CAA News Today
CAA 2026 Board of Directors Election: Vote Now!
posted Dec 11, 2025
As a CAA member, voting is the best way to shape the future of your professional association. Thank you for taking the time to vote!
The CAA Board of Directors is comprised of professionals in the visual arts who are elected annually by the membership to serve four-year terms or (for emerging professionals) two-year terms. The Board is charged with the long-term financial stability and strategic direction of CAA in partnership with the Executive Director; it is also the Association’s governing body. The Board sets policy regarding all aspects of CAA activities, including publishing, the Annual Conference, awards and fellowships, advocacy, and committee procedures. For more information, please read the CAA by-laws section on Nominations, Elections, and Appointments.
MEET THE CANDIDATES
The 2025–26 Nominating Committee has selected the following candidates for election to the CAA Board of Directors. Click the names of the candidates below to read their personal statements and CVs before casting your vote.
BOARD OF DIRECTOR CANDIDATES (FOUR-YEAR TERM, 2026–30)
Researcher and Director, Museum Studies
Rosas Museum (Narcao, Italy)
Professor of Painting
Auburn University (Auburn, AL)
Assistant Professor of Photography, Parsons School of Design
The New School (New York, NY)
Dean, School of Art and Design
Fashion Institute of Technology (New York, NY)
Assistant Dean, Curriculum and Learning, Parsons School of Design
The New School (New York, NY)
Librarian, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs
New York Public Library (New York, NY)
EMERGING PROFESSIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTOR CANDIDATES (TWO-YEAR TERM, 2026–28)
Director of Learning & Engagement
Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY)
PhD Candidate in Art History
The Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA)
Part-Time Design Faculty, Parsons School of Design
The New School (New York, NY)
PhD Candidate in Art History and Visual Culture
Duke University (Durham, NC)
Marketing and Communications Coordinator
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Fort Worth, TX)
CAA members must cast their votes online. The deadline for voting is 5:00 p.m. CT on Thursday, February 19, 2026.
Elected individuals will be announced at the CAA Annual Business Meeting on Friday, February 20, 1:00–2:00 p.m. CT.
Questions? Contact info@collegeart.org with the subject line “Board of Directors Election.”
Notice of the CAA 114th Annual Business Meeting
posted Dec 10, 2025
CAA Annual Business Meeting
Friday, February 20, 2026
1 p.m. CT
The 114th Annual Business Meeting of the members of the College Art Association will be called to order at 1 p.m. CT on Friday, February 20, 2026, at the Hilton Chicago. Access to this meeting is included in paid registration and no-cost registration. Once registered, please log into the online conference schedule to view more details about this meeting. CAA President, Dr. Denise Baxter, will preside.
AGENDA
- Welcome + Call to Order – Denise Baxter, CAA President
- Executive Director Report – Meme Omogbai, CAA Executive Director + CEO
- Approval of 113th Annual Business Meeting Minutes [ACTION ITEM]
- Old/New Business
- Board Member Election Results – Denise Baxter, CAA President
- Adjourn
BOARD VOTING
The Board of Directors slate has been announced as of December 11, 2025, along with an online voting form. Please submit your voting form for the 2026 election no later than 5 p.m. CT on Thursday, February 19th, 2026.
Next Meeting – 2027
The 115th Annual Business Meeting of the College Art Association will be held on February 5, 2027, at the New York Hilton Midtown.
Announcing the CAA-Getty International Program 2026 Participants!
posted Nov 20, 2025
The CAA-Getty International Program will welcome ten new scholars and four program alumni to the CAA 114th Annual Conference! CAA114 will mark the fifteenth year of this invaluable program, which brings a cohort of art historians, museum curators, visual arts professionals, and select program alumni from around the globe to the CAA Annual Conference each year. Grantees participate in a preconference colloquium and alumni session, examining pressing topics in the field, ranging from historiography, interdisciplinary/transnational methodology, and the decolonization of our arts institutions. Read “A Global Vision: The CAA-Getty International Program” to learn more, and register now for CAA114!
