CAA News

The Appraisers Association of America, an affiliated society, invites CAA members to attend “On and Off the Road,” an evening with America’s most popular appraisers, to be held at the Grolier Club in New York on Tuesday, October 16, 2012. Experts from television’s Antiques Roadshow—Lee Dunbar, Kathleen Harwood, Daile Kaplan, Leigh Keno, Betty Krulik, Kevin Zavian, and Alasdair Nichol—will share their experiences on and off camera. Attendees will have the rare opportunity to hear some of the country’s leading appraisers discuss the process of evaluating everything from fine art to memorabilia. You also have the chance for private appraisal consultation to find out if you own a hidden gem. Meet and speak with some of the most trusted experts in the business.

Tickets are $85 for individuals and $75 for CAA members, staff, and guests
; $200 for patrons and $175 CAA members, staff, and guests; and 
$350 for a patron duo and $300 CAA members, staff, and guests. Tickets are tax deductible, with the proceeds benefiting the association’s Appraisal Institute to support educational programs on connoisseurship, assessment, and valuation.

Doors open at 6:00 PM. The panel discussion begins at 
6:30 PM, followed by a reception at 7:30 PM. Free appraisal consultations are offered to those with patron tickets; please 

RSVP by October 9
 by calling 212-889-5404, ext. 11., or writing to 
programs@appraisersassoc.org

.

The Grolier Club is located at 
47 East 60th Street
, New York, NY 10065 (map). For the Appraisal Consultation Guidelines, and for information about the Appraisers Association of America, please visit www.appraisersassociation.org or call 212-889-5404, ext. 11.

The Directory of Affiliated Societies, a comprehensive list of all seventy-four groups that have joined CAA as affiliate members, has just been updated. Please visit the directory to view a single webpage that includes the following information for each group: name, date of founding, size of membership, and annual dues; a brief statement on the society’s nature or purpose; and the names of officers and/or contacts for you to get more details about the groups or to join them. In addition, CAA links directly to each affiliated society’s homepage.

The following report was written by Barbara Nesin, president of the CAA Board of Directors, and Judith Thorpe, also a board member.

The third annual meeting of CAA’s affiliated societies was held during the 100th Annual Conference in Los Angeles on Saturday, February 25, 2012. Twenty representatives from the affiliates joined the CAA president, Barbara Nesin, and members of the Board of Directors to review the accomplishments of the past year and to discuss future directions.

Nesin took this opportunity to announce the formation of a Task Force on Affiliated Societies, approved by the board at its October 2011 meeting. Starting in May 2012, the task force will develop recommendations about the best means of working together to achieve common goals and objectives. She thanked Judith Thorpe, a CAA board member, for leading that effort and for assembling a team of committed board members to serve on the task force. Thorpe reviewed the highlights of CAA’s 2010–2015 Strategic Plan that specifically call for affiliated-society engagement, especially through enhanced communications, advocacy, and membership. Nesin also thanked Jean Miller, another CAA board member, for her preliminary research on which the task force can build. The task force will likely conduct a membership survey before making its recommendations.

Nesin also noted the contributions of the affiliates to the Los Angeles conference. There were twenty-three major affiliate-sponsored sessions reviewed and selected by the Annual Conference Committee, in addition to over seventy special sessions and business meetings providing many opportunities for all CAA members to become familiar with the work of the affiliate organizations.

Nesin encouraged greater collaboration between CAA and the affiliates in the future to include activities beyond the conference, currently the center of affiliate activities. With this in mind, a spreadsheet of all affiliated-society conferences and meetings throughout the year was distributed so that CAA board members could plan to attend more of these events. This year CAA participated in the Southeastern College Art Conference, the annual meeting for the Mid-America College Art Association, and the Society for Photographic Education national conference. CAA staff has also increased communications with affiliated-society representatives by making use of the affiliate listserv and by inviting input on a variety of topics. By the same token, Nesin encouraged the affiliates to nominate their members for service on CAA’s committees and board. Those in attendance had the opportunity to ask questions and to share suggestions.

