Higher education — and particularly the humanities, and very particularly the field of Art History — are in a state of unprecedented crisis in the United States. Art History departments and programs are closing, majors are being eliminated, and faculty, including tenured, full-time faculty, are being laid off. Though this trend predates the COVID-19 pandemic, the pace of layoffs and program eliminations has accelerated substantially in the past year. University administrations, citing financial duress if not official exigency, have exploited the economic stresses of the pandemic to do what they had planned to do beforehand: close programs, lay off faculty, and chip away at tenure. This is happening nationwide.
The purpose of this letter is to bring the crisis level of this situation into sharper focus and to advocate for the creation of an organized public outcry. We need CAA, as the flagship organization for art historians and the only organization with the power to shape the landscape, to publicize this large-scale attack on our academic field. We need CAA to step up and make noise for our field, our faculty, and our students.
We realize that CAA as an organization is aware of these trends, and has responded in the past. The “Guidelines for Addressing Proposed Substantive Changes to an Art, Art History or Design Unit or Program at Colleges and Universities” were established in 2018 to help faculty, staff, and institutional leadership communicate throughout the process of closure or reduction. We urge CAA to go further now, especially because we understand that in many current cases, leadership has not complied with CAA’s “Action Steps for Institutions.” These recommended steps include:
- Provide a written explanation of how the proposed change is consistent with the educational purposes of the institution, including pedagogical focus, curricular programs, educational philosophy, and research mission.
- Fully engage, and receive approval from, the faculty governance body at the institution.
- Wait a period of two years after the completion of all steps outlined above before implementing the proposed change to allow for student and faculty transition.
- Offer existing faculty and staff employment at other areas of the institution; commensurate with their skills and training.
These standards are being violated, and we call on CAA to hold our institutions accountable.
We know anecdotally of layoffs and departmental closures just in the past fourteen months at John Carroll University (Cleveland, OH), Kean University (Union, NJ), the College of Saint Rose (Albany, NY), and William Paterson University (Wayne, NJ). But we also know that many, many more layoffs, furloughs, downsizings, program cuts, and dissolutions are going unnoticed, especially at smaller institutions and those without the prestige of a PhD program. There is no centralized data collection about this, and no organized way for affected faculty to share information about programs and positions at risk. As Rebecca Futo Kennedy (whose advocacy in Classics inspires us) recently wrote about the closure of Classics programs in the US, “often no one learns of these closures or threats until they are too far along to stop.”
To a much greater degree than either individuals or smaller organizations, CAA is in a position to learn about these threats, gather and publicize data, and take action to support faculty and programs at risk. While we understand that CAA cannot change the policies or challenge the decisions of institutions that eliminate Art History programs, departments, or faculty, we believe that CAA can and should respond to this urgency in a number of ways.
We propose that CAA:
- Create a database of Art History programs and their status. This resource should be available publicly (that is, not behind a membership paywall) and should include data from a deep study of the closures, mergers, loss of tenure lines, elimination of majors/minors/programs, and faculty reductions going back at least to the 2008 financial crisis (to provide economic context for some of the closures). This project should include a confidential means for faculty to report and discuss imposed changes and threats to programs.
- Compile a toolkit of proactive measures for faculty/programs under threat, including scripts, talking points, advocacy links, and contact info for specially-tasked CAA board or committee members. We call on the newly formed Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee, who are already working up other mentoring resources, to develop real help for Art History departments/faculty in the face of future assaults. One venue for this could be online workshops, archived and made freely available for department meetings, faculty development, and memberships of smaller organizations.
- Establish “mutual aid” partnerships with the Modern Language Association, Society for Classical Studies, American Philosophical Association, American Historical Association, and other humanities and arts professional societies to coordinate a broader response. Consider developing a system of reciprocal sanctions, with real teeth: if an institution tries to close an Art History department, the other associations will join in defending that department, just as CAA will help defend Classics and Foreign Language departments. Similarly, investigate how the studio arts, graphic design, and museum-based constituencies represented by CAA can be tapped as partners.