2026 CAA-GETTY PARTICIPANTS
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Hesham A. Abdel Kader is an Egyptian archaeologist and Roman archaeology specialist at the Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. He recently earned his PhD from Ain Shams University with a dissertation titled “Public Baths and Water Management in Hermopolis Magna during the Roman Period.” His fieldwork experience spans over a decade and includes key roles in excavations at Hermopolis, Amarna, Tuna el-Gebel, and Deir el-Barsha, in collaboration with national and international missions. He is also a co-founder of the Egyptian Heritage Network and is actively engaged in public outreach and training initiatives in Middle Egypt. His work has been recognized with awards such as the Prof. Dr. Zahi Hawass Prize for Best Archaeologist (2023), and he has published extensively on Roman-era urbanism and infrastructure. He is passionate about integrating the field of archaeology with community heritage awareness and international collaboration. |
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Ornela Barisone holds a PhD in humanities and arts and currently works as a Research Assistant at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET), based at the Centro de Investigaciones en Arte y Patrimonio (CIAP, EAyP, UNSAM-CONICET). As part of this position, she is developing a research project on transnational networks, artistic participation, and mid-twentieth-century avant-gardes in Argentina, Brazil, and France (1949–69). She is also a professor and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Entre Ríos (Argentina), where she serves as adjunct professor in History of Art and Associate Professor in Comparative Literatures. She directs the institutional research project “Avant-garde Archives and Magazines as Transnational Platforms,” focused on Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Latin American–European exchanges in the 1960s. Barisone has been awarded, among others, fellowships from CONICET, a UNL–CEAL–UAM–Banco Santander mobility scholarship, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar grant (UCLA), and a postdoctoral research fellowship at EHESS–Paris. She is the author of Experimentos poéticos opacos. Biopsias malditas: del invencionismo argentino a la poesía visual (1944–1969) (Ed. Corregidor, 2017). |
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Tuuda Haitula is a heritage professional and curator from Namibia, who is the curator of the Oranjemund Shipwreck under the National Museum of Namibia. His work centers on postcolonial restitution, ethical museum practices, and capacity-building in African museums. Tuuda has contributed to grant management, heritage assessments, and national exhibition development. He is passionate about using museums as tools for healing, knowledge recovery, and social transformation |
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Mu He is a contemporary expressionist artist and cross-cultural art researcher. She holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in painting from the Rome Academy of Fine Arts, Italy, and is currently pursuing her PhD at the De Institute of Creative Arts and Design, UCSI University, Malaysia. Her doctoral research, “East–West Fusion: A Comparative Study of Gustav Klimt and Pang Xunqin’s Decorative Language in 20th-Century Figure Painting,” examines the transcultural negotiation of decorative vocabularies in modern painting, with a particular focus on the dialogue between Eastern and Western traditions. From 2018 to 2023, she served as a lecturer in oil painting at Hebei Minzu Normal University, China. In 2024, she received the Ernst Mach Grant to conduct research at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Dedicated to bridging theory and practice and fostering intercultural dialogue, her works have been exhibited in China, Italy, and Malaysia. She continues to publish scholarly articles and is currently preparing a monograph on the comparative study of decorative language in East–West fusion painting. |
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Omar ID Tnaine is a scholar and curator based in Agadir, Morocco, dedicated to preserving and promoting cultural heritage. As a curator at prominent Moroccan museums, he designs educational programs and exhibitions that connect diverse audiences with the richness of national and global heritage. Omar has contributed to significant research programs, including the 2025 Open Restitution Africa (ORA) Cohort, where he conducts case studies on North African restitution, focusing on Morocco, to document and share data on cultural heritage repatriation. He also participated in the Museum Lab, refining innovative museum practices, and the SAWA Museum Studies Program, enhancing his expertise in cultural heritage management. These experiences strengthen his commitment to cross-cultural dialogue and education. |
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Eve Loh-Kazuhara is an art historian specializing in Japanese art, focusing on the history and historiography of nihonga (Japanese-style painting) from the postwar to contemporary period. Her scholarship also explores the transnational narratives and connections of nihonga across Asia. Eve’s current book manuscript is on post-war Japanese painting through the examination of nihonga artist, Tanaka Isson’s landscapes of Amami Ōshima, an island in Southern Japan. She is the 2025–26 Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in East Anglia, England. Previously, Eve taught at the National University of Singapore and the University of the Arts, Singapore, and has worked in museum interpretation. |
