CAA News

CAA warmly welcomes three full-time and one part-time employees who have joined CAA since summer 2011. Two new staffers work in the Publications Department, and two more in the Membership, Development, and Marketing Department.

Hannah O’Reilly Malyn became CAA development associate, a new position, in October. Previously, she assisted the development and marketing associate at Hester Street Collaborative while completing her master’s degree in visual arts administration at New York University, where her thesis explored the advent of populist audience development tactics in art museums. Before attending NYU, she earned a dual BA in economics/business and studio art from Kalamazoo College in Michigan. As an artist, Malyn is mostly interested in the human form; her undergraduate senior solo exhibition, Re-Conceptions: Women in Art, explored the role of women in the art world through a series of watercolor figure studies. She also works in oil and charcoal.

Nancy Nguyen is CAA’s new institutional membership assistant, where she is the primary contact for all institutional members. She succeeds Helen Bayer, who was promoted to marketing and communications associate. Nguyen recently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in history. Prior to joining CAA in October, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as a visitor assistant. During her undergraduate career, she was the public programs assistant at the Harry Ransom Center while interning in the departments of marketing and public relations at several Austin museums and arts organizations, such as the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Mexic-Arte Museum, and Landmarks Public Art Program.

Joining CAA as editorial assistant is Alyssa Pavley, who graduated with a BA from New York University this past May, majoring in art history with a minor in creative writing, concentrating in fiction. Before coming to CAA in August, Pavley served as an intern at two magazines, Art in America and Art + Auction, and at the Judd Foundation and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, all in New York. Her writings and reviews have been published at thefanzine.com and Artinfo.com and in Art + Auction.

Erika Nelson has been directories data collections coordinator since June, succeeding Cecilia Juan, who departed in the spring. Nelson earned a BA in art history and communication at the College of Saint Benedict in Saint Joseph, Minnesota, and will receive her MA in art history from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, in February. Her thesis, “You Are What You Eat: Catholic Cannibalism and Cultural Consumption in the Codex Espangliensis.” examines the influence of both martyrs and Mickey Mouse on contemporary Mexican society. Nelson hopes to pursue her PhD in modern Latin American art in the coming year. Previously, Nelson perfected her data-entry skills through positions at Fordham University and Mutualart.com and developed her communication skills through a teaching assistantship at Brooklyn College and an internship at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in Collegeville, Minnesota.

After two years of research and numerous site visits in the five boroughs of New York, CAA signed a fifteen-year lease for a new office at 50 Broadway in lower Manhattan. The property—located in a rich historical district near Wall Street, Battery Park, Trinity Church, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum—is owned by the 50 Broadway Realty Corporation, an entity of the United Federation of Teachers, which is headquartered in the building. The move comes at the end of CAA’s twenty-five-year lease at 275 Seventh Avenue in Chelsea.

The affordable, furnished office of approximately 9,500 square feet is located on a single floor with a variety of building amenities, including an auditorium, meeting rooms, and a staff cafeteria. It also features natural light through windows on the east, west, and north sides. Since the new office comes largely furnished, CAA has invested little in construction, equipment, and furniture, other than the purchase of a few desks, bookshelves, and a conference table and chairs. Two significant changes, a new telephone system and a new internet service provider, will improve member communications. The installation of carpet, resurfacing of concrete corridors, and repainting of office walls are currently under way and should be completed prior to the move day: Saturday, July 23, 2011.

Meanwhile, CAA staff has been reorganizing and purging files, archiving materials, completing a space utilization analysis, relocating books and periodicals, and coordinating logistics with the movers and with the managements of the old and new buildings. The physical move will happen in one day, and—aside from the normal readjustment period required to be comfortably relocated—CAA expects no interruption in services or operations: the main website, the Online Career Center, caa.reviews, and other online services and publications will all function normally.

CAA is excited about the prospect of becoming a player in lower Manhattan’s ongoing revitalization efforts for residential, commercial, and cultural purposes. The new address for the organization beginning Monday, July 25, 2011, is: College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004. The primary telephone and fax numbers will remain the same: 212-691-1051 and 212-627-2381, respectively. CAA staff, however, will be unavailable from Thursday, July 21, through Monday morning, July 25; the telephone and fax numbers will also not be working during that time.

