CAA News Today
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Apr 03, 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.
ARTstor to Help Launch the Digital Public Library of America
ARTstor is partnering with the Digital Public Library of America to provide access to more than ten thousand high-quality images from six leading museums. In addition to linking to the original contributing museum’s own website, each DPLA record will link to the image in Open ARTstor, a new ARTstor initiative that allows users to view and download large versions of public-domain images. (Read more from the Digital Public Library of America.)
The Etiquette of Accepting a Job Offer
The academic job market is overcrowded, but departments are hiring, and each year thousands of graduate students and other candidates will get phone calls offering them tenure-track positions. It is typically a moment of mutual giddiness. The department heads are excited at the prospect of a terrific new colleague; the job applicants now know that their immediate future is assured. Then, well, complications may ensue. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Help Desk: Juried Shows
I am a painter who recently graduated from art school but haven’t had much gallery experience, and I was interested in submitting work to some juried shows as a way of gaining some experience and making some new connections. Could you offer some advice on finding reputable juried shows to apply to? (Read more at Daily Serving.)
Having “The Talk”
Anyone considering joining the alt-ac job market will eventually tell his or her academic colleagues that he or she might be jumping off the tenure-track train. For graduate students this will often mean having “the talk” with their advisers. There are several reasons why it is important to seek your adviser’s support, even for an alt-ac career. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)
How Can We Reimagine Arts Schools?
Perhaps what was most thrilling and unexpected about the meeting of 250 arts leaders at the “3 Million Stories” conference was an emerging sense of urgency and excitement about the need to think seriously about how arts schools and training institutions—especially at the collegiate level—might reimagine themselves and respond to changes in how creative work is done and the nature of creative careers. In short, who will invent the twenty-first-century arts school? (Read more at Barry’s Blog.)
STEM and Liberal Arts: Frenemies of the State
When I was getting ready for college, I knew I was going to pursue a degree in some area of science; I never even considered a liberal-arts degree. To be honest, I did my best to not take any liberal-arts courses I didn’t need to. These classes were at odds with my science, and I didn’t want to waste my time on something I wasn’t going to use. (Read more at Plos.)
Sotheby’s Controversial Sale of Precolumbian Artifacts Yields Low Sales Figures and Highlights the Increased Efforts of Countries to Repatriate Artifacts
Last week’s sale of Precolumbian artifacts predominantly from the Barbier-Mueller collection, conducted at Sotheby’s in Paris, proved an anticlimactic end to a controversial story. Though estimated to bring in $19 to 23 million, the sale only made $13.3 million, and 165 of the 313 lots were unsold. An unwelcome spotlight had been fixed on the sale, as four countries—Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and Costa Rica—demanded return of artifacts that were allegedly stolen from their borders decades before. (Read more at the Center for Art Law.)
Managing Your Online Time
Over the course of a teaching day, most faculty members find themselves on Facebook, Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, iTunes, Blackboard (or its competitors), blogs, and email. We manage a steady stream of online demands. Yet one of the most frequent complaints from students is that their instructors have “no online presence.” (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
CAA Seeks Nominations for the 2014 Awards for Distinction
posted Apr 02, 2013
CAA has begun accepting nominations for the 2014 Awards for Distinction. Please review the guidelines below to become familiar with the nomination process and to download, complete, and submit the requested materials.
CAA will name the recipients of the 2014 awards in January and honor them in a special ceremony during Convocation at the 102nd Annual Conference in Chicago.
General Guidelines
In your letter, state who you are; how you know (of) the nominee; how the nominee and/or his or her work or publication has affected your practice or studies and the pursuit of your career; and why you think this person (or, in a collaboration, these people) deserves to be recognized. We also urge you to contact up to five colleagues, students, peers, collaborators, and/or coworkers of the nominee to write letters; no more than five letters are considered. Letters of support are important for reference, but the awards decisions are the responsibilities of the juries based on their expert assessment of the qualifications of the nominees.
Nominations for book and exhibition awards should be for authors of books published or works exhibited or staged between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2013. Books published posthumously are not eligible. Letters of support are not required for the Morey and Barr awards. All submissions must include a completed 2014 nomination form and one copy of the nominee’s CV (limit: two pages); book-award nominations do not require a CV (see below for the appropriate forms for the Morey and Barr awards and the Porter Prize).
