CAA News Today

American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works

The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) has partnered with the Smithsonian Institution and the US Committee of the Blue Shield to help recover cultural and historic artifacts damaged by the earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010. Since April, volunteer AIC conservators, initially only members of the AIC Collections Emergency Response Team, have been working at the Haiti Cultural Recovery Center (maintained by the Smithsonian) in Port-au-Prince and onsite on wall murals, such as those at the Cathedral of Sainte Trinité. In addition to helping set up conservation labs at the center, conservators have performed assessments and treatments ranging from basic stabilization to more complete aesthetic reintegration. In addition to travel costs for the volunteers, grant support has, to date, enabled the purchase of over $8,000 in supplies and tools. AIC response is made possible through the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and AIC’s foundation.

Appraisers Association of American

The Appraisers Association of America (AAA) has launched its new website. New features include online registration and payment for courses and programs and an improved “Find an Appraiser” tool. Fall programs for fall 2010, which include study days, lectures, events, and the national conference, have also been announced. To register, AAA members will need to sign in and create a username and password.

Arts Council of the African Studies Association

The fifteenth triennial symposium of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) will be held at the University of California, Los Angeles, March 23–26, 2011. Proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables addressing the theme, “Africa and Its Diasporas in the Marketplace: Cultural Resources and the Global Economy,” are invited. Please read the triennial theme announcement for submission guidelines and information on travel support and stipends.

Association for Latin American Art

The second triennial conference of the Association for Latin American Art (ALAA), called “Origins of State/Origins of Identity,” will be held November 13–14, 2010, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California. The event coincides with the museum’s exhibition, Olmec: Colossal Masterworks from Ancient Mexico, and with Obsidian Mirror-Travels: Refracting Ancient Mexican Art and Archaeology at the Getty Research Institute. Responding to the idea of discovery, the conference is divided into three panels reflecting the main areas of research undertaken by the association’s members: pre-Columbian art and architecture, viceregal and colonial art and architecture, and modern and contemporary Latin American and Latino art and architecture. A PDF of the conference program is available for download.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) acknowledges that students are one of the prime constituencies of all our institutions as well as our future colleagues and leaders. AAMG values the student voice and student participation, and to kick off this academic year it is offering free one-year student memberships from August 15 to October 15, 2010. To become a member, please send the required information via an online form, along with a digital copy (Word or PDF) of your unofficial transcript or student ID, to Emily Forsgren. Or, mail the application and copy of your student ID or transcript to: AAMG Membership, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2410.

Association of Historians of American Art

The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) is offering a travel grant to cover CAA Annual Conference expenses up to $500 for an ABD student of historical art of the United States who will travel to the 2011 meeting in New York to participate in the program. The successful recipient must be enrolled in a graduate program and an AHAA member. Deadline: February 1, 2011.

AHAA is hosting a symposium, called “Current Research in American Art,” to be held at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, October 7–9, 2010. The event is free but attendees must preregister and be AHAA members.

To sustain AHAA’s mission of supporting scholarship, the organization has introduced a new lifetime membership. Dues are $750, of which $730 is tax deductible.

Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art

The Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) has announced that new and standing members may now pay electronically for their annual membership using Google Checkout.

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) is hosting its biannual conference, “ON STREAM,” in partnership with the Mid-America College Art Association, another CAA affiliated society. Held in St. Louis, Missouri, the event will take place March 30–April 2, 2011, at the Ball Park Hilton. The conference will explore connections and question the status quo of how “creativity” is being developed and fostered as we enter the second decade of the third millennium. For more details, please contact Jeff Boshart, conference coordinator.

Historians of British Art

The Historians of British Art (HBA) welcomes Peter Trippi as its new first vice president. Currently editor of Fine Art Connoisseur, he will serve a one-year term before assuming the post of HBA president.

HBA is accepting papers for an upcoming minisession of work by emerging scholars to be held during the HBA business meeting at the CAA Annual Conference in New York, February 9–12, 2011. Current or recent graduate students are invited to submit proposals for consideration. (If an applicant is a PhD recipient, his or her degree must have been earned within the past three years.) Papers may address any topic related to British art, architecture, and visual culture. Presentations or “works in progress” should be limited to fifteen minutes to allow for ample discussion. This minisession is an opportunity for informal presentations of new or ongoing research followed by open discussion. To submit a paper for consideration, send the following items to Colette Crossman, HBA second vice president: (1) a one-page abstract; (2) a CV (limited to two pages); and (3) a brief cover letter explaining interest in the field. Upon selection, presenters are requested to join HBA if they are not current members. Deadline: October 1, 2010; decisions made by November 1.

Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture

The Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) has announced the recipient of the Mary Vidal Travel Award: Iris Moon, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. She will conduct research on the French architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine.

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) will hold its second biennial symposium on the theme of “Objects, Collections and Cultures” at the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, DC. Taking place October 21–23, 2010, the program features an opening address by Julian Raby, director of the Freer and Sackler; thematic sessions with formal presentations; seminar-style workshops on art objects in the museums’ collections; and a roundtable discussion on the arts of the object in Islamic art history today. The complete program and registration information are available online.

HIAA is pleased to welcome Stephennie Mulder as the new editor of its listserv, H-Islamart, and to thank the outgoing editor Christiane Gruber for her years of exemplary service.

Historians of Netherlandish Art

The Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) has announced the submission deadline—March 1, 2011—for the Summer 2011 issue of the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art: Please consult the journal’s submission guidelines for more information about the process. An open-access, peer-reviewed journal published twice per year, JHNA features articles that focus on art produced in the Netherlands (north and south) during the early modern period (ca. 1400–ca.1750) and in other countries and later periods as they relate to this earlier art. These include studies of painting, sculpture, graphic arts, tapestry, architecture, and decoration, from the perspectives of art history, art conservation, museum studies, historiography, technical studies, and collecting history. Book and exhibition reviews, however, will continue to be published in the HNA Newsletter.

International Association of Art Critics

The United States section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA USA) launched a new website in mid-August. Designed to be more interactive and more attractive visually, the website will be an active tool for information about members’ professional achievements, such as new books, exhibitions, awards, participations in major conferences, and the like. In addition, AICA USA will publish cyclical reports on important issues related to art criticism.

AICA USA has elected a new president, Marek Bartelik, to serve from May 2010 to May 2012. Bartelik teaches modern and contemporary art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York and is a graduate critic-in-residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

International Association of Word and Image Studies

The International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS) seeks submissions for the Max Nänny Prize for the best article in word and image studies. First awarded in 2008, the prize—named in honor of the late Max Nänny, a former IAWIS president—is presented every three years on the occasion of the organization’s triennial conference. Both members and nonmembers may submit already published articles, dated no earlier than three years before the submission deadline. Deadline: October 31, 2010.

IAWIS seeks proposals for papers for its ninth international conference, on the theme of “L’imaginaire/The Imaginary.” The meeting will take place in Montreal, Quebec, August 22–26, 2011. Descriptions of all sessions can be found online. Deadline: October 1, 2010.

International Sculpture Center

The International Sculpture Center (ISC) is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York on October 22, 2010. The evening’s festivities will include a cocktail reception, entertainment, and an art sale featuring works by Fletcher Benton, Chakaia Booker, Mark di Suvero, John Clement, Carole Feuerman, John Henry, Jun Kaneko, Donald Lipski, Jesús Moroles, Manuel Neri, Tom Otterness, Albert Paley, Joel Perlman, Judy Pfaff, Kenneth Snelson, Stretch, James Surls, Boaz Vaadia, and Mia Westerlund, among others to be announced. Also taking place are a raffle—with top prize being a one-week vacation in Saint Martin—and a Chinese auction with fabulous prizes. Honorary hosts for the evening include di Suvero, Snelson, and Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz. Space is limited. Tickets are $350 per person, and tables are available for $3,000 and $5,000. Cocktails start at 6:00 PM with dinner at 7:30 PM. For questions or more information, please write to events@sculpture.org.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) invites proposals for the 2011 Italian Art Society/Kress Foundation Lecture in Italy. The lecture series seeks to promote intellectual exchanges among art historians of North America and the international community of scholars living or working in Italy. The lecture will be held in Florence in late May or early June 2011. The proposed lecture may address any period in Italian art but must relate to the city of Florence or the region of Tuscany; it also may not have been previously published or presented at another conference or venue. Application details are published online. Deadline: January 1, 2011.

Leonardo Education and Art Forum

The Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF), a part of Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, hosted a two-part panel on “Grand Challenges in Education” at the Los Angeles ACM SIGGRAPH on July 28, 2010. The participants addressed issues in education in light of new opportunities for participatory and collaborative learning in society. Speakers also responded to a white paper issued by the MacArthur Foundation called “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.” Panelists were: David T. Goldberg, Rebecca Allen, Pamela Jennings, Sarah Cunningham, Glenn Entis, and Marc Barr. Discussants were Donna Cox, James Foley, Andy van Dam, and Ellen K. Levy, with remarks by Roger Malina.