- Promote partnerships with state-level advocacy organizations. Research public arts and humanities organizations by state, and publish an annotated online directory for departments at state institutions seeking support or collaboration.
- Support faculty and staff unionization efforts. Program closures like those mentioned in this letter have been on the horizon for decades, often resisted only by unionized faculty and graduate students. We ask CAA to follow, support, and amplify local grassroots organizing efforts. As Maggie Williams puts it, “Our solidarity and collective power [are] the only tools that [can] really bring about systemic change.”
As the “preeminent international leadership organization in the visual arts,” CAA promises “support, collaboration, and advocacy” for visual arts professionals. We believe the current threats to programs fall within the scope of the “Issues” in the organization’s Advocacy Policy. And so The Material Collective calls for CAA to act — to form a task force, to collect data on Art History programs, to create publicly available resources, and to advocate vigorously for individual members and programs under threat.
We look to you for the leadership our field needs.
Sincerely,
The Material Collective
A few months ago I was in touch with Elizabeth Schlatter, who is the CAA Board Chair. I also suggested that CAA monitor the contraction of art history as an academic discipline. We traded a few emails. And then nothing. She promised to put me in touch with the “Education Committee,” which is apparently the appropriate group for these issues. Nothing came of it.
It’s astonishing the lack of leadership we’re getting from CAA on this problem. What could be ore important for this organization? Hopefully, your letter will get some sort of response and action on their part. If they do nothing, I would suggest that we organize a campaign encouraging colleagues to let their CAA membership lapse.
I agree, Gerry. If this isn’t where CAA steps up, acts, and leads, I don’t see a reason to be a member. And i’ll certainly share my reasons with colleagues.
In 2016 my institution, now Mary Baldwin University, eliminated art history, along with several other liberal arts majors, and consolidated others. I retired, knowing that with no major I would probably be eliminated anyway. The erosion of the liberal arts is frightening. I admire your advocacy and support your ideas. Thank you for taking the Bull by the horns.
I like a lot of this. Why don’t you make your own database, establish a new organization, and just leave the CAA in the dust? The CAA is a bad model. It needs to be replaced, as I have been arguing for almost a decade. Whatever happened to American innovation!? In Germany they have two art history associations! If you do not like one, you can join the other one, or you can join both! (I am not saying Germany is perfect or anything. It has got its own very serious problems. If you do not believe me, check out #ichbinHannah). We need more options. We need more imaginative options. Everywhere.
That said, you state on this very website that you value transparency, but you don’t even sign your names to the document. That is disappointing, as are your t-shirts. You are art historians for Christ-sake!? Can’t you come up with some better designs for your t-shirts!?
When I wrote my open letter to the CAA in 2013 (in the olden days), it included a literature review (where’s your literature review by the way? Who were your advisors? Didn’t they teach you about literature reviews?), and *I signed my name*. Of course, I am currently unemployed, but I am pretty sure I am not unemployed because I spoke out against the CAA (there are some… special circumstances).
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwQRmvZJxL9zUzBnQWhrLUlXd3M/edit?resourcekey=0-hg7Qnt6PMerv96WkjbIhew
Can someone organize an international Zoom panel on this issue already? This little comment box isn’t cutting it, and I am sure that there are others out there who would also like to contribute. Just let me know, and I will be there.
Sincerely,
Victoria H. F. Scott, PhD
Thanks for your feedback, Victoria. If you’re not already a member, we suggest you join our Facebook group, where there are often discussions and posts about this and other issues in Art, Art History, and related fields.
