CAA News Today
Support CAA’s Journals through the Publications Fund
posted by Nia Page — Dec 15, 2014
This was an exciting year for CAA’s publications—for the very first time The Art Bulletin and Art Journal were published online using a multi-media platform that allows authors to include video and hyperlinks directly in their essays, and caa.reviews became fully open-access with broader interactive functionality coming soon. Most important, the journals continued to bring readers more of what they expect from the world’s leading publisher of art history journals: exceptional in-depth scholarship exploring the full range of the visual arts, in formats as diverse as long-form essays, innovative artists’ projects, and critical reviews. It is the support of readers like you that enable CAA to carry out this vital work.
Because you share our mission of advancing the highest standards of intellectual engagement in the arts, please make a tax-deductible gift to the Publications Fund today.
Here are some recent highlights from CAA publications:
In The Art Bulletin:
- Continued support of the long-form, peer-reviewed essay, including John K. Papadopoulos reinterpreting the Greek fifth-century BCE Motya Youth, Douglas Brine on the architectural and cultural context of a Jan van Eyck painting, Aaron Wile identifying a distinctly modern sense of self in Wattaeu’s fête galantes, and Joseph Siry on Frank Lloyd Wright’s theater for Dallas
- In the recurring “Whither Art History?” Cheng-Hua Wang examines artistic interaction between China and Europe in the early modern period
- Reviews of books on a wide variety of topics, from Maya art to sixteenth-century sculpture in Florence, from the politics of Mughal architecture to the materiality of color
In Art Journal:
- Projects by artists such as the sculptor Conrad Bakker, the British animator Jonathan Hodgson, and Karen Schiff, whose colorful drawings intervened in the very fabric of the printed journal
- A forum devoted to conceptual art in Latin America in the 1970s, a time of political oppression and upheaval, featuring four essays in the original Spanish and Portuguese with facing-page English translations
- The journal’s open-access website relaunched with a new name, Art Journal Open, and a new editor, the new-media scholar and curator Gloria Hwang Sutton
- Reviews of monographs on the artists Forrest Bess; books by Claire Bishop, Tom Finkelpearl, and Lev Manovich; and a Le Corbusier exhibition at MoMA
In caa.reviews:
- New Field Editor position established for reviews covering Digital Humanities and Art History
- Over 150 book and exhibition reviews across many subject areas and geographic regions
With your support, CAA publications will continue to delight, challenge, and engage readers for many years to come. Contributors who give at a level of $250 or higher are prominently acknowledged in the publication they support for four consecutive issues, as well as on the publication’s website for one year and through CAA News. On behalf of the scholars, critics, and artists who publish in the journals, we thank you for your continued commitment to maintaining a strong and spirited forum for the visual-arts community.
With best regards,
Suzanne Preston Blier
Vice President for Publications
Fall 2014 Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award Recipients
posted by Christopher Howard — Dec 03, 2014
CAA has announced the four recipients of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award for fall 2014. Thanks to a grant of $60,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CAA is supporting the work of emerging authors who are publishing monographs on the history of art and related subjects.
The four Meiss/Mellon grantees for fall 2014 are:
- Amy R. Bloch, Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise: Humanism, History, and Artistic Philosophy in the Italian Renaissance, Cambridge University Press
- Susan Cahan, The Politics of Race in American Museums, 1966–1972, Duke University Press
- Maggie Popkin, The Architecture of the Roman Triumph: Monuments, Memory, and Identity, Cambridge University Press
- Akiko Walley, Constructing the “Dharma King”: Hōryūji Śākyamuni Triad and the Birth of the “Prince Shōtoku Cult,” Brill
The purpose of the Meiss/Mellon subventions is to reduce the financial burden that authors carry when acquiring images for publication, including licensing and reproduction fees for both print and online publications.
