CAA News

The first issue of CAA News for 2009 has just been posted to the CAA website. Click on the cover to download a PDF of the issue right away. Printed copies for individual and institutional members will be mailed soon, to begin arriving in mid-January.

The January issue includes statements and biographies of the six candidates for the CAA Board of Directors for 2009–13. Please read these texts, as well as view their short video statements online, before casting your vote.

Also featured are details on the upcoming Regional MFA Exhibition at the 97th Annual Conference in Los Angeles, which features the work of student artists from twelve graduate programs in southern California.

The deadline for submissions to, and advertisements for the March 2009 issue is January 10. Please see the newsletter submission guidelines for instructions or write to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor.

CAA’s Services to Artists Committee invites artist members to participate in ARTexchange, an open forum for sharing work at the Annual Conference. ARTexchange, to be held Friday evening, February 27, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, is free and open to the public; a cash bar is available.

The space on, above, and beneath a six-foot table is available for each artist’s exhibition of prints, paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, and small installations; performance, sound, and spoken word are also welcome. Previous ARTexchange participants have found that this parameter sparked creative displays, and the committee looks forward to surprises and inspiring solutions at the upcoming conference. Please note that artwork cannot be hung on walls, and it is not possible to run power cords from laptops or other electronic devices to outlets—bring fully charged batteries.

To participate in Los Angeles, please write to the ARTexchange coordinators, with the subject heading “CAA ARTexchange.” Include your CAA member number and a brief description of what you plan to present. Please provide details regarding performance, sound, spoken word, or technology-based work, including laptop presentations. You will receive an email confirmation. Because ARTexchange is a popular venue and participation is based on available space, early applicants are given preference.

Participants are responsible for their work; CAA is not liable for losses or damages. Sales of work are not permitted. Deadline: December 15, 2008.

Photograph by Teresa Rafidi.

The honoree of the 2009 Distinguished Scholar Session is Svetlana Alpers, a historian of seventeenth-century art and professor emerita of the University of California, Berkeley. Inaugurated in 2001, this Annual Conference session pays tribute to a renowned scholar who has made significant contributions to the field.

The Distinguished Scholar Session, entitled “Paintings/Problems/Possibilities” and chaired by Mariët Westermann of New York University, centers on the art of painting. The panel—which includes Alpers, Carol Armstrong of Yale University, Thomas Crow from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, the painter James Hyde, and Stephen Melville of Ohio State University—will focus on six pictorial images proposed by Alpers. The session takes place on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 2:30–5:00 PM, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Room 502AB, Level 2.

After earning a BA from Radcliffe College in 1957, Alpers completed her doctorate in fine arts at Harvard University in 1965. She began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early sixties and remained there until her retirement in 1994.

Her books—among them The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (1983); Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (1988), which won CAA’s Charles Rufus Morey Book Award in 1990; and Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence (1994), written with Michael Baxandall—have had an enormous impact on the discipline of art history. In 1983, Alpers founded the interdisciplinary journal Representations with Stephen Greenblatt; she remains a corresponding editor to this day.

An artist and a scholar, Alpers, together with James Hyde and the photographer Barney Kulok, recently completed a series of prints, Painting Then For Now. Fragments of Tiepolo at the Ca’ Dolfin, that is based on three paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by the eighteenth-century Venetian artist Giambattista Tiepolo. An exhibition of these works was held at David Krut Projects in New York in 2007 and accompanied by a publication.

Alpers is CAA’s ninth distinguished scholar, joining a list of illustrious past honorees: Robert L. Herbert (2008), Linda Nochlin (2007), John Szarkowski (2006), Richard Brilliant (2005), James Cahill (2004), Phyllis Pray Bober (2003), Leo Steinberg (2002), and James Ackerman (2001).

Please read Mariët Westermann’s article on Svetlana Alpers and her accomplishments, which is also published in the November 2008 CAA News.

Leonardo López Luján, senior researcher and professor of archaeology at the Museo del Templo Mayor, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), in Mexico City, will deliver the keynote address during Convocation at the 2009 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. Convocation takes place at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Wednesday evening, February 25, 5:30–7:00 PM.

For nearly thirty years, López Luján has worked on the excavations of the Templo Mayor (Grand Temple), a fifteenth-century Aztec pyramid and its surroundings that are located in the heart of the Mexican capital; he has been director of the project since 1991. The temple lies beneath the Zócalo, also known as the Plaza de la Constitución, one of the largest public squares in the world.

In his talk, López Luján will focus on the most recent archaeological discoveries, while giving an overview of the history of archaeology in the Aztec capital. He will also discuss other topics, among them the recovery of the Tlaltecuhtli stone, an iconographic analysis that may unveil this sculpture’s functions and meanings, the rich offerings buried underneath it, and the possible presence of a royal tomb in this area of the sacred precinct.

For more information on López Luján, please read the CAA News biography or download Johanna Tuckman’s article, “In Search of an Aztec King,” from the Summer 2008 issue of American Archaeology.

The November CAA News has just been posted to the CAA website. Click on the cover at left to download a PDF of the issue. Printed copies for individual and institutional members will be mailed soon, to arrive in mid-November.

Read about Leonardo López Luján, the renowned archaeologist who is giving the keynote address at Convocation at the 2009 Annual Conference in Los Angeles, and about Continental Rifts: Contemporary Time-Based Works of Africa, the CAA Annual Exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum curated by Mary Nooter Roberts. The issue also contains important conference information, including how to apply to, and become a mentor for, the Artists’ Portfolio Review and Career Development Mentoring programs.

The deadline for submissions to the January issue is November 10, 2008. Please see the newsletter submission guidelines for instructions or write to Christopher Howard, CAA News editor.

