CAA News

The September CAA News has just been published. With the newsletter back in print, individual and institutional members will receive a copy in the mail next month; the newsletter is also available immediately as a PDF download.

The September issue celebrates the tenth anniversary of caa.reviews, the online journal that launched in fall 1998. Also, in preparation for the 2009 Annual Conference, the issue contains an article on the hottest contemporary art galleries downtown in Los Angeles, including those in Chinatown.

A number of important deadlines for participation in CAA activities also appear: calls for nominations for editor-in-chief of Art Journal and reviews editor of The Art Bulletin (September 15); for conference travel grants (September 26); for applications for graduate-student fellowships (October 1); and more.

The deadline for submissions to the November issue is September 10; please send them to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor. If you wish to receive CAA News in electronic format only, please contact CAA Member Services.

The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has selected five recipients for its 2009 Lifetime Achievement Awards:

• Maren Hassinger, director of the Rinehart School of Graduate Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art
• Ester Hernandez, a San Francisco–based artist who was a pioneer in the Chicana/Chicano civil rights art movement
• Joyce Kozloff, a political and feminist artist who was a founding member of the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s
• Margo Machida, a renowned authority on contemporary Asian American art and visual culture and associate professor at the University of Connecticut
• Ruth Weisberg, an artist and dean of fine arts at the University of Southern California

The awards ceremony will be held at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles on Saturday, February 28, 2009, in conjunction with the CAA Annual Conference. This ceremony, which is free and open to the public, will be the thirtieth anniversary of the awards. As in past years, the awards ceremony will include an accompanying catalogue, outlining the awardees’ accomplishments in greater detail. Please check the WCA website for more details about the ceremony (free), the awards dinner (tickets are $90 before December 1, 2008, and $105 after), and other planned events.

Art in America’s 2008 Annual Guide to Galleries, Museums, and Artists hit newsstands earlier this month, with museum previews for the 2008–9 season as well as a look back at notable events and people of the past year. The “People in Review” section features Yoko Ono, Robert L. Herbert, Chris Kraus, and Sylvia Sleigh as honored recipients of CAA Awards for Distinction. The awards were presented in February 2008 at the CAA Annual Conference in Dallas–Fort Worth.

Download the Art in America feature; also, see the full list of 2008 award recipients.

A contributor of art criticism to the Sunday Times of London and chief art critic of the New York Times from 1982 to 1990, John Russell has died at the age of 89. Collections of his writing—twelve volumes in all—were published as The Meanings of Modern Art.

Both of Russell’s papers, the New York Times and the Times, have contributed obituaries.

Applications for the 2008 Professional Development Fellowship Program are now available.

CAA awards fellowships in the amount of $15,000 to qualified graduate students in visual art and art history; grants may be used to help recipients with various aspects of their work, whether for their job-search expenses or purchasing materials for their studio. In addition, one or more fellowships are awarded to a PhD student specializing in American art; this award is made possible with support from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. As in the past, honorable mentions may also be recognized.

The main purpose of the fellowship program is to support outstanding graduate students from diverse backgrounds who may have been underrepresented in their fields. By offering financial assistance to promising MFA and PhD students, CAA can assist the rising generation during this important transitional period in their lives.

This year, application forms and requirements for both visual-art and art-history fellowships have changed. Submission of material by all applicants must now be sent on CD or DVD; slides, videocassettes, and some paperwork in hard copy are not accepted. Please go to the website for specific application requirements; published below are general guidelines.

Art-History Fellowships
Applicants to the art-history fellowships must include the following on a CD: application form; essay; CV; dissertation prospectus; sample dissertation chapter; and timetable for dissertation completion. Letters of recommendation; a copy of your 2007 IRS income-tax form or 2008 Free Application for Student Federal Aid (FASFA); and graduate transcript must be submitted in hard copy and mailed to CAA with the CD. Deadline: October 1, 2008; fellows are chosen by December 31, 2008.

Visual-Art Fellowships
Visual-art fellowship applicants must include the following on CD or DVD: application form; essay; résumé or CV; description of your MFA exhibition and its timetable; all visual documentation (up to six images of your work, properly labeled and formatted for both PC and Macintosh); and image script (caption list and short descriptions of the work). Letters of recommendation; a copy of your 2007 IRS income-tax form or 2008 Free Application for Student Federal Aid (FASFA); and graduate transcript must be submitted in hard copy and mailed to CAA with the CD or DVD. Deadline: October 1, 2008; fellows are chosen by December 31, 2008.

