CAA News Today

The American Academy in Rome has upgraded their website to include images of the community at a higher resolution and dedicated sections for News, Events, Publications, and Society of Fellows. The site is compatible with mobile devices and will soon offer the content in Italian.

South view of the Michigan Avenue façade of the Art Institute of Chicago (photograph provided by the Art Institute of Chicago)

The Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has received a $40,000 Access to Artistic Excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts on behalf of School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The reward will go toward the Teacher Institute of Contemporary Art, a professional-development program that will facilitate workshops and lectures on new media and visual arts for 120 high school teachers across the United States.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Lucie Berard (Child in White), 1883, oil on canvas, 24¼ x 19¾ in. Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1933.1172 (artwork in the public domain)

The Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has also been awarded $400,000 from the Getty Foundation to help the Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative produce an online publication of forty-nine paintings and twenty-three drawings by Claude Monet and Pierre-August Renoir. The catalogue will be fully interactive and include features such as contemporary research, pigment analysis, access to underdrawings or infrared filters, a glossary of technical terms, and “sticky notes” for a user’s own observations.

The Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland has been granted an $80,000 award from the National Endowment for the Arts through the Access to Artistic Excellence program to aid the reinstallation of the West Wing for Contemporary Art, a collection that extends from Abstract Expressionism to the present. New lighting and technology systems will allow the museum to display light-sensitive objects and new media.

Julian Alden Weir, Portrait of John F. Weir, 1890, drypoint, 7 x 6 in. Brigham Young University Museum of Art (artwork in the public domain)

Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, has received a $60,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to support the touring exhibition, The Weir Family, 1820–1920: Expanding the Traditions of American Art, which originated at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art.The funds will facilitate an accompanying catalogue and educational programs to investigate the contributions of John Weir and his two sons, Julian Alden Weir and John Ferguson Weir.

Frederic S. Remington, A Dash for the Timber, 1889, oil on canvas, 48¼ by 84⅛ in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas. 1961.381 (artwork in the public domain)

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, has received a $75,000 Picturing America School Collaboration Project Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the second year in a row. The grant will predominantly fund the 2011 Picturing America Teaching Institute, in which Texan educators in public, private, and home-schooling environments to learn about American art and its relevance to the classroom. The program also provides classroom resources, online curricula, student fieldt rips, and interactive video conferences.

The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, has been awarded a $45,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Arts through the Access to Artistic Excellence program. The museum will publish a catalogue on its permanent collection of glass, logging each item and providing previously unpublished scholarly analyses.

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has received two 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the category of fine arts: Picasso Looks at Degas by Elizabeth Cowling and Richard Kendell won a silver medal, and Eye to Eye: European Portraits 1450–1850 by Richard Rand and Kathleen M. Morris earned a bronze. The awards recognize original content, design, and production among independent, self-published, and university-press publications, as well as their impact on the community.

Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has received $60,000 from the Access to Artistic Excellence program hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts. The fund will aid the reinstallation of the European and American works in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art’s collection, with an emphasis on flexibility and variety and a reinvigorated engagement with the public.

Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849, oil on canvas, 44 x 36 in. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (artwork in the public domain)

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, scheduled to open in Bentonville, Arkansas, in November 2011, has received an $800 million contribution on behalf of the Walton Family Foundation. The funds are allocated for operating needs, general endowment, and future capital needs.

The Dallas Museum of Art in Texas has been awarded an $85,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to create the Archival Exhibition Resources Online interface, which will enable the public to access digital content created for and during an exhibition, including images, video, audio, and other documents.

The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles has acquired Harald Szeemann’s extensive archive including correspondence with artists, proposals and brainstorms for exhibitions, documentary photographs of exhibitions, and other rare ephemera from his vibrant, international career as a curator. The Getty also attained Szeemann’s library, containing 28,000 volumes of monographs, artists’ books, and limited-edition publications.

