CAA News

Three new series of features are introduced in the March 2012 issue of The Art Bulletin. They will appear in the next two volume years of the journal, along with the long-form essays and reviews that have made it the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship. In her introductory editor’s note, Karen Lang writes that she created the new features “to reflect the vibrancy of art history today and to stimulate dialogue across fields and with neighboring disciplines.”

In the first new series, “Regarding Art and Art History,” a leading scholar offers a short personal reflection on what it means to write art history; the inaugural writer is Anne M. Wagner, whose essay takes the form of a letter. “Notes from the Field” will present short texts on a given topic by ten authors from a variety of disciplines; the first topic is anthropomorphism, with texts by the artist Elizabeth King, the philosopher J. M. Bernstein, and eight other scholars, including Finbarr Barry Flood, Jane Garnett, and James Meyer. Each issue will feature an interview as well; the first is a dialogue between the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and the art historian Philip Ursprung. Julia Gelshorn launches the feature with a critical essay on the techniques, strategies, and study of the artist interview.

The March issue also features three essays on diverse topics. In “Henry Fuseli: Greek Tragedy and Cultural Pluralism,” Andrei Pop examines the art of the Anglo-Swiss painter Henry Fuseli in relation to the eighteenth-century revival of Greek tragedy and the formation of the modern liberal version of cultural pluralism. Yukio Lippit’s article, “Of Modes and Manners in Japanese Ink Painting: Sesshū’s Splashed Ink Landscape of 1495,” explores a single work by the Zen monk painter Sesshū Tōyō in the context of the ink painting tradition and artistic transmission in medieval Japan. In her essay, “Agent Provocateur? The African Origin and American Life of a Statue from Côte d’Ivoire,” Monica Blackmun Visonà studies the “biography” of a statue, sculpted near the Lagoon region of Ivory Coast and later donated to Fisk University by Georgia O’Keeffe, as a microcosm of American art history in the twentieth century.

In the Reviews section, Sheila Dillon evaluates Richard Neer’s book, The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture, and Julian Gardner considers The Likeness of the King: A Prehistory of Portraiture in Late Medieval France by Stephen Perkinson. Next, Gerhard Wolf looks at the temporality of Renaissance art as described in Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood’s Anachronistic Renaissance. Finally, Marc Fumaroli reviews Walter S. Melion’s book, The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print (1550–1625).

Please see the full table of contents for March to learn more. CAA sends The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and to those individuals who choose to receive the journal as a benefit of their membership.

The next issue of The Art Bulletin, to be published in June 2012, will feature a “Notes from the Field” section on appropriation and an interview with the art historian Linda Nochlin. The long-form essays will examine artifacts from a tenth-century cave in northwestern China, portraiture and narrative in the 1605 Shahnama (Book of Kings), theater architecture in the 1914 Werkbund exhibition, and Pablo Picasso’s 1912 paper construction Guitar. The Reviews section will include analyses of books on Caravaggio, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Spanish portraiture, the art of early modern China, and the temporality of architecture.

CAA hosted its 100th Annual Conference and Centennial Celebration, February 22–25, 2012, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This year’s program included: four days of presentations and panel discussions on art history and visual culture; Career Services for professionals at all stages of their careers; a Book and Trade Fair; and a host of special events throughout southern California.

Attendance

Five thousand art professionals from throughout the United States and abroad—including artists, art historians, students, educators, curators, critics, collectors, and museum staff—attended the conference.

Sessions

Conference sessions featured presentations by artists, scholars, graduate students, and curators, who addressed a range of topics in art history and the visual arts. In total, the conference offered over 200 sessions, developed by CAA members, affiliated societies, and committees.

Career Services

Career Services included four days of mentoring and portfolio-review sessions, career-development workshops, and job interviews with colleges, universities, and other art institutions. Approximately 200 interviewees and 46 mentors participated in Career Services.