The CAA Board of Directors and staff wish to thank the legal acumen of Steven Alden and Jeffrey Cunard of Debevoise & Plimpton LLC and the real-estate expertise of Carri Lyon of Cushman & Wakefield in securing the new location. Everyone is welcome to attend an open house at the new CAA office, to be held on Saturday afternoon, October 22, 2011.

This month CAA debuts several new sections of its website, gathering previously published material and adding new historical content. Read about the Distinguished Scholars, review a full list of Annual Conference dates and locations, see who served as a CAA president, and browse obituaries written especially for the website since mid-2008.

Established in 2001, the Distinguished Scholar Session illuminates and celebrates the contributions of senior art historians who emerged in the wake of World War II. Not intended as a static honor, the event can be viewed as the equivalent of a living Festschrift: an occasion for applauding, examining, and extending a distinguished career in art history and an opportunity for encouraging dialogue between and among several generations of scholars.

The first three Distinguished Scholars are James S. Ackerman, Leo Steinberg, and Phyllis Pray Bober. CAA honored the current recipient, Jonathan Brown of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, at the 2011 Annual Conference in New York.

CAA held its first gathering in 1911 in Urbana, Illinois, as the College Art Section of the Western Drawing and Manual Training Association. After adopting a constitution in May 1912, the newly formed organization held its second meeting seven months later in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Subsequent Annual Conferences have been held across North America, from Boston to San Francisco, Toronto to San Antonio, and Atlanta to Seattle.

The CAA president leads the Board of Directors and represents the organization as a whole for a single two-year term. CAA’s first president, Holmes Smith, was a professor of art at Washington University in St. Louis, where he taught drawing and designed his school’s official sea in 1896. For many decades, though, an art historian led the organization—Henry Radford Hope and Lamar Dodd were notable exceptions. In 1990, visual artists began filling the role more often, with five of the last eleven presidents—including the current one, Barbara Nesin—being practitioners instead of scholars.

In the Obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. In addition to publishing a semimonthly roundup of recent deaths in the arts, CAA accepts texts written especially for the newsletter and website. Authored obituaries from mid-2008 are collected online, with earlier texts to be published over the coming months.

What is CAA doing today? Read more about important dates and deadlines for the organization’s programs, events, and services in Deadlines. Find out how you can get involved!

Image: Leo Steinberg was the 2002 Distinguished Scholar (photograph by Pamela Blackwell)

Over the summer of 2010, CAA made four new hires—two full-time and two part-time positions—and benefited from the help of several interns who worked across CAA departments. We warmly welcome the new staff members and thank the interns for their hard work.

New CAA Staff

Teresa Lopez has been CAA’s chief financial officer since June 2010. Before coming to the organization, she was controller at the Dia Art Foundation in New York and held the same position at David Zwirner and Zwirner and Wirth, two Manhattan-based art galleries. After studying engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, she took up accounting at Hunter College, City University of New York. A certified public accountant in the state of New York, Lopez has an interest in both art and art history. She succeeds Robert Wayne, who is now chief financial officer at the Palm Springs Art Museum in California.

As the new CAA office coordinator, Roberta Lawson helps route information, acts as liaison with vendors, and manages the general functioning of the office. She previously held positions at Art Crating and Crozier Fine Art, two top firms in New York’s art shipping and storage industry. Lawson has taught studio art at Rutgers University’s Newark campus and on the high school level, at Hunter College High School in New York. After completing a BFA at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, she earned an MFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Both programs were invaluable for her development as an artist, providing strong foundational and conceptual perspectives. A longtime figurative painter, Lawson is investigating the nude in an imaginative landscape in her current work, referencing myth while using color as a psychological force. She replaces Anitral Haendel, who is now pursuing an MFA at the California Institute of Arts in Valencia.

Cecilia Juan joined CAA’s Publications Department in July as data collection coordinator, where she is the primary contact for universities participating in the 2011 editions of the Directories of Graduate Programs in the Arts. A former intern at Exit Art and the New York Council for the Humanities, Juan is pursuing an MA in visual-arts administration at New York University, researching online fundraising strategies for alternative and community-based arts organizations. Before moving to New York last year, she spent two years traveling and teaching English in Japan and the Czech Republic. Juan has a BFA in photography and a BA in English from the University of Florida in Gainesville. Her position at CAA is a new one.

