CAA News

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, architects, curators, teachers, dealers, collectors, philanthropists, and other important figures in the visual arts who have recently died.

• Raymond Abraham, a radical Austrian architect and a professor at Pratt Institute and Cooper Union, died on March 4, 2010. He was 77
• Earl A. Barthé, a New Orleans–based architectural plasterer who created cornices, friezes, and ceiling medallions, died on January 11, 2010, at the age of 87
• Ernst Beyeler, a Swiss art dealer and collector who sold works by Monet, Cézanne, Picasso, Kandinsky, Giacometti, and more, died on February 25, 2010. He was 88
• Michael Buhler, a British artist and a teacher at the Colchester School of Art, died on October 30, 2009, at the age of 69
• Michael Cooper, a collage artist who showed his work in New York, died on January 23, 2010, at the age of 60
• Evelyn Haas, an arts philanthropist who supported the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, died on February 3, 2010. She was 92
• Zygmund Jankowski, a New England–based painter of colorful, expressionist works, died on December 31, 2009, at age 84
• Paul R. Jones, a collector of African American art who gifted hundreds of works to the University of Delaware and thousands to the University of Alabama, died on January 26, 2010, at the age of 81
• Ruth Kligman, an abstract painter and the sole survivor of Jackson Pollock’s 1956 car crash, died on March 1, 2010. She was 80
• Edward Linde, a real-estate developer and arts philanthropist who supported the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, died on January 10, 2010. He was 68
• Fritz Lohman, cofounder of the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation in Manhattan’s SoHo, died on December 31, 2009. He was 87
• Raymond Mason, a British sculptor who worked in a narrative, realist style, died on February 14, 2010, in Paris. He was 87
• Neil E. Matthew, an artist and professor emeritus at the Herron School of Art and Design, died on January 5, 2010. He was 84
• Ursula Mommens, a British potter who worked for more than eight decades, died on January 30, 2010. She was 101
• Anita V. Mozley, a curator of photography at the Stanford Museum of Art and an expert on the work of Eadweard Muybridge, died on January 23, 2010. She was 81
• Bob Noorda, a graphic designer best known for his signs for the New York City Transit Authority, died on January 11, 2010, at age 82
• Judith Taylor, a photographer, professor, and department chair at Arcadia University, died on January 26, 2010. She was 56
• Clare Weiss, a curator of public art for the New York City Parks Department, died on January 11, 2010, at the age of 43

Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.

CAA members have elected four new directors to the CAA board for a four-year term, 2010–14:

• Peter Barnet, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Roger Crum, University of Dayton
• Jean M. K. Miller, Towson University
• Sabina Ott, Columbia College Chicago

The winners were announced by Paul B. Jaskot, CAA president, at the conclusion of the Annual Members’ Business Meeting, held on late Friday afternoon, February 12, at the CAA Annual Conference in Chicago. The above four will join the board at its next meeting, in May 2010.

The following individuals have been appointed to serve on CAA’s nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees for 2010–13. New committee members begin their terms this week at the 2010 Annual Conference in Chicago.

Committee on Diversity Practices: Kevin Concannon, University of Akron; and Zoya Kocuor, New York University. Renée Ater of the University of Maryland, College Park, was appointed chair, taking over Jacqueline Francis’s term.

Committee on Intellectual Property: Scott Contreras-Koterbay, East Tennessee State University; Karen Kelly, Dia Art Foundation; Doralynn Pines, Metropolitan Museum of Art (retired); Caitlin Shey, lawyer and consultant, New York; and Christine Sundt, University of Oregon. Kenneth Cavalier, a lawyer based in British Columbia, becomes committee chair.

Committee on Women in the Arts: Richard Meyer, University of Southern California; and Maura Reilly, independent curator, New York.

Education Committee: Teresa Lenihan, Loyola Marymount University; Cindy Maguire, Adelphi University; and Brian Seymour, Community College of Philadelphia.

International Committee: Richmond Ackam, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology; Beth Steffel, California State University, San Bernadino.

