CAA News

CAA Fellowships for MFA and PhD Students

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

CAA has begun accepting applications from MFA and PhD students for its Professional-Development Fellowships in the Visual Arts and Art History. For the current cycle, CAA will award grants of $5,000 each to outstanding students who will receive their MFA and PhD degrees in calendar year 2014.

Recent Deaths in the Arts

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the artists, scholars, architects, dealers, photographers, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts.

Art Journal Features Essays by Josephine Halvorson and Luke Smythe

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

The Art Journal website has published selected content from its most recent issue, including a reflection by Josephine Halvorson on her practice of painting en plein air and a review of Hal Foster's book The First Pop Age by Joshua Shannon.

May Picks from CAA's Committee on Women in the Arts

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

The CWA Picks for May included solo exhibitions of work by Hung Liu in Oakland, Kara Walker in Chicago, Gillian Wearing in Munich, Latoya Ruby Frazier in New York, and Wangechi Mutu in Durham, North Carolina.

Nominations for the 2014 Awards for Distinction

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

CAA encourages you to nominate colleagues for the 2014 Awards for Distinction, to be presented next February at the 102nd Annual Conference in Chicago. The different perspectives and anecdotes from multiple personal letters of recommendation will provide award juries with a clearer picture of the qualities and attributes of the nominees. Deadline: July 31 and August 31, 2013.

Follow CAA on Twitter

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

Follow CAA on Twitter to stay current with the organization's many programs and services. CAA's Twitter account also posts links to important news stories and feature articles on topics that matter to your professional life.

Donors to the Annual Conference Travel Grants

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

CAA warmly thanks the individuals who contributed to the Annual Conference Travel Grants over the past twelve months. Their support has helped cover expenses for graduate students in art history and studio art, and for international artists and scholars, to attend the conference.

Support Travel Grants for CAA Members

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

Your contribution to CAA's fund for the Annual Conference Travel Grants allows MFA and PhD students, as well as international artists and scholars, to cover expenses for attending the Chicago meeting in February 2014. Travel grants are funded solely by donations from members—please contribute today!

$20,000 NEA Grant for ARTspace

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

CAA has been awarded a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the next ARTspace, taking place at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago. Initiated twelve years ago by CAA's Services to Artists Committee, ARTspace presents programming designed by artists for artists that is free and open to the public.

Book Reviews

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

Jeffrey Abt, American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Reviewed by Whitney Davis. OPEN ACCESS.

Natalie Adamson and Toby Norris, eds., Academics, Pompiers, Official Artists, and the Arrière-garde: Defining Modern and Traditional in France, 1900–1960 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). Reviewed by Romy Golan.

Exhibition Reviews

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bernini: Sculpting in Clay (October 3, 2012–January 6, 2013). Reviewed by Michaël Amy.

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Invisible Cities (April 15, 2012–February 4, 2013). Reviewed by Keith N. Morgan.

Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Hello Nature: How to Draw, Paint, Cook, and Find Your Way (July 13–October 21, 2012). Reviewed by Michelle Lamuniere.

CAA Fellowships for MFA and PhD Students

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

CAA has begun accepting applications from MFA and PhD students for its Professional-Development Fellowships in the Visual Arts and Art History.

Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too)

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association of scientists who study insects.

The Etiquette of Accepting a Job Offer

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

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.

Cultivating Partnerships in the Digital Humanities

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

As academics we can be too snug in our institutional silos. We sometimes think of one another as competitors for students, and as a result we duplicate scarce resources in mutually damaging ways. Without more coordinated programs, will we go on teaching the way we have since the Industrial Revolution? Will our students, knowing it doesn't have to be that way and worried about their future, lose patience with us? The digital humanities provide a context for facing those questions head-on.

What We're Not Arguing About

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

The solutions to the crisis in higher education are still a subject of fierce debate, and I'm happy to see people from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds adding their voices to the conversation. At the same time, I think it's important to clarify what academics and former academics are and aren't arguing about.

How Long Is the Average Dissertation?

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

The best part about writing a dissertation is finding clever ways to procrastinate. The motivation for this blog comes from one of the more creative ways I've found to keep myself from writing. I've posted about data mining in the past, and this post follows up on those ideas using a topic that is relevant to anyone that has ever considered getting, or has successfully completed, their PhD.

To Raze or Not? MoMA Rethinks Plan

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

After impassioned protests from prominent architects, preservationists, and design critics, the Museum of Modern Art said that it would reconsider its decision to demolish its next-door neighbor, the former home of the American Folk Art Museum, to make room for an expansion. In a recent board meeting, the directors were told that a board committee had selected the design firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro to handle the expansion and to help determine whether to keep any of the existing structure.

Help Desk: Ideal Representation

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

I've been meeting with a commercial gallery in my city for some time, and they've extended me an offer to come aboard. I'm excited about the idea of professional representation, having a platform to promote myself to a larger audience and further opportunity for sale of work. Some of the work the gallery represents is totally not my style, which is to say, artwork that favors more commercially viable subject matter or style at the cost of exercising any real dynamic or conceptual verve. How much should this influence my decision to join the gallery?

Thinking about Accreditation in a Rapidly Changing World

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

Enormous change is under way in higher education, driven by a perfect storm of crisis (around cost, access, quality, and funding), technological innovation and what that innovation makes possible, the growing presence and influence of for-profit providers, abuses (of various kinds), opportunity, and workforce-development needs in a global and technological context. Any one of those challenges might fill an agenda for a commissioners’ retreat or a small conference, but accreditors now wrestle with all of these various forces across a broad landscape of change and urgency.

Counting, Not Curtailing, Adjuncts' Work

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

Nowhere does the Law of Unintended Consequences run more rampant than in the field of taxation. That was clearly demonstrated at the Internal Revenue Service's rule-making hearing on April 23, in the agency's attempts to craft regulations to impose a steep tax on employers who fail to provide employee health-care coverage required by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. While most of the twenty-five other witnesses at the hearing represented various employers or organizations, I testified in my personal capacity as an interested citizen who happens to be an adjunct faculty member and former IRS lawyer.

How Prevalent Is Money Laundering in the Art World?

15 May 2013 09:24:24 CDT

Recent federal charges against the New York dealer Helly Nahmad included that he worked "to launder tens of millions of dollars on behalf of the illegal gambling business." While Nahmad has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in the indictment, the accusation raises the questions of whether (and if so why) art would be used in this way. Art lends itself to money laundering because the market's lack of transparency means art can become what Judge Fausto Martin De Sanctiscalls an "invisible asset." Values can be manipulated, and complex ownership schemes, with an emphasis on secrecy, are commonplace.