Book and Trade Fair

This year’s Book and Trade Fair presented over 120 exhibitors, including participants from the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Belgium, Mexico, China, Germany, Poland, and Cuba, displaying new publications, artists’ materials, digital resources, and innovative products of interest to artists and scholars. The Book and Trade Fair also featured book signings, lectures, and demonstrations, as well as three exhibitor-sponsored program sessions on art materials and publishing.

ARTspace and ARTexchange

ARTspace, a “conference within the conference” tailored to the needs and interests of practicing artists, presented this year’s Annual Artists’ Interviews with Mary Kelly and Martin Kersels. Over 300 people attended this extraordinary event.

The ARTspace program also featured four days of panel discussions devoted to visual-arts practice, opportunities for professional development, screenings of video work curated and produced by graduate students from six Los Angeles colleges, and a symposium exploring art in the public realm. Programmed by CAA’s Services to Artists Committee, ARTspace was made possible in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

ARTexchange, an open-portfolio event in which CAA artist members displayed drawings, prints, photographs, small paintings, and works on laptop computers, took place on Friday, February 24. Nearly 50 artists participated in ARTexchange this year.

Convocation and Centennial Awards

More than 400 people attended CAA’s Convocation and presentation of the 2012 Centennial Awards. Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, delivered the keynote address.

The recipients of CAA’s Centennial Awards are:

• Deborah Marrow, Leadership and Service to the Field. Presented by James Cuno, President and CEO, J. Paul Getty Trust
• Edythe and Eli Broad, Patronage and Philanthropic Support of the Arts. Presented by Steven D. Lavine, President, California Institute of the Arts
• California Lawyers for the Arts, Advocacy for the Arts. Awarded to Maria Seferian, Copresident of California Lawyers for the Arts and presented by Joseph Lewis III, Dean, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine

Awards for Distinction

More than 300 people attended CAA’s ceremony for the 2012 Awards for Distinction. The recipients of this year’s awards are:

• David Hammons, Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement
• Adrian Piper, Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
• Lucy R. Lippard, Distinguished Feminist Award
• Allan Sekula, Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art
• David Antin, Frank Jewett Mather Award
• Alexander Nagel, Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
• Maryan W. Ainsworth, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
• Roy Flukinger, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions
• Jacki Apple, Distinguished Teaching of Art Award
• Gabriel P. Weisberg, Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award
• Francesca G. Bewer, CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
• Rebecca Molholt, Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
• Triple Canopy and Colby Chamberlain, Art Journal Award

Centennial Book

Edited by Susan Ball, executive director emerita, The Eye, the Hand, the Mind: 100 Years of the College Art Association surveys the impressive history of the organization from 1911 to the present. The 330-page hardcover book was published jointly by CAA and Rutgers University Press.

Special Events

Following the Centennial Convocation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted a Centennial Reception on Wednesday evening, February 22. Hundreds of attendees gathered to celebrate CAA’s 100th anniversary and enjoyed exclusive access to the museum’s galleries.

Save the Date

CAA’s 101st Annual Conference will be held in New York, February 13–16, 2013.

About CAA

The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other events. CAA focuses on a wide range of issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching.

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, designers, architects, photographers, dealers, filmmakers, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. This month was marked by the loss of three major artists: Mike Kelley, Dorothea Tanning, and Antoni Tàpies.