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Éva Lovra is an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Debrecen. She is an urban planner and civil engineer, her work is distinguished by its interdisciplinary focus on the protection of built heritage. Her scholarship examines architectural and urban history, with a specialization in urban morphology and the art history of the urban. She is the author of five monographs and has presented her research at numerous international venues, including New York University. Her contributions to the field were recognized with a Fulbright Visiting Professorship at the University of Pittsburgh in 2023. In addition to her academic roles, she is a curator of architectural exhibitions, with a forthcoming on the art and architecture of 1930s Miskolc. She is an active member of leading professional and academic bodies, including the Hungarian National Committee of ICOMOS and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. |
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Martina Munivrana is a curator and art historian based at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (MSU), where she currently serves as head of collections. Her curatorial and research focus centers on contemporary women artists, feminist and postcolonial theory, identity construction, and new media. She is particularly dedicated to increasing the visibility of women artists and developing new interpretations of their practices within institutional and exhibition contexts. She holds an MA in art history and philosophy and completed her PhD in 2023 at the University of Zagreb with a dissertation on the work of artist Breda Beban. At MSU, she has curated numerous research-based projects that challenge established narratives and highlight overlooked or marginalized artistic voices, with a strong emphasis on collaboration and inter-institutional exchange. Munivrana has participated in international conferences and programs, including the Getty Foundation’s Museum Studies Summer Institute (NYU), and has served on national expert councils focused on contemporary and innovative artistic practices. |
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Irmuun Unubaatar (Yiri Muen) is a Mongolian artist and PhD candidate in art studies at the National University of Mongolia, specializing in fourteenth-century portraits of Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) emperors and empresses. Her research integrates the study of historical painting techniques with contemporary artistic practice, reflecting her dual role as scholar and practitioner. She has presented her work at international conferences in the United States, Austria, Italy, and Estonia, including the European Conference of Mongolian Studies (Venice, 2024) and the Second International Mongolian Studies Symposium (Vienna, 2024). As an artist, Irmuun focuses on Mongolian traditional scripts and cultural symbols, reinterpreted through modern visual language. She has held solo exhibitions at the Zanabazar Museum of Fine Arts (2023), the National Art Gallery of Mongolia (2016), and participated in international exhibitions such as the Krakow Centrum Sztuki Solvay Biennale in Poland (2025). |
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Rodolfo Ward de Oliveira is a Brazilian transdisciplinary artist, cultural producer, and researcher with a PhD in visual arts from the University of Brasília (UnB), including a funded research residency at UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance (2022–23). He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), focusing on the Tukano people and their epistemologies. Ward is the founder of HORI and CerrAmazon, hybrid platforms exploring decolonial aesthetics, anthropophagic theory, and cultural innovation. His practice bridges Indigenous art—especially among the Xerente and Tukano peoples—with immersive media, digital humanities, and social theory. From a Latin American perspective, he challenges binary oppositions and connects academic, artistic, and ancestral knowledge to forge a visionary cartography of Brazilian identity through ritual, resistance, and intercultural pedagogy. |
ALUMNI PARTICIPANTS
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Savita Kumari is associate professor and head in the Department of History of Art, Indian Institute of Heritage. With over fifteen years of academic and curatorial experience, she specializes in South and Southeast Asian art. Prior to joining the Institute, she worked with renowned cultural institutions such as the National Gallery of Modern Art and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. She has curated significant exhibitions and coordinated numerous national and international seminars, workshops, and collaborative initiatives. Deeply committed to outreach, Dr. Kumari leads art history enrichment programs for educators and students in rural areas. She has been involved in several prominent research and heritage documentation projects of national and international importance. She is a regular speaker at leading institutions in India and abroad. Her scholarly work includes books, articles, and exhibition catalogs, and she has received multiple prestigious fellowships and international travel grants. |
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Pavlína Morganová is an art historian and curator, based in Prague, Czech Republic. She currently works as a director of the VVP AVU Research Center at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. She specializes on the Central and Eastern European art history, performance art and exhibition histories, lectures on Czech Art after 1945. She has participated in several international conferences and takes active part in the representative bodies of Czech art education and research. She recently conducted research concentrated on the medium of exhibition and she is the co-author of the book Exhibition as a Medium. Czech Art 1957−1999 (2020). She is also the author of the books A Walk Through Prague: Actions, Performances, Happenings 1949−1989 (2017) and Czech Action Art / Happenings, Actions, Events, Land Art, Body Art and Performance Art Behind the Iron Curtain (2015). She is a 2019 CAA-Getty International Program alumna. |