Please send all materials by mail or email to: Lauren Stark, 2014 Awards for Distinction, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004. Deadline: July 31, 2013, for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Awards; August 31, 2013, for all others.
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
To give the jury full opportunity to evaluate each submission fairly, submit materials well before the deadline of July 31, 2013. Please review the following nomination guidelines:
- A publisher may submit no more than five titles. In addition, CAA accepts nominations from its membership, jury members, reviews editors for The Art Bulletin and Art Journal, and caa.reviews field editors
- Publishers may not submit the same title for the Morey and Barr awards. The Morey jury does not accept exhibition catalogues
- Eligible books must have been published between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2013
- Books published posthumously are not eligible
- CAA and each jury member must receive a copy of the nominated book by July 31, 2013. A total of six copies of the book must be sent. To receive the mailing addresses for the jury, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs
- Complete and submit the Morey nominaton form
- Letters of support are not required
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
To give the jury full opportunity to evaluate each submission fairly, submit materials well before the deadline of July 31, 2013. Please review the following nomination guidelines:
- A publisher may submit no more than five titles. In addition, CAA accepts nominations from its membership, jury members, reviews editors for The Art Bulletin and Art Journal, and caa.reviews field editors
- Publishers may not submit the same title for the Morey and Barr awards. The Morey jury does not accept exhibition catalogues
- Eligible books must have been published between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2013
- Books published posthumously are not eligible
- CAA and each jury member must receive a copy of the nominated book by July 31, 2013. A total of six copies of the book must be sent. To receive the mailing addresses for the jury, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs
- Complete and submit the Barr nomination form
- Letters of support are not required
Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
To determine eligibility, authors of articles in The Art Bulletin must complete the Porter nomination form.
Frank Jewett Mather Award
Please submit copies of critical writings, which may be website links and printouts, photocopies or scanned pages of newspapers or magazines, and more. If the writing is contained in a single volume (such as a book), please provide the publication information.
Distinguished Teaching of Art and Art History Awards
Letters for these two awards are particularly important for the juries because of the personal contact involved in successful teaching.
Contact
Please write to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, for more information about the nomination process.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Mar 27, 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.
Outside the Citadel, Social Practice Art Is Intended to Nurture
In Detroit a contemporary-art museum is completing a monument to an influential artist that will not feature his work but will instead provide food, haircuts, education programs, and other social services to the general public. In New York an art organization that commissions public installations has been dispatching a journalist to politically precarious places around the world where she enlists artists and activists—often one and the same—to write for a website that can read more like a policy journal than an art portal. And in St. Louis an art institution known primarily for its monumental Richard Serra sculpture is turning itself into a hub of social activism. If none of these projects sounds much like art, that is precisely the point. (Read more in the New York Times.)
The Troubling Dean-to-Professor Ratio
J. Paul Robinson, chairman of the Purdue University faculty senate, walks the halls of a ten-story tower, pointing out a row of offices for administrators. “I have no idea what these people do,” says the biomedical engineering professor. Purdue has a $313,000-a-year acting provost and six vice and associate vice provosts, including a $198,000-a-year chief diversity officer. Among its sixteen deans and eleven vice presidents are a $253,000 marketing officer and a $433,000 business school chief. The average full professor at the public university in West Lafayette, Indiana, makes $125,000. The number of Purdue administrators has jumped 54 percent in the past decade—almost eight times the growth rate of tenured and tenure-track faculty. (Read more in Business Week.)
Let’s Do Lunch
In master’s programs, and especially at the doctoral level, graduate students depend on their advisers more than on anyone else in their careers. Students do more work for their adviser’s eyes than for anyone else’s, and the adviser’s approval is the key to the door that leads to the next place, whether full-time employment or more school. So an adviser’s criticism of a graduate student’s work can pierce deeper than the tiny hooks on a burr. And the adviser may not know it. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
The Gallery’s Glass Ceiling: Sexism Persists in the German Art World
The art world is typically seen as open and progressive, even radical. But artists and curators in Germany say that, despite slow progress, the art scene is still plagued by widespread sexism and a conservative, macho culture. (Read more in Spiegel Online.)