• Leopold (Lee) Adler II, former president of the Historic Savannah Foundation, died on January 29, 2012. He was 88 years old. Born into a wealthy Savannah family, Adler worked all his life to preserve the city’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century homes, gaining a reputation as a committed preservationist
• Theo Angelopoulos, a celebrated Greek filmmaker whose work placed him in a critical pantheon of auteur directors, among them Michaelangelo Antonioni, died on January 24, 2012. He was 76. Angelopoulos’s best-known films include Eternity and a Day (1998), which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. At the time of his death, Angelopoulos was working on The Other Sea, the last film in a trilogy about Greek history
• Carolyn Autry, an artist, printmaker, and educator who taught at the University of Toledo in Ohio for thirty-six years, died on December 12, 2011, at the age of 71. Autry exhibited her work nationally and internationally and was an avid world traveler in her final years
• Lillian Bassman, a fashion and fine-art photographer, died on February 13, 2012, age 94. Bassman first came to prominence in the 1940s as an art director for Junior Bazaar, a youth-orientated version of Harper’s Bazaar. She also showed her pictures in galleries around the world, influencing several generations of fashion photographers
• Emmanuel Cooper, a ceramicist, died on January 21, 2012, at the age of 73. Cooper was primarily known as potter but also established himself as an art critic, educator, and gay-rights activist. His work is in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Mary Louise Coulouris, a vibrant painter, printmaker, and muralist, died on December 20, 2011, at the age of 72.  Born in New York to Greek parents, Coulouris moved to London to attend school, eventually settling in Scotland. Well known for her public artworks in railway stations and hospitals across the United Kingdom, she also showed in galleries in Paris and London and is included in the collections of the New York Public Library, the Bibliothèque National in Paris, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England
• Peter de Francia, a celebrated artist, intellectual, and professor of painting at the Royal College of Art in London, passed away on January 19, 2012, at the age of 90. De Francia, born in France to an English mother and an Italian father, was multilingual from an early age. He served in World War II and was a lifelong socialist and an active member of the British art scene since the 1950s
• Malcolm Fowler, a fine artist and illustrator who brought artful creativity and humor into the world of advertising, died on January 18, 2012, at age 68. Fowler founded the pioneering illustration and model-making Shirt Sleeve Studio in London with his wife, Nancy Fouts, in the late 1960s. The couple crafted seminal ad campaigns for Tate Gallery, and their work has been collected by the Victoria and Albert Museum
• John Gage, a beloved, freethinking art historian known for his scholarship on J. M. W. Turner, died on February 13, 2012, age 73. Gage taught art history at the University of Cambridge from 1970 to 1996 and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1995
• Robert E. Hecht Jr., a controversial American dealer in ancient antiquities died, on February 8, 2012, at the age of 92. Just three weeks prior to his death, Hecht was on trial in Rome for charges of antiquity tomb looting and black-market dealing. A lifelong passion for collecting and selling ancient art began when he was a student at the American Academy in Rome
• John House, an art historian known for his scholarship on Impressionism, specifically Claude Monet, passed away on February 7, 2012. He was 66. House began teaching at the University of East Anglia and University College of London before going to the Courtauld Institute of Art. He often took a radical approach to his subject, challenging previous scholarship with his books and with the popular exhibitions he organized
• Mike Kelley, a groundbreaking artist who put Los Angeles on the map as a contemporary art mecca, committed suicide at the age of 57 on February 1, 2012. Kelley worked in video, installation, painting, and performance, often combining genres to spectacular and grotesque effect. A traveling retrospective of Kelly’s work, originating at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, will come to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2014
• Ricardo Legorreta, the Mexican-born architect known for his design of vibrant, modernist buildings throughout the southwestern United States and internationally, died on December 30, 2011. He was 80
• Steven Leiber, a San Franciscan art collector and rare-book dealer, died on January 28, 2012. He was 54 years old. Leiber operated a website devoted to his collection and knowledge of art ephemera and helped appraise several important archives, including those of Avalanche magazine, Allan Kaprow, and Claus Oldenberg
• John Madin, an architect and planner who transformed the look of postwar England, passed away on January 8, 2012. He was 87. Madin is known for his monolithic designs for commercial buildings in cities throughout the North of England, the West Midlands, and Leeds
• Isi Metzstein, an esteemed Scotish architect and teacher, died on January 10, 2012, at age 83. Metzstein founded the architectural practice Gillespie Kidd and Coia, which designed churches in Scotland, including the Le Corbusier–influenced St. Peter’s Seminary (now falling into ruin), and created buildings for Robinson College and Cambridge University
