CAA News Today
Reflections on African and African Diaspora Art
posted by CAA — April 29, 2016
Re-Views: Field Editors’ Reflections
Routledge and CAA are pleased to announce the fourth installment of “Re-Views: Field Editors’ Reflections,” a series of review essays authored by members of caa.reviews Council of Field Editors.
The latest essay, “Reflections on African and African Diaspora Art,” is by Eddie Chambers, associate professor of art and art history at the University of Texas at Austin. In the essay, Chambers reflects on his role assigning reviews in the area of African art and African diaspora and discusses the complexities of the relationship between the two.
Recent Book Reviews
David Kertai, The Architecture of Late Assyrian Royal Palaces (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Reviewed by Kiersten Neumann.
Mary Ann Eaverly, Tan Men/Pale Women: Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative Approach (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013). Reviewed by Briana C. Jackson.
Recent Exhibition Reviews
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, International Pop (February 18–May 15, 2016). Reviewed by Taylor J. Acosta.
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, Habsburg Splendor: Masterpieces from Vienna’s Imperial Collections at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (October 18, 2015–January 17, 2016). Reviewed by Jan Volek.
About the Journal
caa.reviews, an open-access journal, publishes timely scholarly and critical reviews of studies and projects in all areas and periods of art history, visual studies, and the fine arts, providing peer review for the disciplines served by CAA. Publications and projects reviewed include books, articles, exhibitions, conferences, digital scholarship, and other works as appropriate.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — April 27, 2016
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.
Fair Use Prevails as Supreme Court Rejects Google Books Copyright Case
The US Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge from the Authors Guild and other writers claiming Google’s scanning of their books amounts to wanton copyright infringement and not fair use. The guild urged the high court to review a lower court decision in favor of Google that the writers said amounted to an “unprecedented judicial expansion of the fair-use doctrine.” (Read more from Ars Technica.)
Federal Ruling Puts California Artist Royalty Law in Jeopardy
A federal judge recently dismissed a lawsuit against several auction houses sued by artists over failure to pay them royalties as guaranteed by California law. The ruling could spell the end for the California Resale Royalty Act, which allowed some artists to collect 5 percent of any resale of their work if they lived in state or if the work was sold here. (Read more from the Los Angeles Business Journal.)
Loaded Symbols and Artistic Responsibility
An inexcusable cultural blind spot in the South is a glaring lack of education regarding imagery and symbols—their meaning, power, and unmitigated capacity to make people feel threatened. These minatory icons—nooses, Confederate flags, swastikas, blood drop crosses—are not symbols that can be recontextualized or reappropriated in art. They aren’t even “loaded images.” They are emblems of hate. (Read more from Burnaway.)
Does Mapplethorpe Still Matter?
The Perfect Medium, two concurrent retrospectives of the work of Robert Mapplethorpe hosted simultaneously at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Getty Center, provides the richest narrative about the photographer to date. By centering on Mapplethorpe’s world—his network of affiliations—instead of resting on the artist’s brand of sexual bombast, the shows manage to lift Mapplethorpe out of the often facile discourse on pornography’s contentions with fine art. (Read more from Aperture.)
Estimating Square Foot Coverage for Products
When it is important to know how much paint will be needed to complete a painting, as in the case of a mural or large painting, or simply priming a large surface, there are a few ways to estimate how much your tube, bottle, or jar of paint will cover or how much you will need to buy to complete the project. (Read more from Just Paint.)
Integrate to Innovate: Using Standards to Push Content Forward
At least once a month my colleagues and I walk out of a meeting and someone says: “Remember when we used to be publishers?” It’s become the obvious joke when all we talk about is metadata, digital content distribution, ecommerce solutions, or content licensing issues. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)
The Slow Professor
While professors may be accustomed to nonacademics clinging to an outdated image of faculty life, the newest resistance to letting it go comes from within the academy. In a new book, two tenured professors propose applying the “slow movement”—which describes everything from food to parenting to science to sex—to academic work. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
How Can the Disparity in Arts Funding along Racial Lines Be Fixed?
Nationally, only 6 percent of minority organizations receive comparable funding from individual donors to organizations serving mostly white patrons, according to Grantmakers in the Arts. At a time when foundations like Wallace are spending big bucks to maximize audience engagement, what root causes account for this discrepancy? (Read more from Inside Philanthropy.)
