CAA News

CAA will present its next National Professional-Development Workshop for Artists at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), in partnership with the Baltimore Museum of Art, on Saturday, March 26, 2011. The one-day event, called “Galleries, Grants, and Networking: Effective Strategies for Artists to Make It Happen,” will address important career issues for visual artists and provide them with valuable skills, resources, best practices, and networking suggestions to help meet their professional goals.

“Galleries, Grants, and Networking” will take place 9:00 AM–5:00 PM on the MICA campus: Brown Center, Falvey Hall, 1301 West Mt. Royal Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217. Registration is free for MICA students, alumni, faculty and staff; $15 for all other participants. A limited number of stipends are available; please contact Susan Schear, CAA national workshop project consultant, at 973-482-1000 for more information.

The day will begin at 8:00 AM with registration, check-in, and an opportunity for group networking; complimentary coffee will be served. At 9:00 AM, Doreen Bolger, director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, will give a keynote presentation. Next, René Treviño will lead a panel discussion on “Leveraging Opportunities for Your Artwork” with Julie Cavnor, George Hemphill, and Jack Rasmussen. The three afternoon presentations are “Compelling Grant Writing” with Deborah Bedwell; “Maximizing Social Media and Networking” with Cara Ober; and “Realizing Your Goals” with Susan Schear.

A postworkshop reception, taking place 5:00–6:00 PM, will conclude the day’s program. Workshop participants can either bring their lunch or take advantage of a $10 all-you-can-eat buffet at MICA.

Participants from MICA and those requesting stipends must register in advance; please contact Susan Schear at 973-482-1000 and include your name, mailing address, and telephone number. All others can register and pay by credit card or PayPal. If paying with cash or by check at the door, you must still register in advance; call or email Susan Schear.

Sponsors

Established in 1826, Maryland Institute College of Art is the oldest continuously operating degree-granting school of art and design in the United States. It enrolls more than 2,000 undergraduate, graduate, and continuing-studies students and offers degrees and noncredit programs in fine art, design, electronic media, art education, the liberal arts, and professional studies. MICA has pioneered interdisciplinary approaches to art and design education, emphasizing innovation, research, and community and social engagement. The school’s alumni and programming reach around the globe, even as the school remains a cultural cornerstone in the Baltimore and Washington, DC, regions, hosting hundreds of exhibitions and events annually by students, faculty, and emerging and established artists.

The Baltimore Museum of Art is home to an internationally renowned collection of nineteenth-century, modern, and contemporary art—including the largest holding of works by Henri Matisse in the world. Among the museum’s 90,000 works are an outstanding selection of European and American fine and decorative arts; prints and drawings from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries; contemporary art by established and emerging artists; objects from Africa, Asia, the ancient Americas, and Pacific Islands; and two beautifully landscaped sculpture gardens. The museum organizes and presents a variety of dynamic exhibitions and innovative programs and hosts special events with cultural and educational partners. Thanks to extraordinary government and private support, general museum admission is free.

Founded in 1911, the College Art Association serves the needs and interests of 12,000 individual and 2,000 institutional members. It publishes two scholarly journals in art history, an online reviews journal for books and exhibitions, a weekly email newsletter, and a website with news about the organization, its members, and the larger art and academic worlds. CAA also hosts an Annual Conference for 4,000 to 6,000 artists, art historians, and students, provides career counseling, and advocates for national issues in the visual arts.

Hosted by the New York Center for Art and Media Studies (NYCAMS) in Manhattan, the College Art Association Regional BFA Exhibition celebrates current perspectives from seventeen undergraduate student artists enrolled in seven area BFA programs. Curated by John Silvis and Brent Everett Dickinson, both professors of art at NYCAMS, the exhibition demonstrates the distinctiveness of each artist’s work and cultivates an engaging conversation among the participating programs. It will be on view for three weeks: February 7–25, 2011.

The seven schools in the College Art Association Regional BFA Exhibition are: Brooklyn College, City University of New York; the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York; Long Island University, C. W. Post Campus; Pratt Institute, School of Art and Design; Purchase College, State University of New York; the School of Visual Arts; and St. John’s University.

The seventeen exhibiting artists are: Marcel Bornstein (FIT), Christina Carlsson (Brooklyn), Matthew Chavez (FIT), Theresa Daddezio (Purchase), Alexander Derwick (Purchase), Alex Gavryushenko (Pratt), Su Yeon Ihm (SVA), Saskia Kahn (Brooklyn), Elizabeth Maroney (LIU), Katherine Mias (St. John’s), Anna Niedermeyer (Pratt), Zoey B. Scheler (Pratt), Olivia Taylor (FIT), Matthew Uebbing (Pratt), Allison M. Walters (St. John’s), Samantha Wolf (SVA), and Phillip Wong (Purchase).