The homepage for the main CAA website was enhanced with an Affiliated Societies tab on the horizontal navigation bar that links directly to the Directory of Affiliated Societies. Each affiliated-society listing contains a link to its own website. Nesin pointed out the importance of keeping the contact information for each organization up to date to be sure that information goes to the right person, who is in turn responsible for sharing information with the leadership and/or members of his or her organization. To keep the directory current, CAA annually seeks updates and solicits announcements and news from the groups every two months; these items appear in the Affiliated Society News section of the CAA website, which is promoted through CAA News.

CAA’s seventy-five affiliated societies, covering a wide range of disciplines, are essential partners in the fulfillment of the organization’s mission to promote the visual arts and their understanding through committed practice and intellectual engagement.

The Directory of Affiliated Societies, a comprehensive list of information for all seventy-four groups that have joined CAA as affiliate members, has just been updated. Please visit the directory to view a single webpage that includes the following information for each group: name, date of founding, size of membership, and annual dues; a brief statement on the society’s nature or purpose; and the names and contact information for you to get more information or to join. In addition, CAA links directly to each affiliated society’s homepage.

Joining the list this year are four organizations whose applications the CAA Board of Directors approved at its February 2011 meeting: Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence (ALMSD); the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA); the Curator’s Network at Independent Curators International; and the National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (NAAHBCU).

At its February 2011 meeting, the CAA Board of Directors approved applications from four organizations to become affiliated societies, which are groups of art professionals and other organizations whose goals are generally consonant with those of CAA, with a view toward facilitating intercommunication and mutual enrichment.

Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence

Established in 2010, Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence (ALMSD) focuses on European culture from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. Working to demonstrate the philosophical connection between arts in different countries that were affected by Symbolist ideas, the organization facilitates the exchange of ideas among scholars through an annual newsletter and a conference held every four years at the Allerton Park and Retreat Center in Monticello, Illinois, or at other international locations.

Asian American Women Artists Association

The Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA), founded in 1989, is dedicated to the visibility and documentation of Asian American women in the arts. Through exhibitions, publications, and educational programs, the organization offers thought-provoking perspectives that challenge societal assumptions and promote dialogue. AAWAA activities include a resource portal; regular lectures in art, ethnic, and Asian American studies classes; thought-provoking exhibitions, panel discussions, literary readings, and workshops; and books and catalogues on Asian American women artists.

The Curator’s Network

A new organization established last year by Independent Curators International, the Curator’s Network brings together curators from around the world who want to share their work and exchange information with other professionals in the field. Among the sponsored activities are an online Curator’s Index; a forum for members to share information, called the Network Directory; and Dispatch, a bimonthly newsletter. More than one hundred curators have joined the network.

National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Founded in 2000, the National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (NAAHBCU) brings art and art education to the forefront of member institutions. It also provides comprehensive activities that offer opportunities for professional artists employed at member institutions. In addition, NAAHBCU highlights the artistic achievements of artists through exhibitions; provides scholarships for promising art majors; meets annually to confront issues that affect art departments at historically black colleges and universities; shares information on current technology, art history, and art trends; and disseminates employment opportunities.

CAA’s Directory of Affiliated Societies is currently accepting updates. If you are an officer or the official CAA contact for an organization, please send an updated text, in the same format as your current listing, to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, either as a Word attachment or pasted in the body of an email.

The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA), a CAA affiliated society, has announced the 2011 recipients of its Lifetime Achievement Award: Beverly Buchanan, Diane Burko, Ofelia Garcia, Joan Marter, Carolee Schneemann, and Sylvia Sleigh. In addition, WCA has given the 2011 President’s Art and Activism Award to Maria Torres.

