CAA News Today

CAA hosted its 101st Annual Conference from February 13 to 16, 2013, at the Hilton New York in midtown Manhattan. 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 professional lives, a Book and Trade Fair, and a host of special events throughout the region. Preceding the Annual Conference was CAA’s first THATCamp, an “unconference” on digital art history that took place at Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York.

Attendance

Close to six thousand people 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 two hundred 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 230 interviewees and forty mentors participated in Career Services.

Book and Trade Fair

This year’s Book and Trade Fair presented 110 exhibitors—including participants from the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Belgium, Mexico, Hong Kong, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and Canada—that displayed new publications, materials for artists, digital resources, and other 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 programming free and open to the public, including this year’s Annual Artists’ Interviews with Mira Schor and Janine Antoni. Over three hundred people attended this extraordinary event.

ARTspace also featured four days of panel discussions devoted to visual-arts practice, opportunities for professional development, and screenings of video work curated and produced by graduate students from the New York region. 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 15. Nearly fifty artists participated in ARTexchange this year.

Convocation and Awards

More than five hundred people attended CAA’s Convocation and presentation of the annual Awards for Distinction, which honor the outstanding achievements and accomplishments of individual artists, art historians, authors, conservators, curators, and critics whose efforts transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large. The recipients of the 2013 awards are:

• Ellsworth Kelly, Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement
• Elaine Sturtevant, Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
• T. J. Clark, Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art
• Hal Foster and Claire Bishop, Frank Jewett Mather Award
• Harmony Hammond and Martha Rosler, Distinguished Feminist Award
• Mary K. Coffey, Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
• Philipp Kaiser and Miwon Kwon, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
• Joanne Pillsbury, Miriam Doutriaux, Reiko Ishihara-Brito, and Alexandre Tokovinine, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions
• Buzz Spector, Distinguished Teaching of Art Award
• June Hargrove, Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award
• Lance Mayer and Gay Myers, CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
• Yukio Lippit, Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
• Julia Bryan-Wilson, Art Journal Award

Robert Storr of Yale University delivered the keynote address. His provocative address will be posted on CAA’s website in the coming weeks.

Special Events

Following Convocation, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum hosted CAA’s Opening Reception on Wednesday evening, February 13. Hundreds of attendees gathered to celebrate the conference while enjoying a preview of the exhibition Gutai: Splendid Playground.

CAA celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of The Art Bulletin and the fifteenth anniversary of caa.reviews after the Annual Members’ Business Meeting on Friday, February 15.

Thank You

Members of CAA’s Board of Directors and staff would like to extend their gratitude to all conference funders and sponsors, attendees, volunteers, and participants; the organization’s committees and award juries; the Hilton New York staff; NYC and Company; the museums and galleries that opened their doors to conference attendees free of charge; and everyone involved in helping to make the 101st Annual Conference such a tremendous success!

Save the Date

CAA’s 102nd Annual Conference will be held in Chicago, Illinois, February 12–15, 2014.

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, websites, 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.