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Tatiana Muñoz-Brenes is an art historian, curator, museologist, and activist. She holds a BS in psychology and a BA in art history from the University of Costa Rica, and an MA in museum studies from New York University, where she was a Fulbright scholar. Her work critically examines the intersections of gender, sexuality, class struggle, race, coloniality, and institutional power within the fields of art and museums. Grounded in feminist and queer theory, her research exposes the systemic oppression of marginalized subjects within canonical art history and museum practices. She has curated exhibitions and conducted research in Latin America and the United States that closely examines the unequal dynamics between center and periphery. Her practice seeks to challenge white, male-dominated epistemologies and to promote more caring, affective, and community-based approaches to cultural production and display. |
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Viviana Usubiaga is a researcher at the Research Center in Art and Heritage (CIAP), Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM) and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina. She is currently director of the master’s program in Latin American art history at the School of Interdisciplinary Advanced Social Studies, UNSAM, where she is also a professor of contemporary art. She is assistant lecturer in modern and contemporary art at the University of Buenos Aires. From 2019 to 2023, she served as director of the National Division of Heritage Management at the Ministry of Culture of Argentina, and she has worked as a curator and editor. She holds a PhD in art theory and history from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Her publications explore how art contributes to shaping systems of value and how culture and museums participate in the social construction of historical memory during the post-dictatorship period in South America. She is a 2019 CAA-Getty International Program alumna. |
This program is made possible with support from Getty through its Connecting Art Histories initiative.
Announcing the 2026 Morey Book Award and Barr Awards Shortlists
posted Nov 13, 2025
Finalists for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Awards have been selected. The winners, alongside recipients of other Awards for Distinction, will be presented on Wednesday, February 18, during Convocation at the CAA 114th Annual Conference in Chicago. Congratulations to all of the finalists!
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award Shortlist
Named in honor of one of the founding members of CAA and first teachers of art history in the United States, the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award was established in 1953 to recognize an especially distinguished English-language book in the history of art.
Time Machines: Telegraphic Images in Nineteenth-Century France by Richard Taws (MIT Press, 2025)
The Empire’s New Cloth: Cross-Cultural Textiles at the Qing Court by Mei Mei Rado (Yale University Press, 2025)
Relics of War: The History of a Photograph by Jennifer Raab (Princeton University Press, 2024)
The Monument of Tomorrow: Creative Conservation and the Spanish War by Miguel Caballero (Penn State University Press, 2025)
The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art & Institutional Critique by Amanda Cachia (Temple University Press, 2024)
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award Shortlist
Named for the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art and a scholar of early-twentieth-century painting, the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award is presented to the author or authors of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published in English by a museum, library, or collection.
Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies, edited by Dalila Scruggs (National Gallery of Art and The Brooklyn Museum/The University of Chicago Press, 2024)
Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World, edited by Alexandra Libby, Brooks Rich, and Stacey Sell The (National Gallery of Art/ Princeton University Press, 2025)
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, edited by Janet Bishop and Cara Manes (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art/Yale University Press, 2025)
Sonia Delaunay: Living Art, edited by Waleria Dorogova and Laura Microulis (Bard Graduate Center/Yale University Press, 2024)
The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, edited by Karen Lemmey, Tobias Wofford, and Grace Yasumura (Smithsonian American Art Museum/Princeton University Press, 2024)
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions Shortlist
Established in 2009, the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions is presented to the author(s) of catalogues produced by an institution with an operating budget of less than $10 million.
Art and Artifact: Murals from the Minneapolis Uprising, edited by Leesa Kelly and Howard Oransky (Katherine E. Nash Gallery in association with Memorialize the Movement, Minneapolis/The University of Minnesota Press, 2024)
Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha, edited by Jean-Louis Cohen and Vanessa Grossman (Casa da Arquitectura–Portuguese Centre for Architecture/Yale University Press, 2024)
Crossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–2020, edited by Peter Sachs Collopy and Claudia Bohn-Spector (Caltech Library/Getty Publications, 2024)
Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art, edited by C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz (Inventory Press/Williams College Museum of Art/Vincent Price Art Museum/Independent Curators International, 2024)
Eddie Chambers Named CAA114 Distinguished Scholar
posted Nov 13, 2025
Photograph by Hakeem Adewumi
The Distinguished Scholar Session at the 114th CAA Annual Conference will recognize the career of Eddie Chambers, including his professional experience as an artist and curator, and celebrate his ongoing legacy of critical engagement, mentorship, and advocacy for Black British and African diaspora artists within the global field of art history.