The opening reception for the artists, their professors, and CAA conference attendees is Friday, February 11, 6:00–9:00 PM. NYCAMS is located twenty-five blocks south of the Hilton New York, at 44 West 28th Street, 7th Floor, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. (Take the F or M train to the 34th or 23rd Street stops.) The NYCAMS gallery is open Monday–Friday, 10:00 AM–4:00 PM or by appointment. For more information, please call Janna Dyk at 212-213-8052. CAA is also sponsoring the College Art Association New York Area MFA Exhibition, which opens on the same evening at the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery.

RSVP to the exhibition on Facebook.

About NYCAMS

Affiliated with Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, NYCAMS offers a semester-long, sixteen-credit residency in art and writing for its undergraduate students. The program provides a concentrated educational experience to prepare students for an effective career in the arts. The core of its mission is to pursue excellence in all academic and artistic endeavors, and to provide a stimulating and nurturing environment that encourages the creative process. NYCAMS is committed to exploring issues in contemporary culture in a rigorous academic environment, enabling students to become astute contributors to the current cultural discourse.

Image: Alexander Derwick, Temporary Tattoos, 2011, etching, 17½ x 24 in. (artwork © Alexander Derwick)

CAA has awarded five 2010–11 Professional-Development Fellowships in the Visual Arts to artists enrolled in MFA programs across the United States. The organization has also recognized the work of five additional artists with honorable mentions.

CAA will award each fellow a one-time grant of $5,000. The fellows and honorable mentions will also receive complimentary one-year CAA memberships and free registrations for the 2011 Annual Conference in New York. In addition, Barbara Nesin, president of the CAA Board of Directors, will formally introduce and recognize the ten artists during the presentation of the 2011 Awards for Distinction, which takes place on Thursday evening, February 10, 6:00–7:30 PM, in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

CAA will publish full profiles of all ten artists later this month, with images of their recent work. Initiated in 1993, the fellowship program helps student artists and art historians bridge the gap between their graduate studies and professional careers. It is open to all eligible graduate students in the visual arts.

2010–11 Fellows

Born in Honduras, Alma Leiva is an artist working in photography, film, and installation at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. In her latest series, Celdas (Prison Cells), she builds sets in her studio that she then photographs. These absurd constructions allude to the way in which citizens in Central American, where she often returns to reseach and work, have learned to subsist within violent societies. Her next project, a documentary, will focus on how individuals cope with loss and repression in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

An MFA student at the University of California, San Diego, Sheryl Oring investigates technology and its role in society through projects that incorporate old and new media. Her work tells stories, examines public opinion, encourages civic engagement, and creates platforms for public discussion. Formerly a journalist, Oring uses the tools of that trade––camera, typewriter, pen, interview and archive—to create concept-driven photographic and video installations, performances, artist’s books, and internet-based works.

Working in new media at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Brittany Ransom probes the relationships and differences among humans, animals, and the environment in the form of interactive sculpture, possible prosthetics, wearable recording devices, and digital manipulations. Her artwork invites technology—real and imagined—to heighten a viewer’s awareness of the existence and perspectives of the world from the point of view of other species.

Currently pursuing an MFA in documentary film and video at Stanford University in California, Mina T. Son makes films on an eclectic range of topics, offering a glimpse into underrepresented and rarely seen subjects and individuals. Her thesis film, a short observational film following two Korean students who attend the California School for the Deaf, explores how each navigates the complexities of adolescence and the transition to adulthood in both deaf and Korean cultures. Watch Son’s An Architect’s Vision online at KQED Media.

Amanda Valdez, an MFA student at Hunter College, City University of New York, uses fabric, scissors, a sewing machine, and a frame as ingredients for her current body of work, which she calls Fabric Paintings. Her approach grants her a recycling-based process of invention that plays with images and material from diverse sources. These works also combine her interests in craft and abstraction, encouraging an intimate relationship with shape and line between them while pushing these forms toward the edge of their frame.

Honorable Mentions

The jury also named five artists as honorable mentions: Maria Antelman, who studies photography and video at Columbia University’s School of Fine Arts in New York; Caetlynn Booth, a painter enrolled in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey; Gregory Hayes, a painter pursuing an MFA at Brooklyn College, City University of New York; Ashley Lyon, an artist working in sculpture and extended media at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond; and Georgia Wall, who creates works in video and performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois.