The Chapman Brothers on Life as Artists’ Assistants
“It was hard labor by any measure,” says Jake Chapman, recalling his and brother Dinos’s apprenticeship as assistants to Gilbert and George. “There was absolutely no creative input at all. They were very polite and it was interesting to hear them talking—as we did our daily penance.” What did the work involve? “Coloring in their prints. We colored in Gilbert and George’s penises for eight hours a day.” (Read more in the Guardian.)
Protect Rights of Artists in New Copyright Law
The head of the US Copyright Office has suggested that it may be time to start considering “the next great Copyright Act.” The last general revision to US copyright law passed in 1976 at the end of a process that took over twenty years. Since then, incredible technological advances have brought new opportunities and challenges to which copyright law has not been immune. In fact, with the advent of digital platforms and the internet, the centuries-old legal doctrine of copyright has perhaps faced more challenges than any other area of the law. (Read more in the Hill.)
Can Unions Save the Creative Class?
They’re just for hard hats. They peaked around the time Elvis was getting big. They killed Detroit. They’ve got nothing to do with you or me. They’re a special interest—and they hate our freedom. That’s the kind of noise you pick up in twenty-first-century America—in politics and popular culture alike—when you tune your station to the issue of trade unions. (Read more in Salon.)
Tackling Concerns of Independent Workers
Soon after landing a job at a Manhattan law firm nearly twenty years ago, Sara Horowitz was shocked to discover that it planned to treat her not as an employee, but as an independent contractor. Her status meant no health coverage, no pension plan, no paid vacation—nothing but a paycheck. She realized that she was part of a trend in which American employers relied increasingly on independent contractors, temporary workers, contract employees, and freelancers to cut costs. (Read more in the New York Times.)
National Humanities Alliance Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day
posted Mar 26, 2013
Anne Collins Goodyear, curator of prints and drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, is the president of the CAA Board of Directors, and Hannah O’Reilly Malyn is CAA development associate.
Anne Collins Goodyear and Hannah O’Reilly Malyn attended a day of meetings and panel discussions presented by the National Humanities Alliance (NHA). This year’s annual event, held on March 18, 2013, in Washington, DC, addressed the practical need for continued support of humanities education and research and the importance of quantifying the benefits of such, as well as highlighting the Clemente Course in the Humanities program, an endeavor that illustrates the impact of humanities learning on people from all walks of life. These discussions helped prepare participants for Humanities Advocacy Day, taking place on Capitol Hill the following day.
CAA is a member of NHA, which advocates federal funding of the humanities. In addition to its annual meeting, NHA organizes Humanities Advocacy Day, which brings critical information to participants and prepares them for congressional visits to support the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Fulbright Program, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and numerous Department of Education programs in the humanities.
The day began with a keynote address by Christina Paxson, president of Brown University, whose talk centered around the question “Are the Humanities Worth It?” and touched on demonstrating the tangible benefits derived from studying the humanities. She discussed the significance of understanding other cultures as we progress toward globalization and a world society, especially the ways in which humanists can help people respond to the social changes brought on by technological advances. Paxson stressed that we must train people not just with the immediately necessary skills for employment, which devalue over time, but also with the creativity to work in a rapidly changing world. She also revealed that, contrary to popular belief, the average lifetime incomes of people with bachelor’s degrees in the humanities are not much lower than those of people with bachelor’s degrees in STEM subjects, and noted that people with humanities degrees are more likely to pursue higher education above the bachelor’s.
The keynote address was followed by a panel on making the case for federal humanities funding, which consisted of six individuals: Stephen Kidd, executive director of NHA; Esther Mackintosh, president of the Federation of State Humanities Councils; Ben Kershaw, assistant director of congressional relations at the American Alliance of Museums; Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition for History; Miriam Kazanjian, consultant for the Coalition for International Education; and Mollie Benz Flounlacker, associate vice president for federal relations at the Association for American Universities. Continuing in the same line as Paxson’s talk, the panelists described the different government programs concerned with the humanities and what tactics are most effective in arguing for their continued funding—namely economic impact, the importance of creative thinking skills and well-rounded job candidates, and how the humanities relate to core American values such as citizenship and civic understanding and participation. The overarching message was that to remain competitive in the global economy, America must produce workers who are well rounded, creative, and able to interact effectively with stakeholders abroad. Panelists noted that bipartisan support for the humanities does exist in Congress so long as the emphasis is on the value created for communities and taxpayers.
