a Community Service Award from the Oklahoma Arts Council, an official state agency. The award recognizes significant contributions to the arts in specific Oklahoma communities in areas of leadership and volunteerism.
The Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri has received a $125,000 multiyear commitment from the Private Client Reserve of US Bank for the Beaux Arts Council, a leadership giving group that provides unrestricted support for the museum.
The University of Michigan School of Art and Design in Ann Arbor has received a $32.5 million pledge from Penny Stampls, a 1966 design graduate, and her husband, E. Roe Stampls, which will be matched with $7.5 million from the university.
The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, has received the 2012 Benjamin West Award from the American Associates of the Royal Academy Trust. This annual award is given to an individual or institution that has shown extraordinary commitment to Anglo-American friendship and generosity to the arts.
Yale University Press, based in New Haven, Connecticut, has accepted a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a new digital initiative in its scholarly publishing program in art and architectural history. The grant will allow the press to launch extensive market research and development of a new electronic model for illustrated books.
Grants, Awards, and Honors
posted Dec 15, 2012
CAA recognizes its members for their professional achievements, be it a grant, fellowship, residency, book prize, honorary degree, or related award.
Grants, Awards, and Honors 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.
December 2012
Anna Sigrídur ArnarAnna Sigrídur Arnar of Minnesota State University, Moorhead, has received the Robert Motherwell Book Award for the best publication in the history and criticism of modernism in the arts—including the visual arts, literature, music, and the performing arts. The $20,000 prize, administered by the Dedalus Foundation, based in New York, recognizes The Book as Instrument: Stéphane Mallarmé, the Artist’s Book, and the Transformation of Print Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Nominations are made by publishers, and the winner is chosen by a panel of distinguished scholars and writers.
Oskar Bätschmann of the Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft in Zürich, Switzerland, has been named Samuel H. Kress Professor at the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC.
Nina Berson has used a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to produce a summer institute, “Mesoamerica and the Southwest: A New History for an Ancient Land,” which took place June 17–July 23, 2012. This NEH institute, sponsored by the Community College Humanities Association and held in Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico, examined the interconnections among Mesoamerican and ancient Southwestern archaeological, anthropological, and art-historical studies.
S. Hollis ClaysonS. Hollis Clayson, Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Art History at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has been named the 2013–14 Samuel H. Kress Professor at the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC. Clayson will be the senior member of the center and counsel postdoctoral fellows. She will also complete her book, Electric Paris: The Visual Cultures of the City of Light in the Era of Thomas Edison (to be published by the University of Chicago Press).
Jonathan FinebergJonathan Fineberg, professor of art history emeritus at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, has received a 2012 Craft Research Fund Project Research Grant, administered by the University of North Carolina’s Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design in Hendersonville. He will use the $5,000 award to conduct research for the first scholarly monograph on the work of Robert Arneson.
Julia P. Herzberg has received a 2012–13 Fulbright Scholar grant. From March to May 2013, she will teach a graduate course, “Latin American Artists in the US from 1995: Globalism and Localism,” at the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, and work on a curatorial project at el Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, also in Santiago.
Alexander Brier Marr of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, has earned an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Predoctoral Fellowship for Historians of American Art to Travel Abroad. The fellowship is administered by the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC.
Constance Moffett has used a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to produce a summer institute, “Leonardo da Vinci: Between Art and Science” which took place June 25–July 13, 2012. This NEH institute, sponsored by the University of Virginia and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, explored how Leonardo melded art and science by using geography and cartography to begin his study of military engineering, canalization, and architecture.
Rachel Silberstein, a doctoral student in oriental studies at the University of Oxford in England, has earned a student and new professionals scholarship from the Textile Society of America. The award provided free registration for the society’s symposium, which was held September 19–23, 2012, in Washington, DC.
Carol SolomonCarol Solomon, visiting associate professor of art history at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania, has received a 2012–13 Fulbright Award in the Middle East and North Africa Regional Reserach Program. She will undertake research in Tunisia and Morocco on contemporary art of the Maghreb, focusing on issues of national memory, culture, and identity.