Museum Committee: Janet Marstine, Seton Hall University; and Nancy Mowell Mathews, Williams College Museum of Art.

Professional Practices Committee: James Hopfensperger, Western Michigan University; Morgan T. Paine, Florida Gulf Coast University; and Susan Waller, University of Missouri, St. Louis. Charles Wright of Western Illinois University has been appointed committee chair.

Services to Artists Committee: Sharon Louden, artist; and Vesna Pavlovic, Vanderbilt University. Brian Bishop of Framingham State College has accepted a one-year extension as committee chair.

Student and Emerging Professionals Committee: Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Vanderbilt University.

A call for nominations to serve on these committees appears annually in the July and September issues of CAA News and on the CAA website. CAA’s president, vice president for committees, and executive director review nominations in December and make appointments that take effect the following February.

For more information about the Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees, please write to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive assistant.

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, architects, scholars, teachers, collectors, filmmakers, authors, critics, philanthropists, and other important figures in the visual arts who have recently died. Of special note is William A. Peniston’s text on the art historian Karl Lunde, who passed away in late December.

• Paul Ahyi, a painter and sculptor based in Togo, Africa, who designed his country’s flag, died on January 4, 2010. He was 80
• Craigie Aitchison, a Scottish painter of dogs, still lifes, and religious scenes, died on December 21, 2009, at age 83
• Peggy Amsterdam, an arts advocate based in Philadelphia, died on December 26, 2009, at the age of 60. She was a founding member of the Cultural Data Project, which is establishing a national standard for reporting and tracking data on arts and cultural groups
• Donald S. Baker, Sr., a Chicago-based artist and teacher who explored African-American history in his wooded pieces, died on December 23, 2009. He was 72
• Bill Brooks, an auctioneer who founded Christie’s South Kensington auction house in London, died on December 9, 2009. He was 85
• Gertrude Whitney Conner, an artist and the granddaughter of the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, died on December 13, 2009
• George Dannatt, an English abstract artist and former music critic, died on November 17, 2009, at the age of 94
• Harry Diamond, a London photographer who snapped images of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and others in bohemian Soho of the 1960s and 1970s, died on December 3, 2009. He was 85
• Esther Gordon Dotson, an art historian and Michelangelo specialist who taught at Cornell University, died on October 28, 2009, at age 91. She received CAA’s Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award in 1986
• Michael Dwyer, a highly influential film critic for the Irish Times, died on January 1, 2010, at the age of 58
• Susan Einzing, a British illustrator known for her work on the children’s book Tom’s Midnight Garden, died on December 25, 2009, at the age of 87. She had taught for more than thirty years at the Chelsea School of Art
• Elizabeth Fallaize, a professor of French and women’s studies at St. John’s College and Oxford University, died on December 9, 2009, at age 59. She was a renowned authority on the books of Simone de Beauvoir
• William Gambini, an artist from the New York School of Abstract Expressionism who had settled in San Diego, died on January 3, 2010. He was 91
• Lydia Gasman, an inspiring art historian at the University of Virginia and an authority on the work of Pablo Picasso, died on January 15, 2010. She was 84
• Rupprecht Geiger, a German abstract painter who is credited with inventing the shaped canvas, died on December 6, 2009, at the age of 101
• Jennifer Jones, an Academy Award–winning actress who married the art collector and museum founder Norton Simon and later headed his foundation, died on December 17, 2009. She was 90
• Robert Kaufman, an artist and former chair of illustration at the Art Institute of Boston, died on January 8, 2010. He was 58
• Vivien Knight, curator of the Guildhall Art Gallery in London and a scholar of British painters of the Victorian era, died on December 18, 2009, at age 56
• Karl Lunde, an art historian who taught for many years at William Paterson University, died on December 27, 2009, at age 78. He also directed a gallery, the Contemporaries, in New York from 1956 to 1965
• Flo McGarrell, an artist and director of FOSAJ, a nonprofit art center in Jacmel, Haiti, died in the earthquake on January 11, 2010. He was 35. The Village Voice has also published a remembrance piece on the artist
• Yiannis Moralis, a Greek painter who was part of the “Generation of the ‘30s,” died on December 20, 2009. He was 93
• Kenneth Noland, an American artist who was a pioneer of Color Field painting, died on January 5, 2010, at the age of 85
• Laughlin Phillips, a former director of the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the museum founded by his father, died on January 24, 2010. He was 85
• Antonio Pineda, an internationally exhibited silversmith from Taxco, Mexico, died on December 14, 2009, at the age of 90
• Éric Rohmer, a film critic and filmmaker of the French New Wave best known for My Night at Maud’s, died on January 11, 2010, at the age of 89
• James Rossant, an American architect, professor, and city planner who helped design Battery Park City in Manhattan, died on December 15, 2009. He was 81
• David Sarkisyan, the former director of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow, died on January 7, 2010, at the age of 62
• Robert H. Smith, a real-estate developer and art collector who was a former president of the National Gallery of Art’s board of trustees, died on December 29, 2009, at the age of 81. The museum has also published on Smith’s work there
• Dennis Stock, a photographer of jazz musicians and actors, who took an iconic image of James Dean, died on January 11, 2010. He was 81
• Norval White, coauthor of the AIA Guide to New York City, a guide to American architecture first published in 1968, died on December 26, 2009. He was 83
• Jack Wolgin, a Philadelphian developer, banker, and philanthropist of art, died on January 26, 2010. He was 93
• Robin Wood, a film critic who wrote about Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Author Penn, and Ingrid Bergman, died on December 18, 2009. He was 78

Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.

CAA announces today the recipients of its 2010 Awards for Distinction. These annual awards honor outstanding achievements in the visual arts and reaffirm CAA’s mission to encourage the highest standards of scholarship, practice, and teaching.

CAA President Paul B. Jaskot will formally recognize the honorees and present the awards at Convocation, to be held during CAA’s 98th Annual Conference on Wednesday evening, February 10, 2010, 5:30–7:00 PM, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. The Annual Conference—hosting scholarly sessions, panel discussions, career-development workshops, art exhibitions, a book and trade fair, and more—is the largest gathering of artists, art historians, students, and arts professionals in the United States.

With these awards, CAA honors the accomplishments of individual artists, art historians, authors, conservators, curators, and critics whose efforts transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large.

Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement
Suzanne Lacy
The continuum of Suzanne Lacy’s career mirrors the history of contemporary art: performance, installation, activism, social practice, and public engagement. An internationally regarded artist whose work includes installations, video, and performance, Lacy has addressed issues of sexual violence, aging, incarceration, illness, poverty, and a range of social-justice issues for almost four decades. Beginning in the early 1970s as a student at University of California, Fresno, and then in the Feminist Art Program at California Institute for the Arts, she was an integral and pioneering member of the Women’s Studio Workshop, Woman’s Building, and other important landmarks of feminist art. Since then, Lacy has maintained a career resolute in its commitment to feminism and social change.

Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
Emory Douglas and Barkley L. Hendricks
Emory Douglas and Barkley L. Hendricks have long challenged the art world’s boundaries and received definitions in different but historically important ways. While working on opposite coasts and in different mediums, they transformed how African Americans saw themselves, and how they were seen. Emerging during the mid-1960s at a time of intense social upheaval, the two made work that was confrontational and incendiary, subversive and sly. While Douglas worked outside the confines of the art world as the Black Panther Party’s minister of culture, contributing to the Black Panther newspaper, Hendricks worked inside it without succumbing to the pressures and proscriptions against painting, particularly observational painting, and, to go one step further, portraiture.

Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art
Holland Cotter
As a staff art critic at the New York Times for more than ten years, Holland Cotter has been remarkable for his unwavering attention to the work of those less recognized—including women artists, artists of color, and artists from all five boroughs of New York—giving important visibility to work of all kinds. His subjects have ranged from Italian Renaissance painting to street-based communal work by artist collectives. Writing widely about non-Western art and culture as well, Cotter has introduced readers to a broad range of contemporary Chinese art and helped bring contemporary art from India to wider critical notice.