Over lunch, Karl Eikenbarry, the former US ambassador to Afghanistan, spoke about how the humanities were brought home for him in his work abroad. His anecdotes affirmed the advantages of learning foreign languages and cultures and endorsed the effective use of soft and hard power in diplomatic situations. Cultural diplomacy through touring symphonies, he said, is a reminder of US good will that can mitigate displays of military strength.
In the afternoon, a panel was held on advocacy infrastructure. John Churchill, secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, talked about a demand for new strategies in advocacy, particularly the year-round involvement of advocates at the state and local levels to truly involve elected officials in the humanities in their communities. Churchill introduced the new Phi Beta Kappa’s National Advocacy Initiative, which will pursue this goal through regional events and local member “emissaries” for the humanities. This was followed by presentations by Robert Townsend, deputy director of the American Historical Association, and Carolyn Fuqua, program associate for humanities at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, on recent studies and data regarding the humanities. They discussed the Humanities Indicators project, which compiles data on the humanities as a whole, and noted interesting statistics such as the fact that humanities majors score better than business majors on management program entrance exams.
The day concluded with a presentation on the Clemente Course program. This program offers humanities classes to underserved demographics such as incarcerated adults, people in economically disadvantaged communities, and immigrants. Past participants testified to how these courses, which offer college credit upon completion, changed their lives and their worldviews. Star Perry, a program graduate, spoke about how the program increased her self-value, improved her job prospects, and inspired her children to attend college. Moise Koffi, another graduate, shared how he came to the US as a manual laborer and, because of the Clemente Courses, has completed his PhD and is now an engineer and a professor. Senators Richard Durbin and Elizabeth Warren also gave a few words about the program and the humanities as a whole.
The following day, Malyn represented CAA while visiting the offices of seven members of congress, traveling with a group of New York professionals that included advocates from the Modern Language Association, Cornell University, Columbia University, and Queensborough Community College, City University of New York. (As a federal employee, Goodyear is not eligible to participate in such visits.) Together, the group met with five congressional staffers to discuss the importance of continued humanities funding. Advocates also thanked longtime supporters for their ongoing efforts and encouraged newly elected officials to join the Congressional Humanities Caucus. Malyn also visited the offices of Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) to update them on CAA’s work on fair use (i.e., its task force and conference session) and to distribute copies of CAA’s letter regarding the use of orphan works.
Propose a Paper or Presentation for the 2014 Annual Conference
posted Mar 26, 2013
The 2014 Call for Participation for the 102nd Annual Conference, taking place February 12–15, 2014, in Chicago, describes many of next year’s programs sessions. CAA and the session chairs invite your participation: please follow the instructions in the booklet to submit a proposal for a paper or presentation. This publication also includes a call for Poster Session proposals and describes the seven Open Forms sessions.
Listing more than 120 panels, the 2014 Call for Participation will soon mail to all individual and institutional members; you can also download a PDF of the twenty-seven-page document from the CAA website immediately.
The deadline for proposals of papers and presentations for the Chicago conference has been extended to Monday, May 13, 2013.
In addition to dozens of wide-ranging panels on art history, studio art, contemporary issues, and professional and educational practices, CAA conference attendees can expect participation from many area schools, museums, galleries, and other institutions. The Hilton Chicago on South Michigan Avenue (in the Loop) is the conference headquarters, holding most sessions, Career Services, the Book and Trade Fair, ARTspace, special events, and more. Deadline extended: May 13, 2013.
Contact
For more information about proposals of papers and presentations for the 2014 Annual Conference, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, at 212-392-4405.
Action Alert: Urge Congress to Support the Humanities
posted Mar 26, 2013
The National Humanities Alliance (NHA) sent the following email on March 26, 2013.