Jenni Sorkin, assistant professor of contemporary art history at the University of Houston in Texas, has received a 2012 Craft Research Fund Project Research Grant from the University of North Carolina’s Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design in Hendersonville. Her $12,500 award will go toward research on a book-length study that recovers the gendered history of weaving and its uncertain disciplinary status within the mid-twentieth-century university.
Catherine Whalen, assistant professor at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture in New York, has accepted a 2012 Craft Research Fund Project Research Grant, administered by the University of North Carolina’s Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design in Hendersonville. She will share the $8,000 award with a colleague, working toward a book on Paul Hollister, a critic and historian of the studio glass movement.
Teresa Wilkins, a doctoral student at Indiana University in Bloomington, has earned a 2012 Craft Research Fund Graduate Research Grant for $8,285 from the University of North Carolina’s Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design in Hendersonville. She will conduct dissertation research investigating the construction, use, and sociopolitical meaning of the modern feather arts of Hawai‘i.
Yanfei Zhu, a doctoral student in the Department of History of Art at Ohio State University in Columbus, has been named an Ittleson Fellow for 2011–13 by the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC. His project is titled “Transtemporal and Cross-Border Alignment: The Rediscovery of Yimin Ink Painting in Modern China, 1900–1949.”
Exhibitions Curated by CAA Members
posted Dec 15, 2012
Check out details on recent shows organized by CAA members who are also curators.
Exhibitions Curated by CAA 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.
December 2012
Julia P. Herzberg. Iván Navarro: Fluorescent Light Sculptures. Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, November 17, 2012–January 2, 2013.
Maya, Motul de San José or vicinity, Petén Guatemala, Late Classic, ca. 755, Service Set with Wahy Figures, ceramic with polychrome slip, h. 20.4 cm., diam. 16.3 cm (largest). Princeton University Art Museum, museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund (y1993-17, 18, and 19) (artwork in the public domain; photograph by Bruce M. White)Bryan R. Just. Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom. Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, October 6, 2012–February 17, 2013.
Larissa Leclair and Leslie J. Ureña. Captured by a Portrait: 20 Photobooks from the Indie Photobook Library. GautePhoto, Guatemala City, Guatemala, November 7–25, 2012.
Jennifer McComas. Pioneers and Exiles: German Expressionism at the Indiana University Art Museum. Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, Indiana, October 6–December 23, 2012.
Gertrude Fisher-Fishman, Joe in Yellow Pajamas, 1948, oil on Masonite, 24 x 18 in. (artwork © Gertrude Fisher-Fishman; photograph provided by the Louise Fishman Foundation)Matthew Palczynski. Generations: Louise Fishman, Gertrude Fisher-Fishman, Razel Kapustin. Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 13, 2012–January 6, 2013.
Janko Domsic, Untitled, no date, ballpoint pen on cardboard, 25¾ x 19¾ in. abcd Collection, Paris (photograph provided by Valérie Rousseau)Valérie Rousseau and Barbara Safarova. Collectors of Skies. Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York. September 13–November 3, 2012.
Leslie J. Ureña. The In-Between Space. Tina Keng Gallery, Beijing, China, June 9–July 15, 2012.
Books Published by CAA Members
posted Dec 15, 2012
Publishing a book is a major milestone for artists and scholars—browse a list of recent titles below.
Books Published by CAA Members appears 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.
December 2012
Jill Bennett. Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affects, and Art after 9/11 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).
Michele Brody and the World Tea Company. Reflections in Tea: World Tea Stories (New York: Magcloud, 2012).
Rachel Epp Buller, ed. Reconciling Art and Mothering (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012).
Julie Codell, ed. Power and Resistance: The Delhi Coronation Durbars (Ahmadabad, India: Mapin Publishing, 2012).
David Getsy, ed. Scott Burton: Collected Writings on Art and Performance, 1965–1975 (Chicago: Soberscove Press, 2012).
