CAA News Today

Anne Collins Goodyear, associate curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, became president of the CAA Board of Directors in May 2012. CAA News caught up with her this month to discuss what’s happening in the organization.

Anne Collins Goodyear

CAA just finished its Centennial year at the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. What’s next?

Marching into its next century, CAA has a number of important initiatives on the docket. Many of these involve taking advantage of new technologies to ease access to CAA’s resources and to enhance the ability of members to connect with one another and to share information. The Board of Directors has just committed to exploring a copublication agreement with an outside publisher that would involve the digitization of Art Journal and The Art Bulletin, albeit retaining print versions of these publications for the foreseeable future. It has also committed to providing open access to caa.reviews within the coming year.

We hope to provide a digital version of our print publications—together with hard copy—by 2014. In addition, a task force formed last year is now reviewing the use of technology at the Annual Conference. At the upcoming 2013 event, we will offer free Wi-Fi for conference goers for the first time. This should make it easier for speakers to bring online resources into the session room and even use Skype or similar services to incorporate talks by artists and scholars who are unable to attend. On the Monday and Tuesday before the conference, we will experiment with the Humanities and Technology Camp—better known as THAT Camp—in order to allow one hundred members to convene for a self-organized discussion on how art, the humanities, and technology intersect.

Of course, one pressing matter that new digital technologies raise—one that “predates” the internet—is obtaining and using reproductions of artwork. This complex issue has important implications for everyone in the visual arts—scholars, curators, and artists. To this end, CAA has undertaken a study that it hopes will lead to a Code of Best Practices for Fair Use of Copyrighted Images in the Creation and Curation of Artworks and Scholarly Publishing in the Visual Arts. Over the course of fall 2012, thanks to funding recently received from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, CAA will be facilitating a review of the literature in the field and conducting interviews with leaders in the visual arts on the subject of copyright and creativity. We will also develop a survey for CAA members to make their views on the subject known. We are working with Patricia Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media at American University, and Peter Jaszi, professor of law and faculty director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic at American University’s Washington College of Law, who have successfully developed fair-use codes for other creative disciplines, including for independent filmmakers. Aufderheide and Jaszi are the authors of Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), which describes their work on and approach to the fair use of copyrighted materials. Their efforts will be overseen by a task force of CAA members cochaired by Jeffrey P. Cunard, longstanding CAA counsel and a managing partner in the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, and Gretchen Wagner, general counsel of ARTstor and a member of CAA’s Committee on Intellectual Property. The committee’s upcoming session at the Annual Conference will provide an update on the task force’s progress to members.

What’s the importance of being a CAA member in 2012, for emerging, midcareer, and established artists and scholars?

To my mind, CAA offers many benefits for artists and scholars at all stages of their careers—though we’re always eager to hear how we can provide more support. CAA delivers top-notch scholarship through its publications and sessions at the Annual Conference and also provides excellent opportunities for artists to discuss and showcase their work at the conference. The Services to Artists Committee, chaired by Sharon Louden, is extraordinarily active in developing terrific programming in ARTspace for 2013.

In addition to these resources, CAA provides valuable guidelines for tenure and promotion, information about navigating copyright, and other best practices. Last year, in response to concern expressed by members engaged with authentication, CAA worked with its insurance broker, which now extends authentication insurance to interested members. CAA also provides great networking opportunities through its committees and its conference. Ultimately, members shape CAA’s identity, from their time as graduate students throughout the duration of their careers. CAA has an incredibly dedicated staff and board, all of whom are committed to serving the membership and addressing matters of professional concern. Members shouldn’t hesitate to reach out to us.

If CAA wishes to be more inclusive of artists and designers, as it has indicated in the 2010–2015 Strategic Plan, how might it do so?

CAA currently has a task force investigating opportunities for designers. As previously mentioned, the Services to Artists Committee produces a lot of conference content. CAA also provides a great forum to present and discuss work outside a commercial framework. Artists have an important hand in the Task Force on Annual Conference Technologies. CAA’s guidelines for artists with respect to academic tenure and promotion, conventions for résumés and CVs, and studio health and safety are highly prized. CAA hopes artists will find much value in the Code of Best Practices for Fair Use of Copyrighted Images. Artist members, like others, should feel encouraged to let the staff and board know if there are other ways in which we can advocate on their behalf or provide services that would be helpful. CAA is also now embarking on the development of its new 2015–2020 Strategic Plan, which will enable the organization to solicit and build upon input from the membership about its evolving needs and priorities and the ways in which CAA can adapt to serve those most effectively.

Digital publications and social networking are among important internet-related issues for artists and scholars. What are your ideas regarding these two areas?

CAA is developing a plan to digitize its print publications, as discussed above, and hopes to offer caa.reviews as an open-access journal in a year. Nia Page, CAA’s director of membership, development, and marketing, recently circulated a study to CAA’s membership to ask how CAA members might benefit from new platforms for social networking related to their professional interests.

How do you envision the relationship between the CAA membership and the president and board?

My hope is for a fluid relationship. The board, which is elected by the membership, is extremely active in the organization. CAA members should feel welcome and encouraged to reach out to anyone who serves on the board, including the president and the executive director. Members should also give serious consideration to becoming personally involved in the governance of the organization. This includes considering running for the board and serving on it, as well as simply taking time to get to know candidates for the board and casting votes in the annual election. The business meeting at the Annual Conference is a great way to get information about recent activities, financial reports, or other matters of interest. Joining one of the Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees is another way for members to have a voice and to shape the organization. Other opportunities for them to contribute to or benefit from CAA’s activities are to serve on an editorial board, the Annual Conference Committee, awards juries, or the Nominating Committee, which is charged with interviewing those who have expressed an interest in serving on the board and developing the final slate of candidates.

What is CAA’s role in relation not only to government, politics, and the freedom of expression, but also to workforce issues and intellectual property?

CAA has the clout and organizational capacity to play an important role advocating issues of significance on behalf of its members and makes every effort to do so. Members should feel free to alert the organization to topics of concern. CAA regularly participates in the national Humanities Advocacy Day and Arts Advocacy Day. It is part of the American Council of Learned Societies and well integrated with other professional organizations. CAA is involved in supporting the interests of adjunct faculty as well as other professionals. CAA is a founding member of the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, which has just published results about part-time professors from its 2010 survey. As noted at the outset of this interview, CAA is currently undertaking a serious study of the fair use of copyrighted materials—including images—by scholars and artists. We hope to clarify how and when nonlicensed reproduction of third-party works can be considered “fair.” A generous grant from the Kress Foundation is supporting preliminary work in this area.

How CAA uses its organization capacity to serve its membership is ultimately the most important concern for the organization. Clearly, that can take many different forms. We welcome the ongoing input of our membership to ensure we are doing that as effectively and meaningfully as possible.

The CAA Board of Directors convened in New York on Saturday and Sunday, October 27–28, 2012, for its fall meetings. The following report from Anne Collins Goodyear, CAA board president, and Linda Downs, CAA executive director and chief executive officer, summarizes the discussion and the results of the meetings.

As the hurricane of the century approached the northeastern coast during the weekend of October 27, CAA hosted its annual fall meetings for the Board of Directors, the editorial boards of all three journals, and the Publications Committee, all held in New York. The board also gathered for its biannual retreat. All agendas were covered despite the pending storm. One board member found herself stranded in New York, where she rode out Sandy, but all others were able to get home before its arrival. The staff and offices did not fare as well. Many CAA employees were without power for several days, and ten days passed before electricity, heat, telephones, and internet were restored at the office located in Lower Manhattan. Those staff members who did have power donated their time, equipment, chothing, and funds to help the hundreds of thousands in the area who needed assistance. CAA is up and running again with the hope that we will not see another storm like the one that devastated the region. Fortunately, CAA’s website, which relies on servers outside the New York region, was not affected.

The board retreat provided an opportunity for the Directors to focus on critical issues in the visual arts field and the association. This year the focus was on three important areas—the development of a copublications arrangement for CAA’s journals, which will enable the transition from print to online journals; open access for caa.reviews; and the development of a fair use code of best practices in the visual arts for creative work and scholarly publishing.

CAA’s consultant on the transition to online journals, Raym Crow of the Chain Bridge Group, presented his analyses of The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, and caa.reviews and his recommendations. The analyses are based on a survey distributed to members in April 2012 to determine the value of the journals and interest in an online format. The analyses included an extensive financial projection of resources needed over the next five years for print and online journals. Crow also provided business models to support caa.reviews on an open access basis. The discussion at the retreat as well as at the editorial board meetings reviewed the analyses and the resolution, adopted by the Board of Directors, to distribute a request for proposal (RFP) to potential publishing partners and to pursue the distribution of caa.reviews on an open access basis next year.