2017 Annual Conference Submissions Record!
posted by CAA — April 26, 2016
Thank you to all our CAA members and conference submitters for the hard work in pulling together sessions and papers for the 2017 Annual Conference in New York, February 15-18. We are happy to report that we received over 850 submissions! This is a record number for CAA and none of this would be possible without the support and interest of our members, scholars, and practitioners in the visual arts. We thank you also for submitting materials in the shorter submission timeframe that came along with the changes to the Annual Conference .
Now begins the unenviable task of reviewing and selecting sessions and papers, the timeline for which you will find below.
- June 3 – Annual Conference Committee meets to select sessions and papers
- June 20 – Notification sent regarding approved sessions and papers
- July 1 – Call for Participation for approved sessions soliciting contributors announced
- August 30 – Paper titles and abstracts due to chairs of sessions soliciting contributors
Here’s what attendees to the 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, DC said [Video].
Annual Conference participants and attendees must be current CAA members and must register for the conference. Save $75 on a membership and registration package with a Premium Level Membership over Basic Level Membership.
The 105th CAA Annual Conference will be held at the Hilton New York Midtown from Wednesday, February 15 through Saturday, February 18. Registration opens in early fall 2016. CAA’s Annual Conference consists of four days and hundreds of presentations, panel discussions, workshops, special events, and exhibitions exploring the study, practice, and history of art and visual culture. As the best-attended international forum in the visual arts, the Annual Conference offers an unparalleled opportunity to expand your professional network, meet with potential employers, and strengthen your skills in a professional-development workshop, mentoring session, or portfolio review.
Fair Use Is Up to Date in Kansas City
posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — April 21, 2016
“Do we have to seek copyright permission to post on our website a scholarly checklist of twentieth-century paintings?” “Our museum wants to put an image of a contemporary sculpture from its collection on an invitation for a fundraiser. Do we need copyright permission?” These are the kinds of questions a group of art-museum professionals discussed at a half-day workshop on copyright and fair use sponsored by CAA with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and held at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 8, 2016.
When Patricia McDonnell, director of the Wichita Art Museum, decided her museum could use input and guidance in applying the policies outlined in CAA’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, she organized a meeting for art museums in her region, believing that the support and information she needed was likely the same as her neighboring colleagues. As a member of CAA’s Task Force on Fair Use, McDonnell was familiar with the approach outlined in the Code, and her primary goal was to design an event that would generate immediate practical results. To that end, the “fair use summit” featured two elements that made it particularly effective. First, each of the eight participating museums was represented by its director, legal counsel, and staff member responsible for rights and reproduction. Second, each museum submitted a case study of a fair-use issue from their institution in advance, thereby providing practical examples for consideration during the workshop. As a result, the pragmatic discussions that took place exemplified the type of analysis necessary to determine on a case-by-case basis if the use of a copyrighted text or image is fair; the talks also unified the participating staffs in their understanding of this work.
The workshop was led by Peter Jaszi, a lead principal investigator on CAA’s fair-use project and a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law. After providing a brief history of fair use and how court opinion has evolved on this aspect of copyright law, Jaszi guided participants in analyzing each case study to determine if the use in that instance required copyright permission or if the museum could rely on fair use. Participants referred to CAA’s Code to understand the basic principles and limitations that applied in each case. In every situation, the key question was whether or not the use under consideration was “transformative.” Did it show the work of art in a new context, add to its meaning, or change our understanding of it? Was it an educational use? As the discussion continued, it became apparent that every user of copyrighted materials has to decide for him or herself if a use is fair. One museum might decide that the fair-use doctrine applies to a copyrighted image on the cover of a catalogue, for example, while another museum using the same image on the cover of a similar publication might decide to seek permission. It all depends on how each institution understands its own purpose.
The summit included the following museums: the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University; the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College; the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas; the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University; and the Wichita Art Museum. As a result of the meeting, the directors and staff of these institutions have decided to continue their work on fair use by sharing documents related to rights and reproductions―donation agreements, artist contracts, and the like. The goal is to develop additional best practices among their museums related to copyright and fair use.
Julian Zugazagoitia, director of the Nelson-Atkins, summarized the accomplishments of the meeting like this: “I think it brought immensely valuable information to all our participants and will allow us to use images in a more robust and self-assured way.” McDonnell also commented: “The CAA Code opens the door to a sea change in art-museum practice related to image use. Arriving at wise conclusions about interpretations of fair use with other art-museum colleagues provided grounded information and confidence about possible new practices.” What better results can one ask for?
Image: Shuttlecock (1994) by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — April 20, 2016
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.