CAA warmly thanks the 831 participants in a recent email survey, which was sent to 8,300 members whose database records indicate that their primary profession is: art/architectural historian, artist, administrator, curator, art-museum educator, or librarian. The results of the survey will be presented at the Board of Directors’ Strategic Planning Retreat on October 25, 2008, and will be incorporated into discussions on how to better serve all CAA members in the new strategic plan.

The survey contained one open-ended question: “What are the most pressing issues you face in your profession?” The following summary provides a synopsis of your responses, which are recorded in order of priority and frequency; many respondents gave multiple answers.

Art/Architectural Historians – 455 respondents
33% – Decrease in positions; increase in PhDs; reduction of tenured positions and increase in part-time and adjunct positions
17% – Difficulty finding publishers; insufficient number of art journals; decrease in presses publishing art history; tenure requirement for monographs vs. few presses publishing monographs
16% – Limited research funds and high cost of travel
13% – Work load vs. keeping up with the field and quality of life
11% – High cost of image reproduction; copyright restrictions
7% – Low salaries and need for pay equity
7% – Issues regarding resources and attention devoted to historical art vs. contemporary art; Western vs. non-Western art; national vs. global; traditional curriculum, research, and pedagogy vs. interdisciplinary curriculum, research, and pedagogy
7% – New technology demands: cost, training, accessibility
5% – Need for American public understanding of art and combating anti-intellectualism
4% – Viability, credibility, and relevance of art history to other disciplines

Artists – 305 respondents
40% – Earning enough to support creative work; finding jobs and job security
23% – Finding reliable galleries; support for exhibitions; support for creative work and research
19% – Need for exposure of work, networking, and negotiating the art world
17% – Low salaries and need for pay equity
13% – Reduction of tenured positions and increase in part-time and adjunct positions
5% – Maintaining art as a critical discipline on all levels of education
5% – Need for health insurance
5% – Heavy teaching load and higher expectations for productivity
5% – Need for greater preparation of entering students

Administrators – 47 respondents
45% – Decrease in federal, state, and private funding for research, travel, faculty, staff, and technology
10% – Decrease in scholarships and fellowships
10% – Reduction of full-time faculty and increase in part-time faculty
10% – Recruitment of qualified candidates for faculty positions given the expansion of disciplines and need for pedagogical expertise
7% – Decreased enrollment
6% – Need for pay equity between art historians and artists
5% – Work load vs. keeping up with the field
4% – Blurring of disciplines and need for curriculum revision; new forms of assessment

Curators – 14 respondents
44% – Financial stability of art museums; decrease in funds for research and scholarly exhibitions
19% – High stress, long hours, and diminished staff positions
15% – Devaluation of research
10% – How to communicate with the public
10% – Low salaries and need for pay equity
5% – Demands of exhibition funders

Art-Museum Educations – 6 respondents
25% – High stress, long hours, and diminished staff positions
10% – Maintaining links between museum educators and art historians
10% – Low salaries and need for pay equity
5% – Decrease in funds for public programs

Art Librarians – 4 respondents
30% – New technology equipment costs, training, and research
25% – Decreased funds for purchase of books and periodicals
10% – Recruitment of qualified candidates for staff positions

Because many respondents gave more than one answer, the percentages do not always add up to 100 percent.

The September CAA News has just been published. With the newsletter back in print, individual and institutional members will receive a copy in the mail next month; the newsletter is also available immediately as a PDF download.

The September issue celebrates the tenth anniversary of caa.reviews, the online journal that launched in fall 1998. Also, in preparation for the 2009 Annual Conference, the issue contains an article on the hottest contemporary art galleries downtown in Los Angeles, including those in Chinatown.

A number of important deadlines for participation in CAA activities also appear: calls for nominations for editor-in-chief of Art Journal and reviews editor of The Art Bulletin (September 15); for conference travel grants (September 26); for applications for graduate-student fellowships (October 1); and more.

The deadline for submissions to the November issue is September 10; please send them to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor. If you wish to receive CAA News in electronic format only, please contact CAA Member Services.

The July CAA News has been posted to the CAA website. You can download a 1.6-megabyte PDF of the issue by clicking on the cover at right.

In the issue, CAA News talks to the editors of two art magazines with roots in Los Angeles: X-TRA and Afterall. Also included are CAA’s new procedures for developing professional standards and guidelines; a report on the recent Board of Directors meeting in May; and information on registration rates for the upcoming Los Angeles conference and travel grants to attend it.

The deadline for submissions to the September issue is July 10, 2008. Please send yours to Christopher Howard, CAA News editor.

Beginning with the September 2008 issue, CAA News will once again be printed and mailed to all individual and institutional members six times a year.

In July 2007, the newsletter transformed from printed publication to a PDF document distributed online primarily to balance the previous year’s budget. The decision, made by the CAA Board of Directors, was not a permanent one.

Going from 32–48 pages to 16–24 pages per issue, the new CAA News will focus largely on organizational business, providing updates on the Annual Conference; listing individual- and institutional-member achievements; publishing calls for participation for CAA committees, editorial boards, awards committees; and more.

At the same time, CAA plans to beef up its website, with more online-only content. Former newsletter sections such as the Advocacy Update and the Obituaries, for example, will be exclusive to the web as part of a larger initiative to revamp the CAA website. We want www.collegeart.org to become an indispensable resource for artists and scholars, curators and educators, and critics and other arts professionals throughout the year.

CAA News will continue to appear as a PDF document on the website; past issues go back to March 2002. Posted at the beginning of the month of publication, the newsletter can be read immediately—before the printed publication arrives in your mailbox.

If you wish to receive CAA News in electronic format only, please contact CAA Member Services.