Action Alert: Urge Congress to Support the Humanities
Dear Humanities Advocate,
With the sequester now in effect, the budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities is slated to be cut by approximately $60 million over the next ten years. Title VI potentially stands to lose an additional $36 million from its already decimated budget over the same span. Other federal funding for the humanities will be cut by similarly significant amounts. Now is the time to urge your elected officials to replace the sequester with a balanced approach to deficit reduction that will preserve crucial investments in humanities programs.
Act now to preserve humanities funding. Tell your Member of Congress to replace the sequester with a long-term, balanced approach to deficit reduction.
Click here to write to your representative and senators today!
Sincerely,
Stephen Kidd, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Humanities Alliance
My Trip to New York (Thanks to CAA and the Getty Foundation)
posted Mar 22, 2013
Early last year, in my role as president of the South African Visual Arts Historians (SAVAH), I was asked by Professor Federico Freschi (at the University of Johannesburg) to send out a call for participants to apply for a travel grant to attend the CAA Annual Conference in New York in February 2013. After mailing the request to SAVAH members, I read through the requirements and found that it was an extraordinarily generous grant for which one only needed to be a full-time practicing art historian residing in a country not well represented in CAA membership. The grant, which was funded by the Getty Foundation, was aimed at encouraging dialogue between art historians from around the globe and included a year’s membership to CAA.
As a lucky recipient I was one of twenty people heading for the icy snow-laden New York in February and arrived on the first morning that JFK airport was opened again after being closed for two days due to blizzards. My first activity in New York was to head for Central Park and enjoy the novelty of walking in the deep snow.
The day before the CAA conference, travel-grant recipients had a preconference gathering where we met the other grantees and gave five-minute presentations to introduce ourselves. This allowed us to get to know each other and identify like minds and areas of collaboration, so from the first meeting there was already a networking frenzy taking place. The grantees reminded me of the League of Nations, with people from various African countries, South American countries, India, Pakistan, China, Haiti, Korea, Iceland, and several Eastern European countries (and I have probably missed a few). There was a lot of lively discussion every time we met, and we got on very well with each other as a group. It was wonderful to meet so many diverse people who shared a passion for the development and teaching of art history.
The CAA conference was huge and frenetic with many parallel sessions, so one had to choose the papers very carefully. I heard some wonderful presentations by Amelia Jones, Griselda Pollock, and Whitney Chadwick (among others) in a feminist session that was packed to the hilt, with people sitting on the floor and lining the walls. As part of conference attendance, everyone had free access to many galleries and museums in New York for the duration of the conference, so there was much rushing to see exhibitions between listening to papers.
I was also lucky enough to be invited (with the other African delegates) to the opening of El Anatsui’s glorious exhibition, Gravity and Grace, at the Brooklyn Museum, where the artist made an appearance as well. For this and other wonderful visits (such as a private tour of the African collection at the Metropolitan Museum) I must thank Jean Borgatti, who was assigned as host to two of the African delegates but was kind enough to include all the visitors from Africa in her plans. At the end of the conference, we had a final “debriefing” session where we could state what worked and what didn’t. From my point of view, the entire event was splendidly arranged and I cannot fault anything, although on a purely personal note I would have enjoyed more time with the group as a whole.
After the conference we were invited by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute to visit their museum and research center in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Most of the group were able to extend their visit for the extra three days required for this trip, and we were bussed off to Williamstown, where we stayed at the delightful Williams Inn. At the Clark we were given a tour of the library, the print archives, and the museum, and joined in discussions of possible future projects for the Clark’s Research and Academic Programs to pursue. We were also taken to one of the biggest art spaces I have ever seen: the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (or MASS MoCA), which had a room large enough (one football field long) to display Xu Bing’s enormous flying Phoenix.
After returning to New York, most travel-grant recipients returned to their countries, while I and a few others were able to stay another few days (in my case until the weekend—two more days) to make the most of the city. I spent this time literally running from one gallery to another to try and fit them all in before leaving. New York is amazingly rich in terms of what it has to offer culturally, and I feel this trip was altogether an enriching experience—from the intellectual stimulation and visual excitement to the wonderful people I met. This affords great networking opportunities such as reciprocal arrangements between institutions (student or staff exchanges) and invitations to conferences or ongoing discussions about the state of art history on a global scale (via email, of course). As a direct result of this trip I have already been invited to speak at a global conference in Slovakia this September, and am making arrangements for exchange programs with other institutions.
First image: Me (the “Michelin Man”) in Central Park.
Second image: The “African Contingent” admiring El Anatsui at the Met.
Third image: Our group at the final “debriefing” in New York.
Foundation Supports Ongoing Care of Collections after Devastation of Superstorm Sandy
posted Mar 21, 2013
The Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC) sent the following email on March 21, 2013. FAIC supports conservation education, research, and outreach activities that increase understanding of our global cultural heritage.
Foundation Supports Ongoing Care of Collections after Devastation of Superstorm Sandy
The Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC) has completed work at the Cultural Recovery Center (CRC) in Brooklyn, NY after serving a community of artists and organizations in dire need of assistance. The CRC offered space and help at no cost to owners of artworks damaged as a result of Superstorm Sandy. Volunteer assistance and work space was provided to museums, libraries, archives, historic sites, galleries, collectors, and artists. While full conservation treatment was not covered, guidance and assistance in the cleaning and stabilization of art and cultural materials was.
23 members of the AIC Collections Emergency Response Team (AIC-CERT) contributed 128 days of professional volunteer services in New York and New Jersey. At least 34 additional conservators from the region also volunteered. At the CRC, volunteers worked with nineteen artists on hundreds of items, including paintings, works on paper, photographs, textiles, and multi-media works. Many of the works were at risk because of toxic deposits and potential mold growth.
The Center for Cultural Recovery was operated by The Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC), in cooperation with a consortium of organizations:
- Alliance for Response New York City
- Heritage Preservation
- New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
- New York Regional Association for Conservation
- Industry City at Bush Terminal
- Smithsonian Institution
Initial funding for the response and recovery efforts, including initial costs for the Center, was provided by a leadership gift to FAIC from Sotheby’s. A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation allowed the Center to remain open through March 8. Industry City at Bush Terminal provided the space rent-free. Rapid Refile set up containment tents and air scrubbers to prevent the spread of mold from incoming objects to cleaned objects. Collector Systems provided free use of its web-based collection management system. The Smithsonian Institution and a grant to Heritage Preservation from the New York Community Trust, as well as support from TALAS, enabled purchase of supplies. The Center was also outfitted with supplies from Materials for the Arts, a creative reuse program managed by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional donations to FAIC came from PINTA, The Modern & Contemporary Latin American Art Show; Tru Vue; Aon Huntington Block Insurance; Aon Foundation; members of AIC; and others. The American Museum of Natural History and MoMA also provided key in-kind support for recovery efforts and establishment of the CRC.
As the need for conservation continues, those with damaged pieces are encouraged to use AIC’s Find A Conservator tool available for free on the AIC website: www.conservation-us.org/findaconservator. The tool provides a systematic, consistent method of obtaining current information to identify and locate professional conservation services from all across the United States and abroad. It allows users to address a wide range of conservation problems, whether the needs are long-range or short-term and whether the collection consists of thousands of valuable historic artifacts, one priceless work of art, or items of great personal value.
CAA Seeks Award Jury Members
posted Mar 20, 2013
CAA invites nominations and self-nominations for individuals to serve on nine of the twelve juries for the annual Awards for Distinction for three years (2013–16). Terms begin in May 2013; award years are 2014–16. CAA’s twelve awards honor artists, art historians, authors, curators, critics, and teachers whose accomplishments transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large.
Candidates must possess expertise appropriate to the jury’s work and be current CAA members. They should not be serving on another CAA committee or editorial board. CAA’s president and vice president for committees appoint jury members for service.