Humanities E-Book Releases Round 11: Available to CAA Members
posted by CAA — Oct 14, 2014
The American Council of Learned Societies Humanities E-Book (HEB) released Round 11 of their online collection this August. These 353 titles bring the total of the volumes in the collection to 4,315. The new round includes additional titles from two of HEB’s original publishing partners, Oxford University Press and Harvard University Press, as well as books from new partners such as University of Toronto Press and Michigan State University Press.
All the titles in Humanities E-Book are available to College Art Association members. The American Council of Learned Societies Humanities E-Book (HEB) makes individual subscriptions available through standing membership in any of the 72 ACLS constituent societies.
The subscription offers unlimited access to 4,315 cross-searchable, full-text titles across the humanities and related social sciences. The titles in HEB have been selected and peer reviewed by ACLS constituent learned societies for their continued value in teaching and researching. The collection comprises both in- and out-of-print titles ranging from the 1880s through the present, and includes many prize-winning works. It also includes special series such as the Records of Civilization: http://www.humanitiesebook.org/the-collection/series_ROC.html and the College Art Association Monographs: http://www.humanitiesebook.org/the-collection/series_CAA.html.
Individual subscriptions are ideal for those whose school might not yet have an institutional subscription to HEB or for individual members of a learned society who might not be affiliated with a subscribing institution. (A full list of subscribing institutions can be found on the HEB website, at http://www.humanitiesebook.org/subscriptions-pricing/subscribing-institutions.html.) Individual subscriptions are USD $40.00 for a twelve-month subscription, and College Art Association members can sign up via the HEB website: http://www.humanitiesebook.org/subscriptions-pricing/individuals.html.
For more information about individual subscriptions, contact subscriptions@hebook.org.
David Rosand: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Sep 19, 2014
Paula Carabell received her PhD from Columbia University in 1994 with a dissertation on the work of Michelangelo and Titian. She has published on Renaissance and contemporary art and currently teaches at Pratt Institute.
David Rosand
It is with great sadness that I write that David Rosand, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History Emeritus at Columbia University, died on August 8, 2014, at the age of 75. Known for his work on Titian and Veronese and for his breadth of knowledge in the field, he maintained a long association with Columbia, which he attended as both an undergraduate and a graduate student, subsequently joining the faculty of the Department of Art History and Archaeology in 1964, where he remained until he taught his last class in 2013. Rosand’s many students will remember him as a kind, generous, erudite, and elegant scholar who extended his expertise and help even to those whose areas of research went beyond his own field, the Italian Renaissance.
Rosand was, above all, a passionate and dedicated advocate of the art of Renaissance Venice, An active member of Save Venice, he served on the foundation’s board of directors from 1998 onward and acted as project director from 2003 until his death. So that future generations might also come to know and love Venice, he was instrumental in acquiring the residence of one his own mentors and colleagues, Michelangelo Murano, past director of the Ca’ d’Oro museum, which now serves as the Columbia University Center for Study in Venice at Casa Murano. This seems a fitting legacy for one who, as a graduate student, expressed concern to his teacher, the legendary Rudolf Wittkower, that Venice was sinking—to which Wittkower replied, “Tsk, tsk, it will be there as long as you need it.” And thankfully for all who heard him lecture or who read his work, so it was.
It was, of course, to the art of Titian that he dedicated the largest part of his career. As an undergraduate at Columbia in the 1950s, Rosand, who had been an editor and cartoonist for the school’s humor magazine the Jester, had considered becoming a painter and, as such, would have become part of the Abstract Expressionist movement. This, however, never came to pass despite encouragement and an offer of studio space from his undergraduate mentor. In an oft-repeated story, Rosand recalled that “the prospect of being alone with a canvas so frightened me that I came back and threw myself into art history.” It was, however, the idea of the brushstroke and the painterly gesture that ultimately stayed with him, and the transition from the New York School of painting to the art of the Serenissima proved to be a natural one. As the artist Willem de Kooning had pointed out, “flesh is the reason that oil paint was invented,” and Rosand explored this notion most thoroughly in the work of Titian. Standing with him once at the Titian, Prince of Painters exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, I marveled at how intensely he searched the surface of the canvas, how he seemed to perceive nuances of painterly gesture that it appeared only he could see. And indeed it was the interaction of oil paint and canvas, of pen and paper, of chisel and stone, to which Rosand always returned. His injunction to “always start with the object” proved to be sound advice in an age of art-historical scholarship that all too often turned to issues that seemed to eschew the very act of image making.