• Amy Page, a writer and former editor-in-chief of Art + Auction magazine passed away on January 19, 2012, at age 72. A native New Yorker, Page was as comfortable in the rough and tumble world of art journalism as she was with socializing with collectors, gallery directors, and traveling the world to attend art fairs
• Gianfranco Pardi, an Italian artist who created minimalist paintings, died on February 2, 2012, at age 78. Pardi lived and worked in Milan, where he showed at the Gio Marconi Gallery. In 1986 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and his 1970s series Architettura combines hard-edge abstraction, drawing, cable wires and aluminum
• Vita Petersen, an artist, teacher, and legendary fixture at the New York Studio School, passed away on October 22, 2011, age 96. Born in Berlin to an aristocratic, art-loving family, Petersen moved to New York in 1938 and became involved in the heady art scene of the 1940s and 1950s. She showed her colorful abstractions at the Betty Parsons Gallery in the 1960s and was known to paint every day of her life
• Jessie Poesch, an art professor at Tulane University’s Newcomb College in New Orleans, died on April 23, 2011, at the age of 88. Poesch was a specialist in decorative arts, pottery, and Louisiana architecture. She taught at Newcomb College from 1963 to 1992 and wrote books and articles that established her as an expert in her field
• Julie Carter Preston, a Liverpool-born ceramicist whose clients included members of the British Royal Family, died on January 6, 2012. She was 85 years old. Preston is best known for her use of sgraffitto, an ancient scratching technique that creates a rich-looking surface texture. She taught for many years at the Liverpool College of Art, and her work is represented by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool
• Peter Saunders, a British painter whose favorite subject was the city of London and its people, passed away on November 19, 2011, age 70. Saunders attended Camberwell School of Art, where he studied under Euan Uglow. He later taught at schools throughout London and was a member of the Soho crowd of artists who gathered at the Colony Room in the 1960s and 1970s
• Ian Simpson, an artist and art instructor who was a presenter on the BBC program Eyeline (1968–69), died on December 15, 2011, at the age of 78. Simpson taught at Hornsey College of Art in London and at St Martins School of Art from 1972 to 1988. He was a great believer in demystifying the world of art-making, and that technical skills could be taught to anyone with the dedication to learn them
• Norma Merrick Sklarek, the first African American woman to become a licensed architect, died on February 6, 2012, aged 85. Born in Harlem, Sklarek was one of only two women to graduate from Columbia University with a degree in architecture. She moved to Los Angeles to join Gruen Associates in 1960, where she worked as the project director for Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International Airport and later was a founding partner of Siegel-Sklarek-Diamon, an all-woman architectural firm
• Kazimierz Smolen, the former director and cofounder of the State Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau and a survivor of the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Mauthausen, died on January 27, 2012, at the age of 91. In addition to founding the State Museum at Auschwitz, he appeared as a witness in many war criminal trials, including the Nuremberg Trials in 1945–46
• Tobi Lim Sonstroem, a graphic-design alumnus of the Tyler School of Art in Pennsylvania, took his own life on February 2, 2012. He was 25 years old. Sonstroem was remembered by friends and teachers as a passionate young man who was dedicated to his burgeoning art and graphic-design career
• Dorothea Tanning, a painter, sculptor, and muse to the Surrealists, died on January 31, 2012. She was 101 years old. Tanning was married for thirty years to Max Ernst and lived with him in New York, Arizona, and France. In addition to an esteemed career as a painter, she published several books of verse and in 1994 established the $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award at the Academy of American Poets
• Antoni Tàpies, the Catalan painter known for large-scale works that often mix oil painting with sand, chalk, and household objects, died on February 6, 2012. He was 88. The critic Roland Penrose described Tàpies as “a painter who was to create mysteries in matter itself.” The Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona, Spain, was created in 1984 as a museum and research center dedicated to the artist’s work and to other international modern artists
• Eugene Weston III, an architect who revolutionized the look of Los Angeles homes in the 1950s, died on January 31, 2012, at the age of 87. Weston’s designs emphasized space, glass windows, and natural light, bringing an elegant, modern sensibility to middle-class family homes. Later commissions include the Scripps College Research Center and the San Diego Zoo
• Erica Wilson, a craftswoman who popularize embroidery and needlework through numerous television appearances, books, and magazine articles, died on December 13, 2011. She was 83. The British-born Wilson moved to New York in 1954, where she taught at Cooper Union and gave private lessons in her apartment. Wilson later opened boutique shops on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and on Long Island, as well as in Palm Beach, Florida, and in Nantucket, Massachusetts
• Althea Wynne, a British sculptor known for her equestrian statues in bronze and ceramic, died on January 24, 2012, at the age of 75. Inspired by Etruscan art and a childhood love of horseback riding, Wynne created sculptures recognized as powerful and graceful monuments. Her best-known commission is the three bronze horses that stand sentinel at Minister Court in the City of London