Professor Pay Up 3.4 Percent
Salaries for full-time continuing faculty increased by 3.4 percent this year and 2.7 percent adjusted for inflation, according to a new American Association of University Professors report. But while a continued upward salary trend is promising, the report argues that it doesn’t reflect a systemic threat to higher education: the decline of full-time and ranked faculty positions. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Why Failure Is Being Taught in Art Schools
Of course art schools want to propel students toward success, but should they also teach young artists how to fail? The answer is found sprinkled throughout the curriculum of Chicago’s top art schools, where students are routinely encouraged to consider what it means to fail, but also how to “fail better,” in the immortal words of playwright Samuel Beckett. (Read more from Chicago Magazine.)
What Is Object-Oriented Ontology?
Ask yourself: what does your toaster want? How about your dog? Or the bacteria in your gut? What about the pixels on the screen you’re reading now—how is their day going? In other words, do things, animals, and other nonhuman entities experience their existence in a way that lies outside our own species-centric definition of consciousness? It’s precisely these questions that the nascent philosophical movement known as Object-Oriented Ontology is attempting to answer. (Read more from Artspace Magazine.)
So Long at the Fair?
Love ’em or hate ’em, the art fair is the major marketing phenomenon of our times. The website Artsy lists sixty top fairs worldwide, with estimates for maintaining a booth at one ranging from $15,000 to more than $100,000 a week. Dealers complain of sixteen-hour days, collectors who “buy with their ears,” exhausting travel, and a back-breaking workload for gallery staff. (Read more from Vasari24.)
Seven Bricks to Lay the Foundation for Productive Difficult Dialogues
There are three basic ways that I hear faculty talk about difficult dialogues: in-class dialogues that were planned but did not go particularly well; in-class hot moments that were not anticipated and that the professor did not feel equipped to handle; and difficult dialogues that happen during office hours or outside class. In all three instances, faculty are challenged to use skills they may not have learned at any point in their disciplinary training. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)
A Multiplicity of University Publishing
If you already have a university press in place, why add library publishing to the mix? And why stop there? Why not allow the special affordances of digital media, such as low costs and dissemination at the speed of light, to enable publishing centers across any institution with the pluck to take on the effort? (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)
Expanded Horizons: Looking beyond Building Projects
In the 1990s, museum expansions focused on spaces for larger and more dramatically displayed temporary exhibitions and, in the contemporary field, for the installation of larger works of art, in line with artistic practice. Then the focus was on circulation and event space and on revenue-generating activities, segueing into new spaces for educational activities. Today there is an interesting trend toward spaces for performance and music programming. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Interviewing as Performance Art
Think about the last job talk or speaker seminar you attended. How did the speaker make you feel? Did he or she put you at ease with a fluid delivery and natural speaking style? Or did the speaker seem out of place and appear nervous or uncomfortable in the presence of an audience? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Statement regarding Discriminatory Laws in North Carolina and Mississippi
posted by CAA — April 19, 2016
In March, the North Carolina legislature passed a bill that made it illegal for cities to enact laws that superseded or contradicted state law. The bill, known as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, invalidated an ordinance established in the city of Charlotte that had extended rights to gay and transgender people. This month in Mississippi, the governor signed a bill, called the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act, that came from the state legislature. This law may protect discrimination of LGBTQ people in schools, workplaces, and government locales.
Responding to the legislation in Mississippi and North Carolina, CAA’s Board of Directors approved its own statement, which reads:
The College Art Association denounces laws that sanction discrimination against LGBTQ people, including those recently enacted in North Carolina and Mississippi. The visual arts community has long stood for diversity and the inclusion of all peoples in the civic fabric of our country. We support CAA members and others in the visual arts community who live or work in the affected states and their efforts to oppose these unjust laws.
CAA Salutes Fifty-Year Members
posted by Christopher Howard — April 18, 2016
CAA warmly thanks the many contributions of the following dedicated members who joined the organization in 1966 or earlier. This year, the annually published list welcomes fourteen artists, scholars, and educators—and one attorney—whose distinguished exhibitions, publications, teaching practices, and professional service have shaped the direction and history of art over the last fifty years.
1966: Madeline H. Caviness; Gilbert S. Edelson; Jonathan Fineberg; Ann Sutherland Harris; Sara Lynn Henry; Cecelia F. Klein; Henry F. Klein; Anne-Marie Logan; Peter V. Moak; Anne Morganstern; James Morganstern; Peter H. Schabacker; David M. Sokol; and Marcia H. Werner.