Chambers is Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor in Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Previously, he held the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a Visiting Professor at Emory University, Atlanta. In addition to his notable academic career, he has been professionally involved in the visual arts for four decades as an artist, art critic, and curator. He earned his PhD at Goldsmiths College University of London.
His broad areas of scholarship are the art and art history of the African diaspora. Chambers has written several books, including Run Through the Jungle: Selected Writings by Eddie Chambers (Institute of International Visual Arts, 1999); Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain (Rodopi Editions, 2012); Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s (I. B. Tauris, 2014); Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain (I. B. Tauris, 2017); World is Africa: Writings on Diaspora Art (Bloomsbury, 2021). His other writing has been published widely in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Panorama, and elsewhere.
Chambers has worked with many artists over the course of several decades, including Eugene Palmer, Cybil Charlier, Frank Bowling, Denzil Forrester, Barbara Walker, and Alberta Whittle.
Following two terms as a field editor for caa.reviews, he was Editor-in-Chief of CAA’s Art Journal until July 2024. Chambers is the editor of the just-published Routledge Companion to African Diaspora Art History.
Chambers’s career and his impact on the field will be celebrated with presentations and a dialogue with scholars and colleagues:
Session Panelists:
Cherise Smith, University of Texas at Austin
John Tyson, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Katherine Gregory, Wake Forest University
Richard Hylton, Tyler School, Temple University and Reviews Editor, Art Journal
Register now for the CAA 114th Annual Conference, February 18–21, 2026 in Chicago!
The CAA114 Distinguished Scholar Session will be held on Thursday, February 19, 4:30–6:30 p.m. CT at the Hilton Chicago. This event will also be livestreamed via YouTube.
Call for Submissions: Services to Artists Committee Exhibition During CAA114
posted Oct 30, 2025
Resistance and change often begin in art.
—Ursula Le Guin
The CAA Services to Artists Committee (SAC) is now accepting submissions for Parallel Worlds, an exhibition during the CAA 114th Annual Conference in Chicago.
Since the nineteenth century, science fiction has provided conceptual spaces for questioning and criticizing our world and imagining alternative futures. As notable futurist Stuart Candy states in The Futures of Everyday Life, what is “central to the present future studies is not an effort to ‘predict’ the future . . . but the effort to sketch ‘alternative futures.’” In other words, creativity and imagination are needed to better prepare for the unknown.
With this exhibition, SAC aims to draw attention to parallel worlds, temporal shifts, and alternative futures. Addressing a legacy of different communities and building on critical movements such as Afrofuturism, Indigenous Futurism, Queer Futurisms, Post-Humanist Futurism, Crip Futurism, Eco-Solar Punk Futurism, Speculative Futurism, and AI Futurism, we hope to collectively imagine beyond our current reality.
Art can serve as a mode of critique, resistance, and speculation to address and disrupt our deeply rooted colonial history. SAC invites submissions that challenge dominant narratives and provide a critical repositioning of identity, environment, technology, and time. SAC is especially interested in work that responds to the current social and cultural climates while offering new, creative, revolutionary visions for all futures.
APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS
Please combine into one pdf:
- Artist statement (up to 200 words)
- Biography (up to 150 words)
- CV
- Website (if applicable)
- Corresponding image list (image number, title, medium, dimensions, date)
- Handling, framing, and hanging descriptions
- Technology/equipment requirements
- Accessibility requirements
Portfolio of 10–15 images:
- Each image must be sized to 1 MB
- Title format: 01_Last name_Title_Medium_Dimensions_Date
Incomplete applications will not be accepted.
Please Note:
- Entry is free, but all accepted artists must join CAA as an individual member to show their work.
- If selected, artists are responsible for arranging timely delivery (Wednesday, February 18) and pickup of artwork (Saturday, February 21) to the gallery in Chicago at their own expense during conference week.
- All work must be ready to be presented or hung equipped with D-rings or picture wire. Framing of the work and presentation details needs to be agreed upon in consultation with the curator.
- Any technology related to the work may need to be provided by the artist.