LEAF sponsored a meeting and workshop, called “Art-Science – Curricular Models and Best Practices,” at the 2010 International Symposium on Electronic Art on August 27, 2010. Leaders of the workshop, which was coordinated by Edward Shanken, were Jennifer Kanary Nikolov, Jill Scott, and Paul Thomas.

Fran Ilich was selected as the winner of the Media Art Histories (MAH) Leonardo Scholarship for notable contributions to the field. MAH is a collaborative project between Leonardo and the Department for Image Science at Danube University Krems in Austria.

LEAF is sponsoring workshops at the Ars Electronica Festival, taking place September 2–11, 2010, in Linz, Austria.

Pacific Arts Association

The Pacific Arts Association (PAA) convened its tenth international symposium, “Pacific Art in the 21st Century: Museums, New Global Communities, and Future Trends,” from August 9 to 11, 2010, in Rarotonga, Cook Islands. PAA hosted over eighty-three presenters and seventy-five presentations, highlighting issues surrounding the creation, dispersal, possession, repatriation, stewardship, and interpretation of Pacific art in the twenty-first century. The symposium welcomed three keynote speakers: Michelle Hippolite of Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand; Jean-Marc Pambrun of the Museum of Tahiti and Her Islands; and Jonathan Mane-Wheoki of Auckland University. Special exhibitions, artist presentations, and events included Janet Lilo’s TOP16, curated by Ron Brownson; a craft exhibition; Nanette Lela’ulu’s In the House of My Heart; Wrapping the Cook Islands: Tivaivai; and the launch of Art Monthly Australia’s special Pacific issue. Visit the symposium website for a complete list of presenters, abstracts, and schedule of events.

Society for Architectural Historians

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) invites CAA members to gather at the Four Seasons in midtown Manhattan next month for conversation about the restaurant’s historical developments. This free event takes place on Saturday, September 25, 2010, at 9:00 PM. The gathering concludes a tour day in which SAH members will have spent studying the work of Richard Kelly, who was responsible for the interior and exterior lighting of the Seagram Building and the Four Seasons. Joining the group will be Belmont Freeman, the restaurant’s current restoration architect, and Dietrich Neumann, the tour leader, past SAH president, and editor of the forthcoming book, The Structure of Light: Richard Kelly and the Illumination of Modern Architecture.

Society for Photographic Education

The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) offers student scholarships to offset the cost of attending its 2011 national conference, titled “Science, Poetry, and the Photographic Image,” to be held March 10–13 in Atlanta, Georgia. A conference fee waiver and a one-year SPE membership are provided in addition to the cash awards.

Ten SPE Awards and the SPE Award for Innovations in Imaging in Honor of Jeannie Pearce feature a $500 travel stipend. The Freestyle Crystal Apple Award for Outstanding Achievement in Black and White Photography is generously sponsored by Freestyle Photographic Supplies and offers a $5,000 cash prize and recognition for the sponsoring faculty member.

Applicants must be SPE student members and current full-time students enrolled at a postsecondary institution as an undergraduate or graduate majoring or concentrating in photography but not graduating before the end of academic year 2010–11. Deadline: November 1, 2010.

Southeastern College Art Conference

From November 9 to 12, 2011, the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) will hold its sixty-seventh annual meeting, hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia. The conference headquarters will be the DeSoto Hilton Hotel, located in the heart of historic Savannah. Featuring extensive panels and sessions for the exchange of ideas and concerns relevant to the practice and study of art, the conference will include the annual awards luncheon and the fourteenth annual members’ exhibition, as well as a rich array of tours, workshops, and evening events. The curator Dan Cameron will jury the SECAC members’ exhibition, to be held at one of SCAD’s premier venues. For more information, contact secac@secollegeart.org or secac2011@scad.edu.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) 2010 Nancy DeLaurier Award, honoring distinguished achievement in the field of image management, has been given to Murtha Baca and Patricia Harpring for their work on the Getty Vocabulary Program. The program is instrumental to standardizing image cataloging across the cultural-heritage community. Professionals in visual-resources collections, libraries, museums, and archives regularly use three important sources: the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, the Union List of Artist Names, and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names—all developed, sustained, and nurtured, primarily by these two individuals, under the auspices of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Attesting to their ongoing vision of the future is their promotion of a new Cultural Objects Name Authority. The Getty Vocabulary Program not only provides uniform terminology to describe works of art, architecture, material culture, and other associated materials for metadata creation, but it also enhances access to online resources and the knowledge bases on which researchers rely.