1965: Jean M. Borgatti; Norma Broude; Wanda M. Corn; Elaine K. Gazda; Diana Gisolfi; Dorothy F. Glass; Andree M. Hayum; Ellen V. Kosmer; Lillian D. MacBrayne; Jerry D. Meyer; Ann Lee Morgan; Myra N. Rosenfeld-Little; Ted E. Stebbins; Eugenia Summer; MaryJo Viola; Michele Vishny; and Wallace E. Weston.
1964: Richard J. Betts; Ruth Bowman; Vivian P. Cameron; Kathleen R. Cohen; Paula Gerson; Ronald W. Johnson; Jim M. Jordan; William M. Kloss; Rose-Carol Washton Long; Phyllis Anina Moriarty; Annie Shaver-Crandell; Judith B. Sobre; and Alan Wallach.
1963: Lilian Armstrong; Richard Brilliant; Eric G. Carlson; Vivian L. Ebersman; Françoise Forster-Hahn; Walter S. Gibson; Caroline M. Houser; Susan J. Koslow; E. Solomon; Lauren Soth; Richard E. Spear; Roxanna A. Sway; Athena Tacha; and Roger A. Welchans.
1962: Jo Anne Bernstein; Phyllis Braff; Jacquelyn C. Clinton; Shirley S. Crosman; Frances D. Fergusson; Gloria K. Fiero; Jaroslav Folda; Harlan H. Holladay; Seymour Howard; Alfonz Lengyel; David Merrill; John T. Paoletti; Aimee Brown Price; Lillian M. Randall; Nancy P. Sevcenko; Thomas L. Sloan; Elisabeth Stevens; Anne Betty J. Weinshenker; and William D. Wixom.
1961: Matthew Baigell; Margaret Diane David; Bowdoin Davis Jr.; David Farmer; J. D. Forbes; Isabelle Hyman; Clifton C. Olds; Marion E. Roberts; and Conrad H. Ross.
1960: Shirley N. Blum; Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt; Dan F. Howard; Eugene Kleinbauer; Edward W. Navone; Linda Nochlin; and J. J. Pollitt.
1959: Geraldine Fowle; Carol H. Krinsky; James F. O’Gorman; and Ann K. Warren.
1958: Samuel Y. Edgerton Jr.; Carla Lord; Damie Stillman; Clare Vincent; and Barbara Ehrlich White.
1957: Bruce Glaser; Marcel M. Franciscono; Jane Campbell Hutchison; Susan R. McKillop; and Frances P. Taft.
1956: Svetlana L. Alpers; Norman W. Canedy; David C. Driskell; John Goelet; Joel Isaacson; John M. Schnorrenberg; and Jack J. Spector.
1955: Lola B. Gellman; Irving Lavin; and Suzanne Lewis.
1954: Franklin Hamilton Hazlehurst; Thomas J. McCormick; Jules D. Prown; Irving Sandler; Lucy Freeman Sandler; and Harold Edwin Spencer.
1953: Dorathea K. Beard; Margaret McCormick; and Jack Wasserman.
1951: Wen C. Fong.
1950: Alan M. Fern.
1949: Dario A. Covi and Ann-Sofi Lindsten.
1948: William S. Dale.
1947: Dericksen M. Brinkerhoff; David G. Carter; Ellen P. Conant; and Ilene H. Forsyth.
1945: James S. Ackerman.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for April 2016
posted by CAA — April 15, 2016
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.
April 2016
s
Sidsel Meineche Hansen, DICKGIRL 3D(X), 2016, CGI animation, HD video with sound, 3 min loop (artwork © Sidsel Meineche Hansen; photograph by Andy Keate)
Sidsel Meineche Hansen: ‘SECOND SEX WAR’
Gasworks
155 Vauxhall Street, London SE11 5RH, United Kingdom
March 17–May 29, 2016
Gasworks presents ‘SECOND SEX WAR’, a multidisciplinary solo exhibition by the London-based Danish artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen. Born in Denmark in 1981, Hansen has led a research-based practice rooted in the exploration of nervousness and the body and its industrial complex in what the artist refers to as a “techno-somatic variant of institutional critique.” The visual outcome includes woodcuts, sculptures, and CGI animations often made by combining her own low-tech manual craft with outsourced, skilled digital labor. Hansen’s research is not only manifested as exhibitions, but also as cross-disciplinary seminars and publications.
‘SECOND SEX WAR’ includes several new works commissioned by Gasworks in partnership with Trondheim Kunstmuseum and supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, including a pornographic CGI animation, a series of laser-cut drawings, and a large-scale ceramic relief.
Between them, the animation DICKGIRL 3D(X) is presented on a virtual-reality headset, appropriating hypersexualised 3D models, “genitalia props,” and readymade “pose sets” that have been used for animating sex scenes to critique posthuman porn production from within. Also included is the CGI animation No Right Way 2 Cum (2015) and the ceramic sculpture Cite Werkflow Ltd (2016), which expand on the artist’s investigation and commentary on commodity status of virtual 3D models in relation to gender.
The exhibition also features a large-scale clay relief Cultural Capital Cooperative Object, made in collaboration with the artists Manuela Gernedel, Alan Michael, Georgie Nettell, Oliver Rees, Matthew Richardson, Gili Tal, and Lena Tutunjian. ‘SECOND SEX WAR’ incorporates and reflects on the artist’s working relationships—with her friends, the avatar EVA 3.0, and digital arts studio Werkflow Ltd.
Rebecca Warren: Pas de Deux (Plaza Monument) & The Main Feeling
Dallas Museum of Art
1717 North Harwood, Dallas, TX 75201
March 13–July 17, 2016
The Dallas Museum of Art presents Pas de Deux (Plaza Monument) & The Main Feeling, a commission and a sculpture survey by the British artist Rebecca Warren. Born in London in 1965, Warren is one of Britain’s most vital contemporary artists. Her restless and sometimes contradictory work challenges us to engage with the aesthetic conventions of an earlier generation of male sculptors through a freshly feminist sensibility.
The Dallas Museum of Art is the first US museum to commission a sculpture from Warren, representing also one of the first commissioned works by a living female artist to be installed at the entrance of an American museum. Pas de Deux (Plaza Monument) is the inaugural sculpture in a series of site-specific works located in the museum’s new Eagle Family Plaza, to be unveiled this April. Pas de Deux (Plaza Monument) refers to the dynamic, fluctuating relationship between art history’s most persistent binaries: male/female, high/low, old/new, Dionysus/Apollo, classic/grotesque.
To coincide with the installation of the first US museum–commissioned sculpture by Warren, the Dallas Museum of Art will present an exhibition of her work: Rebecca Warren: The Main. This survey of twenty works selected from ten years of sculptural innovations, from 2003 to the present, will include work from a pivotal transitional phase in the artist’s practice characterized by the emergence of an increasingly abstract style in her work, evidencing a distinct shift from her earlier use of softer materials such as clay to steel, and then to bronze, where the artist referenced the work of canonical male artists such as Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, and Willem de Kooning. From mystical prehistoric sources up to the present moment—Warren’s ambiguous, figurative forms disrupt entrenched notions of the classical ideal.
Edith Dekyndt: Indigenous Shadows
WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre
Av. Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Brussels, Belgium
February 2–April 24, 2016
WIELS Contemporary Art Centre presents Indigenous Shadows, the first major retrospective of the Belgian artist Edith Dekyndt. Through associations with material, environment, and support, Dekyndt (born Ypres, Belgium, 1960) designs complex forms and surfaces applying biochemical, organic, or nonorganic processes on unusual supports, combining the abstract and the concrete, the particular and the universal. Thus, her works in permanent transformation appeal to us through their strong material and corporeal character.
Dekyndt has approached her first retrospective creating a dialogue between new creations and already existing works, faithful to her practice of inhabiting an exhibition location and its environment and taking as a starting point its substances, materials, and specific elements. The environment she has constructed for WIELS has been freely organized according to the nature of the location—a former brewery—and consists of works based on copper, yeast, earth, water from the local river Senne, and bacteria used to brew the Brussels specialty beer, gueuze. In this way, she links the specificity of the site with the characteristics and general qualities of natural elements while forging connections between the particular and the universal, the concrete and the abstract.
The first floor welcomes visitors with a large surface of “domestic” dust, accompanied by a soundtrack with the song from a Native American rain dance. A carpet of dust collected at WIELS over the course of a year shines underneath a spotlight, which shifts like a shadow throughout the day. Following this nomadic, shifting frame the dust is meticulously brushed back under the light. This in-situ installation One Thousand and one Nights sets the tone for her first major retrospective in Brussels. On this carpet we are invited to enter her alchemist universe of projections, painterly abstracts and drawings, visual objects, and installations as embracing our permanent state of transformation.