David Rosand at the Accadenua Gallery in Venice
Rosand was an eloquent writer who instilled in his students an appreciation for the poetic aspects of both word and image. Whether it was about Titian’s sensual poesia created for Philip II or the final Pietà that the artist had intended for his own tomb, Rosand made one aware of the deeper levels of meaning that adhered to the work itself, most notably, the pathos inherent in the art of painting.
It is to that sense of pathos that we return upon his passing. It is not only that we will be deprived of further publications like his many contributions to scholarly journals or such major works as Painting in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto (1982), The Meaning of the Mark: Leonardo and Titian (1988), and Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (2001), plus important monographs on Titian and Veronese, but to the man himself. To those who knew him, we will miss the way that Rosand seem to glide through the halls of Schermerhorn, how in the classroom his lectures seemed to meander in an evocative circle of images and ideas and then culminate in a burst of wisdom and insight, and, of course, his favorite call to arms, “coraggio,” when we began to question our own work.
Rosand was accorded many honors and earned the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates in 1997 and the Award for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum from the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia in 2000. He received recognition from such organizations as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In May 2014, Rosand was awarded the degree of doctor of letters, honoris causa, from Columbia to recognize his many contributions to the field of art history and to the life of the university.
David Rosand, who died of cardiac amyloidosis, is survived by his wife Ellen Rosand, professor of music at Yale University; by his sons Jonathan, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Eric, a senior counterterrorism policy official at the US State Department; and by five grandsons. He will be greatly missed by the many whose lives he touched.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 09, 2014
Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Who Ought to Underwrite Publishing Scholars’ Books?
At almost any gathering of academic publishers or librarians, you’ll hear someone float the idea—sometimes phrased as a question—that the model for publishing scholarly monographs is broken. Two sets of ideas aired at the Association of American University Presses’ recent annual meeting don’t say the model is damaged beyond repair. But the proposals, both from groups outside the university-press community, suggest that it needs to be retrofitted, at the least. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
We Should Allow Failing Arts Organizations to Die
Arts organizations are already dying. In Detroit, in New York City, in the United Kingdom. From operas to art galleries. This is no longer an urban versus rural debate. A nonprofit versus for profit debate. A “one discipline is dying” but “others are inexplicably thriving” debate. This is a simple acknowledgement that the industry is in decline. And I think that not only should we allow it, we should encourage it. (Read more from Medium.)
Race, Gender, and Academic Jobs
I am currently the lowest-paid tenure-track faculty member in my department and was told by the man paid to manage me that if I wanted a raise I would probably need to get a new job or at least an offer that might prompt a counteroffer. So I went on the job market and was lucky enough to score a campus interview for an assistant professor position at a liberal arts college in an ideal location. Let’s just call this place Rich Liberal Arts College. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Does the Mojave Desert Need an Artist-Built Swimming Pool? Maybe
The art world loves a work of art that requires trekking to a remote location. There’s Spiral Jetty, one of the most iconic pieces of land art in existence, on the northern shores of the Great Salt Lake. New Mexico has Lightning Field, Walter de Maria’s installation of four hundred stainless-steel poles that serves as Minimal sculpture at most times and a veritable light show during lightning storms. These experiences are about long journeys, landscape, and meditation. Now there’s another piece to add to this list: Social Pool by the Austrian artist Alfredo Barsuglia, who was a resident at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
At Mellon, Signs of Change
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has a reputation for moving in mysterious ways. For forty-five years, it has steadily handed out money—lots of it—to sustain the humanities and the performing arts. As times have gotten tougher, Mellon’s deep pockets have become increasingly important. The foundation tends to attract an unusual level of anxiety and interest, like a rich uncle whose quirks and whims keep poorer relations on their toes. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
When Copy and Paste Reigned in the Age of Scrapbooking
Cutting, pasting, collating—this feels like a new behavior, a desperate attempt to cope with a radical case of information overload. But it’s actually a quite venerable urge. Indeed, back in the nineteenth century we had a similarly intense media barrage, and we used a very similar technology to handle it: the scrapbook. (Read more from the Smithsonian.)