Jury Members

The 2010–11 jury members are: Virginia Derryberry, professor of painting and drawing, University of North Carolina, Asheville; Dianna Frid, assistant professor in studio arts, School of Art and Design, University of Illinois, Chicago; Reni Gower, professor of art, Department of Painting and Printmaking, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond; Dennis Y. Ichiyama, professor of art and design at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana; and Maria Ann Conelli, executive director of the American Folk Art Museum in New York. As CAA vice president of committees, Conelli is a nonvoting juror.

First image: Sheryl Oring, I Wish to Say, 2010, performance at the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California (artwork © Sheryl Oring)

Second image: Brittany Ransom, Only a Mother Could Love, 2008, digital manipulations, 5 x 7 in. (artwork © Brittany Ransom)

Graduate students currently enrolled in MFA programs at twenty schools within one hundred miles of New York will participate in the College Art Association New York Area MFA Exhibition, on view February 9–April 9, 2011, at the spacious Hunter College/Times Square Gallery. Held concurrently with the 99th Annual Conference and Centennial Kickoff in New York, the exhibition marks the seventh time that Hunter College will host this expansive survey exhibition.

An opening reception for the artists, their professors, and CAA conference attendees will take place on Friday evening, February 11, 6:00–9:00 PM. Free and open to the public, the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery is located at 450 West 41st Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues—a short walk or cab ride from the Hilton New York. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday–Saturday, 1:00–6:00 PM. CAA is also sponsoring the College Art Association Regional BFA Exhibition, which opens on the same evening at the New York Center for Art and Media Studies (NYCAMS).

RSVP to the exhibition on Facebook.

Participating Schools

Participating institutions are: Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts; Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus; Montclair State University; New Jersey City University; New York Academy of Art; Parsons the New School for Design; Pratt Institute; Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts; School of Visual Arts; Temple University, Tyler School of Art; University of Connecticut, Storrs; and Yale University, Yale School of Art.

In addition, five art departments in the City University of New York system are participating: Brooklyn College; City College of New York; Hunter College; Herbert H. Lehman College; and Queens College.

Two art departments and one school in the State University of New York system are also sending artists: Purchase College, School of Art and Design; State University of New York, New Paltz; and Stony Brook University.

Hunter College Art Galleries

The Hunter MFA CAA Curatorial Committee comprises three MA students in the art-history program—Sophia Marisa Lucas, Valentina Spalten, and Annie Wischmeyer—and three MFA alumni who are adjunct faculty in the Department of Art: Selena Kimball, Eric Lee, and Nicole Tschampel.

On view at Hunter’s second space, the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, is Objects of Devotion and Desire: Medieval Relic to Contemporary Art, organized by Cynthia Hahn, professor of art history at Hunter, with the assistance of MA and MFA students from Hunter and PhD students from the Graduate Center. The exhibition sets up a dialogue between five medieval reliquaries from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and works by postwar artists such as Christian Boltanski, Hannah Wilke, and Joseph Beuys, and by contemporary practitioners Gayil Nalls, Nate Larson, and Jeffrey Mongrain, among others. Hahn also includes examples of early photography in the mix.

The Leubsdorf Gallery is located in the West Lobby at Hunter College, on the southwest corner of East 68th Street and Lexington Avenue; no admission fee is required. The exhibition dates are January 27–April 30, 2011.

CAA’s two Directories of Graduate Programs in the Arts, covering MA, MFA, and PhD programs in art and art history, are now on sale: $15 for CAA members and $20 for nonmembers, plus $4 shipping.

Published in late 2008 and early 2009, the directories remain the most comprehensive resources available for prospective graduate students in the visual arts, listing hundreds of programs in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere worldwide. CAA will introduce revised, online versions of the directories in fall 2011, with a price to be determined.

The directories come in two volumes, each sold separately: Graduate Programs in Art History includes art history, visual studies, museum studies, curatorial studies, arts administration, and library science; and Graduate Programs in the Visual Arts comprises studio art, graphic design, applied arts and design, film production, art education, and conservation. An index lists schools alphabetically and by state and country for quick reference. An introductory essay presents a detailed description of the elements of a program entry, including explanations of the various kinds of programs and degrees offered, helping place your search and selection process in context.

CAA accepts online purchases from individuals only. If you are ordering on behalf of a school, department, library, museum, or other institution, please download and complete this form and submit it via mail or fax to: CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001; 212-627-2381.

Updated on February 23, 2011.

Dissertation titles in art history and visual studies from United States and Canadian institutions, both completed and in progress, are published annually in caa.reviews, making them available through web searches. Dissertations formerly appeared in the June issue of The Art Bulletin and on the main CAA website.