Elizabeth Donato is CAA’s new programs assistant, helping with various aspects of planning and preparing for upcoming annual conferences. Prior to joining the Programs Department, she was a research assistant for scholars and curators in New York; she also interned in curatorial departments at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. With a BA in art history from the University of Richmond in Virginia, Donato has begun work toward a PhD in art history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is focusing on modern and contemporary Latin American art, with an emphasis on art from the Southern Cone of South America and on socially engaged aesthetics. Donato succeeds Jeanne Jo, who is now in the doctoral program in media arts and practice at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

CAA Summer Interns

Grace Paik and Maureen Ragalie worked in the Membership, Marketing, and Development Department. Paik, a fall intern at Horton Gallery in New York, recently double-majored in art history and English at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Ragalie is currently at New York University, earning an MA in museum studies. She is also interning at the New York Public Library and Independent Curators International.

Tom Carr, a junior at Rutgers, interned in the Publications Department. In addition to studying art history, he is an accomplished viola player who performs in his school’s orchestra.

Two recent high school graduates, Amanda Morton and Tyroo Tyler, worked in CAA’s Finance Department. They participated in the Summer Youth Employment Program in New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development before heading to college this fall. Morton is enrolled at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and Tyler is attending Alfred State College, State University of New York College of Technology in Alfred.

For our one-hundredth birthday, CAA got a face-lift. And don’t we look great? You’ve probably seen our new look trickle out over the past month on CAA’s Facebook and Twitter pages, for example, and on organizational letterhead. The complete design transformation launched full throttle last Friday with a revamped homepage and changes made site-wide.

In planning the upcoming Centennial year, CAA board and staff desired to celebrate past achievements while focusing significantly on the future. The old CAA logo, used since the mid-1970s, had worn out. A fresh identity with a more creative character, we felt, would appropriately signify CAA’s leadership in our quickly changing, adaptive field.

LaPlaca Cohen, a marketing firm specializing in arts and culture, had recently assisted CAA during the 2010–15 strategic-planning process. Since that team already possessed a deep understanding of CAA’s mission, vision, history, and membership, it was only natural that they help conceptualize our new look. Tom Zetek, director of creative services and production at LaPlaca Cohen, says, “The dynamic stance of the logotype is meant to depict the progressive nature of CAA. The fluid, looping sketch element with the logo reflects the creative roots of the organization.”

CAA’s Centennial Celebration, which begins at the 2011 Annual Conference in New York and ends one year later at the Los Angeles meeting, presents you with a unique opportunity to help refine our purpose and core values, and to influence and activate everything we do. For many, CAA represents a professional community; for others, it’s a wellspring of opportunity. We’d like to know what CAA means to you. Please send your comments on CAA’s identity to centennial@collegeart.org.

This month, CAA News transforms from a bimonthly PDF download into a weekly email. The new format is an excellent way of getting compelling CAA information more quickly; it also offers news essential to your life and career as an artist or scholar. If CAA has your email address, you will automatically receive CAA News every Wednesday, beginning September 8.

Each email newsletter begins with short timely notices about CAA programs and publications, grant and fellowship opportunities, conference updates, advocacy work, and more. Links to the CAA website allow you to read the full articles, and social-networking buttons let you easily share these links with friends and colleagues.

Keeping you up to date with the larger art and academic worlds, CAA News features selected headlines from national and international newspapers and magazines on topics that matter to you: publishing and teaching, contemporary art and its practice, new art-historical research, and copyright and intellectual property, to name a few.

In addition, CAA News brings you something different each week: fresh listings from Opportunities, links to recently published reviews in caa.reviews, news from our many affiliated societies, and monthly listings of Member News, which present a record of your solo exhibitions, books published, fellowships received, and more (starting September 8). As we get closer to the 2011 Annual Conference and Centennial Kickoff, immediate updates on special events and member-discount rates will arrive in your inbox.

To keep CAA News out of your spam folder, you may need to set your email preferences to allow messages from caanews@collegeart.org. If you wish to change your email for the newsletter, or to unsubscribe from it, you can do so at http://multibriefs.com/briefs/caa/index.php. To give your email address to CAA, log into your CAA account and update your Contact Info.

Comments, questions, or suggestions? Write to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor.

