By-Law and Resolution Information
In accordance with the By-laws, Article IV, Sections 1, 2, 3, and 4:

• The Association shall hold an annual business meeting in conjunction with the Annual Conference at a place and on a date and time fixed by the Board of Directors. The purpose of the Annual Meeting is to transact such business as may come before the Meeting and to elect new Directors to the Board
• Active Members may propose resolutions for consideration at the Annual Meeting. Any such proposals must (i) be received by the office of the Executive Director no later than eighty (80) days prior to the Annual Meeting; (ii) be in proper parliamentary form; (iii) be signed by at least twenty-five (25) Active Members of the Association in good standing; (iv) be no more than three hundred (300) words in length; and (v) deal with matters relating to the purposes of the Association as set forth in Article II. The Board may also propose matters for consideration at the Annual Meeting
• The Notice of the Annual Meeting shall give notice of the date, time, and place of the Annual Meeting, the names of and other information regarding candidates for the Board of Directors, and of any resolutions or other matters to be considered at the Annual Meeting. The Notice shall be served personally, by mail or by electronic mail, to all members entitled to notice at least sixty (60) days prior to the date designated for the Annual Meeting
• At the Annual Meeting, the President shall determine the order in which resolutions or other matters may be considered. As the President may deem appropriate, resolutions from the floor may be considered at the Annual Meeting

The complete by-laws can be found online. Any proposed resolutions should be sent to: Linda Downs, c/o CAA Executive Assistant, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001, with a copy, in Microsoft Word, sent to vjalet@collegeart.org. The deadline for receipt of any proposed resolutions to be considered at the Annual Meeting is December 8, 2008.

Agenda

1. Call to Order: Paul Jaskot
2. Approval of Minutes of February 22, 2008, Annual Meeting
3. President’s Report: Paul Jaskot
4. Financial Report: John Hyland, Jr., Treasurer
5. Strategic Planning Discussion
6. Governance Task Force
7. Old Business
8. New Business
9. Results of Election of New Directors: Paul Jaskot

If you are unable to attend the Annual Meeting, please complete a proxy to appoint the individuals named thereon to: (i) vote, in their discretion, on such matters as may properly come before the Annual Meeting; and (ii) to vote in any and all adjournments thereof. In early January, CAA will either mail you a proxy and a postage-paid reply envelope (along with a ballot), or email you instructions for completing your proxy (and casting your vote) online. Your proxy must be received by no later than 5:00 PM (PST) on February 27, 2009.

Barbara Nesin, Secretary
College Art Association
November 1, 2008

During summer and fall 2008, Jean Miller, chair of the PPC-MFA Standards Review Committee, and Charles Wright, a PPC member who is also leading a discussion about the doctorate in studio art, worked on a draft of a revised MFA Standards. Last revised and approved in 1991, the document was submitted to the board by Maxine Payne, PPC chair.

The PPC-MFA Committee contacted art and design colleagues across the nation throughout the revision process to gather ideas for changes. The response was very good, with certain themes or points reoccurring. Many of those queried thought that the idea of the MFA as the terminal degree in art and design needed to be reinforced. Others found the language in the 1991 standards to be dated, so it was rewritten throughout to reflect present-day issues and concerns.

Contemporary and evolving studio practices, interpretation of ideas, and the role of art and design in innovation were all thought to be important concepts. Information about technology and experimental media, collaborative works, and interdisciplinary applications of art and design were also considered to be critical to current art practices for students in MFA programs.

Some respondents advocated for robust and comprehensive educational curricula that include critical studies, art history, and visual culture. The inclusion of statements about diversity and how curriculum must support non-Western and Western cultures was important to all.

The PPC thanks everyone who helped in the revision, in particular, Carmon Colangelo, Patricia Olynyk, Nora Sturges, Judith Thorpe, and Jim Hopfensperger.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced that Chairman Bruce Cole will leave the endowment to join the American Revolution Center as its president and chief executive officer, effective January 2009.

Appointed NEH chairman by President George W. Bush, Cole was confirmed by the Senate in 2001 and reconfirmed in 2005 for a second term. Cole is the longest serving chairman in NEH history. During his tenure, the NEH launched innovative humanities programs, including We the People and Picturing America. Under his leadership, the NEH led the application of digital technology to the humanities through its Office of Digital Humanities. The office established innovative new grant programs and formed ground-breaking partnerships with the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Cole has also worked to broaden the international reach of NEH.

The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in any language between September 1, 2007, and August 31, 2008. The finalists are:

• Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, Artisans in Early Imperial China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007)
• Jennifer A. González, Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008)
• D. Fairchild Ruggles, Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)
• Harvey Stahl, Picturing Kingship: History and Painting in the Psalter of Saint Louis (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008)

The Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for museum scholarship is presented to the author(s) of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published between September 1, 2007, and August 31, 2008, under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. The finalists are:

• Tim Barringer, Gillian Forrester, and Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, eds., Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2007)
• Wolfram Koeppe and Annamaria Giusti, Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2008)
• Terese Tse Bartholomew and John Johnston, eds., The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan (Chicago: Serindia Publications, in association with the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Kingdom of Bhutan, 2008)
• Shelley Bennett and Carolyn Sargentson, eds., French Art of the Eighteenth Century at the Huntington (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, in association with Yale University Press, 2008)

A second Barr award will be awarded, intended for but not restricted to smaller museums, libraries, or collections. It takes into consideration the size of the collection or exhibition. The two finalists are:

• Phillip Earenfight, ed., A Kiowa’s Odyssey: A Sketchbook from Fort Marion (Seattle: University of Washington Press, in association with the Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, 2007)
• Ella Reitsma, assisted by Sandrine Ulenberg, Maria Sibylla Merian and Daughters: Women of Art and Science (Zwolle, the Netherlands: Waanders, in collaboration with the Rembrandt House Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008)

Convocation at the 2009 Annual Conference takes place on Wednesday evening, February 25, 5:30–7:00 PM, in West Hall Meeting Room 502AB at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information about CAA’s Awards for Distinction, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, at 212-691-1051, ext. 248.

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.

The current Nominating Committee will select new members at its business meeting held at the 2009 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. All committee members nominate a minimum of five and a maximum of ten candidates for the board. Service on the committee also involves conducting telephone interviews with candidates during the summer and meeting at the CAA office in New York in September 2009 to select the final slate. Finally, all committee members must attend the Nominating Committee’s business meeting at the Annual Conference in Chicago to select the 2010 committee.

Nominations and self-nominations should include a brief statement of interest and a two-page CV. Please send all materials to: Mary-Ann Milford-Lutzker, Vice President for Committees c/o CAA Executive Assistant, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Materials may also be sent by email as Microsoft Word attachments to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive assistant. Deadline: January 7, 2009.

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.

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.

Americans for the Arts has issued a press release on the merger and also published two lists of frequently asked questions for its members and the general public.

The agreement promises to benefit readers and researchers, and enhance the ability of authors and publishers to distribute their content in digital form, by significantly expanding online access to works through Google Book Search, an ambitious effort to make millions of books searchable via the web. The agreement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright owners, provides an efficient means for them to control how their intellectual property is accessed online, and enables them to receive compensation for online access to their works.

To read more about this landmark settlement, visit the Authors Guild v. Google Settlement Resources Page and the Google Book Search Copyright Settlement. The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, the New York Times, and Wired all report on the story.