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the April listing.

 

Professional liability insurance is essential for art authenticators, appraisers, scholars, artists, curators, and other practitioners in the field of visual art and art history. In today’s increasingly litigious environment, professionals are often subject to lawsuits brought by unhappy clients or other parties who feel they have been harmed by the actions—or inactions—of individuals who worked for them. The financial consequences of such suits, including the costs to defend them, can be devastating. As a result, it is critical that professionals recognize their exposures to financial losses and adopt effective means to deal with them.

Herbert L. Jamison & Co. LLC, a provider of professional liability programs, and Philadelphia Insurance Companies are now offering a comprehensive, affordable professional liability insurance solution to art authenticators to help defend against a damaging financial loss that could occur from alleged mistakes or negligence in conducting professional, fee-based services. Though premiums vary depending on circumstances, the annual premium of one policy—which insures an individual engaged in authenticating works up to $500,000 in value—is $1,000 with a $2,500 deductible.

Several key benefits of this program are:

• Automatic independent-contractor coverage for professional services while acting on the insured’s behalf
• Defense costs in addition to the limit of liability for eligible risks
• Policy coverage for a lawful spouse or domestic partner of the insured, but only for actual or alleged wrongful acts of such individual insured for which said spouse or domestic partner may be liable as the spouse or domestic partner of such insured
• Tailored policy to meet the specific need(s) of clients
• Free sixty-day discovery clause
• Worldwide coverage

Sometimes insurance protection is not enough. The art professional must establish and maintain a loss-prevention program that will help minimize the chance of a professional liability claim being brought in the first place. Examples of effective loss-prevention techniques that can be adopted include:

• Establishing the fees and/or billing practices at the beginning of a client relationship
• Using engagement letters, contracts, and other means to precisely identify the scope of the services to be performed
• Keeping written documentation of all activity, including telephone calls, billing calculations, and the like
• Participating in peer reviews, when feasible
• Avoiding situations that present conflicts of interest
• Obtaining appropriate credentials and certifications and taking continuing-education courses to remain current regarding developments in the profession
• Screening new clients carefully and keeping existing clients informed at all times
• Avoiding giving specific warranties and similar performance guarantees

A well-designed combination of insurance and loss prevention will go a long way in managing the potential liabilities that art professionals must face as they deliver their services to their clients.

CAA recommends that interested individuals contact Kevin J. Hill, vice president at Herbert L. Jamison & Co. LLC, at 973-669-2388 or 800-5264766, ext. 2388.

The latest issue of Art Journal, mailed in February, is dedicated to manifestations of print, from the cultural roles of published artifacts in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries (by Michael Leja and the editors of the collective Triple Canopy respectively) to artist’s projects by Richard Tuttle and Matthew Brannon that exploit the physical conditions of the printed journal itself.

The final Art Journal Centennial essay by Sarah Suzuki surveys up-to-the-moment practices in printmaking, while a piece by Harper Montgomery focuses on a Mexico City street exhibition of prints in 1929 as an instance of the political dimensions of distributing art prints. Finally, an essay by Bruce Hainley, “Store as Cunt,” explores the subversive 1960s work of the artist Sturtevant.

The Triple Canopy essay, “The Binder and the Server,” which received the 2012 Art Journal Award at the CAA Annual Conference last month, and Seth McCormick’s review of Hiroko Ikegami’s book The Great Migrator: Robert Rauschenberg and the Global Rise of American Art are featured as free content on the journal’s website.