As announced earlier in CAA News, CAA is now pursuing research into the fair use of copyrighted materials by artists, scholars, and curators, thanks to funding from the Kress Foundation (see http://bit.ly/QGktD9). To this end, the board heard from Peter Jaszi, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, American University, and Patricia Aufderheide, Professor, School of Communications and Director of the Center for Social Media, American University, who are lead investigators on CAA’s project to develop a code of fair use for creative work and scholarly publications made possible through a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Jaszi and Aufderheide described their research methodology, which focuses on consensus-building within a field to develop codes of fair use. Their method has resulted in fair use codes for many other academic fields such as documentary filmmaking, dance, and research libraries. (See: www.centerforsocialmedia.org.)

Jaszi and Aufderheide divided the Board and staff into two groups to gather information about situations where copyright issues occur in the creation of artwork and in scholarly research and publication. Over the next two months they will interview CAA members—art historians, artists, museum curators, visual resources personnel, publishers, image rights holders, CAA Affiliated Society members, and many others—to establish an issues report for the visual arts field. The objective is to reach consensus on best practices of fair use for creative work and scholarly publishing in the visual arts.

Jaszi and Aufderheide will report on a regular basis to the CAA Task Force on Fair Use, which is cochaired by Jeffrey Cunard, CAA Counsel and Managing Partner at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP; and Gretchen Wagner, a member of the CAA Committee on Intellectual Property and General Counsel for ARTstor. Members of the Task Force include: Anne Collins Goodyear (CAA President and Associate Curator, Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution); Linda Downs (CAA Executive Director and CEO); Suzanne Preston Blier (CAA Board Member and Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University); DeWitt Godfrey (CAA Vice President for Committees and Director, Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts, Colgate University); Randall C. Griffin (ex-officio as CAA Vice President for Publications, Professor, Division of Art History, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University); Paul Jaskot (CAA Past President and Professor of History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University); Patricia McDonnell (CAA Vice President for External Affairs and Director, Wichita Art Museum); Charles Wright (CAA Board Member and Chair, Department of Art, Western Illinois University).

The Board’s Audit Committee reviewed the annual audit and it was accepted by the Board. The 2012 CAA Audit will be presented at the Annual Members’ Business Meeting at the Annual Conference on Friday, February 15, 2013.

The Finance and Budget Committee heard a presentation by CAA’s investment manager, Domenic Colasacco of Boston Trust. The investments have followed the association’s investment policies and are continuing to recover from the economic recession of 2008.

The Board approved a resolution presented by President Goodyear to establish a Task Force for CAA’s 2015–2020 Strategic Plan. The current plan will conclude June 30, 2014. We anticipate that the next strategic plan will begin immediately after that, at the beginning of CAA’s 2015 Fiscal Year.

Deputy Director, Michael Fahlund, and Karol Ann Lawson, Chair, CAA Museum Committee, presented a resolution to support the Museum Best Practices for Managing Controversy. This statement was initiated by the National Coalition Against Censorship and representatives from the Association of Art Museum Directors, Association of Art Museum Curators, and American Alliance of Museums. Fahlund discussed the need for the guidelines given the increase in art museum controversies. Lawson indicated the support of these guidelines by the CAA Museum Committee. The resolution was adopted by the board.

Two associations were welcomed to CAA’s Affiliated Societies bringing the total number of affiliates to seventy-eight: the American Society of Appraisers: Personal Property Committee and the European Postwar and Contemporary Art Forum. See: www.collegeart.org/affiliated.

The Vice President for Committees, DeWitt Godfrey, and the CAA Chair of the Professional Practices Committee, Jim Hopfensberger, presented resolutions to adopt the following guidelines: Artist Résumé: Recommended Conventions (written in 1999); Visual Artist Curriculum Vitae: Recommended Conventions (written in 1999); and Revised Standards for Professional Placement (formerly revised in 1992). All three resolutions were approved and are available at: www.collegeart.org/guidelines.

The Vice President for Publications, Randall Griffin, presented the Resolution to Provide Online Journals Through a Copublisher. This resolution affirms that a Request for Proposals will be developed by the CAA consultant, Raym Crow, in cooperation with an Advisory Group, the staff, and CAA Counsel and be reviewed by the Publications Committee and approved by the board. It also states that caa.reviews will be provided on an open access basis beginning in the fall of 2013 supported by ads and/or click through purchases of books. The resolution was approved.