I am not on Facebook anymore, and frankly, I do not think anyone else should be either. But heartfelt thank yous for the invitation! I would sign up for a listserv, if there was one – and that might be a good way to kick things off. Come to think of it. Just an idea. Feel frrrrreeeeeeeee to steal it.
vhfs
Hello Victoria, thanks so much for your comment. I remember your open letter, and thanks also for re-sharing it here. It’s so frustrating that statements like yours seem to have fallen on deaf ears! As far as the authorship of this piece goes, the core members of the Material Collective tend to work on such items as a group. Our original core members are listed here: https://thematerialcollective.org/manifesto/. This particular letter was drafted by Karen Overbey and my colleague at WPU, Claudia Goldstein. Edits and comments were provided by me, Maggie M. Williams, Asa Mittman, Ben Tilghman, Jennifer Borland, and Nancy Thompson. I suppose we neglected to “sign” the letter because we have been working together as the Collective for over a decade and we probably assumed folks would know at least some of our names–we should have been clearer, so thanks for the correction.
Awesome. Thank you. Just start a new organization already.
There is also this article that might interest you, which I published with Daniel Burckhardt in 2015: ‘The Republic of Art History: Using Gender and Social Network Analysis to Reinvent the Discipline’.
https://voekk.at/de/publikationen/newest-art-history-wohin-geht-die-juengste-kunstgeschichte
All my best,
Victoria
Dismantling art history programs is one way to block the DEI movement from shifting the art world from a White art world to a more diverse and equitable art world. Dismantling art history in higher ed also impacts future generations of artists, though I believe art history also needs to be taught in a way that builds student agency rather than rote learning. It’s devastating that at a time when there is so much work that needs to be done to document, research, write curate and speak about art from “othered” communities also coincides with the dismantling of the beginning portion of the training “pipeline.” I write this as one of the handful of Native Americanists who are tribally enrolled. There needs to be many more art historians, art administrators, curators, community arts leaders. Undergraduate art history courses help people develop in these roles. I started as a studio art major in undergrad. When I embarked on the PHD n art history, I did not know I would become the first Native person to have an art history degree focused on Native American/First Nations art.
From what I have learned about how things work, MONEY is key. Unless CAA can throw a huge amount of money at this problem, we won’t be able to make traction. I respectfully suggest this is something the huge grant founders need to help with: Mellon, Ford, Luce, yes, but also STEM, health, and environmental foundations need to support art education very broadly, and undergrad art history programs at non-PhD institutions is just one piece of that need. The arts are vitally important ways for people to think through problems, get creative, have “ahaa!” moments, find inspiration, compassion, and cross the boundaries of nations, cultures, the material and immaterial worlds! Ok, I’m done ranting. Love and support to you all,
Lara M. Evans (Cherokee Nation), PhD
Santa Fe, NM
https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=Y2SGyJxe5qa
Ugh – please overlook my copious typos. Stupid iPad keyboard.
(If I had a nickel for every typo I ever wrote, I could probably endow a chair in art history.)
Lara, thank you so much for this insightful comment. It’s such a great example of why the stakes are so high here: it might not seem like we should be worried about the closings of a few small departments, but the more we constrict the pipeline the less able we’re going to be as a field to address the extreme lack of diversity in our field. This really is an existential crisis, even if it might not feel like it yet.
And I think you’re right that one of the best things CAA can do to address the problem is to activate the deep-pocketed supporters of art history. CAA has the institutional authority to get everyone around the table, show them how dangerous the situation is, and start developing a plan of action.
Thank you so much for your comment, Lara, and for stating so eloquently the stakes of this all. I also really appreciate your point about how this is connected to broad arts education at every level. CAA is also in the position to bring together art history with studio art and design, all interconnected fields. I’ve been trying to think about how CAA could connect in some way with state arts and/or humanities councils, which are doing good work to advocate for arts education before college and at the community level.
One more thing, Lara – I just happened to be traveling through Santa Fe on a recent road trip and the IAIA Museum was a highlight! We were so glad that we got to see the shows that are up right now, including the Linda Lomahaftewa exhibition. Congratulations on an excellent exhibition!
Hello:
I am the North American Correspondent for the University World News (London, UK).
I am doing a story on the state of Art History Education in the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, Italy and Germany.
I am looking for professors who can tell me about closures or consolidations of their departments in the last few years.
Sincerely,
Dr. Nathan M. Greenfield