The July 2010 issue of CAA News just been published. You may download a PDF of it immediately.

Introduced by Andrea Kirsh, CAA’s vice president of external affairs, the July newsletter brings you up to date on all CAA programs and services. It also includes an interview with James Sloss Ackerman, a celebrated professor of Renaissance architecture, and updates on the future of the Bibliography of the History of Art.

In addition, the July issue solicits your participation in the two upcoming Centennial Conferences in New York (2011) and Los Angeles (2012). For Los Angeles, CAA continues to accept your session proposals through an online process, and an article provides full details on the process. For New York, CAA invites artists to submit video documentation of performance work for the ARTspace Media Lounge, and the organizers of several panels—on Damien Hirst, the future of art history, and health and safety in the artist’s studio—want to hear from you.

The CAA News managing editor welcomes your submissions to the Endnotes section of the next issue. Please send listings for recent solo exhibitions, books published, and exhibitions curated, as well as news about your new position or your grant or fellowship, to Christopher Howard. Deadline: August 13, 2010.

The May issue of CAA News—which requests your participation in the two upcoming Centennial Conferences in New York (2011) and Los Angeles (2012)—has just been published. You may download a PDF of it immediately.

Although the deadline for papers for the New York conference has passed, ARTspace seeks participation from members for two events. First, CAA invites artists to submit video documentation of performance work for the ARTspace Media Lounge, on continuous view during the conference. Second, the organizers of a panel on health and safety in the artist’s studio seek presenters from diverse points of view. (See pp. 17–18 for information on both.) For Los Angeles, CAA will begin accepting your session proposals through an online process starting June 28; see pages 9–11 for full details.

Introduced by Barbara Nesin, the new president of the CAA Board of Directors, the May newsletter brings you up to date on all CAA programs and services, including a profile of Karen Lang, the incoming editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, and an announcement that CAA is reinstating its fellowships for MFA students and restoring the Millard Meiss Publication Fund.

The CAA News managing editor welcomes your submissions to the Endnotes section of the July issue. Please send listings for recent solo exhibitions, books published, and exhibitions curated, as well as news about your new position or your grant or fellowship, to Christopher Howard. Deadline extended: June 7, 2010.

Interested in advertising in CAA News? Please contact Bradford Nordeen, CAA marketing and membership assistant, at 212-691-1051, ext. 252.

The March CAA News—which presents a wrap-up of the wildly successful 2010 Annual Conference in Chicago—has just been published. You may download a PDF of it immediately.

This issue offers conference summaries from multiple perspectives by key players, including CAA’s conference director Emmanuel Lemakis, Services to Artists Committee members Brian Bishop and Sabina Ott, and more. Dawoud Bey’s keynote address at Convocation is reprinted in full, and a report from the Board of Directors meeting is also included. And don’t miss the wide selection of full-color photographs from the many conference events.

If you missed the web article on the Coalition on the Academic Workforce’s statement on part-time faculty, or the calls for editorial-board members of CAA’s journals, you can catch up with the March newsletter.

The CAA News editor is still accepting submissions for the Endnotes section for the May issue. Please send your listings for recent solo exhibitions, books published, and exhibitions curated, as well as news about your new position or your grant or fellowship, to Christopher Howard.

Interested in advertising in CAA News? Please contact Bradford Nordeen at 212-691-1051, ext. 252.

The January CAA News—the last issue before the 2010 Annual Conference in Chicago—has just been published. You may download a PDF of it immediately.

This issue announces Barbara Nesin of the Art Institute of Atlanta as president-elect of the CAA Board of Directors. The current president, Paul B. Jaskot of DePaul University, interviews her about the direction CAA may take during her two-year term.

You too can help steer CAA’s direction in the coming years. Read about the proposed changes to the CAA By-laws (pp. 12–13), cast your vote in the Board of Directors election, which ends during the Chicago conference (p. 26), and attend the Annual Members’ Business Meeting at the conference, where you can voice your concerns (pp. 24–25).

The January newsletter also contains the first of a new series of articles, entitled Centennial Celebration, that will consist of profiles and interviews with longtime CAA members. For the inaugural feature, CAA News talks to Ruth Bowman.

The deadline for submissions to the March 2010 issue is January 31; please review the guidelines before sending in your information. Questions? Contact Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor.