CAA News Today
New Members of CAA’s Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees
posted by Christopher Howard — January 24, 2012
CAA’s nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees welcome their newly appointed members, who will serve three-year terms (2012–15). In addition, three new chairs will take over committee leadership, with one current chair appointed for an additional year. New committee members and chairs will begin their terms next month at the 100th Annual Conference, to be held February 22–25, 2012, in Los Angeles. CAA warmly thanks all outgoing committee members for their years of service to the organization.
A call for nominations for these committees appears annually from July to September in CAA News and on the CAA website. CAA’s president, vice president for committees, and executive director review all nominations in December and make appointments that take effect the following February.
New Committee Members and Chairs
Committee on Diversity Practices: Peggy Blood, Savannah State University; Sunanda K. Sanyal, Art Institute of Boston; and Susan Zurbrigg, James Madison University. Barbara Nesin, president of the CAA Board of Directors, is a new board liaison.
Committee on Intellectual Property: Elaine Koss, Frick Collection; Judith Metro, National Gallery of Art; and Gretchen Wagner, ARTstor.
Committee on Women in the Arts: Temma Balducci, Arkansas State University; Melissa Dabakis, Kenyon College; Kalliopi Minioudaki, independent curator and art historian, New York; Margaret Murphy, independent artist and curator, Jersey City; and Sarah Schuster, Oberlin College.
Education Committee: Barbara Airulla, Franklin University. Rosenne Gibel has been appointed chair for one more year, and Hilary Braysmith received a term extension for committee membership through February 2013. Georgia Strange of the University of Georgia joins the committee as a board liaison.
International Committee: Timothy Collins, Glasgow School of Art; Radha Dalal, College of Charleston; and Rosemary O’Neill, Parsons the New School of Design. Ann Albritton of Ringling College of Art and Design has been named committee chair, succeeding Jennifer D. Milam of the University of Sydney. Anne-Imelda Radice of the Dilenschneider Group is a new board liaison.
Museum Committee: Bruce Boucher, University of Virginia Art Museums; Saadia N. Lawton, Lincoln University; and Celka Straughn, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence.
Professional Practices Committee: Elliot Bostwick Davis, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Helen C. Evans, Metropolitan Museum of Art. James Hopfensperger of Western Michigan University takes over as chair from Charles Wright of Western Illinois University.
Services to Artists Committee: Blane De St. Croix, independent artist, Brooklyn; Niku Kashef, California State University, Northridge; and Jenny Krasner, independent artist, New York. Sharon Louden, an independent artist based in New York, succeeds Jacki Apple of Art Center College of Design as chair. Saul Ostrow of the Cleveland Institute of Art is a new liaison from the CAA board.
Student and Emerging Professionals Committee: Anitra Haendel, California Institute of the Arts; Amanda Hawley Hellman, Emory University; and Megan Koza Young, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence. Serving as board liaison is Leslie Bellavance of Alfred University.
CAA Names the Recipients of the Getty-Funded International Travel Grants
posted by Christopher Howard — January 23, 2012
CAA has awarded travel grants to twenty art historians and artists from around the world who will convene in Los Angeles to attend and participate in the 100th Annual Conference, taking place February 22–25, 2012. The CAA International Travel Grant Program was made possible by a generous grant from the Getty Foundation.
At the conference, the twenty recipients will participate in mentoring activities and other events planned in connection with the grant. Members of CAA’s International Committee have agreed to host the participants, and the National Committee for the History of Art will also lend support to the program.
This travel-grant program is intended to familiarize international professionals with the Annual Conference program, including the session participation process. CAA accepted applications from art historians, artists who teach art history, and art historians who are museum curators; those from developing countries or from nations not well represented in CAA’s membership were especially encouraged to apply. In late 2011, a jury of CAA members selected the final twenty awardees, whose names, home institutions, and primary areas of scholarly and professional interest are as follows:
- Salam Atta Sabri, Director, National Museum of Modern Art, Baghdad, Iraq. Atta Sabri conducts research on missing works of art from Iraq and is also a ceramic artist
- Parul Pandya Dhar, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi, Delhi, India. Dhar focuses on the history of Indian art and architecture to 1300 CE, cultural interactions in South and Southeast Asia, the visual arts and visual archives as sources of history, performing arts, and the historiography of Indian art
- Federico Freschi, Associate Professor, History of Art, Wits School of Arts, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Freschi’s work explores South African modern art and architecture and postcolonial identity politics
- Rosa Gabriella de Castro Gonçalves, Professor of Art Theory and Aesthetics, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil. Gonçalves is interested in the role of modernism in recent debates in art theory
- Angela Harutyunyan, Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Arts and Art History, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon. Harutyunyan is interested in methodologies of reading and historicizing contemporary art and studies the political aesthetics of the Armenian avant-garde
- Gyöngyvér Horváth, Assistant Professor of Art History, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, Hungary. Horváth studies the historiography of narrative painting
- Didier Houenoude, Assistant Professor, Université d’Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou, Benin. Houenoude teaches art history and drawing and closely follows contemporary art in Benin
- Nadhra Shahbaz Naeem Khan, Visiting Faculty, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan. Khan’s work focuses on Sikh art and architecture
- Irena Kossowska, Professor of Art History, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland. Kossowska works on national identity in Central Europe as reflected in the visual arts and also researches nineteenth- and twentieth-century European art