The International Center of Photography in New York has been granted $100,000 through the Access the Artistic Excellence program of the National Endowment for the Arts to organize Roman Vishniac’s collection of more than 20,000 items from the early twentieth century. The collection encompasses many iconic photographs of Jewish life in Europe between the World Wars.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, has received approximately $33,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to conduct a survey of 435 sculptural objects, ranging from antiques to contemporary work, and determine long-term plans for care and treatment. This conservation effort will support research and educational advancement; it will also increase access to the museum’s sculpture by facilitating public display and loans to institutions.

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, has been awarded $75,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to support an artist-in-residence program. In collaboration with the Plymouth School District, the Kohler will support eight visual artists during the 2011–12 school year for two weeks at a time.

Students from Maryland Institute College of Art teach art to Baltimore-area children in a recent festival in the Community Arts Partnerships program (photograph provided by Maryland Institute College of Art)

Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore has been honored by the Corporation for National and Community Service for programs that allow their students and staff members to participate in volunteer efforts and generous civic engagement. The school has thus been admitted to the 2010 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.

The New York State Historical Association has received $16,000 from the Access to Artistic Excellence program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to support the conservation of seventy-three folk, Native American, and academic works of art housed in the Fenimore Art Museum. The award will animate the institution’s conservation priorities and treatment recommendations and facilitate a storage plan.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania has received a $250,000 exhibition grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to fund a midcareer retrospective of Zoe Strauss, a photographer and native Philadelphian who highlights blue-collar experiences and marginalized people and places. The show—comprising more than 125 prints placed between the photography galleries and the lobby—will also host an interactive kiosk designed by publishing and curatorial collective Megawords, a slide show of Strauss’s work projected on the museum’s façade, and select photographs appearing on billboards throughout the city.

Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey,has been awarded $65,000 through the Access to Artistic Excellence program on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts to support public programs related to Momentum: Women/Art/Technology. This exhibition, organized by Rutgers’ Institute for Women and Art with the Mason Gross School of the Arts, will be accompanied by lectures and symposia, educational workshops, interactive web activities, and a film and video festival highlighting the work of established and contemporary female artists who manipulate technology.

The San Diego Museum of Art in California has received a $60,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to reinstall their permanent collection of East Asian art. Approximately four hundred works from Japan, Korea, and China from 1000 BCE to the present will be on display.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has accepted a $5 million donation from Leroy Neiman, an artist and alumni, to build the Leroy Neiman Center, a two-story student hub opening in spring 2012. The architecture firm Valerio Dewalt Train Associates will fabricate the interior design of the space, which will house a café, lounge, art gallery, and more.

The University of Maryland in College Park has been honored with a $60,000 grant from the Access to Artistic Excellence program, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to support the conservation of the permanent collection at the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora. The award will facilitate the documentation of roughly 1,000 works, the addition of a full-time registrar, and further development of the collection’s management policies and procedures.

The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has received a $25,000 grant via the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to publish a catalogue documenting the Ackland Museum of Art’s collection of Mediterranean art. The publication will cite 225 objects in the collection hailing from Egyptian, Grecian, Etruscan, and Roman origins between the third and first millennia.

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has announced an eight-year collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to begin in 2015 at the Whitney’s landmark building, designed by Marcel Breuer. The Metropolitan will generate exhibitions and educational programming at the Breuer building with a global emphasis while supporting dialogue between the two distinct collections, publications, and educational initiatives. The Whitney will maintain a small space in the building for storage and permanent site-specific works.

The Yale Center for British Arts in New Haven, Connecticut, has launched a new online catalogue of their extensive collection and is offering free high-resolution images of all objects in the public domain. An exhibition, called Connections, will be on display through September 11, 2011, to emphasize the value of the vivacious holdings.

The Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, has been awarded $125,000 by the Access to Artistic Excellence grant program, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, to support the renovation of its ancient Mediterranean collection. The grant will initiate the construction of a new gallery to house the treasures from the university’s excavations in Dura-Europos in the 1930s and refurbish the existing exhibition space with another 13,000 objects from Egypt, Etruria, Greece, the Near East, and Rome.