CAA News Today

We’re delighted to introduce CAA members to a new series of coffee talk conversations between Meme Omogbai, our executive director and CEO, and Theresa Avila, the Program Chair of the 110 Annual Conference. In this first video, they discuss the format of the Conference and how this key program is part of CAA’s response to members, both domestic and international, and vital to positioning our organization for sustainable growth. Upcoming conversations will address questions sent by members. Check it out and send us your thoughts for the next installment! 

Please send us your questions: programs@collegeart.org  

Speaker Biographies 

Theresa Avila is a curator and an Assistant Professor of non-Western Art History at California State University, Channel Islands. She earned a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of New Mexico with a focus on Modern Latin American and Latin@x art. As a scholar and curator her work focuses on the intersections between the visual and political, as she interrogates historiography, empire and nation building, and systems of differentiation. Published works include “Echoing the Call for Revolution: Emiliano Zapata in Chican@x Art” for the exhibition catalogue Emiliano Zapata despues de Zapata (2019), the book Making and Being Made: Contemporary Citizenship, Art, and Visual Culture (2017), as well as the forthcoming “The History of the Barrio Mobile Art Studio, a vehicle for creative transformations” for the fifty-year anthology of Self Help Graphics (2023) and the project “Dialogos: on Landscapes of the Americas” for Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture Journal. (2023). As the Director of the Broome Library Gallery at CSUCI she curated Magnetic Currents: Art charged by the U.S. and Mexico Border (2020); Colecion de Lucha, Desde Santa Paula a las Americas: The Personal Archive of Luzma Espinosa (2019); and Tracing History: Mapping California (2018). Dr. Avila firmly believes we must activate art in meaningful and engage art as a tool for change. 

Meme Omogbai, CAA Executive Director and CEO: Before joining CAA, Meme Omogbai served as a member and past board chair of the New Jersey Historic Trust, one of four landmark entities dedicated to preservation of the state’s historic and cultural heritage, and Montclair State University’s Advisory Board. Named one of 25 Influential Black Women in Business by The Network Journal, Meme has over twenty-five years of experience in corporate, government, higher education, and museum sectors. As the first American of African descent to chair the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), Omogbai led an initiative to rebrand the AAM as a global, inclusive alliance. While COO and trustee, she spearheaded a major transformation in operating performance at the Newark Museum. During her time as deputy assistant chancellor of New Jersey’s Department of Higher Education, Omogbai received legislative acknowledgment and was recognized with the New Jersey Meritorious Service award for her work on college affordability initiatives for families. Omogbai received her MBA from Rutgers University and holds a CPA. She did postgraduate work at Harvard University’s executive management program and has earned the designation of Chartered Global Management Accountant. She studied global museum executive leadership at the J. Paul Getty Trust Museum Leadership Institute, where she also served on the faculty.  

Willie Cole (left) and Jessica Stockholder (right).

We are excited to announce that CAA’s Annual Artists’ Interviews will feature Willie Cole and Jessica Stockholder. Each artist will take part in a one-on-one interview with a colleague during CAA’s 110th Annual Conference. These interviews will take place virtually on February 18, 2022. 

Beginning in 1997, the Annual Artists’ Interviews were established to provide the opportunity for esteemed artists to have one-on-one conversations with colleagues at the Annual Conference. Each year, the Services to Artists Committee (SAC) identifies two distinguished artists to participate.  

The interviews are held as part of the Services to Artists Program. Access to this program requires registration and is included with an All Access registration, or with stand-alone program registration at no cost. Recordings will be accessible to registrants after the event. Register here. 

Speaker Biographies 

Willie Cole is a contemporary American sculptor, printer, and perceptual engineer. His work uses contexts of postmodern eclecticism, and combines references and appropriation from African and African American imagery. Cole is best known for his Dada and Surrealist readymades, which assemble and transform ordinary domestic and used objects such as irons, ironing boards, high-heeled shoes, hair dryers, bicycle parts, wooden matches, lawn jockeys, and other discarded appliances and hardware. Cole grew up in Newark, NJ. He attended the Boston University School of Fine Arts, received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1976, and continued his studies at the Art Students League of New York from 1976 to 1979.  

Recent exhibitions of Cole’s work include To Reclaim, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, USA; New Concepts in Printmaking 2: Willie Cole, MoMA, New York, NY, USA; Reconfiguring an African Icon: Odes to the Mask by Modern and Contemporary Artists from Three Continents, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA; Chicago, Surrealism: The Conjured Life, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, USA; and Afro: Black Identity in America and Brazil, Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, NM, USA. Cole’s work is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; MoMA, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; and many others. 

Jessica Stockholder is an internationally acclaimed visual artist and educator who lives and works in Chicago. In addition to earning her BFA from the University of Victoria in Canada and her MFA from Yale University, she was awarded two honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees: one from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2010, and one from Columbia College in 2013. Stockholder was Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2018.  

Stockholder’s works sit at the intersection of painting with sculpture, and often incorporate the architecture in which it has been conceived. Employing a wide range of ordinary everyday materials Stockholder orchestrates an intersection of pictorial and physical space. She probes how meaning derives from physicality, and engages the sensuality and pleasure evoked by color and formal order in an effort to call attention to the edges of understanding.  

Stockholder’s work has been exhibited in many of the world’s most influential art venues, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Dia Center for the Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Venice Biennale. It is included in such museum collections as the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA, and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.  

Stockholder is currently the Raymond W. & Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, a position she accepted in 2011, after 12 years as Director of the Sculpture Department at the Yale School of Art.  

Skawennati as xox

We’re delighted to announce that the Keynote Speaker for the 109th CAA Annual Conference will be Skawennati, who will address the membership during Convocation.

Skawennati makes art that addresses history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her early adoption of cyberspace as both a location and a medium for her practice has led to groundbreaking projects such as CyberPowWow and TimeTraveller™. She is best known for her machinimas—movies made in virtual environments—but she also produces still images, textiles and sculpture.

Her works have been presented in Europe, Oceania, China and across North America in exhibitions such as “Uchronia I What if?”, in the HyperPavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale; “Now? Now!” at the Biennale of the Americas; and “Looking Forward (L’Avenir)” at the Montreal Biennale. They are included in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the National Bank of Canada and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, among others. She was honoured to receive the 2019 Salt Spring National Art Prize Jurors’ Choice Award and a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. Skawennati is represented by ELLEPHANT, and her work is viewable at skawennati.com.

Skawennati has been active in various communities. In the 80s she joined SAGE (Students Against Global Extermination) and the Quebec Native Women’s Association. In the 90s she co-founded Nation to Nation, a First Nations artist collective, while working in and with various Indigenous organizations and artist-run centres, including the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal and Oboro. In 2005, she co-founded Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research-creation network whose projects include the Skins workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling and Digital Media as well as the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. Throughout most of the teens, she volunteered extensively for her children’s elementary school, where she also initiated an Indigenous Awareness programme. In 2019, she co-founded centre d’art daphne, Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal’s first Indigenous artist-run centre.

Born in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati belongs to the Turtle clan. She holds a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, where she resides.

Convocation will be held on Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 4:30-6:00 pm EST. Access to Convocation requires free registration for “Free and Open Sessions” and is included in paid registration.

Polly Apfelbaum, image credit: Nicole Eisenman, Apfelbaum, 2019, Paper pulp drawing, Paper dimensions: 30 1/2 x 22 1/2 in, Courtesy the artist and Anton Kern Gallery.
David Pagel.

We are excited to announce that one of this year’s Artists’ Interviews will feature Polly Apfelbaum, interviewed by David Pagel.  

Beginning in 1997, the Annual Artists’ Interviews were established to provide the opportunity for esteemed artists to have one-on-one conversations with colleagues at the Annual Conference.  

Each year, the Services to Artists Committee identifies two distinguished artists to participate. The interviews, held as part of the Services to Artists Program, provide a unique opportunity for members to hear insights from artists in dialogue with the interviewer.  Access to this program content requires free registration for “Free and Open Sessions” and is included in paid registration. This year’s Artists’ Interviews are supported by a generous grant from the NEA.

Speaker Biographies

New York-based artist Polly Apfelbaum’s (b.1955) work has situated itself as a hybrid of painting, sculpture, and installation over a career spanning 30-plus years. Exploring the intricacies of color, Apfelbaum weaves her way, both literally and conceptually, through ideas of Minimalism, Pop aesthetics, and Color Field painting to blur the lines between two-and three-dimensional art making. Apfelbaum graduated from the Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. She has exhibited consistently since her first solo show in 1986. Her work has recently been recognized with a Pew Center for Arts Grant, a Creative Capital Award, and the 2012 Rome Prize at the American Academy. She has also received a Joan Mitchell Grant, The Diebenkorn Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Recent solo exhibitions include: “Waiting For the UFO’s (a space between a landscape and a bunch of flowers)” at the Kemper Museum, Kansas City, and the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2019); “Haystack Hands” at Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Deer Isle, ME; “Happiness Runs” at Belvedere 21, in Vienna, Austria (2018); “Dubuffet’s Feet, My Hands” at Frith Gallery, London, UK (2017); “The Potential of Women” at Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY (2017); “Face (Geometry)(Naked) Eyes,” Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA (2016); and “Deep Purple, Red Shoes,” Be-Part, Waregem, Belgium (2015). She is represented in numerous collections including: Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.  

David Pagel is an art critic who lives in Los Angeles and regularly contributes to the Los Angeles Times. He is a professor of art theory and history at Claremont Graduate University and an adjunct curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY, where he has organized “Telling Stories: Changing the Narratives” (2020) and “Unfinished Business: Paintings from the 1970s and 1980s by Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl and David Salle” (2016).  

Recent publications include “Jim Shaw” (Lund Humphries, 2019) and “Talking Beauty: A Conversation Between Joseph Raffael and David Pagel About Art, Love, Death, and Creativity” (Zero+, 2019). An avid cyclist, he is a seven-time winner of the California Triple Crown.   

Apfelbaum and Pagel’s pre-recorded conversation will be available starting on February 5, 2021. They will host a live online Q&A on Friday, February 12 at 5:30pm EST.