By Design
There are toxic words in every field and, when it comes to design, two of the most ominous are “sculptural” and “artistic.” Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with design projects exhibiting either quality, but those that are described as doing so seldom do. Instead, they are likely to be any or all of the following: bland, silly, blingy, pretentious, shoddy, derivative, ugly, ridiculous, or unjustifiably expensive. (Read more from Frieze.)
Make Sure the Artists Are on Board
The artist-trustees at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles—John Baldessari, Catherine Opie, Barbara Kruger, and Ed Ruscha—went from filling what could have been seen as symbolic posts, demonstrating the museum’s commitment to living artists, to playing a critical role in the museum’s recent public-relations crisis and its recovery-in-progress. Other contemporary art museums are also making space for at least one artist on their boards. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Two Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Awards for Spring 2014
posted by Christopher Howard — Jun 17, 2014
CAA is pleased to announce the two recipients of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award for spring 2014. Thanks to a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CAA is supporting the work of emerging authors who are publishing monographs on the history of art and related subjects.
The spring 2014 grant recipients are:
- Sonal Khullar, Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930–1990, University of California Press
- Pepper Stetler, Stop Reading! Look! Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book, University of Michigan Press
The purpose of the Meiss/Mellon subventions is to reduce the financial burden that authors carry when acquiring images for publication, including licensing and reproduction fees for both print and online publications. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information. Deadline for the fall 2014 grant cycle: September 15, 2014.
Affiliated Society News for May 2014
posted by CAA — May 09, 2014
American Council for Southern Asian Art
The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) invites you to visit its newly updated website, where you can browse calls for papers, job and fellowship listings, and, for members, recent and past issues of the ACSAA Bulletin. Please send news and postings for the website to ACSAA’s webmaster, Cathleen Cummings.
Please also watch the ACSAA website and listserv for news about upcoming elections. ACSAA will be voting on new board members, changes to membership fees, and several other initiatives. You must be a member in good standing to be eligible to cast your vote. Help shape the future of ACSAA.
Association of Art Historians
The Association of Art Historians (AAH) has announced that Christine Riding is the new AAH chair, serving a three-year post. She takes over from Alison Yarrington. Riding is senior curator and head of art at the Royal Museums Greenwich in London. Previously she was curator of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art at Tate Britain and held curatorial positions at the Palace of Westminster, Museum of London, and the Wallace Collection. Riding has lectured and published widely on the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art and has organized a number of international exhibitions at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Her current projects include curating Turner and the Sea, a major exhibition that opened at Greenwich in November 2013. She also served as an AAH trustee between 2004 and 2007 and was deputy editor of Art History between 2007 and 2012. Riding has participated on the Clore Leadership Programme and was recently appointed as an impact assessor for REF2014.
Community College Professors of Art and Art History
The Community College Professors of Art and Art History (CCPAAH) had a successful session at this year’s CAA Annual Conference in Chicago. “Starting the Conversation: Engaging Students in the Studio and Art History,”chaired by Susan Altman of Middlesex County College, featured: Tyrus Clutter, College of Central Florida, “Flipping the Classroom with Digital Demonstrations”; Monica Anke Hahn, Community College of Philadelphia, “Virtual Engagement: Conversations in Online and Hybrid Classes”; and Julianne Parse Sandlin, Portland Community College, “Low-Tech Engagement: Art History and the Class Discussion.” The prospectus for next year’s conference session will be posted later this spring on CCPAAH’s Facebook page. To become more involved in the organization, please email ccpaah@gmail.com.