Frank Jewett Mather Award
Terry Smith
Terry Smith is that rare art and social historian able to write criticism at once alert to the forces that contextualize art and sensitive to the elements and qualities that inhere to the works of art themselves. His most recent book, What Is Contemporary Art? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), contains a series of interrelated essays that unpack a vast range of topics and issues and take the reader on a theoretical tour through some of the world’s most influential art museums, laying bare their conflicted missions and studying the heightening distinction, and dispute, between modern and contemporary art.

Distinguished Feminist Award
Griselda Pollock
Griselda Pollock has earned a reputation not only as an influential scholar of modern and contemporary art and cultural studies, but also as a pioneer of feminist art, scholarship, and criticism. Her writings—including her groundbreaking 1980 monograph on Mary Cassatt and the pioneering volume Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), coauthored with Rozsika Parker—have had a major influence on feminist theory, feminist art history, and gender studies. Teaching at Leeds University since 1977, she was appointed chair in social and critical histories of art in 1990 and has served as director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and History.

Distinguished Teaching of Art Award
Dean Nimmer
Dean Nimmer, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, has had a distinguished, dynamic, and astonishing career as an educator, empowering generations of artists through his enthusiasm and unbridled creativity. After thirty-four years of teaching painting, drawing, and printmaking in Boston, Nimmer thwarted all expectations for a retired professor by embarking on a second career as community arts educator, author, and provocateur. His recently published book, Art from Intuition: Overcoming Your Fears and Obstacles to Making Art (New York: Watson-Guptill, 2008), is a vehicle for him to share his wisdom with a new generation of artists and educators.

Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award
Richard Shiff
The impact of Richard Shiff, who holds the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art and directs the Center for the Study of Modernism at the University of Texas at Austin, on the teaching of art history comes not only through his many scholarly contributions to the field, but also through his extraordinary forty years of active teaching and mentorship. Students and colleagues alike praise his long and influential career, describing how he teaches art history within many contexts, weaving together elements of formal analysis, connoisseurship, and theory within the larger web of human history and experience. Shiff’s talent for merging the sometimes-uncomfortable process of learning with playfulness and adventure instills a love of discovery and thought in all who have experienced his charisma, no matter their chosen life path.

Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
Cammy Brothers
When one considers the vast bibliography on Michelangelo, it is a tribute to Cammy Brothers that her book is such a readable and masterful work of new scholarship and substantial insight into both the artist’s working methods and his modes of thinking. Remarkably erudite, Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) marshals compelling visual evidence along with literary, historical, and philosophical support on behalf of a fresh and persuasive argument.

See the shortlist for the Morey award.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award
Debra Diamond, Catherine Glynn, and Karni Singh Jasol, Gardens and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur
Gardens and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2008) documents an exhibition that dramatically debuted to wide audiences a body of nineteenth-century Jodhpur painting little known even to experts in the field. The authors Debra Diamond, Catherine Glynn, and Karni Singh Jasol, with their fellow contributors Jason Freitag and Rahul Jain, are to be commended for this publication, which makes a major contribution to the study of the art of Southeast Asia through the production of breathtaking color plates and a text that impressively grounds the work in the context of Jodhpur history and the Nath religious sect.

See the shortlist for the Barr award.

Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
Michael Schreffler, “‘Their Cortés and Our Cortés’: Spanish Colonialism and Aztec Representation”
In his methodologically sophisticated and skillfully argued article, published in the December 2009 issue of The Art Bulletin, Michael Schreffler examines a key moment of cultural exchange and the misunderstandings to which it gave rise. Bravely departing from the consensus that Spanish conquistadors’ accounts of Aztec painting they saw at Antigua in 1519 constitute objective primary evidence about Aztec art, he offers instead a complex, nuanced, yet always clear explanation of what the accounts reveal about the colonizers and their subjective attitudes toward Aztec culture.