The awards ceremony will be held on Saturday, February 12, 2011, during the annual WCA and CAA conferences in New York. The awards ceremony, free and open to the public, will take place from 6:00 to 7:30 PM in the Beekman/Sutton rooms at the Hilton New York, followed by a ticketed gala from 8:00 to 10:00 PM at the nearby American Folk Art Museum. Called LIVE SPACE, the gala will include a walk-around gourmet dinner with three food stations and an open bar, as well as the opportunity to meet the award recipients, network with attendees, and tour the museum.

Ticket prices for LIVE SPACE are $75 for WCA members and $135 for nonmembers (Prices will increase after January 12). CAA members receive a special price of $120. All tickets include reserved seating at the awards presentation. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit the WCA website.

Beverly Buchanan

Born in 1940, Beverly Buchanan began creating art at an early age. She received a bachelor’s degree in medical technology from Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and then earned a master’s of science in parasitology and a master’s of public health degree, both from Columbia University. Rather than pursuing a degree in medicine, she decided to focus on making art. Buchanan studied at the Art Students League before moving to Georgia, where she still lives, dividing her time between there and Michigan. Her early sculptures were poured concrete and stone, and she has since worked in a variety of media, focusing on southern vernacular architecture. Buchanan is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award, and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. In addition, she was a Georgia Visual Arts honoree and a recipient of an Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and was honored with a Recognition Award by CAA’s Committee for Women in the Arts in 2005.

Diane Burko

A painter and photographer who resides in Philadelphia and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Diane Burko has been involved in the feminist movement since the early 1970s. She is a founding member of WCA who also founded and organized the first multivenue feminist citywide art festival in Philadelphia, called “Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts, Past and Present,” also known as “Focus.” After that event, Burko continued her feminist commitment to the present day, serving on the WCA and CAA boards and on the Philadelphia Art Commission. She is now the chair of CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts. Burko has been recognized with fellowships from the Bellagio Center, the Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among many other honors. One of the first movers and shakers in the feminist art movement, Burko has not yet been fully recognized for her important contributions.

Ofelia Garcia

Ofelia Garcia is professor of art at William Paterson University, where she was dean of the College of the Arts and Communication for a decade. She earned her BA at Manhattanville College and her MFA at Tufts University, and was a Kent fellow at Duke University. Garcia has been on the art faculty at Boston College, a critic at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, director of the Print Center in Philadelphia, and president of the Atlanta College of Art and Rosemont College. Also a former president of WCA, Garcia has served on numerous boards, including those of CAA, the American Council on Education, and Haverford College; she was most recently board chair of the Jersey City Museum. Garcia now serves as vice chair of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, on the Hudson County Art Commission, and on the boards of the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions and Catholics for Choice.

Joan Marter

Joan Marter is distinguished professor of art history at Rutgers University. She received her PhD from the University of Delaware and has lectured and published widely. She is currently editor-in-chief of The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, a five-volume reference set forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2010. Marter serves as editor of Woman’s Art Journal, in print continuously for thirty-one years. She has published monographs on artists such as Alexander Calder and has written extensively about Abstract Expressionism and women artists. In 2004, she was inducted into the Alumni Wall of Fame at the University of Delaware. A former member of the CAA Board of Directors, Marter is currently president of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann is a multidisciplinary artist whose radical works in performance art, installation, film, and video are widely influential. The history of her imagery is characterized by research into archaic visual traditions, pleasure wrested from suppressive taboos, and the body of the artist in dynamic relationship with the social body. Her involvement in collaborative groups includes the Judson Dance Theater, Experiments in Art and Technology, and many feminist organizations. Schneemann has exhibited her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and in New York at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Internationally, she has shown at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and the Centre George Pompidou in Paris. Her recent multichannel video installation Precarious was presented at Tate Liverpool in September 2009. The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York in New Paltz presented a major retrospective in summer 2010.