Bryan R. Just. Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2012).
Patricia Karetzky. Femininity in Asian Women Artists’ Work from China, Korea, and USA:
If the Shoe Fits (London: KT Press, 2012).
Beth Lilly. the oracle @ wifi: Beth Lilly (Heidelberg, Germany: Kehrer Verlag, 2012).
Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari. Multi-National Force: Iraq in Agatha Christie’s “They Came to Baghdad” (Boston: Eighteen Publications, 2012).
Valérie Rousseau (ed.), Barbara Safarova, and Champfleury. Collectors of Skies (New York: Andrew Edlin Gallery, 2012).
Cassone Subscriptions for Student Members
posted Dec 12, 2012
Cassone: The International Online Magazine of Art and Art Books is offering a free one-year subscription to all first-year students at any level (BA, MA, BSc, diploma, PhD, etc.) and in any subject. But time is running out—this offer is running only until December 31, 2012. Please pass the information below to your friends, colleagues, and students.
To obtain your free Cassone subscription, please go to www.cassone-art.com/subscription/register. Enter your email address in the box on the left and click the “Begin registration” button immediately underneath it. On the next page, type in your personal details. By the time you get to the page’s footer, a validation code email should have turned up in your email inbox (if not, check your junk folder). Copy and paste the code into the box marked with this phrase: “Please copy and paste the validation code just emailed to you into the box below.” Tick the two boxes under that (legal requirement) and the third box (optional) if you wish and click “Complete registration.” Then follow the onscreen instructions. On the page titled “Step 2: Activate your subscription,” you will see a box headed “Got a gift voucher or discount code?” In that box, copy and paste the code: STUDent12. Then click on “Apply voucher.” Your yearlong subscription has begun.
If you have any questions, please contact Cassone at production@cassone-art.com. For students beyond their first year, a subscription is only £5 per year and for nonstudents £10.
December 2012 Issue of The Art Bulletin
posted Dec 12, 2012
The December 2012 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, presents the fourth installment of a feature series that will continue through at least 2013. In Regarding Art and Art History, Rebecca Zorach reflects on politics and teaching. The subject of this issue’s Notes from the Field is detail, with twelve texts by artists, scholars, professors, conservators, and archaeologists: Susan Hiller, Spike Bucklow, Johannes Endres, Carlo Ginzburg, Joan Kee, Spyros Papapetros, Adrian Rifkin, Joanna Roche, Nina Rowe, Alain Schnapp, Blake Stimson, and Robert Williams. The Interview presents the German art historian Horst Bredekamp in conversation with the American scholar Christopher Wood. An installation view of Hiller’s Witness (2002), as seen as Tate London, appears on the cover.
The opening three long-form essays address the art of Italy. The first, by J. Keith Doherty, offers a new interpretation of the Judgment of Paris myth as it is depicted in Roman wall paintings. Robert Glass’s contribution, “Filarete’s Hilaritas: Claiming Authorship and Status on the Doors of St. Peter’s,” is a close reading of the Italian Renaissance sculptor’s bronze relief on the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. David M. Stone’s article, “Signature Killer: Caravaggio and the Poetics of Blood,” considers the artist’s signature in his Beheading of Saint John the Baptist from 1608. Luisa Elena Alcalá’s “‘A Call to Action’: Visual Persuasion in a Spanish American Painting” analyzes a Central American painting from the mid-1680s sent to Madrid from Mexico as a tactic to lobby for continued royal support. Finally, Philip Cottrell explores the unpublished papers of the nineteenth-century English connoisseur George Scharf, who organized the celebrated exhibition Art Treasures of the United Kingdom in Manchester in 1857.