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education
The next biennial conference of Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE), called “Tectonic Shifts” and hosted by the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, will be held March 25–28, 2015. The event will take place in the heart of downtown Indianapolis at the Westin Hotel Indianapolis, which just completed a $14 million renovation. You can access hotel registration information via the FATE website.
FATE’s Programming Committee is now reviewing the call for session proposals. While the call for sessions is now closed, a call for papers was sent in April 2014. Approximately one hundred sessions will run during the three-day conference. Papers will be accepted from all who contribute to the foundation experience. The “Tectonic Shifts” FATE members exhibition will take place in one of Indianapolis’s most respected exhibition venues, the Herron School Art and Design Galleries. A call for exhibition entries will go out in mid-May. The conference keynote speaker is Wayne White, an American artist, art director, illustrator, puppeteer, and much, much more.White has traveled the country delivering an incredibly entertaining hour-long talk in which he discusses his life and work, while making time for banjo and harmonica playing.
Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture
The Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture (HGCEA) has elected a new board of directors for a three-year term, 2014–17. They are: Marsha Morton, president; Jay Clarke, secretary; Jim Van Dyke, treasurer; Elizabeth Cronin, web manager; and Keith Holz, Karla Huebner, Juliet Koss, and Elizabeth Otto, at-large members.
Historians of Netherlandish Art
The Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) will hold its next conference June 5–7, 2014, in Boston, Massachusetts. The event will be held in cooperation with the American Association for Netherlandic Studies and involve sessions and workshops with focus on Netherlandish art from 1350 to 1750. Please see the HNA website for more information.
The next formal deadline for submitting manuscripts to the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, HNA’s peer-reviewed, open-access ejournal, is August 1, 2014. In addition to longer articles, the journal welcomes shorter notes on archival discoveries, iconographical issues, technical studies, and rediscovered works. For submission guidelines, see the journal’s website or contact Alison Kettering, senior editor, at aketteri@carleton.edu or aketteri@jhna.org for more information.
International Association of Art Critics
The United States chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) will hold its awards ceremony and dinner to honor the best exhibitions that opened between January and December 2013 at the studio of Izhar Patkin in New York on Monday, May 12, 2014, 6:00–9:00 PM.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) invites scholars in Italy this spring to attend the fifth annual IAS/Kress Lecture in Italy by Jean K. Cadogan, professor of fine arts at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, whose paper is titled “‘Maravigliose istorie’: The Mural Decoration of the Camposanto in Pisa.” Cadogan will share her intriguing work on the multiphase, comprehensive program of painting on the walls of the Camposanto in a presentation on May 27, 2014, at the Gipsoteca of the Università di Pisa. See the IAS website for details.
In addition, the IAS website publishes information about the organization’s activities at the upcoming forty-ninth International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, taking place May 8–11, 2014. IAS will hold a business meeting at 5:30 PM on Thursday, May 8 (in Valley II, Garneau Lounge), plus three IAS-sponsored sessions (all in Bernhard 209) and an IAS reception (in the second floor lobby of Bernhard) at 5:30 PM on Friday, May 9. All members and prospective members are welcome!
National Art Education Association
The National Art Education Association (NAEA) is accepting proposals for presentations for the 2015 NAEA national convention, to be held March 26–28 in New Orleans, Louisiana. You must be an NAEA member to submit a proposal. The deadline is May 15, 2014.
NAEA also announces two new publications: Practice Theory: Seeing the Power of Art Teacher Researchers and Purposes, Principles, and Standards for School Art Programs.
Studies in Art Education, the NAEA’s professional refereed journal, is a quarterly publication that reports quantitative, qualitative, historical, and philosophical research in art education. View a sample digital issue. The cost for a one-year subscription is $20 for NAEA members, $30 for nonmembers, and $45 for Canadian/foreign subscriptions.