Art Journal Award
Joanna Grabski, “Urban Claims and Visual Sources in the Making of Dakar’s Art World City”
Joanna Grabski’s fascinating and ambitious essay, published in Art Journal in Spring 2009, is rich in first-hand information from her years of experience with the artists and institutions that make up this West African metropolis. Understanding the Senegalese capital as both site for innovative art practices, research, and international exchange, the author effectively demonstrates that in the hands of the city’s artists found objects have produced artworks and environments that meld their histories with languages of local form that reverberate with each other to piercing levels of impact.

CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
David Bomford
David Bomford, currently associate director for collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum, is celebrated for more than forty years of scholarship, practical application, and leadership in the field of paintings conservation. Beginning in 1968 as an assistant restorer at the National Gallery in London, he assumed the role of senior restorer by 1974, a position he held until 2005. In the course of his work, Bomford has advanced the study of art conservation to new levels by combining science, art history, and practical conservation knowledge in his extraordinary list of publications, and by spearheading the influential interdisciplinary study of technical art history. He wrote the single-most useful book for introducing both students and the public to the profession of paintings conservation, Conservation of Paintings (London: National Gallery Publications, 1997), which has become a standard reference guide for the discipline.

For more information on the 2010 Awards for Distinction, please contact Emmanuel Lemakis, CAA director of programs. Visit the Awards section of the CAA website to read about past awards recipients.

Barbara Nesin, the department chair of art foundations at the Art Institute of Atlanta, has been elected president of CAA’s Board of Directors for a two-year term, beginning May 2010. A member of the board since 2006, Nesin has served as secretary for the past two years. She will succeed Paul B. Jaskot, professor of art history at DePaul University in Chicago, who has served as president since May 2008.

An artist and educator, Nesin says, “The work of those who make, interpret, and preserve images in our global culture has never been more important than it is now. As a visual artist who has participated in the formulation of our association’s Strategic Plan for the next five years, I am particularly excited about this opportunity to tangibly demonstrate CAA’s special commitment to expanding services to our artist members. In addition, I view the work of art historians, museum professionals, and teachers as integral and inseparable from the work of artists and designers, and will advocate on their behalf. I am also excited about CAA’s renewed focus on developing partnerships with a variety of institutions, including our own affiliated societies, in order to further CAA’s goals.”

Previous to her appointment at the Art Institute of Atlanta earlier this year, Nesin was associate professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, where she chaired the Department of Art from 2002 to 2005. Before that, she taught art at Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, Colorado—the largest community college in the state—while directing its Visual Art Program.

After receiving a BFA in 1975 from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Nesin earned an MBA in 1984 at Long Island University in New York. She worked in the financial industry for twelve years—as a registered representative of the New York Stock Exchange and a vice president and department head of pension trust administration—before attending graduate school, earning her MFA in drawing and mixed media at Indiana State University in Terre Haute in 1996.

An overarching theme in Nesin’s art is a visual bridging of cultural differences by making connections to all aspects of her mixed-diaspora heritage. While her work is clearly about cultural narratives, it is difficult to place it neatly in existing categories. Nesin comments, “Narrow definitions of identity seem outdated in this age of globalization, which follows centuries of migration, exchange, acculturation, and syncretism. We seem to have plenty of new media for deeply entrenched paradigms, and not enough truly independent thinking.” Her mixed-media paintings and drawings often include photo transfers, retablos, and installations in which she employs a strategy of métissage—“mixing” in the political sense articulated by Françoise Lionnet as a practice of cultural survival—to navigate the layered terrain of humanity.

Her work has been shown internationally, most recently in the 2009 Havana Biennial in Cuba and in Cryptablos: Creole, Black & Jewish, a solo exhibition at the Dillard University Art Gallery in New Orleans. She has also presented work in solo shows in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, and Accra, Ghana, among others, and in juried and invitational group exhibitions across the United States. She maintains her studio at the Arts Exchange in Atlanta.

Nesin has traveled to Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, including numerous trips to Haiti. Her research, which informs her creative work, has been published in Anales del Caribe, Higher Education Exchange, and the Journal of Haitian Studies. Current projects include two books in progress and a creative collaboration with English faculty from Birmingham Southern University in Alabama, funded by a grant from Associated Colleges of the South.