The Reviews section leads off with David J. Roxburgh’s take on the new galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Next, Elizabeth Hill Boone considers Carolyn Dean’s A Culture of Stone: Inka Perspectives on Rock, and Jesús Escobar looks at Gauvin Alexander Bailey’s The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru. Nicola Suthor’s book Bravura: Virtuosität und Mutwilligkeit in der Malerei der Frühen Neuzeit is appraised by Andreas Beyer, and Molly Emma Aitken’s study The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting, is evaluated by Pika Ghosh. The section concludes with Michael Leja’s assessment of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
CAA sends The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and to those individuals who choose to receive the journal as a benefit of their membership. The next issue of the quarterly publication, to appear in March 2013, will feature essays on the strategic use of microarchitecture in Christian ivory carvings of the thirteenth century, perspectival “distortions” in Paul Cézanne’s paintings and the political implications of his repudiation of perspective, and appellations of photography that circulated in China between 1840 and 1911, which trace the emergence of a new understanding of visual truth in Chinese art.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Dec 12, 2012
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.
Openness, Value, and Scholarly Societies: The MLA Model
In 2011, the Modern Language Association established a new office of scholarly communication and began a series of experiments in ways of supporting the open exchange of scholarly work among its members. While the office and its platforms are new, the motivating force behind the office is not. From the beginning, scholarly societies were designed to play a crucial role in facilitating communication between scholars working on common subjects. (Read more from College and Research Libraries News.)
Ten Essential Apps for the Mobile Artist
Michelangelo, Raphael, and the rest of the old masters drew everything they saw, everywhere they went. The new masters of the twenty-first century can still adhere to that artistic custom, with powerful apps designed for a mobile and creative world. GeekSugar has rounded up apps with specific media in mind, such as ink, charcoal, and watercolor, and more general-purpose digital drawing tools, too. When inspiration unexpectedly strikes, modern-day artists will be grateful they had these ten essential iOS drawing apps in their mobile toolkit. (Read more from GeekSugar.)
Monday Musings: The Price of a Free Membership
I’ve been following with interest the news that the Dallas Museum of Art is abolishing admission for the permanent exhibits and offering free memberships to all. I hear with increasing frequency from colleagues in cultural nonprofits that people don’t want to make long-term commitments such as season passes or memberships anymore and want their experiences a la carte; and that people want real and meaningful engagement with organizations—they don’t want to be anonymous, interchangeable customers. Making memberships free in response to these drivers of change seems like a reasonable experiment. But how does the math work out? (Read more from the Center for the Future of Museums.)
Museum Policies and Art Images: Conflicting Objectives and Copyright Overreaching
Museums face steady demand for images of artworks from their collections, and they typically provide a service of making and delivering high-resolution images of art. The images are often intellectually essential for scholarly study and teaching, and they are sometimes economically valuable for production of the coffee mugs and note cards sold in museum shops and elsewhere. Though the law is unclear regarding copyright protection afforded to such images, many museum policies and licenses encumber the use of art images with contractual terms and license restrictions often aimed at raising revenue or protecting the integrity of the art. (Read more from the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media, and Entertainment Law Journal.)
A New (Kind of) Scholarly Press
The FAQ to go with the announcement that Amherst College is launching a new scholarly press ends with the question “Isn’t this endeavor wildly idealistic?” The answer is yes. But Amherst thinks that there may be long-term gains—both for scholarship and the economics of academic publishing—by publishing books that are subject to traditional peer review, edited with rigor, and then published in digital form only, completely free. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Moment of Digital Art History?
Two thousand and twelve has proven to be a significant year as art history continues its transition into the sphere of the digital humanities. The following post aims to provide a summary of discussions around “digital art history,” which at present describes a mode of practice without a fully articulated definition. This summary will also extend beyond the institutional considerations primarily expressed in recent reports and consider the implications for digital art history on public engagement, including the involvement of new-media practitioners, such as bloggers and users of social-media platforms. (Read more from 3 Pipe Problem.)