NAEA announces SummerVision DC: Hands-On Learning in Art Museums. Choose from two sessions: July 8–11, 2014, or July 22–25, 2014. Now in its fifth year, NAEA SummerVision DC is an annual event offered by NAEA in partnership with Washington, DC–area art museums. Upon completion of the program, participants will receive a certificate of participation with thirty clock hours of professional development. The cost is $495 (NAEA members) and $549 (nonmembers). Each session is limited to twenty-five participants.
New Media Caucus
The New Media Caucus (NMC) has announced the results of its recent board and officer elections. The NMC board of directors voted to add two new officer positions to its Executive Committee: chair of the Communications Committee and chair of the Events and Exhibitions Committee. A. Bill Miller, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater, joins the board and begins a one-year term as the chair of the Communications Committee. Joyce Rudinsky, associate professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, was voted as the chair of Exhibitions and Events Committee. NMC also welcomes new and reelected board members: Barbara Rauch, Kevin Hamilton, Joshua Selman, A. Bill Miller, Rachel Clarke, and Mat Rappaport. Rappaport was reelected as secretary, and Vagner Whitehead, associate professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, begins his term as the fourth NMC president.
The NMC board would like to thank its former president, Paul Catanese, for his leadership over the past six years. Under his tenure NMC has grown into an organization of over nine hundred members and developed annual programming that highlights the practice and scholarship of new-media art and theory. He now sits on the Executive Committee as immediate past president. NMC also wants to thank board members whose terms have ended for all the work they have done in the past years: Mike Salmond, Dima Strakovsky, Leslie Raymond, and Gwyan Rhabyt (president emeritus). Finally, NMC thanks the members of the Nominations Committee who oversaw the election: Mina Cheon, Meredith Hoy, and Mat Rappaport.
Pacific Arts Association
The conference of the European chapter of Pacific Arts Association (PAA) was held April 24–26, 2014, at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum-Cultures of the World in Cologne, Germany. The conference coincided with the exhibition Made in Oceania: Tapa – Art and Social Landscapes. Learn more about conference registration, programs, accommodations, and special events on the PAA website.
Public Art Dialogue
At CAA’s 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago, Jack Becker received the 2014 Public Art Dialogue Award for Achievement in the Field of Public Art. In honoring his thirty-five years of service to the profession, Harriet F. Senie, cochair of Public Art Dialogue (PAD), observed, “I don’t think there is anyone in the field who has done more to legitimize the field of public art than Jack Becker. I can’t begin to imagine where we would all be without the Public Art Review and its ongoing response to and expansion of our enterprise.”
A CAA session on “Public Art and Its Role in Placemaking from an International Perspective” featured the speakers Marisa D. Lerer, Norie Sato, and Jack Becker. Chaired by Erika Doss, another session, “Vandalism, Removal, Relocation, Destruction: The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence,” featured the following presentations: “Yankees, Automobiles, and Other Hazards: Shattered Monuments and the Problem of Confederate Memory,” by Sarah Beetham; “Marking Memory: Ambiguity and Amnesia in the Monument to Soviet Tank Crews in Prague,” by Jenelle Davis; “Maintaining Problematic Public Art,” by Christine Young-Kyung Hahn; “Distant Stars, Black Holes, and Burned Out Sculptures: Media Obsolescence and the Trouble with Public Art,” by Julia E. Marsh; and “The Sordid Pasts of Public Art and How We Go About Protecting Them,” by Michele Bogart.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) is accepting proposals for its 2015 conference, “Atmospheres: Climate, Equity, and Community in Photography.” Topics may include but are not limited to: image-making, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. SPE membership is required to submit; proposals are peer reviewed. Proposals are due by June 1, 2014. Visit the SPE website for full proposal guidelines.
SPE is pleased to announce these award opportunities:
- Future Focus Project Support Grant: Established to recognize exceptional photographic work, this $5,000 grant is partially funded by the SPE Future Focus Campaign. The recipient also receives a complimentary one-year SPE membership and two years of conference registration
- Honored Educator Award: Bestowed upon a career educator recognizing significant contribution to the field of photographic education. The recipient receives a lifetime SPE membership and a $1,000 honorarium
- Insight Award: Given to up to five members annually who demonstrate excellence in innovative teaching, sustained mentoring of colleagues or students, broad contribution to technical, critical, pedagogical, or visual aspects of the field, breadth or depth of exhibition or publication, and/or sustained presence in the field
Applications and nominations are due by July 1, 2014. Visit the SPE website for more information about these awards.