- Jean Celestin Ky, Professor of Art History, University of Ouagadougou, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Celestin researches African art and works with the National Museum of Burkina Faso in conserving and promoting contemporary art
- Pavlína Morganová, Researcher and Professor, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, Czech Republic. Morganová works on contemporary art
- Cristian Nae, PhD Lecturer, Department of Art History and Theory, Faculty of Fine Arts, George Enescu University of Arts, Iaşi, Romania. Nae examines post–World War II art history, critical theory, hermeneutics, and cultural studies
- Judy Peter, Lecturer, Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture, and Head, Department of Jewellery Design and Manufacture, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa. Peter works in art history, theory, cultural and postcolonial studies, the history of jewellery. She is also interested in curriculum development in the context of a neoliberal South Africa
- Daniel Premerl, Research Associate, Institute of Art History, Zagreb, Croatia. Premerl is interested in Renaissance and Baroque art and art-historical methodology
- Malvina Rousseva, Professor, Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria. Rousseva pursues research in archaeology, Thracian tombs and temples, interdisciplinary studies, architectural history, cultural and visual studies, and philosophy
- Ganna Rudyk, Deputy Director General of Research, Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum of Arts, Kyiv, Ukraine. Rudyk is a specialist in Islamic art who presents Islamic and generally non-Western art to broad publics
- Dóra Sallay, Curator of Italian Painting, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary. Sallay works with thirteenth- to sixteenth-century Italian art, in particular Sienese painting, the history of collecting and museums, and the history of the reception of Gothic and Renaissance painting
- Olabisi Silva, Director, Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, Nigeria. Silva is working on the first roaming African art academy, placing equal emphasis on artistic practice, art history, critical thinking, and curatorial practice
- Shao-Chien Tseng, Associate Professor of Art History, Graduate Institute of Art Studies, National Central University, Jhongli City, Taiwan. A specialist in nineteenth-century French art, Tseng is interested in modern art and natural history, landscape painting and photography, and postcolonialism and Taiwanese art
- Jagath Weerasinghe, Director and Professor, Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Trained in fine arts, archeology, and conservation, Weerasinghe recently established his country’s first graduate program in art history, which will offer postgraduate diplomas and master of arts degrees in art history, focusing primarily on Asian art
CAA hopes that this travel grant will not only increase international participation in the organization’s activities, but will also expand international networking and the exchange of ideas. The Getty Foundation grant allows CAA to expand greatly the participation of international colleagues beyond its regular program of Annual Conference Travel Grants for graduate students and international artists and scholars.
Registration Deadline Extended for CAA’s 100th Annual Conference
posted by Christopher Howard — January 23, 2012
Advance registration for CAA’s 100th Annual Conference, taking place February 22–25, 2012, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, has been extended to Monday, January 30, 2012. This is also your last chance to purchase advance tickets for special events and workshops.
Registration
Advance registration ends on Monday, January 30, 2012.
- Members: $235
- Student and retired members: $135
- Nonmembers: $365
Special Events
Join us for a variety of special events including CAA’s Centennial Reception at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Tours to the Getty Villa and the Getty Center, An Evening at UCLA, as well as the Santa Monica and Venice Art Tour!
Workshops
Looking to advance your career? This year’s conference will include a bevy of professional-development workshops designed specifically for artists, art historians, and professionals in the visual arts. Workshops address topics such securing tenure, job hunting, and much more! Workshop space is limited, so book your place today! Each workshop costs $45.
Hotel Discounts
Have you booked your accommodation yet? Conference attendees can also take advantage of substantial discounts on rooms at the JW Marriott Los Angeles LA Live, just steps away from the Los Angeles Convention Center. The Westin Bonaventure, the Millennium Biltmore, and the Figueroa Hotel also offer discounts to conference attendees.
Recipients of the 2012 Awards for Distinction
posted by Christopher Howard — January 18, 2012
CAA has announced the recipients of the 2012 Awards for Distinction, which honor the outstanding achievements and accomplishments of individual artists, art historians, authors, conservators, curators, and critics whose efforts transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large.
CAA will formally recognize the recipients at a special awards ceremony during the 100th Annual Conference in Los Angeles, on Thursday afternoon, February 23, 2012, 12:30–2:00 PM, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Led by Barbara Nesin, president of the CAA Board of Directors, the awards ceremony will take place in West Hall Meeting Room 502AB, Level 2; it is free and open to the public. The Los Angeles Convention Center is located downtown, at 1201 South Figueroa Street adjacent to the Staples Center.
The 2012 Annual Conference—presenting scholarly sessions, panel discussions, professional-development workshops, a Book and Trade Fair, and more—is the largest gathering of artists, art historians, students, and arts professionals in the United States.
David Hammons, Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement
The innovative, far-ranging work of David Hammons is central to the history of postwar art in all its complexities. For the past five decades, Hammons has ingeniously blurred boundaries separating sculpture, Conceptual art, performance, and installation. Through a restless hybridization of practices, he has explored many timely and urgent contemporary issues, commenting on the civil rights movement, racial stereotyping, institutional exclusion, and the commodification of artistic identity. Hammons is not only one of the great political artists of our time, but also a crafter of careful assemblage and canny composition, creating irreverent, sometimes scathing works that are as formally riveting as they are incisive.
Adrian Piper, Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
Since the late 1960s, the provocative and often challenging work of Adrian Piper has profoundly influenced the language and form of Conceptual art. Her 2010 exhibition Past Time: Selected Works 1973–1995, presented at Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York, showcased several bodies of work that dealt with dissent in varying forms and represented a period of time widely considered as her most influential. Piper’s artistic practice flirts with the syntax of Minimalism and infuses it with explicitly political content, addressing issues of race, gender, and identity politics. Additionally, her work has been shaped by studies in philosophy, a subject on which she has lectured since earning a doctorate in the discipline thirty years ago. A keen interlocutor of mass culture, Piper has produced art and writing that makes us question our constantly shifting contemporary social landscape.
Lucy R. Lippard, Distinguished Feminist Award
For more than five decades, the critic, activist, and curator Lucy R. Lippard has been a consistent, passionate, and influential advocate of feminist art. A prolific author first honored by CAA in 1975 with the Frank Jewett Mather Award, she is known for her concise, accessible, and lucid prose that brings feminist perspectives to bear on a wide scope of art and activism—from Eva Hesse (1976) to The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays on Feminist Art (1995). Lippard’s curatorial efforts—such as c. 7,500 (1973), the groundbreaking all-woman exhibition of Conceptual art—have also been vital to the feminist art movement and offered some of the earliest considerations of global feminisms. Throughout her life, she has modeled a complex, ever-changing point of view as it intersects with progressive notions of art and politics.
Allan Sekula, Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art
Allan Sekula has devoted his life as an artist to writing, photography, installation, and film. While his multidisciplinary approach to problems of representation and politics has earned him accolades as an artist, his writings have helped students, scholars, and the public to think critically about interventions in the political and social realities of our world. The essays collected in his first book, Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973–83 (1984), significantly altered the way in which the documentary function of photography was conceptualized. His more recent volumes—such as Fish Story (1995), Titanic’s Wake (2003), and Performance under Working Conditions (2003)—mobilize us through his vision and words to carefully consider the effects of capitalism, globalization, information formats, and the dematerialization of image and word.
David Antin, Frank Jewett Mather Award
David Antin has been a singular, combative voice in art criticism since the mid 1960s. His Radical Coherency: Selected Essays on Art and Literature 1966 to 2005 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) demonstrates his sustained critical commitment, constant formal experimentation, and a style of thought and expression that is unique to both the visual arts and poetry. The essays and “talking poems” in Radical Coherency display a no-nonsense, skeptical intelligence squaring off firsthand with the work of artists—many of them his contemporaries—who were bent on radically transforming art, from Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol to the artists of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 1971 exhibition Art and Technology.
Alexander Nagel, Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
Alexander Nagel’s The Controversy of Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) is a compelling reexamination of the key paradoxes that define this era and the works associated with it. Guided in part by sixteenth-century religious history and the writings of historians of that era, Nagel positions sixteenth-century art making in the realm of the experimental, a vantage also in concert with the efforts of the religious reformers concerned with ritual and devotional practices usually associated with the Middle Ages. A breakthrough volume that makes significant contributions to scholarship on sixteenth-century Italian art, Nagel’s book compels art historians more generally to reconsider “standard” interpretations of many canonical monuments of the periods in which they are working.
Maryan W. Ainsworth, Stijn Alsteens, and Nadine M. Orenstein, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2010) is a “summa” of Maryan Ainsworth’s decades-long exploration of the artistic legacy of this place and time. Using a variety of methods—technical analysis, connoisseurship, archival research, biography, iconography, and sustained attention to each object—she and the other authors place Gossart at the center of a rich world of intertwined relationships. Together they reveal the artist’s groundbreaking engagement with Rome and antiquity, his intent study of architecture and sculpture, his carefully crafted experimentation in a variety of media, and his amazing versatility as a painter of religious scenes, mythological subjects, and innovative portraits over a long career. The book is also significant for the insightful way in which it situates Gossart among his contemporaries, including the painters Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach, the sculptor Conrad Meit, and the patron and connoisseur Philip of Burgundy.
Roy Flukinger, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions
With The Gernsheim Collection (Austin: Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas Press, 2010), Roy Flukinger has crafted an exceptional catalogue of the Helmut and Alison Gernsheim Collection, one of the earliest and most comprehensive collections of photography in the world. One hundred and twenty-six items are beautifully illustrated and analyzed in readable, absorbing prose that traces the story of the couple’s achievements as sleuths, gatherers, connoisseurs, photographers, devotees, and champions, while at the same time recognizing and examining their (sometimes controversial) role as architects of the study of photography. Contributions by Alison Nordstrom and Mark Haworth-Booth illuminate the role this collection has played in the history of photography as well as the Gernsheims’ commitment to the medium as a form of fine art. In this way, the book considers the process (in addition to the underlying principles, assumptions, and implications) of canon formulation in an emerging discipline.
Jacki Apple, Distinguished Teaching of Art Award
For the past twenty-eight years, Jacki Apple has provided students at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, with a dynamic, inspiring, and evolving model of the possibilities and rewards of an interdisciplinary practice. An artist, writer, and producer, she has produced work in multiple modes—performance, installation, drawing, book art, photography, film, radio, text, and audio—and presciently engages the opportunities afforded by new technologies. Praised by students and colleagues alike for her intelligence, generosity, enthusiasm, and critical discernment, Apple adeptly bridges various disciplines using a wide scope of knowledge about contemporary culture and technology and a depth of understanding about the history and practice of the visual and performing arts. A gifted communicator, Apple is exceptionally effective in encouraging students to think for themselves.
Gabriel P. Weisberg, Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award
Gabriel P. Weisberg’s distinguished teaching record—which includes faculty positions at the University of New Mexico, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Pittsburgh, Case Western Reserve University, and the University of Minnesota, where he is currently a professor in the Department of Art History—spans nearly half a century. His students, both graduate and undergraduate, praise his presentation of art as a dynamic interplay among culture, aesthetics, and human experience, revealed through direct examination of works of art in the context of primary historical documentation. Weisberg’s varied and distinguished background as a historian, curator, and administrator seamlessly integrates academic and museum realms, and his scholarship has shaped the discipline of nineteenth-century art history in a profound way.
Francesca G. Bewer, CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
Francesca G. Bewer, research curator in the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, is an exemplary technical art historian. An expert in the materials and techniques of European Renaissance and Baroque bronze sculpture, she trained as both an art historian, at University College London, and as a conservator, at Palazzo Spinelli in Florence. A highly valued teacher and lecturer, Bewer has published a steady stream of superb texts in conservation and art-historical journals, exhibition catalogues, and monographs. She also recently authored a book on the history of conservation, A Laboratory for Art: Harvard’s Fogg Museum and the Emergence of Conservation in America, 1900–1950 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museum; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).
Rebecca Molholt, Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
Rebecca Molholt’s article “Roman Labyrinth Mosaics and the Experience of Motion,” published in the September 2011 issue of The Art Bulletin, is an imaginative study of seven North African mosaics that were once floors in Roman bathhouses. She introduces a fresh methodology for their assessment, building on a distinction that Walter Benjamin drew between “vertical and horizontal forms of viewing.” Moholt argues that mosaics have long been read as if they were vertical easel paintings rather than understood as “materials underfoot,” which are experienced while kinetically moving over their horizontal surfaces. She uncovers a metaphoric reading of these mosaics that relates the labyrinths, their subject matter, and architectural context—the Roman bath—to athleticism and heroism.
Art Journal Award
An article by the online journal Triple Canopy, authored primarily by Colby Chamberlain of Columbia University, has won the 2012 Art Journal Award. The text, called “The Binder and the Server,” appears in the Winter 2011 issue.
Contact
For more information on the 2012 Awards for Distinction, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs. Visit the Awards section of the CAA website to read about all past recipients.
CAA announced the shortlists for the 2012 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the two Alfred H. Barr Jr. Awards on December 2, 2011.
January Picks from CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — January 11, 2012
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts produces a curated list, called CWA Picks, of recommended exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship in North America and around the world.
The CWA Picks for January 2012 include five solo shows of women artists at museums and galleries across the United States. The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, presents Jenny Saville, and the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford, Massachusetts, will exhibit the work of Nancy Holt. Cathy Wilkes is on view at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery of New Jersey City University in Jersey City has organized a survey of Margaret Murphy’s work. Last, Zoe Strauss receives a midcareer retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania.
In California, the performance artists Andrea Fraser and Vaginal Davis will stage one-day events for Pacific Standard Time’s Performance and Public Art Festival, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is presenting an exhibition of work created between 1931 and 1968 by female Surrealist artists living in the United States and Mexico.
Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
Image: Jenny Saville, Stare, 2004–5, oil on canvas, 120⅛ x 98½ in. Collection of the Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica (artwork © Jenny Saville)
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for January 2012
posted by CAA — January 10, 2012
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
January 2012
Jenny Saville, Bleach, 2008, oil on canvas, 99 5/16 x 73 11/16 in. Collection of Lisa and Steven Tananbaum (artwork © Jenny Saville)
Jenny Saville
Norton Museum of Art
1451 South Olive Avenue, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
November 30, 2011–March 4, 2012
Jenny Saville is the inaugural exhibition of the Norton Museum of Art’s Recognition of Art by Women (RAW) series, and the first solo American museum exhibition of the British figurative artist. This exhibition will bring together her most recognizable monumental figure and portrait paintings along with drawings from her recent series Reproduction drawing (based on the Leonardo cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and John the Baptist from the National Gallery, London) depicting mother and child images. The presentation will include twenty-eight canvases and drawings dating from 1992 to 2011 and smaller studies, not previously shown, from the artist’s studio.
In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
January 29–May 6, 2012
The Surrealist movement in art is most often identified with male artists, many of whom objectified women in their paintings. Numerous female artists at the time, however, developed their own identity-based imagery. This exhibition looks at female Surrealists working in the United States and Mexico and contains 175 works in a variety of media that were created between 1931 and 1968 by artists such as Lee Miller, Yayoi Kusama, and Frida Kahlo.
Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels: Sunset, 1976, Great Basin Desert, Utah, 1976, detail of composite of four photographs reproduced from original 35mm transparencies, (artwork © Nancy Holt)
Nancy Holt: Sightlines
Tufts University Art Gallery
Aidekman Arts Center, Tufts University, 40 Talbot Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
January 19–April 1, 2012
Since the late 1960s, Nancy Holt has created a far-reaching body of work, including Land Art, films, videos, site-specific installations, artist’s books, concrete poetry and major sculpture commissions. Nancy Holt: Sightlines showcases the artist’s transformation from the perception of the landscape through the use of different observational modes in her early films, videos, and related works from 1966–80.
Cathy Wilkes
Carnegie Museum of Art
4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
November 12, 2011–February 26, 2012
Carnegie Museum of Art presents the first solo American museum exhibition to combine the painting and sculptural installations of the Irish artist Cathy Wilkes. Often examining personal experiences, including motherhood, Wilkes is best known for vulnerable, haunting sculptures and installations in which sculpted and found objects are altered and arranged into humanistic—if sometimes disturbing—domestic scenes. Including nine paintings, a recent sculpture, and a newly commissioned installation, this exhibition provides a comprehensive view of Wilkes’s practice.
Margaret Murphy, Reclining Woman (after Kurosawa), 2007, watercolor and acrylic on paper, 20 x 14 in. (artwork © Margaret Murphy)
Margaret Murphy, A Ten-Year Survey; Decoding the Marketplace: coupons, dollar stores, and eBay
Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery
New Jersey City University, Hepburn Hall, Room 323, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, NJ 07305
January 30–March 7, 2012
This exhibition highlights varied bodies of work created during the last decade by the artist Margaret Murphy. Included in the exhibition are the Tarot Cards series (1997–2000), the Sweet 16 series (2005–7), and the Parlor Paintings (2006–7). Seen together for the first time, these paintings and collages demonstrate Murphy’s insightful feminist critique of the American consumer culture and misrepresentation of women as seen through commodity objects such as porcelain figurines and product packaging.
Andrea Fraser, Men on the Line, KPFK
National Center for the Preservation of Democracy
111 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
January 23, 2012
Vaginal Davis, My Pussy is Still in Los Angeles (I Only Live in Berlin)
Bullock Department Store Wilshire
3050 Wilshire Boulevard, Fifth Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90010
January 29, 2012
In late January, West of Rome Public Art will host performances by two legendary and controversial feminist artists as part of Pacific Standard Time’s Performance and Public Art Festival. Both works are part of a series inspired by the Los Angeles–based Woman’s Building (1973–81), whose history and influence is currently explored in the PST exhibition Doin’ It in Public.
Zoe Strauss, South Philly (Mattress Flip Front), 2001/2003 (negative/print), chromogenic print, image: 6⅞ x 10⅛ in./sheet: 8 x 10⅜ in. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased with funds contributed by Theodore T. Newbold and Helen Cunningham, 2003 (artwork © Zoe Strauss)
Zoe Strauss: Ten Years
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130
January 14–April 22, 2012
This midcareer survey of the work of Zoe Strauss, a resident of south Philadelphia, focuses on her decade-long public art project in which each year on the first Sunday in May she exhibited more than two hundred of her photographs in a space beneath a section of Interstate 95 in south Philadelphia. Most of her subjects are disenfranchised people or places.
Art Journal Publishes New Issue
posted by Christopher Howard — January 10, 2012
The Fall 2011 issue of Art Journal, CAA’s quarterly of modern and contemporary art, was published and mailed in late December. A benefit of CAA membership, the journal is sent to those individual members who elect to receive it and to all institutional members.
The issue opens with a state-of-the-field essay by Krista Thompson, “A Sidelong Glance: The Practice of African Diaspora Art History in the United States.” The third of four Centennial essays commissioned with funds from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Thompson’s study offers an extraordinary range of reference and comprehensive citations that suggest it will be highly useful to historians, students, and artists alike. The art historian Amelia Jones organized a forum for the issue, “Performance, Live or Dead,” with texts by the artists Ron Athey, Sharon Hayes, and William Pope.L, the historians Sven Lütticken and Branislav Jakovljević, and the curators Sophia Yadong Hao and Helena Reckitt. Each writer considers the phenomenon of reenactment, which has been prominent in the performance art of recent years.
The cover essay, Miwako Tezuka’s “Experimentation and Tradition: The Avant-Garde Play Pierrot Lunaire by Jikken Kōbō and Takechi Tetsuji,” examines the 1955 collaboration of vanguard visual and performing artists in Tokyo on a staging of Arnold Schoenberg’s song cycle Pierrot Lunaire. Tezuka sees the production, little known in the West until now, as a major catalyst in the reinvigoration of new arts following destitution and stagnation in postwar Japan.
A final feature considers broadcast radio as a medium for public art. Sarah Kanouse’s “Take It to the Air: Radio as Public Art” explores works by Jon Brumit, Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, and the collective LIGNA to emphasize the surprising ways in which they treat radio as a participatory, two-way medium. The Art Journal website includes audio and video documentation that complements the printed piece.
The Reviews section includes Lisa Florman’s assessment of the Guggenheim exhibition catalogue Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–36; Jaleh Mansoor on Rosalyn Deutsch’s Hiroshima after Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War; and Lara Weibgen’s analysis of Boris Groys’s History Becomes Firm: Moscow Conceptualism. Available both in print and online is Robert Slifkin’s review of two recent books and an exhibition on the artist Paul Thek.
Affiliated Society News for January 2012
posted by CAA — January 09, 2012
American Council for Southern Asian Art
The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) held its fifteenth biennial symposium from September 22 to 25, 2011, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A report of the proceedings is available online.
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
Registration has opened for the annual conference of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG), to be held April 28, 2012, at the Weisman Art Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Titled “Tools of Engagement: Securing Commitment on Campus,” the event will focus on positive strategies for getting the buy-in needed from our faculty, academic administrators, presidents, and other campus stakeholders.
In addition, AAMG has recently been granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service. This status will allow the organization the opportunity to gain access to new funding sources in order to execute its mission to establish and support best practices, educational activities, and professional development, enabling member organizations to fulfill their educational missions.
Association of Historians of American Art
The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) is sponsoring two sessions at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. The professional session, “Ideology, Industry, and Instinct: The Art of Labor,” cochaired by Wendy Katz and Brandon Rudd, is scheduled for Friday, February 24, 2012, 12:30–2:00 PM, Concourse Meeting Room 402AB at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The scholarly session, “American Symbolism,” chaired by Erika Schneider, will take place on Saturday, February 25, 2012, 9:30 AM–NOON, West Hall Meeting Room 502A. Following this session, the AHAA business meeting will be held 12:30 PM–2:00 PM in the Concourse Meeting Room 408B. Light refreshments will be served. All members and other interested parties are invited to attend these events.
Save the date for the second AHAA symposium, “American Art: The Academy, Museums, and the Market,” to be held October 12–13, 2012, hosted by the Boston Athenaeum and Boston University in Massachusetts. For more information, contact the symposium cochairs: David Dearinger and Melissa Renn.
Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art
The Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) will sponsor several activities at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. Scott Allan, assistant curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, will moderate the annual “Future Directions” panel on Thursday, February 23, 12:30–2:00 PM in the Concourse Meeting Room 402AB at the Los Angeles Convention Center. David O’Brien of the University of Illinois will chair AHNCA’s main session, the two-part “Civilization and Its Others in Nineteenth-Century Art,” taking place on Thursday, February 23, and Saturday, February 25. Finally, AHNCA’s annual business meeting will take place on Thursday, February 23, at 5:30 PM in Concourse Meeting Room 402AB.
In addition, AHNCA invites its members to attend a free private tour of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena on Wednesday, February 22. The curator Leah Lehmbeck will present highlights and rarely exhibited holdings from the museum’s collection. The visit will conclude with a reception generously hosted by the Norton Simon. There is no cost for AHNCA members, but space is limited. To reserve your place, please contact Elizabeth Mansfield. Deadline: January 15, 2012
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) will hold a regional workshop, titled “Spicing It Up: Critique Strategies,” at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, on January 28, 2012. FATE urges those who teach art foundation courses and are located in Texas, Oklahoma, or Louisiana to consider attending. The workshop, to be held 10:00 AM–3:00 PM, will focus on practical techniques and strategies for critiquing theme-based and idea-driven artwork created in foundation courses. If interested, please contact Valerie Powell at 936-294-4451. Deadline: January 15, 2012.
Please save the date for FATE’s next national conference, to be held during the spring of 2013. The Savannah College of Art and Design in beautiful Savannah, Georgia, will host the event.
For a limited time you can review past issues of FATE in Review online. You can also find FATE Newsletters and information about submitting a paper for inclusion in the next issue of FATE in Review.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) has elected Ladan Akbarnia to the position of secretary for the next two years. Akbarnia previously served as interim secretary in 2011. HIAA also would like to draw attention to the recent establishment of the Oleg Grabar Memorial Fund to support the annual award of Grabar Grants and Fellowships. This new program, in honor of the late eminent historian of Islamic art and architecture, is intended to encourage and further the professional development of graduate students and recent postdoctoral scholars in all areas of the history of Islamic art, architecture, and archaeology. Contributions from CAA members are most welcome. Instructions for contributing to the Grabar Memorial Fund can be found online.
Historians of Netherlandish Art
The Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, a peer-reviewed, open-access ejournal published by the Historians of Netherlandish Art, has announced its next formal deadline for the submission of manuscripts for articles: March 1, 2012. Please consult the journal’s submission guidelines and contact Alison Kettering for additional information.
International Association of Art Critics
The International Association of Art Critics (AICA) has elected Marek Bartelik as its new president during its general assembly in Asunción, Paraguay, on October 20, 2011. Bartelik succeeds Yacouba Konaté from Ivory Coast, who had served as AICA’s president since October 2008. Originally from Poland, Bartelik is the association’s fifteenth president. Previous presidents include: James Johnson Sweeney (American, 1957–63), René Berger (Swiss, 1969–75), Jacques Leenhardt (French, 1990–96), and Henry Meyric Hughes (British, 2002–8).
International Sculpture Center
The International Sculpture Center (ISC) seeks papers for the twenty-third International Sculpture Conference, called “Process, Patron, and Public” and taking place October 4–6, 2012, in Chicago, Illinois. The conference will bring together artists, educators, art administrators, museum directors, collectors, patrons, students, and sculpture enthusiasts to explore how sculpture becomes part of contemporary culture. ISC invites individuals to submit proposals for papers and panel discussions that can provoke critical exchange and debate in relation to the broad thematic areas referred to in the conference title. Presenters are encouraged to support opportunities for interaction among participants and to enable conference attendees to engage a truly international exchange of ideas and viewpoints. For more information, please call 609-689-1051, ext. 302.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) will hold its business meeting at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference on Friday, February 24, 7:30–9:00 AM in Concourse Meeting Room 406AB of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Those interested in Italian art and architecture from the prehistoric period to the present are welcome to attend. IAS congratulates the recipients of its 2012 travel grants: Karen Lloyd will present “A New Samson: Scipione Borghese and the Representation of Nepotism in the Vatican Palace” at CAA, and Kristin Huffman Lanzoni will speak on “Ducal Fraternity and Family Glory: Girolamo and Lorenzo Priuli” at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. IAS welcomes exhibition reviews, short articles, and announcements related to Italian art and architecture for its winter newsletter. Please send your contributions to the newsletter editor. Deadline: January 15, 2012. Please like IAS on Facebook.
Leonardo Education and Art Forum
The Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF) has recently sponsored several events. The LEAF chair Patricia Olynyk and the former chair Ellen Levy hosted a post-Thanksgiving NY LASER (Art/Sci Salon) on Sunday, December 11, at Levy’s studio. To encourage deeper discussion, the meeting focused on summarizing projects presented at NY LASER events throughout 2011.
Paul Thomas, an international LEAF affiliate, moderated LEAF Education Workshops in collaboration with the Australian Forum at the 2011 International Symposium on Electronic Art in Istanbul, Turkey, and at Rewire, the fourth International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science, and Technology in Liverpool, England. The workshops focused on transdisciplinary visual arts, science and technology renewal, and post–new media assimilation.
The LEAF business meeting will be held at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles on Thursday, February 23. Other panels of potential interest to Leonardo members include: “Is It Time to Question the ‘Privileging’ of Visual Art?” on Friday, February 24, chaired by Levy and Greta Berman of Juilliard School; “Headlines! Environmental News, Artist Presenters, Audience Respondents,” on Wednesday, February 22, chaired by Linda Weintraub of Artnow Publications; “Sustainable Futures: New Cultural Movements in Art and Ecology,” on Saturday, February 25, chaired by Olynyk; and a LEAF Education Roundtable, “Education at the Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology,” on Thursday, February 23, led by Eddie Shanken.
Mid-America College Art Association
The James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University will host the next Mid-America College Art Association (MACAA) conference, to be held October 3–6, 2012, in downtown Detroit, Michigan. Programming will include three featured speakers and numerous panels on art, design, art history, and visual resources, as well as studio workshops, MACAA member exhibitions, and museum visits. The conference will have two areas: “Meaning and Making” and “Community and Collaboration.” The call for session proposals, and for the MACAA membership exhibition, has been announced online.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) held its 2011 annual meeting, called “Push/Pull: The Artistic Engine of Innovation,” from November 2–5, in Savannah, Georgia. The organization owes a debt of gratitude to the conference chair, Steve Bliss of the Savannah College of Art and Design, and to Carolyn Henne, NCAA’s executive director, for organizing a first-rate affair.
NCAA wishes to thank outgoing board members Cora Lynn Deibler of the University of Connecticut, Georgia Strange of the University of Georgia, and Carolyn Henne of Florida State University. Three new board members have been elected: Amy Hauft of Virginia Commonwealth University, Lydia Thompson of Mississippi State University, and Mel Ziegler of Vanderbilt University. Returning board members include: Andrea Eis of Oakland University, treasurer; Jim Hopfensperger of Western Michigan University, president; John Kissick of the University of Guelph; Sally McRorie of Florida State University; Kim Russo of the Ringling College of Art and Design, secretary; and Sergio Soave of Ohio State University.
Organizational activities at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles include the annual NCAA reception, a lively forum for networking on issues related to arts leadership and management, to be held on Thursday, February 23, 5:30–7:30 PM. The session “Hot Problems/Cool Solutions in Arts Leadership” will be a series of five-minute presentations on problem solving and leadership, taking place on Friday, February 24, 12:30–2:00 PM. NCAA enthusiastically welcomes new members, current members, and all other interested parties to its events.
Society for Photographic Education
Registration is now open for the ninth annual conference of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), called “Intimacy and Voyeurism: The Public/Private Divide in Photography” and taking place March 22–25, 2012, in San Francisco, California. Join over one thousand artists, educators, and photographic professionals for presentations, industry seminars, and critiques designed to stimulate and engage. Explore a fair of over seventy exhibitors showcasing the latest equipment, processes, publications, and schools with photo-related programs. Participate in one-on-one portfolio critiques or informal portfolio sharing. For reduced admission, take advantage of student volunteer opportunities. Other conference highlights include a print raffle, silent auction, film screenings, exhibitions, tours, receptions, and a dance party. Sally Mann will be the keynote speaker; other featured speakers include Sharon Olds and Trevor Paglen. Preview the conference schedule and register online.