At CAA, Nesin was chair of the Committee on Diversity Practices (2006–9) and cochair of the Governance Task Force (2007–9), which researched and drafted the proposed changes to the CAA By-laws. She also served on the Steering Committee, which wrote the recently approved 2010–2015 Strategic Plan. As secretary of the board, Nesin served on the Executive, Finance and Budget, and Audit Committees. She was also a board member of the Haitian Studies Association from 2005 to 2009 and was the president of Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE), a CAA affiliate, for two years, following eight years of board service.

The CAA board chooses its next president from among the elected directors in the fall of the current president’s final year of service, providing a period in which the next president can learn the responsibilities of the office and prepare for his or her term.

For more information on CAA and the Board of Directors, please contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive assistant.

Artwork: Barbara Nesin, Sefarad, from the series Art in a Time of War, 2005, mixed media, 36 x 24 in. (artwork © Barbara Nesin; photograph provided by the artist)

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, architects, scholars, teachers, collectors, and other important figures in the visual arts. Of note is John Carey’s text on the artist and author Robert Kaupelis, written especially for CAA.

• Samuel Bookatz, an artist who worked in many styles and media, including oil and tempera paintings and ranging from realist to abstract, died on November 16, 2009, at the age of 90
• John Craxton, a painter who also created scenery and costume designs for opera and ballet productions, died on November 17, 2009, at the age of 87
• Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who collaborated with her husband Christo Javacheff on many environmental art projects, died on November 18, 2009. She was 74
• Luciano Emmer, a distinguished Italian cinema director best known for his many art documentaries, including a film about Pablo Picasso, died on September 16, 2009, at the age of 91
• Rachel Evans-Milne, an artist of the original YBA generation, a teacher, and a counselor of children and young adults, died in November 2009 at the age of 44
• Peter Forakis, a California-based artist known for his geometric abstract sculptures, died on November 26, 2009, at age 82. Forakis was also a founder of the Park Place Gallery in New York in the early 1960s
• Walter Grallert, an architect, architectural conservator, poet, and environmentalist, died on November 27, 2009, at the age of 79
• Claude Harrison, a painter and the author of A Portrait Painter’s Handbook, died on September 13, 2009. He was 87
• Ikuo Hirayama, a painter whose subjects involved imagery of Buddhism and the Silk Road, died on December 2, 2009, at the age of 79
• Thomas Hoving, a former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on December 10, 2009. He was 78
• Alfred Hrdlicka, an Austrian artist whose controversial works, often containing religious themes, were done in metal, paint, and pencil, died on December 5, 2009. He was 81
• Robert Kaupelis, an artist, art teacher, and author of Learning to Draw, died on June 12, 2009, at the age of 81. John Carey contributes a special text on Kaupelis for CAA.
• Michael Kidner, an English abstract painter and sculptor whose precise and hard-edged images were often at odds with the style of the New York School, died on November 29, 2009. He was 92
• Harry C. McCray, Jr., the chairman of the board of trustees at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, died on November 28, 2009, at the age of 76
• Jan Mitchell, a collector of pre-Columbian gold pieces, which he donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a founding member of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, died on November 28, 2009. He was 96
• Daniel Rowen, a modernist architect who designed houses, apartments, and commercial spaces, died on November 17, 2009, at the age of 56
• Larry Sultan, a photographer and CalArts professor who used found images from industrial and government archives for his and Mike Mandel’s book Evidence, died on December 13, 2009. He was 63
• Anna McCullough Tyler, an art historian, teacher, and artist of abstract monoprints, died on November 29, 2009, at the age of 79
• Eddy Walker, an architect who improved housing conditions and designed and renovated community buildings in Leeds, died in November 2009. He was 59
• Harry Weinberger, a painter and collector of masks, which inspired him and appear throughout his oeuvre, died on September 10, 2009. He was 85
• Malcolm Wells, an architect, writer, and teacher whose unconventional approach included designs for earth-friendly structures, died on November 27, 2009. He was 83.
• Charis Wilson, a model and the inspiration for many of Edward Weston’s photographs, died on November 20, 2009. She was 95

Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, photographers, scholars, curators, critics, dealers, collectors, and other professionals and important figures in the visual arts. Of special note is Zena Pearlstone’s text on the Native American artist Michael Kabotie.