The following jury vacancies will be filled this spring:
- Charles Rufus Morey Book Award: 4 members
- Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award: 3 members
- Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize: 2 members
- Frank Jewett Mather Award: 1 member
- Art Journal Award: 2 members
- Distinguished Teaching of Art Award: 2 members
- Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement: 1 member
- Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art: 2 members
- CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation: 2 members
Nominations and self-nominations should include a brief statement (no more than 150 words) outlining the individual’s qualifications and experience and an abbreviated CV (no more than two pages). Please send all materials by email to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs; submissions must be sent as Microsoft Word attachments. Deadline: April 26, 2013.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Mar 20, 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.
Biotechnology as Art Form
It’s natural that some artists spend as much time in the lab as they do in the studio. Over the last three decades, in fact, artists have cultivated human tissue, bred frogs, assembled DNA profiles, and used modified bacteria as electrical transmitters. Bio-art—as this type of work is called—has also begun to surface in museums and avant-garde art festivals, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth in Australia. (Read more in ARTnews.)
What Do University Presses Do?
A book published by the University of Minnesota Press, begun as the author’s dissertation, had been discussed in the New Yorker. This journey, from dissertation to published book and beyond, provides a counter narrative to the rhetoric about scholarly publishers these days, rhetoric which paints us as parasites sucking profit and capital out of the work of scholars, structured around a “conflict” between publishers, libraries, and scholars often oversimplified into a binary. Publishers are interested in profit. Libraries and scholars are not. (Read more in the University of Minnesota Press Blog.)
What Do Cats Have to Do with It? Welcome to LACMA’s New Collections Website
Two years ago, we launched an experiment: an online image library where we made 2,000 high-resolution images of artworks that the museum deemed to be in the public domain available for download without any restrictions. This week, we’ve exceeded ourselves with the launch of our new collections website, giving away ten times the number of images we offered in the initial image library. Nearly 20,000 high-quality images of art from our collection are available to download and use as you see fit (that’s about a quarter of all the art represented on the site). (Read more in Unframed.)
What to Do with Artist’s Work after Death Can Be Vexing
Since the Oakland artist Thomas “Glen” Whittaker died last month, his longtime companion, Marcy Pitts, has faced the daunting task of deciding what to do with about thirty-five paintings and other works he left behind. More specifically, she has wrestled with how to catalog, value, transport, store, and market the works, some of which are several feet wide. At the forefront of Pitts’s mind is a desire to earn Whittaker, who was 62, recognition for his work. (Read more in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.)
Pre-Tenure Leadership
As the dean of a college whose faculty includes many assistant professors, I am frequently asked for advice on how much service they should undertake. The twin horns of their dilemma? They know that service counts for less than teaching or research in annual and promotion evaluations … but they also know that demonstrating leadership potential through community engagement is important. (Read more in Inside Higher Ed.)
Things I Didn’t Learn in Graduate School
For more than thirty years now, I have benefited in my professional practice in student affairs from having attended some terrific graduate programs. It’s important to say that explicitly, upfront, as I’m about to focus on the things I didn’t learn in graduate school. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Help Desk: Lazy Art Critic
An art critic who writes for local newspaper recently approached me to review a recent show I installed at a local gallery. He is essentially asking me to provide him with my thoughts on my work and, after reading several of his articles, it seems as if he will just quote me at length rather than provide an actual review of my work. Should I indulge him in my eagerness to gain press attention or decline in hopes of a future proposal from a more attentive critic? (Read more in Daily Serving.)
Art without Market, Art without Education: Political Economy of Art
Since the early days of modernism, artists have faced a peculiar dilemma with regard to the economy surrounding their work. By breaking from older artistic formations such as medieval artisan guilds, bohemian artists of the nineteenth century distanced themselves from the vulgar sphere of day-to-day commerce in favor of an idealized conception of art and authorship. While on the one hand this allowed for a certain rejection of normative bourgeois life, it also required that artists entrust their livelihoods to middlemen—to private agents or state organizations. While a concern with labor and fair compensation in the arts, exemplified by such recent initiatives as W.A.G.E. or earlier efforts such as the Art Workers Coalition, has been an important part of artistic discourse, so far it has focused primarily on public critique as a means to shame and reform institutions into developing a more fair system of compensation for “content providers.” It seems to me that we need to move beyond the critique of art institutions if we want to improve the relationship between artists and the economy surrounding their work. (Read more in e-flux Journal.)