Board of Directors Election
2011 Candidates
Saul L. Ostrow, Cleveland Institute of Art
Saul L. Ostrow, chair of Visual Arts and Technologies at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio
Statement: A decade ago artists, designers, historians, and art educators worked in an environment very different from the one we presently live in. Our institutions and disciplines are changing, and our students have grown up in an unparalleled period of globalization, as well as rapid social and technological change. These conditions require an increased need for a better understanding of diverse communities, cultural and aesthetic practices, and histories. Those of us concerned with addressing these challenges continue to identify the core values and practices that might guide the development of our respective fields, professional practices, and pedagogies, while striving to bridge the art–art history, studio–academic divide. I believe that CAA as a professional organization has an important leadership role to play in defining and addressing the challenges we, and our students, now face. As a board member, I would act as an advocate for those views that reflect our new circumstances, advance the improvements that have been made in promoting the interests of studio faculty and graduate students, and seek new ways to give support to those engaged in the practice and teaching of art and art history.
Biography: Saul Ostrow in 1972 received his MFA in art from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Since 2002, he has been chair of Visual Arts and Technologies at the Cleveland Institute of Art. He is presently the art editor for Bomb Magazine and was coeditor of Lusitania Press (1996–2004). He also served on the Art Journal Editorial Board (1996–2002) and as editor of the book series Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture, published by Routledge from 1995 to 2006. Since 1987, he has also curated over seventy exhibitions in the United States and abroad.
Ostrow’s writings have appeared in numerous art magazines, journals, catalogues, and anthologies. Most recently his article, “The Persistent Mythology of Modernism: Interpreting Post-Modernism/Postmodernism/post-Modernism…,” was published in Philosophy, Art, History, Future, edited by Vladimir Marchenkov and published by the University of Ohio Press. Art in America publishes Ostrow’s reviews on a regular basis, as well as his interviews with Liam Gillick, Michelle Grabner, and Brent Green. His article, “Reconfiguring Pop: Women in Pop,” appeared in the September 2010 issue.
In 2008, Ostrow and the artist Charles Tucker began their collaboration on the question, “What is a Subject,” as part of the Making Artistic Inquiry Visible residency at the Banff Center in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. They continue to work together on this project, which explores the artwork as a potentially quantifiable systems network of interlocking aesthetic, material, conceptual, and sociocultural components. In spring 2009, as part of this partnership, they organized a residency called Analogous Fields: Art and Science for the center.
Candidate’s Video
How to Vote
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