CAA News

CAA has been awarded a $42,800 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support the Distinguished Scholar Sessions at the 2010 and 2014 Annual Conferences, both of which will take place in Chicago, Illinois. The purpose of the sessions is to celebrate the contributions of distinguished scholars and curators of art through panels that will bring together an honoree and five participants.

The first Distinguished Scholar Session, which took place at the 2001 conference—also held in Chicago—honored James Ackerman. Other illustrious past honorees include Svetlana Alpers (2009) Robert L. Herbert (2008), Linda Nochlin (2007), John Szarkowski (2006), Richard Brilliant (2005), James Cahill (2004), Phyllis Pray Bober (2003), and Leo Steinberg (2002).

The Terra Foundation for American Art, based in Chicago, Illinois, is dedicated to promoting the exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States. With financial resources of more than $200 million and an exceptional collection of American art from the Colonial era to 1945, it is one of the world’s leading foundations focused on American art and devotes approximately $9 million annually in support of American-art exhibitions, projects, and research.

Beginning today, individual CAA members may submit a session proposal for the centennial Annual Conference, taking place February 9–12, 2011, in New York. Proposals should cover the breadth of current thought and research in art, art and architectural history, theory and criticism, pedagogical issues, museum and curatorial practice, conservation, and developments in technology.

The Annual Conference Committee welcomes session proposals that include the work of established artists and scholars, along with that of younger scholars, emerging and midcareer artists, and graduate students. Particularly welcome are those sessions that highlight interdisciplinary work. Artists are especially encouraged to propose sessions appropriate to dialogue and information exchange relevant to artists.

Session proposals are only accepted online; paper forms and postal mailings are not required. To set up an account, please email Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, who will register your email address and provide you with a password. For full details on the submission process, please visit Chair a Conference Session. Deadline: September 1, 2009; no late applications are accepted.

Updated May 14, 2009.

Like most universities, art museums, and learned societies, CAA has been significantly affected by the global economic downturn. The Board of Directors made difficult decisions at its May 2009 meeting that nevertheless will allow CAA to maintain the high quality of member services and programming. Strategic reductions and other measures have been instituted throughout the association to balance the budget and keep core programs, publications, and services in operation. With this careful financial planning, CAA remains dedicated to supporting members and the visual-arts community at large through our advocacy, career services, publications, and conference.

Annual Conference

The 2010 Annual Conference in Chicago will commence on Wednesday evening, February 10, with Convocation and the Gala Reception. All 120 planned sessions will be presented over the following three days, Thursday, February 11 to Saturday, February 13, with the addition of extended evening hours. No sessions will take place on Wednesday.

Publications

Newsletter: Beginning July 2009, CAA News will only be distributed online in a new reader-friendly design. This allows us to save printing and mailing costs and help to preserve coverage of core programs and publications. CAA’s website, www.collegeart.org, will become the primary hub of up-to-date information on the organization.

Journals: CAA’s longtime support of the journals is absolutely central to the mission, and the association is fully committed to maintaining them now and in the future. The Art Bulletin and Art Journal will continue to be published. Illustrations, however, will be limited to black and white for 2009–10, except where editorial and budget decisions may allow the insertion of color. caa.reviews will be unchanged, with new book reviews, exhibition reviews, and conference and symposia reports published regularly. While the CAA Board of Directors has determined the budget restrictions necessary for this part of the association, the editors-in-chief will work closely with staff and editorial boards to make sure that any further reductions are implemented with a strict attention to quality consistent with the identity and mission of the journals.

Grants and Fellowships

Two programs in CAA’s grant-making arm will be suspended for 2009–10: the Professional Development Fellowship Program for graduate students and the Millard Meiss Publication Fund. However, the Annual Conference Travel Grants and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant will both continue, and the CAA Annual Exhibitions, also funded by a grant, will take place at the Chicago and New York conferences.

CAA wishes to thank the artists, art historians, curators, critics, and educators who generously served during Career Services at the 2009 Annual Conference as mentors for the Artists’ Portfolio Review and Career Development Mentoring, as leaders of the Professional Development Roundtable Discussions, as presenters of the Career Development Workshops, and as speakers at Orientation.

Artists’ Portfolio Review
Michael Bzdak, Sue Canning, Carole Garmon, Les Joynes, Jason Lahr, Marius Lehene, Suzanne Lemakis, Meg Linton, Holly Morrison, Margaret Murphy, Alastair Noble, Liz Roth, Richard Tichich.

Career Development Mentoring
Becca Albee, Pam Aloisa, Susan Altman, Michael Aurbach, Lucinda Bliss, Sally Cornelison, Connie Cortez, Julie Nelson Davis, Carole Gorman, Reni Gower, Julie Green, Randall C. Griffin, Courtney Grim, Richard Heipp, Jim Hopfensperger, Dennis Y. Ichiyama, Arthur Jones, Heather McPherson, Mary McInnes, David Raizman, David Sokol, Steve Teczar, Ann Tsubota, Jaime Ursic.

Roundtable Leaders
Susan Altman, Michael Aurbach, Sally Block, Diane Burko, Nicola Courtright, Diane Edison, Suzanne Lemakis, Harold Linton, Andrea Polli, Norie Sato, Marie Thibeault.

Career Development Workshops
Barbara Bernstein, Steven Bleicher, Mika Cho, David Dombrosky, Kate Kuykendall, Harold Linton, David Sokol.

Orientation
Michael Aurbach, Irina D. Costache, Margaret Lazzari, David Sokol.