Society of Architectural Historians
The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) is accepting applications for its 2014 SAH/Mellon Author Awards, designed to support emerging authors publishing monographs on the history of the built environment who are responsible for paying for rights and permissions for images in their publications. The deadline is June 1, 2014.
SAH is also accepting abstracts for papers for its sixty-eighth annual conference, taking place April 15–19, 2015, in Chicago, Illinois. Abstracts may be submitted for one of the thirty-two thematic sessions or for an open session. The deadline to submit is June 6, 2014. Visit the SAH website for details.
Carolyn Garrett has been named SAH development director. She has over twelve years of experience in resource development and previously held positions at Changing Worlds and Chicago Foundation for Women.
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) seeks proposals of papers for its sponsored session, “Reconsidering Art and Politics: Toward New Narratives of Russian and Eastern European Art” at CAA’s 2015 Annual Conference in New York. The session aims to move beyond conventional binary narratives of art and power by inviting papers that challenge these interpretations and highlight the complexity of artistic responses produced at the nexus of aesthetics and politics. The chairs seek historically grounded case studies of Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian art from the Byzantine era to modern times that productively explore these issues. Interested contributors should see CAA’s 2015 Call for Participation and send proposals with other required materials to the session’s cochairs, Galina Mardilovich and Maria Taroutina. The deadline for proposals is May 9, 2014.
SHERA is delighted to welcome two new institutional members: the Russian American Cultural Center, an organization that sponsors exhibitions, arts events, and scholarly symposia in the greater New York area; and Centro Studi sulle Arti della Russia in Venice, Italy, a center for the research and study of Russia’s rich cultural heritage.
Southeastern College Art Conference
The Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) has announced the newly elected members of its board of directors: Sandra Reed, Savannah College of Art and Design; Reni Gower, Virginia Commonwealth University; and Ria O’Foghludha, Whittier College were reelected to a three-year term. In addition, Heather Stark of Marshall University and Ute Wachsmann-Linnan of Columbia College were elected to a three-year term.
The new issue of the Southeastern College Art Conference Review has been published. It is volume 17, number 3, 2013.
Visual Resources Association
The 2014 Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management (SEI) will be held June 10–13 at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. This intensive workshop features a curriculum addressing the latest requirements of today’s visual-resources and image-management professionals. Expert instructors will cover: intellectual-property rights; digital imaging and digital preservation; metadata and cataloging; project management; and professional development. SEI is open to all individuals interested in visual resources and image management. Past participants have included: current graduate students and recent graduates; visual-resources professionals; information, library, and museum professionals; art historians; and digital-collection managers.
Founded over ten years ago, SEI is a joint project of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF). SEI provides information professionals with the information and experience needed to stay current in a rapidly changing field, and significant networking opportunities. Registration for members of VRA or ARLIS/NA and University of Illinois staff and students is $595; registration for nonmembers is $675. For more information or to register, visit the SEI website.
Fall Winners of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award
posted by Christopher Howard — Dec 16, 2013
CAA is pleased to announce the two recipients of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award for fall 2013. Thanks to a grant of $60,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CAA is supporting the work of emerging authors who are publishing monographs on the history of art and related subjects.
The fall 2013 grant recipients are:
- Sarah Hamill, David Smith in Two Dimensions: Photography and the Matter of Sculpture, University of California Press
- Ara H. Merjian, Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City, Yale University Press
The purpose of the Meiss/Mellon subventions is to reduce the financial burden that authors carry when acquiring images for publication, including licensing and reproduction fees for both print and online publications.
