Board of Directors Election
Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University
Statement
Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University
In times of economic restraint, such as the one we are now in, it is important that CAA positions itself to take advantage of new opportunities and to support creative solutions. The web is one such resource, and I believe CAA could have an even greater role in helping to create templates for innovative types of exhibitions and performance spaces, research venues, and publishing engagements, along with advocacy.
I have been on the boards of both the Society of Architectural Historians and CAA, and from 2005 to 2008 I was chair of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board. I have served on various CAA committees and helped to write the Standards and Guidelines for historic object documentation. I am very proud that two articles of mine were selected for the Art Bulletin’s Centennial Anthology.
I hope that CAA will promote new opportunities for members, such as group rates for liability insurance and travel opportunities. Further, I will press for greater CAA engagement at the local and international levels. Finally, I hope that CAA will advocate more generally for the global primacy of art.
Biography
Suzanne Preston Blier is a historian specializing in the art and architecture of Africa. She grew up in Vermont and left college at age nineteen to join the Peace Corps in Africa. On her return, she completed a BA and attended Columbia University for a PhD in African art and architecture. Blier taught as an adjunct at various New York institutions while completing her dissertation. She was on the faculty at Northwestern University (for two years) and then at Columbia (for ten years) before joining Harvard University in both the History of Art and Architecture and the African and African American Studies Departments.
One of her projects at Harvard is an open-source website called WorldMap, recently expanded from AfricaMap. This site brings together the best available mapping and other data in a geospatial framework, with tools to upload images, videos, and text. This site, open to everyone, allows users to explore key topics, such as cross-currencies in the era of exploration, the slave trade, or the colonial legacy in Africa and elsewhere. Blier hopes to use this resource in a project focused on architectural preservation in Nigeria. Her work currently focuses on ancient bronzes from the Nigerian site of Ile-Ife. She is also keenly interested in art making and is coleading a hands-on class this winter on bronze casting with an art museum conservator and educator.
Blier’s first book, The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression (1987), won the Arts Council of the African Studies Association’s Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award. Her next book, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power (1995), received CAA’s Charles Rufus Morey Book Award. Other volumes include: African Royal Art: The Majesty of Form (1998); Butabu: Adobe Architecture in West Africa; and, as editor, Art of the Senses: Masterpieces from the William and Bertha Teel Collection (2004). Cambridge University Press will publish her latest book, Art and Risk: Politics and Statecraft in Ancient Ife.
Blier’s past honors include fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Institute for Advanced Study, among others.
Her most unusual pleasure: gardening in public spaces; the most surprising affiliation: Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science.
Endorsement
With this letter, I formally endorse the candidacy of Suzanne Preston Blier for CAA’s Board of Directors. Over the past two decades, I have witnessed firsthand her commitment to her own consistently rigorous and groundbreaking research and been impressed by her history of service to the profession as a whole. Much of the latter has been expressed through her active engagement with CAA, most prominently as chair of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board.
Blier is a scholar dedicated to furthering CAA’s mission, particularly in technological and international initiatives. With her as a board member, CAA will be poised to better articulate the importance of new technologies for art and art-historical research and dissemination. Importantly, Blier understands that technology is a tool, not only for research and art making, but also for forming new means of communication and collaboration. She has the skills, experience, and capacity to help guide CAA, and by extension its constituencies, through this brave new world.
Given her three decades of groundbreaking research, her tireless service to the profession, and her unique capacity to advance CAA’s mission as the organization enters its second century, I enthusiastically endorse Blier’s candidacy for the Board of Directors.
—Steven D. Nelson, Consortium Scholar, Getty Research Institute, 2011–12; Associate Professor of African and African American Art History, University of California, Los Angeles; President, Arts Council of the African Studies Association
Video
How to Vote
CAA members may vote for up to four candidates, including one write-in candidate (who must be a CAA member). The four candidates receiving the most votes will be elected to the board. CAA members may cast their votes and submit their proxies online; no paper ballots will be mailed. Please have your CAA user/member ID# and password handy when you are ready to vote. All voting must take place by 5:00 PM PST on Friday, February 24, 2012. CAA will provide a computer dedicated to the election in the registration area at the upcoming 100th Annual Conference in Los Angeles.
Barbara Nesin, CAA board president, will present the election results at the close of the next Annual Members’ Business Meeting, to be held on Friday, February 24, 2012, 5:30–7:00 PM (PST) in the West Hall Meeting Room 503, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, California.