- Each artist is required to gallery sit for at least one shift during the exhibition and is strongly encouraged to attend the Thursday night reception.
Submit now via email to SAC!
Deadline: December 5
Elyse Longair, Cryopreservation Birth Chamber, 2020; Elyse Longair, Man in Capsule, 2022 (images provided by the artist)
CAA and the National Coalition Against Censorship Release Joint Letter to the President of Pepperdine University
posted Oct 27, 2025
CAA and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) have released a joint letter to Pepperdine University’s president calling for the reinstallation of two censored art installations, removed from the Hold My Hand in Yours exhibition for “overly political content.” The University argued that the works—until recently on view at the university’s Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art—placed their nonprofit status at risk. The exhibition has since been shut down by the university, and Andrea Gyorody, the museum’s director, has resigned.
CAA and NCAC stand firm in the belief that “. . . virtually every artwork on a topical subject can be interpreted as expressing a political position. Crucially, the exhibition of an object in a University museum does not mean that the University endorses the ideas it expresses any more than teaching a text in a classroom means that this text expresses the position of the University.”
CAA and NCAC call for reopening of the exhibition, a statement affirming the value of freedom of expression, and the development of guidelines for the exhibition of art on campus. Read the full joint letter here on NCAC’s website.
CAA Statement On the Dismantling of Free Speech and Freedom of Expression
posted Oct 24, 2025
The College Art Association fervently opposes the systemic dismantling of free speech, censorship, and retaliation for various forms of expression in US-based cultural institutions, universities, and the press.
The most recent wave of censorship, suppression, and retaliation threatens every element of our mission and touches every single one of our constituencies—professors, curators, students, art makers, and other visual arts professionals.
CAA believes censorship fundamentally undermines scholarship and artistic expression, and that expression, along with public discourse and dissent, is powerful and necessary in a free society. Losing those freedoms will irreparably alter defining elements of our culture.
CAA unambiguously supports artistic and scholarly expression and believes in the principle that they must remain free from censorship and suppression. The arts and the academy are vital places of new and transformational ideas and a collective commitment to these principles has never been more urgent.
Faheem Majeed to give CAA114 Convocation Keynote Address
posted Oct 23, 2025
Photograph: Michael Sullivan
We are delighted to announce Faheem Majeed as the 2026 Convocation keynote speaker at the organization’s 114th Annual Conference in Chicago.
Majeed is an artist, curator, educator, and nonprofit administrator whose work focuses on institutional critique and centers collaboration as a tool to engage communities in meaningful dialogue. He received his BFA from Howard University and an MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago, where he is currently an assistant professor of art. He is the recipient of the Field and MacArthur Foundations’ Leaders for a New Chicago award, the Joyce Award, and the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors grant, and has been recognized as a Harpo Foundation awardee. Majeed served as the executive director of the South Side Community Art Center from 2005 to 2011 and is the founder and co-director of the Floating Museum, an arts collective and nonprofit that creates new models to explore relationships between art, community, architecture, and public institutions. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Centre Pompidou, the Highline, and the Hyde Park Art Center. Majeed’s sculpture highlights marginalized objects, histories, people, and places them into powerful narratives that challenge and recontextualize their value while fostering dialogue and broader social change.
CAA114 Convocation will be held on Wednesday, February 18, 6:00–7:30 p.m. CT. at the Hilton Chicago. The event will also be livestreamed via YouTube.
Register now for the CAA 114th Annual Conference, February 18–21, 2026!
ACLS Releases Statement Regarding White House “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”
posted Oct 07, 2025
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) released a statement regarding the October 1 White House proposal to nine universities which delineated a list of demands in exchange for receiving preferential access to research funding.
CAA stands with ACLS in the call for the immediate rejection of the “Compact for American Excellence in Higher Education” by all institutions of higher education in order to preserve academic independence.
“Universities and colleges have one mission: to advance knowledge. Faculty carry out the mission by conducting research and teaching students. The knowledge they produce and circulate is independently assessed by professional peers. Interfering with that process by forcing knowledge to pass through a political filter is a tactic adopted by the Soviet Union and other authoritarian states. The White House is dressing up its compact as a reasonable corrective to what it views as problems in campus culture. Let no one be deceived. This proposal imposes government censorship on academia. It is anti-American, and it weakens our democracy by devaluing academic expertise.”
Read the full statement here.