Dmitrii V. Sarabianov: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Aug 21, 2013
Alison Hilton is Wright Family Professor of Art History at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Dmitrii V. Sarabianov, a Russian art historian and a specialist on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, died in Moscow on July 19, 2013. He was 89 years old. Sarabianov was one of the great art historians of his generation, those who began their scholarly careers during and following World War II.
Born on October 10, 1923, into the family of a Marxist philosopher, Sarabianov showed an early interest in the arts, especially poetry and music, as well as camping and athletics. Soon after he began his undergraduate studies in 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. He joined the army to serve as a translator, was wounded twice, and received several medals for military merit. After the war Sarabianov completed his undergraduate work at Moscow State University and was admitted into the school’s graduate program in art history, earning his candidate’s degree in 1952.
In 1954 he began work at Moscow’s prestigious Institute of Art History, first as a senior researcher and later as deputy director. From 1966 to 1996 Sarabianov taught and served as the head of the Art History Department at Moscow State University. He earned his doctorate in 1971. (In Russia this signifies substantial scholarly achievement beyond the candidate’s degree; it is roughly equivalent to full professorship.) Sarabianov became a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1987 and was elected to the rank of academician five years later.
Sarabianov was an inspiring teacher and mentor whose influence guided the careers of many Russian academics and museum scholars for several generations. Even for those who did not encounter him directly, Sarabianov’s publications—numbering more than 360 books and articles—set a standard for scholarship recognized both in Russia and abroad. Subjects of his monographs, many of them translated, include important nineteenth-century artists, among them Pavel Fedotov, Orest Kiprenskii, Aleksei Venetsianov, Ilya Repin, and Valentin Serov, as well as key figures in early-twentieth-century art such as Vasilii Kandinsky, Pavel Kuznetsov, Robert Falk, Liubov Popova, and Kazimir Malevich. What distinguishes Sarabianov’s work is the scope and originality of his interpretations of Russian art movements. He was among the first to write about Russian nineteenth-century painting in relation to European art, and he published a path-breaking study of international Art Nouveau in 1989. His book Russian Art: From Neoclassicism to the Avant Garde 1800–1917 (1990) is considered the fundamental text on the subject.
Sarabianov always took his civic responsibility as an academic very seriously. He spoke up at meetings, defended intellectual freedom, and voted on policy questions. In 2005, he and colleagues in Moscow’s major museums and other art institutions created the National Organization of Art Experts (NOEXI) to monitor and cope with the unprecedented demands of the chaotic art market in Russia and to establish means of ensuring professional credibility and trust.
Regarded by his peers, his former students, and his readers as a scholar of absolute integrity, Dmitrii Sarabianov will be missed most for his immense charm and kindness. He is survived by his wife, Elena Borisovna Murina, and his sons, Andrei and Vladimir Sarabianov.
Inaugural Recipients of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award
posted by Christopher Howard — Jun 05, 2013
CAA is pleased to announce the five inaugural recipients of the new Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award. Thanks to a one-year grant of $60,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CAA will provide funds to emerging authors who are publishing monographs on the history of art and related subjects. The purpose of the subventions is to reduce the financial burden that authors carry when acquiring images for publication, including licensing and reproduction fees for both print and online publications.
The winning books for spring 2013 are:
- Claudia Brittenham, The Cacaxtla Paintings: How Art Shaped the Identity of an Ancient Central Mexican City, University of Texas Press
- Chelsea Foxwell, In Search of Images: Kano Hogai and the Making of Modern Japanese-Style Painting, University of Chicago Press
- Jesse Locker, “The Hands of Aurora”: Artemisia Gentileschi and Her Contemporaries, Yale University Press
- Megan R. Luke, Kurt Schwitters: Space, Image, Exile, University of Chicago Press
- Karl Whittington, Body-Worlds: Opicinus de Canistris and the Medieval Cartographic Imagination, Press of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
Successful applicants are emerging scholars who are under contract with a publisher for a manuscript on art history or visual studies. For full details on the grant, please review the Application Guidelines and the Application Process, Schedule, and Checklist. Fall deadline: September 15, 2013.