CAA invites nominations and self-nominations for two field-editor positions for exhibition reviews in caa.reviews for a four-year term, through June 30, 2012. Each field editor covers a geographic region of the United States; needed now are editors covering art exhibitions in the Northwest and Southeast United States.

caa.reviews is an online journal devoted to the peer review of new books, museum exhibitions, and projects relevant to the fields of art history, visual studies, and the arts. Candidates may be artists, art historians, art critics, art educators, curators, or other art professionals; institutional affiliation is not required. Field editors should live in the region covered.

Each field editor commissions reviews of important museum and gallery exhibitions for caa.reviews. He or she selects shows to be reviewed, commissions reviewers, determines the appropriate character of the reviews, and works with reviewers to develop manuscripts for publication. These field editors work with the caa.reviews Editorial Board as well as the caa.reviews editor-in-chief and CAA’s staff editor. Each field editor is expected to keep abreast of current and upcoming exhibitions (and other related projects) in his or her geographic region.

The Council of Field Editors meets annually at the CAA Annual Conference. Field editors must pay travel and lodging expenses to attend the conference.

Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Send a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, CV, and contact information to: Chair, caa.reviews Editorial Board, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Deadline extended: September 15, 2008.

Manny Farber, a film critic and an artist, died on August 18, 2008, at the age of 91. Although he was a painter whose retrospectives were held at the Museums of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and San Diego, Farber is best known for his film criticism that appeared since the early 1960s in such publications as the Nation, the New Republic, Film Comment, Film Culture, and Artforum, among many others.

The New York Times, the Village Voice, and the Museum of the Moving Image have paid tribute to Farber.

Michael Baxandall, a highly influential art historian, died on August 12, 2008, at the age of 74. He is best known for transforming the methodologies of the discipline through his books, Giotto and the Orators (1971) and Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (1972). Baxandall was a long-time professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Independent and the Telegraph have published obituaries on Baxandall and his career. UPDATE: The New York Times has also published a text on the art historian.

As the current term of the Art Bulletin reviews editor is coming to its conclusion, CAA invites applicants for the next term, July 1, 2009–June 30, 2012 (with service as incoming reviews editor designate from February to June 2009). The Art Bulletin, published quarterly by CAA, is the leading publication of art history in English.

Candidates should be art scholars with stature in the field and experience in editing book and/or exhibition reviews; institutional affiliation is not required. Candidates should be published authors of at least one book.

The reviews editor is responsible for commissioning all book and exhibition reviews in The Art Bulletin. He or she selects books and exhibitions for review, commissions reviewers, and determines the appropriate length and character of reviews. The reviews editor also works with authors and CAA’s director of publications in the development and preparation of review manuscripts for publication. He or she is expected to keep abreast of newly published and important books and recent exhibitions in the fields of art history, criticism, theory, visual studies, and museum publishing. This is a three-year term, which includes membership on the Art Bulletin Editorial Board.

The reviews editor attends the three annual meetings of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board—held in the spring and fall in New York and in February at the CAA Annual Conference—and submits an annual report to CAA’s Publications Committee. CAA reimburses the reviews editor for travel and lodging expenses for the spring and fall New York meetings in accordance with its travel policy, but he or she pays these expenses to attend the conference.

Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, CV, and at least one letter of recommendation to: Director of Publications, Art Bulletin Reviews Editor Search, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Deadline: September 15, 2008; finalists will be interviewed on October 24, 2008, in New York.

CAA invites curators to submit proposals for exhibitions whose openings coincide with upcoming Annual Conferences in Chicago and New York. The exhibition must be held in the conference city and on view during the conference dates:

• Chicago, February 10–13, 2010. Deadline extended: October 31, 2008
• New York, February 2010. Deadline: September 1, 2009

There are no limitations on the theme or media of work to be included in the exhibition, except that it must be a group show of contemporary art comprising about fifteen artists. CAA’s Exhibitions Committee reviews and evaluates proposals based on merit. CAA provides support for the exhibition with a grant of up to $10,000. An additional grant of $5,000 is available for an exhibition catalogue to be printed in sufficient numbers for distribution to all Annual Conference attendees. Preference is given to those proposals that include both an open call and some CAA members among the exhibiting artists.

Proposals must be submitted by e-mail and should include the following information:

• Name(s) of curator(s) or organizer(s), affiliation(s), and CV(s)
• A brief statement of 250 words or less describing the exhibition’s theme and explaining any special or timely significance it may have
• Identification of the designated venue, including a brief description of the exhibition space, its staffing and security features, and the approval for this exhibition by the venue’s appropriate officer or authority; a space of no less than three thousand square feet is highly recommended
• A detailed exhibition budget for expenses and income, showing other anticipated sources of funding or in-kind support

Please send your proposal to Emmanuel Lemakis, CAA director of programs.