• Sarane Alexandrian, an art historian, poet, writer, and founder of the literary magazine Supérieur Inconnu, which was dedicated to Surrealism, died on September 11, 2009, at the age of 82
• Frances L. Brody, an arts advocate, collector, and benefactor of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Gardens, died on November 12, 2009, at the age of 93
• José Cisneros, a self-taught artist best known for his pen-and-ink sketches of history and life in the southwestern United States, died on November 14, 2009, at the age of 99. He was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2002.
• Roy DeCarava, a photographer and professor of art who sought creative expression, rather than social documentary, through his photography of life in Harlem, died on October 27, 2009. He was 89
• Evelyn Hofer, a photographer of both human and architectural subjects who excelled at still, composed portraits and scenes, died on November 2, 2009. She was 87
• Michael Kabotie, a Hopi artist, muralist, jeweler, poet, and printmaker whose work promoted understanding of traditional Hopi teachings, died on October 23, at the age of 67. Read Zena Pearlstone’s text, written especially for CAA
• Wolfgang Ketterer, a German art dealer whose gallery in Stuttgart and Munich specialized in modern art, died on October 14, 2009. He was 89
• Irving Kriesberg, a figurative expressionist painter praised for his bold forms and intense colors, died on November 11, 2009, at the age of 90
• Robert Lautman, an architectural photographer whose work focuses on the use of light to capture architectural design, died on October 20, 2009, at the age of 85
• Claude Lévi-Strauss, a preeminent anthropologist whose structuralist approach influenced many writers, theorists, and art historians worldwide, died on October 30, 2009. He was 100
• A. John Poole, an architectural sculptor, letter cutter, restorer of sculpture, and teacher whose often-ecclesiastical work can be found throughout Britain, died on September 2, 2009. He was 83
• Meir “Mike” Ronnen, an art critic for the Jerusalem Post and a cartoonist known for his satirical commentary about life in Israel, died on August 30, 3009, at the age of 83
• Robert Taylor, a former chief art and book critic for the Boston Globe, died on October 25, 2009, at the age of 84
• Nick Waterlow, an art curator and the director of three Sydney Biennales whose exhibitions sought to challenge Australian and international views of contemporary art, died on November 9, 2009. He was 68
• Albert York, a reclusive artist who painted intimate landscapes and still lifes with a quiet sense of the mysterious, died on October 27, 2009, at the age of 80

Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.

Jules David Prown, a devoted teacher of the history of American art and material culture and Paul Mellon Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Yale University, will be honored at the 2010 Distinguished Scholar Session. Held at the CAA Annual Conference in Chicago, this special event takes place on Thursday, February 11, 2010, 2:30–5:00 PM in Grand EF, East Tower, Gold Level, Hyatt Regency Chicago.

Bryan J. Wolf, a professor of American art and culture at Stanford University, writes this about Prown:

His remarkable career marks the coming of age of American art history. His two-volume study of the painter John Singleton Copley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966) overturned the usual concerns of positivistic biography. His growing focus during the next several decades on the formal properties of objects, together with what he termed the system of cultural “belief” embedded within them, led to a methodological revolution that still resonates loudly in classrooms wherever American art and material culture are taught.

Please read Wolf’s article on Prown and his accomplishments, which is also published in the November 2009 CAA News.

Prown is CAA’s tenth distinguished scholar. He joins a list of illustrious past honorees: Svetlana Alpers (2009), 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).

The 2010 Distinguished Scholar Session is generously funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, curators, photographers, collectors, architects, museum directors, and other professionals and important figures in the visual arts.