“Toward an Art Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century,” “Torture, Extraordinary Renditions, and the Aesthetics of Disappearance,” and “About Face: Portrait, Mask, and Facial Expression in Mesoamerica and the Andes, 6000 BC–AD 1600”—these are titles of only three of the many exciting sessions from the 2009 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. They are also available as audio recordings from Conference Media. Nearly eighty sessions—including special Saturday sessions hosted by the Feminist Art Project—are included.

A set of MP3 audio recordings from the conference is available for only $149.95, either as a download or on interactive CD-ROMs. Individual sessions, available only as downloads, are $24.95 each. Please visit Conference Media to view the list of sessions and to order.

Whether you took part in, attended, or missed a particular conference session, these recordings are a must-have for your library, research, or teaching. Listen to them while walking across campus, while driving in your car or using public transportation, or while relaxing in your home.

You can also purchase session audio recordings from the 2006–8 conferences in Boston, New York, and Dallas–Fort Worth.

Photo: A 2009 Annual Conference session (photograph by Brad Marks)

The 98th Annual Conference takes place February 10–13, 2010, in Chicago, Illinois, the first time since 2001. Listing more than 120 sessions, the 2010 Call for Participation, which you can download now as a PDF, will arrive in the mailboxes of all individual and institutional CAA members in March.

This publication describes many of next year’s panels and presentations. CAA and session chairs invite your participation: please follow the instructions in the booklet to submit a proposal for a paper. This publication also includes a call for Poster Session proposals and describes the Open Forms sessions.

In addition to attending and participating in the wide-ranging panels on art history, studio art, contemporary issues, and professional and educational practices, CAA expects participation from many area schools, museums, galleries, and other art institutions. The Hyatt Regency Chicago is the conference hotel, holding most sessions and panels, Career Services and the Book and Trade Fair, receptions and special events, and more. Deadline: May 8, 2009.

Once again, CAA is publishing an official Annual Conference blog in order to chronicle the event’s diverse experiences, points of view, and opinions. Six bloggers, selected from among the CAA membership, will be writing daily—even hourly—on Los Angeles conference events. Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, will moderate and post images.

The 2009 bloggers are: Katie Anania, a graduate student in art history at the University of Texas at Austin; Beth Harris, director of digital learning at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Micol Hebron, a California-based video and performance artist and an assistant professor of art at Chapman University; Benjamin Lima, a doctoral student at Yale University; Ed Schad, a Los Angeles–based writer and a curatorial associate for the Broad Art Foundation; and Steven Zucker, dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. Read their full biographies on the blog.

Regular sessions and ARTspace happenings, Career Services and the Book and Trade Fair, exhibition openings and special events—anything and everything is game for the CAA conference blog!

CAA has announced the list of exhibitors who will be present in Los Angeles for this year’s Book and Trade Fair. Taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center during the 97th Annual Conference, the Book and Trade Fair hosts more than one hundred major college and university publishers, leading trade publishers, and trend-setting independent presses.

The largest national and international art-materials manufacturers and distributors, as well as highly specialized companies with unique products for studio artists, will show their products and wares. Also on hand are a handful of contemporary art journals.

The fair continues to attract a wide array of diverse organizations providing professional services to the visual arts, including programs of advanced study, specialized associations, advanced-degree programs, and independent exhibition services.

At the CAA booth, you can purchase copies of the highly anticipated directories of graduate programs in the arts: Graduate Programs in Art History and Graduate Programs in the Visual Arts. Stop by to browse these publications, talk with CAA staff members, and learn more about CAA’s programs and services.

The Book and Trade Fair in Los Angeles is open for three days: Thursday, February 26, and Friday, February 27, 9:00 AM–6:00 PM, and Saturday, February 28, 9:00 AM–2:30 PM. The 2009 sponsors are ARTstor, Blick Artist Materials, Prestel Publishing, Saskia Ltd./Scholars Resource, the School of Visual Arts, and SlideRoom.

The Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California (USC) is hosting the 2009 CAA Regional MFA Exhibition, which will showcase the unique, diverse community of young artists in the Southern California region. Held in the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery and the Gayle and Ed Roski MFA Gallery, the exhibition will be on view February 24–28, 2009. The reception for the artists and CAA conference attendees takes place in Watt Hall 104 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM on Friday, February 27.

After the MFA opening reception, stick around USC for a celebration and special viewing of Looking into Andy Warhol’s Photographic Practice at the USC Fisher Museum of Art.

What would a trip to Tinseltown be without taking in a few films? During the upcoming CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles, a pair of excellent documentaries on contemporary artists will be screened.

Join us at REDCAT: The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in downtown Los Angeles for a screening of The Cool School, a documentary about how a few renegade artists built the Los Angeles art scene from scratch. The principal cast includes: Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, Frank Gehry, Billy Al Bengston, Irving Blum, and Robert Irwin. The film’s director, Morgan Neville, will be on hand for a Q&A session after the film.

The screening of The Cool School will take place on Thursday, February 26, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM. Tickets are $15; space is limited. Tickets can be purchased by calling CAA Member Services at 212-691-1051, ext 12., or in the registration area at the Los Angeles Convention Center only; they cannot be sold or purchased at REDCAT.
Produced and directed by Jeffrey Perkins, The Painter Sam Francis, a feature-length film portrait of the artist Sam Francis (1923–1994), portrays his entire life and professional career. Forty years in the making, the film shows the artist at work in his studios from 1969 to 1992; it also includes interviews with the artist, his family members, art historians, and artists such as Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, and Bruce Conner. The film is an intimate portrait of an important artist at work, as well as an personal view as told by the artist himself and those that knew him.

The Painter Sam Francis will be screened on Friday, February 27, and Saturday, Febru-ary 28, 12:30–2:00 PM, in the Ahmanson Auditorium at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; admission if free.