If He Did It
In trying to figure out the why—no seriously, WHY?—of Bob Dylan’s second painting exhibition at Gagosian, Gallerist NY’s Michael Miller was left with the same Only Possible Explanation that’s been dogging me since the musician’s first baffling Gagosian gig in October 2011: “All I could come up with was a conspiracy theory cooked up by a friend, that both of Mr. Dylan’s shows at Gagosian are actually the work of Richard Prince using ‘Bob Dylan’ as a pseudonym, making the ultimate statement on art and artifice, and proving once and for all that Bob Dylan is whoever you want him to be.” (Read more from Greg.org.)
USC and MOCA Are in Talks about “A Possible Partnership”
Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art and the University of Southern California are in talks about a possible partnership that would link the ambitious private university with the fiscally struggling downtown museum. Responding to Los Angeles Times inquiries, USC’s provost Elizabeth Garrett said that discussions are underway “about a possible partnership that would enhance the missions of both institutions.” Talks “are very preliminary at this time,” she added, providing no further details. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
Recipients of CAA’s Meiss and Wyeth Publishing Grants
posted Dec 11, 2012
CAA has awarded grants to the publishers of eighteen books in art history and visual culture through two programs: the Millard Meiss Publication Fund and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant.
Wyeth Grant Recipients
CAA is pleased to announce seven recipients of the annual Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, established in 2005. Thanks to a generous grant from the Wyeth Foundation, these awards are given annually to publishers to support the publication of one or more book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, visual studies, and related subjects. For this grant program, “American art” is defined as art created in the United States, Canada, and Mexico through 1970.
Receiving 2012 grants are:
- Katherine A. Bussard, Unfamiliar Streets: Photographs by Richard Avedon, Charles Moore, Martha Rosler, and Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Yale University Press
- Melissa Dabakis, The American Corinnes: Women Sculptors and the Eternal City, 1850–1876, Pennsylvania State University Press
- Michael Lobel, Becoming an Artist: John Sloan, the Ashcan School, and Popular Illustration, Yale University Press
- Amy F. Ogata, Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America, University of Minnesota Press
- John Ott, Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California: Cultural Philanthropy, Industrial Capital, and Social Authority, Ashgate
- Rachel Sailor, Meaningful Places: Local Landscape Photography in the Nineteenth-Century American West and Its Legacy, University of New Mexico Press
- George E. Thomas, Frank Furness and the Poetry of the Present: Architecture in the Age of the Great Machines, University of Pennsylvania Press
Eligible for the grant are book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, visual studies, and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher on their merits but cannot be published in the most desirable form without a subsidy. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information.
Meiss Grant Winners
This fall, CAA awarded grants to the publishers of eleven books in art history and visual culture through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund. Thanks to the generous bequest of the late Prof. Millard Meiss, CAA gives these grants to support the publication of scholarly books in art history and related fields.
The grantees for fall 2012 are:
- Paroma Chatterjee, The Living Icon in Medieval Art, Cambridge University Press
- Anthony Colantuono and Steven F. Ostrow, eds., Critical Perspectives on Early Modern Roman Sculpture, Pennsylvania State University Press
- T. J. Demos, Migrations: The Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis, Duke University Press
- Jennifer Doyle, Hold It against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art, Duke University Press
- Dorita Hannah, Event Space: Theatre Architecture and the Historical Avant-Garde, Routledge
- Cara Krmpotich and Laura Peers, This Is Our Life: Haida People, Collections, and International Museums, University of British Columbia Press
- Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim, Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
- Bibiana Obler, Intimate Collaborations: Gender, Craft, and the Emergence of Abstraction, Yale University Press
- Dorothy C. Rowe, After Dada: Marta Hegemann and the Cologne Avant-Garde, Manchester University Press
- Linda Safran, Art and Identity in the Medieval Salento, University of Pennsylvania Press
- Robert Slifkin, Out of Time: Philip Guston and the Refiguration of Postwar American Art, University of California Press
Books eligible for Meiss grants must already be under contract with a publisher and on a subject in the visual arts or art history. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information.
Image: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts building, built by the American architects Frank Furness and George Hewitt, opened in 1876 (photograph by the Detroit Publishing Company, 1900)