Sylvia Sleigh

Born in 1916 in Wales, Sylvia Sleigh paints portraits in a realist style, informed by sources ranging from the Pre-Raphaelites to famous portraits throughout history. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1953 at the Kensington Art Gallery; her most recent, at I-20 Gallery in New York, closed in January 2010. She married the art critic Lawrence Alloway in 1954, with whom she became part of the London avant-garde. They later moved to the United States, where she continued painting and showing her work. In 1970, Sleigh became actively involved in feminism and started painting life-size nudes in her precise, realist style. She was active in many of the first women-artist-run galleries, including A.I.R. Gallery and Soho 20. Her work can be found in numerous major public and private collections. Sleigh was honored with CAA’s Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008.

Maria Torres

Winner of the 2011 Presidents Art and Activism Award is Maria Torres, president and chief operations officer of the Point Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to youth development and the cultural and economic revitalization of the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx in New York. The Point’s mission is to encourage the arts, local enterprise, responsible ecology, and “self-investment” in a community traditionally defined in terms of its poverty, crime rate, poor schools, and substandard housing. In 1993, Torres received a BS from Cornell University. That same year, she launched the Neighborhood Internship Bank for at-risk youth, the first employment service of its kind in the South Bronx, and established La Marqueta, an outdoor community market aimed at lowering the barriers to the marketplace for neighborhood entrepreneurs. In 1994, Torres worked with Paul Lipson, Mildred Ruiz, and Steven Sapp to found the Point. Recipient of Union Square Award in 1998, she served on the Board of the Bronx Charter School for the Arts from 2002 to 2009.

About the Awards

The WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards were first presented in 1979 in President Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Past honorees have represented the full range of distinguished achievement in the visual arts, and this year’s awardees are no exception, with considerable accomplishments and contributions represented by their professional efforts.

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) invites CAA members to gather at the Four Seasons in midtown Manhattan next month for conversation about the restaurant’s historical developments. This free event takes place on Saturday, September 25, 2010, at 9:00 PM.

The gathering concludes a tour day in which SAH members will have spent studying the work of Richard Kelly, who was responsible for the interior and exterior lighting of the Seagram Building and the Four Seasons. Joining the group will be Belmont Freeman, the restaurant’s current restoration architect, and Dietrich Neumann, the tour leader, past SAH president, and editor of the forthcoming book, The Structure of Light: Richard Kelly and the Illumination of Modern Architecture. (The tour is sold out.)

The Four Seasons opened in 1959 to breathless headlines about the “world’s costliest restaurant,” which took an unprecedented $4.5 million to build. Occupying a monumental space on the first floor of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, the restaurant was designed by Philip Johnson in collaboration with a stellar cast of artists, including Kelly, William Pahlman (interior designer to Restaurant Associates), Karl Linn (landscape architect), and Garth Huxtable (industrial designer). In addition, Kelly created the sculptures that hover over the Bar Room, Marie Nichols made the shimmering aluminum chain window shades, and Treitel-Gratz fabricated the Mies-designed Brno and Barcelona chairs (this being before Knoll put them into production.) Blue-chip art, including a stage backdrop painted by Pablo Picasso, adorned the walls.

During his lifetime Johnson kept close control over the maintenance, alteration, and periodic refurbishment of the restaurant, which the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission named an interior landmark in 1989 and which recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Four years after Johnson’s death in 2005, the owners decided that the Four Seasons needed a new house architect to design and direct urgently needed restorations and, as Phyllis Lambert phrased it in her brief in support of the work, to “monitor and safeguard the architectural and artistic patrimony” of the establishment. Freeman was selected for this role. Since December 2008, Belmont Freeman Architects (BFA) and a team of consultants have been immersed in researching the history, design, and construction of the restaurant, and in designing and managing its phased restoration.

