Board of Directors Election
2009 Candidates
DeWitt Godfrey, Colgate University
DeWitt Godfrey, Colgate University
Statement: Because I spent the first fifteen years of my professional life as an independent artist, followed by a decade of teaching at the university level, I believe I offer some unique insights into CAA’s mission. In addition, my own academic experiences, as a student and professor, are located in departments that combine the study of art practice and art history. The creation, teaching, and reception of art, I have found, resonate strongly in settings that sustain multiple intellectual, critical, and creative discourses.
As CAA approaches its one-hundredth year and embarks on its next strategic-planning process, it must be equally creative and innovative, responding to and taking the lead in its support of emerging hybrid forms of artistic creation and scholarly production. Building on its core strengths, CAA must maintain its vitally important academic and professional standards, sustain the Annual Conference while exploring new models of collegial gatherings, and provide expanded venues for the presentation and publication of creative and scholarly work. CAA needs to better support its recent graduates and emerging professionals, encourage and provide for pedagogical innovation, and reexamine, reaffirm, and reinvigorate strategies to support its artists members. The association should also explore new paths of communication with membership that better address the specific needs of its various constituencies and embrace the opportunities and challenges of an increasingly digital world, as well as increase its advocacy for the place of art in the larger culture by expanding partnerships with other organizations. The planning, articulation, and implementation of these programs, as well as fundraising and membership expansion, are essential to CAA’s long-term fiscal health and stability.
Biography: DeWitt Godfrey is associate professor of sculpture in the Department of Art and Art History at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and director of the Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts there.
His artistic practice engages the public sphere. Godfrey was included in the multivenue exhibition Public Art/Moving Site at three locations in New England (2006) and has installed his work at the Fields Sculpture Park at Omi International Art Center (2005) and Socrates Sculpture Park (2001). In 1998 Godfrey’s CAM Sculpture was the subject of one-person shows at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and Sculpture Center in New York. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art News, Sculpture, the New Yorker, and the New York Times.
Godfrey completed undergraduate studies at Yale University, was a member of the inaugural group of Core Program fellows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and received his MFA from Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. He is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including ones from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Japan Foundation.
For CAA, Godfrey has served on the Services to Artists Committee and the Professional Practices Committee, which he also chaired. He is a member of the steering committee for the newly formed Public Art Dialogue, a CAA affiliated society.