Society for the Study of Early Modern Women
At its most recent annual meeting, held on October 20, 2011, the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW) formally announced the recipients of its awards for books, catalogues, articles and other scholarship published in 2010. The Book Award went to Margaret P. Hannay, Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010); Honorable mention was awarded to Marie-Louise Coolahan, Women, Writing and Language in Early Modern Ireland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). The Collaborative Project award went to Caroline Bicks and Jennifer Summit, eds., The History of British Women’s Writing, Volume 2: 1500–1610 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The Josephine A. Roberts Scholarly Edition was awarded to Michael G. Brennan, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Margaret P. Hannay, eds., The Correspondence (ca. 1626–1659) of Dorothy Percy Sidney, Countess of Leicester (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010). The Translation or Teaching Edition award was given to Domna Stanton and Rebecca Wilkin, eds., for Gabrielle Suchon, A Woman Who Defends All the Persons of Her Sex: Selected Philosophical and Moral Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Honorable Mention went to David F. Hult, ed., for Chirstine de Pizan, Debate of the “Romance of the Rose” (Chicago: University of Chiciago Press, 2010). The award for Essay or Article went to Paula McQuade, “A Knowing People: Early Modern Motherhood, Female Authorship, and Working-Class Community in Dorothy Burch’s“A Catechism of the Several Heads of the Christian Religion,” Prose Studies 32, no. 3 (December 2010): 167–86; Honorable Mention went to Allyson M. Poska, “Babies on Board: Women, Children and Imperial Policy in the Spanish Empire,”Gender and History 22, vol. 2 (August 2010): 269–83. Finally, for Arts and Media, the award was given to the compact disc for La Donna Musicale, with Laury Gutierrez (director), Julianne Baird (soprano), and Renee Rapier (contralto), Anna Bon: La virtuosa di Venezia.
Society of Architectural Historians
Registration will open January 4, 2012, for the sixty-fifth annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), to be held in Detroit, Michigan, April 18–22, 2012. The conference will present more than 140 scholarly papers and thirty-five special thematic sessions. The local committee has planned numerous tours of Detroit and cities in the surrounding region, including Cranbrook, Dearborn, and Ann Arbor. A daylong preservation seminar will examine the challenges of “right-sizing” this historic city in light of its current economic pressures and shrinking population. At the meeting, SAH will launch a revised edition of its award-winning book, Buildings of Michigan, as well as a new online encyclopedia of American architecture called SAH Archipedia. Developed in collaboration with the University of Virginia Press, SAH Archipedia is a richly illustrated database of all the building histories, illustrations, maps, sidebars, interpretive essays, glossaries, and bibliographies contained in fifteen authoritative books produced as part of SAH’s Buildings of the United States series. SAH Archipedia will be available to individual SAH members and to the public through library subscriptions. Concurrently, SAH will launch an open-access version of the database, SAH Archipedia Classic Buildings, which will contain a subset of one hundred of the most representative buildings from each state.
Visual Resources Association
The Visual Resources Association (VRA) will host the session “Paint, Prints and Pixels: Learning from the History of Teaching with Art” at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles, Thursday, February 23, 12:30–2:00 PM. The session will explore how historic and current imaging paradigm shifts have informed twenty-first-century classroom teaching; the implications of increased access to digital images; intersections of photographic and scientific technologies; interdisciplinary uses of images for teaching and research; and recently developed visual literacy competency standards. The session will conclude with a question-and-answer session.
Online registration starts on December 7, 2011 for the thirtieth annual VRA conference, to be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 18–21, 2011. Headquartered at the Hotel Albuquerque in historic Old Town, the conference is within easy walking distance to restaurants, museums, and notable landmarks. As part of the “Broadening Horizons” theme, the opening speaker will be Todd Martin, the founder of Tagasauris, an online image-tagging source. Amy Herman, who uses art to teach observation and communication skills, will deliver the closing talk at the conference.
Women’s Caucus for Art
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA), a momentous occasion not only for WCA but for all women. For forty years, WCA has fought to ensure the future of women in the arts. The 2012 WCA conference—a diverse celebration that will include panels, speakers, exhibitions, bus tours, workshops, awards, and a gala—will be held February 23–27, 2012, in Los Angeles, in conjunction with the 2012 CAA Annual Conference.
On Thursday, February 23, 7:30–10:00 PM, WCA will present its first Media Award to the filmmaker and feminist Lynn Hershman Leeson. The event will be held at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum and includes a presentation of the award, a viewing of her film !Women Art Revolution, and a dessert reception. This is a ticketed event. On Saturday, February 25, 6:00–7:30 PM at the Kyoto Hotel, the WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards and Gala will honor Whitney Chadwick, Suzanne Lacy, Ferris Olin, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Bernice Steinbaum, as well as the recipients of the President’s Art and Activism Award: Karen Mary Davalos and Cathy Salser. The awards presentation is free and open to the public. The Momentum Gala will be held from 8:00 to 10:00 PM at Japanese American National Museum. The gala includes three food stations and an open bar, an opportunity to meet the awardees and to network, tours of the museum, and the kickoff of the Sylvia Sleigh Legacy campaign. This is a ticketed event.
Cast Your Vote in the 2012–16 Board of Directors Election
posted by Vanessa Jalet — January 09, 2012
The annual election of CAA members to serve on the Board of Directors has begun. Visit the main board election page or click the candidates’ names below to read their statements, biographies, and endorsements—and to watch their video presentations—before casting your vote.
The six candidates for the 2012–16 term are:
- Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University
- Stephanie D’Alessandro, Art Institute of Chicago
- Gail Feigenbaum, Getty Research Institute
- Elizabeth Otto, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
- Doralynn Pines, independent art historian and consultant
- Charles A. Wright, Western Illinois University
To vote, log into your CAA account with your CAA user/member ID# and password. Then click the Vote Now image at the center of the screen to begin the process. If you are already logged in, click the Home link at left, and then the Vote Now image.
You may vote for up to four candidates (including one write-in candidate, if you wish) who will serve on the board for four years. The election ends at 5:00 PM (PST) on Friday, February 24, 2012.
Questions? Contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive assistant.