The Four Seasons is not a museum but a busy working restaurant. As such, its renovation is subject to particular functional, logistical, and economic exigencies. Since the restaurant cannot close for renovation, work is planned as a series of surgical interventions that can be performed off hours. After completing an assessment of existing conditions, BFA compiled and ranked discrete restoration subprojects by priority. While the main dining rooms have been admirably maintained over the years, ancillary spaces—entrance, lobby, restrooms, coat check, stairs, bar—have suffered fifty years of abuse and are in urgent need of renovation. Another important object of attention is the lighting: the historical importance of Kelly’s pioneering lighting design is equal to—and inseparable from—that of the architecture. BFA is working with lighting designer WALD Studio and with Edison Price, manufacturers of the original fixtures, on this restoration program.

There is no charge to attend this cash-bar event. On entering the Four Seasons, say you are with the Society of Architectural Historians group. Have questions or need additional information? Please contact Kathy Sturm, SAH director of programs, at 312-543-7243.

The Association of College and University Museums and Galleries (ACUMG), a CAA affiliated society, has changed its name to the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG). The organization has also strengthened its mission to better reflect its role as the leading educational and professional organization for museums and galleries affiliated with academic institutions.

The formal name change, which more closely links AAMG to its affiliate organization, the American Association of Museums (AAM), took place at AAMG’s annual business meeting in Los Angeles on May 24, 2010. At the same meeting AAMG revised its by-laws and invigorated its mission as a resource for college and university museums of all disciplines, including art, history, anthropology, natural history, and science.

Organized in 1980, the association has a growing membership of more than four hundred of the nation’s estimated 1,150 academic museums and galleries. AAMG addresses such issues as governance, ethics, collections management, educational outreach, exhibitions, strategic planning, and financial management. Along with CAA, it has been in the forefront of the movement to safeguard college and university collections, advocating against the sale of donated artworks and the closure of art museums by institutions of higher education.

AAMG sponsors national conferences at prominent academic museums in conjunction with annual AAM meetings. Its May 22 conference took place at the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Society for Architectural Historians (SAH) invites CAA members to take a study tour of Mexico City. The tour’s focus will be modern and contemporary architecture, but because some knowledge of older styles, contemporary issues across the arts, and the growth of the city itself are critical to understanding Mexican modern architecture, the tour will include pre-twentieth-century buildings and works of art and urban planning that inform the development of Mexican architectural modernism in essential ways.

The study program is designed to include famous, “must-see” sites in Mexico City as well as buildings that participants may not know and that they might find difficult to visit. Download a detailed brochure and register online to reserve a space on the tour. CAA members need not be members of SAH but will pay a $25 administration fee to attend, in addition to the tour-package cost. Space is limited, so please make your reservations today!

Image: The Basilica of Guadalupe on top of Tepeyac hill, north of Mexico City, was built between 1974 and 1976 by the Mexican architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez (photograph provided by Kathryn O’Rourke and the Society of Architectural Historians)

At its February meeting in Chicago, the Board of Directors approved the applications of two groups to join CAA’s affiliated societies. The first new affiliate, the Appraisers Association of America, is a professional organization, while the second, the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey, is an area-studies organization.

The Appraisers Association of America (AAA) began in 1949; it currently has 650 members. Its purpose is to establish the highest standards of ethical conduct and promote the profession of appraising as a service to the national economy. An admissions committee insures that its members have met the standards of the profession. AAA advances the field though educational seminars, conferences, publications, and other activities. It publishes All About Appraising: The Definitive Appraisal Handbook and a biannual newsletter, and it offers classes in collaboration with New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. CAA recently partnered with AAA to host a symposium on art authentication in January 2010.

An affiliate of the Middle East Studies Association, the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) was established in 2007, and it currently has fifty-seven members. This newly formed academic organization aims to advance the study of this emerging field through the creation of an international network of interested scholars and organizations. AMCA facilitates communications by sponsoring conferences, meetings, a website, and a newsletter. It will be launching peer-reviewed exhibition and catalogue reviews on its website.

CAA’s Directory of Affiliated Societies is currently accepting updates. If you are an officer or the official CAA contact for an organization, please send an updated text, in the same format as your current listing, to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, by March 31, either as a Word attachment or pasted into the body of an email.