PhD-granting institutions may send a list of doctoral students’ dissertation titles to dissertations@collegeart.org. Complete Dissertation Submission Guidelines regarding the format of listings are now available. CAA does not accept listings from individuals. Improperly formatted lists will be returned to sender. For more information, please write to the above email address. Deadline: January 15, 2011.

OCTOBER 28 UPDATE: Because of high demand, applications are not being accepted; please check back in December for more information.

Working as a projectionist or room monitor at the 2011 Annual Conference in New York is a great way to save on conference expenses. All candidates must be US citizens or permanent US residents.

Projectionists

CAA seeks applications for projectionists for conference program sessions. Successful applicants are paid $10 per hour and receive complimentary conference registration. Projectionists are required to work a minimum of four 2½-hour program sessions, from Wednesday, February 9, to Saturday, February 12, and attend a training meeting Wednesday morning at 7:30 AM. Projectionists must be familiar with digital projectors. Please send a brief letter of interest to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs. Deadline: January 7, 2011.

Room Monitors

Room monitors are needed for two Career Services mentoring programs (Artists’ Portfolio Review and Career Development Mentoring), several offsite sessions, and other conference events. Successful candidates are paid $10 per hour and receive complimentary conference registration. Room monitors are required to work a minimum of eight hours, checking in participants and facilitating the work of the mentors. Please send a brief letter of interest to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs. Deadline: January 7, 2011.

Space 4 Art will present a CAA National Professional-Development Workshop for Artists on Saturday, October 2, 2010, from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. The full-day event, called “The Nuts and Bolts of Professionalizing Your Art Practice,” will concentrate on career-building skills for both emerging and established artists. The San Diego Foundation is cosponsoring the workshop.

Presenters from the San Diego and Los Angeles areas will conduct the workshop, which includes these topics: “It’s All about You”; “Marketing Yourself to Market Your Art”; “Show Me the Money”; and “Getting Your House in Order to Do Business.” Karen Atkinson, an artist, curator, collaborator, and founder of GYST, will offer a lunch keynote on “Hybrid Careers.”

A light breakfast and lunch are included for participants, and a postworkshop reception will take place from 5:00 to 6:00 PM.

Registration for the workshop is first-come, first-served. The investment is $15 for students, seniors, and CAA members; $25 for all others. Stipends are available; contact Susan Schear, CAA national workshop project consultant, at 973-482-1000. You may pay by credit card or PayPal. Please make checks payable to College Art Association and mail to: CAA Workshops, Space 4 Art, 325 15th Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

CAA’s National Professional-Development Workshops for Artists, sustained by a generous grant from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, focus on supporting visual artists in underserved areas. Three additional workshops are scheduled for this fall in Portland, Albuquerque, and Birmingham.

The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque will host a CAA National Professional-Development Workshop for Artists on Saturday, October 9, 2010, from 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM. The full-day event, called “Professionalizing Your Art Practice,” will concentrate on career-building skills for both emerging and established artists.

Preceded by a keynote address from the art historian Libby Lumpkin on “The Changing Climate of the Art World,” the workshop will include these topics, each one hour in length: “CV/Résumé/Artist Statement Preparation”; “Creating a Digital Portfolio”; “Social Media: Facebook and Twitter”; and “Marketing/Self-Promotion/Networking.” A panel discussion on “Getting into Galleries” will conclude the presentations.

Registration for the workshop is first-come, first-served. The investment is $25 for students and CAA members; $40 for all others. Stipends are available; contact Susan Schear, CAA national workshop project consultant, at 973-482-1000. You may pay by credit card or PayPal. Please make checks payable to College Art Association and mail to: Dept. of Art and Art History, MSC04 2560, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131.

CAA’s National Professional-Development Workshops for Artists, sustained by a generous grant from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, focus on supporting visual artists in underserved areas. Three additional workshops are scheduled for this fall in Portland, San Diego, and Birmingham.

CAA is accepting applications from MFA students who are CAA members for the recently restored Professional-Development Fellowships in the Visual Arts. Full details, including the application form, are posted to the Fellowships section of the website.

In fall 2010, CAA will award five grants of $5,000 each to outstanding students who will receive their MFA degrees in calendar year 2011. Honorable mentions, given at the discretion of the jury, will receive a free one-year CAA membership and complimentary registration to the Annual Conference.

CAA’s Professional-Development Fellowships in the Visual Arts offer financial assistance to promising MFA candidates. Fellows are honored with grants to help them with various aspects of their work, whether it be for job-search expenses or purchasing materials for the studio. CAA believes a grant of this kind, without contingencies, can best facilitate the transition between graduate studies and professional careers.

Applications must be postmarked by Friday, October 1, 2010.

CAA hopes that Professional-Development Fellowships in Art History can again be awarded to doctoral candidates next year.