• Maurice Agis, a London-born sculptor and creator of Dreamspace, an inflatable, interactive sculpture that explores color, form, movement, light and sound, died on October 12, 2009, at the age of 77
• Maryanne Amacher, a composer of site-specific sound installations that explore psychoacoustic properties, died on October 22, 2009. She was 66
• Ruth Duckworth, a modernist sculptor of abstract ceramic forms, a muralist, and a ceramics teacher at the University of Chicago, died on October 18, 2009, at the age of 90
• Amos Ferguson, a Bahamian folk artist known for his depictions of biblical scenes and of the landscape and culture of his country, died on October 19, 2009. He was 89.
• Gerald Ferguson, an artist who established the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where he taught for thirty-eight years, as a major international center of conceptual art, died on October 8, 2009, at the age of 72
• Suzanne Fiol, the founder of Issue Project Room, an art and performance space in Brooklyn, died on October 5, 2009. She was 49
• Nat Finkelstein, the house photographer for Andy Warhol’s Factory for three years in the mid-1960s, died on October 2, 2009. He was 76
• Donald Fisher, a cofounder of the Gap who collected modern art and supported the arts and civic culture in San Francisco, died on September 27, 2009, at the age of 81
• Anne Friedberg, an art historian, theorist, and teacher whose work combined media and film studies, art history, and architecture, died on October 9, 2009, at the age of 57
• Bernard Leo Fuchs, an illustrator whose works for Cosmopolitan, Sports Illustrated, and TV Guide combined realism with avant-garde techniques, died on September 17, 2009. He was 76
• Lawrence Halprin, a landscape architect whose best-known works include the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC, and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, died on October 25, 2009 at the age of 93
• Jenelsie Walden Holloway, an artist, advocate for African American art, and a teacher at Spelman College for thirty-eight years, died on October 15, 2009, at the age of 89
• Henry T. Hopkins, former director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Hammer Museum, founder of the Huysman Gallery in Los Angeles, and professor and chair of the Department of Art at UCLA, died on September 27, 2009, at the age of 81
• Barry Horn, executive director of the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in Brownsville, Texas, died on October 24, 2009. He was 59
• Michael Komechak, a teacher of English and art and a curator at Benedictine University in Illinois, where he helped to acquire over 3,700 works of art from around the world, died on August 19, 2009. He was 77
• Barbara Morris, a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum who was one of the first scholars to treat the study of Victorian art and design as an academic discipline, died on July 15, 2009, at the age of 90
• Robert M. Murdock, an independent curator and scholar of modern and contemporary art who was also a museum director and curator, died on October 8, 2009, at the age of 67
• Emile Norman, an artist and sculptor whose best-known works are the glass mosaic window and sculptural reliefs created for a Masonic temple in San Francisco, died on September 24, 2009. He was 91
• Irving Penn, a fashion photographer whose elegant, minimal works appeared in the pages of Vogue and on the walls of museums, died on October 7, 2009, at the age of 92
• Monica Pidgeon, an editor at Architectural Design who promoted the work of major modernist architects, died on September 17, 2009. She was 95
• Don Ivan Punchatz, an illustrator of novels, magazines, and the first Star Wars film poster, died on October 22, 2009, at the age of 73
• Richard Robbins, a painter, etcher, and sculptor who was the head of fine art at Middlesex University in London, died on July 28, 2009, at the age of 82
• George Sample, an architect who founded the nonprofit Chicago Architectural Assistance Center, which provided design and construction support to inner-city neighborhoods, died on October 4, 2009. He was 90
• Harry Sefarbi, a painter and teacher at the Barnes Foundation whose colorful paintings can be found in many museum collections, died on September 28, 2009. He was 92
• Charles Seliger, an Abstract Expressionist painter whose small works of imaginary forms were influenced by Surrealism and automatism, died on October 1, 2009, at the age of 83
• Nancy Spero, an artist and feminist who combined drawing, painting, collage, and printmaking to create politicized work, died on October 18, 2009 at the age of 83. She was a member of Women Artists in Revolution and a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, which promotes women’s art
• Alfred Brockie Stevenson, an American realist painter known for his nostalgic images of American life, died on September 1, 2009. He was 89
• Dietrich von Bothmer, curator emeritus of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a professor at the Institute of Fine Art at New York University, died on October 12, 2009, at the age of 91. He helped to develop the museum’s collection of Greek vases into one of the largest in the world

Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.