Zoe Leonard, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson: Nothing Personal
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL
Through May 1, 2016
Nothing Personal, at the Art Institute of Chicago, presents works by three feminist artists, Zoe Leonard, Cindy Sherman, and Lorna Simpson, in an exhibition “about the passage from personhood to persona.”
The piece The Fae Richards Archive is a culmination of Leonard’s meticulous work to create an archive around Fae Richards, a woman who did not exist. Instead, her persona exists through a mix of eighty-two publicity shots, film stills, and personal photographs that Leonard prints on historically appropriate papers. “The results show happiness tinged with melancholy and ask us to think about what it means to go through life behaving as a credible facsimile.”
In her well-known series Untitled Film Stills, Sherman enacts the role of actress during publicity shoots. While not re-creating any particular film or mimicking any particular actress, the artist stages scenes modeled on European art-house cinema, postwar genres, and female roles. “The characters weren’t just airhead accesses,” Sherman has said. “The clothes make them seem a certain way, but then you look at their expression and wonder if maybe ‘they’ are not what they clothes are communicating.”
Completing the triptych is Simpson’s video work Corridor, which features another accomplished female artist, Wangechi Mutu, playing the role of both a mid-nineteenth-century household servant or freed slave and a mid-twentieth century homeowner. In the video, the “two characters, each alone in her domestic world, bring these moments to life, moving in parallel or in tandem through their respective daily routines,” creating a dialogue across time. Accompanying the visuals is a soundtrack, composed by John Davis, with “echos of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ Chopinesque piano, New Orleans dirges, and free jazz.”
Laurie Simmons: In and Around the House
Addison Gallery of American Art
Phillips Academy, Corner of Route 28 [Main Street] and Chapel Avenue, Andover, MA
February 6–April 17, 2016
In In and Around the House (1976–78), Laurie Simmons pushed the boundaries of photography into the realm of Conceptual art, while focusing on stereotypical chores of a 1950s housewife. “I was simply trying to recreate a feeling, a mood … a sense of the Fifties that I knew was both beautiful and lethal at the same time,” Simmons said in describing the work.
The Addison recently acquired a complete set of fifty-nine photographs in Simmons’s series, created at the threshold of her career. “These poignant and melancholy black and white photographs reflect concerns and themes—artifice, and fiction, gender and identity, and memory and nostalgia—that continue to inform her work today.” The images reflect both an attention to the daily details of a housewife, as well as those of a photograph—whether through Simmons’s intentional use of lighting to cast shadows across the compositions or her shallow depth of field, directing attention.
In her photographs, the painstakingly wallpapered rooms are arranged with furniture, utensils, and other ephemera in a recognizable yet distinctly unnerving form. As the review in the Boston Globe by Mark Feeney commented, “Most unsettling of all is ‘Falling Off Chair,’ which shows a piece of furniture hanging on a tow truck hook—odd enough, but so far so good—near a doll lying on the ground: far too odd, and not good at all.” (February 17, 2016)
Sophie Barbasch’s: Training to Be a Girl
Despacio
Avenida Central – Calle 11, San José, Costa Rica
March 3, 2016–onward
Now on view both at Despacio and online are two book sets by the New York photographer Sophie Barbasch who, among other artists, was invited to curate and create a selection of books in Despacio’s Library in Residence. The library is an “ever-evolving selection of artworks, artist books, and unique handmade publications that together not only reimagine ingrained librarian systems but also examine literature’s role in contemporary art.”
Barbasch began by asking men on Craigslist questions such as: “Are you lonely?” “Is there anything you’ve never told anyone?” “Tell me why I’m a good girl,” “Please send me a picture of your bed,” and “Please write me a love letter.”
The questions led to two projects, a six-book set called Hello I Am Lonely, and the ten-book set titled Training To Be A Girl. Both projects contain original photography generated from her questions posted on Craigslist as well as photographs taken from Chat Roulette, transcribed dreams, reprinted psychic readings, and pictures from ads on Craigslist of wedding rings and dresses for sale. The full PDF files of her work can be found at http://sophiebarbasch.com/pdfs-of-books-with-full-text/.
Solo Exhibitions by Artist Members
posted by CAA — April 15, 2016
See when and where CAA members are exhibiting their art, and view images of their work.
Solo Exhibitions by Artist Members is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
April 2016
Mid-Atlantic
Virginia Maksymowicz, on the left, Comparisons, 2015, inkjet prints, 22 x 17 in. each; on the right, Caryatid, 2015, inkjet print, Hydro-Stone, fiberglass, and resin, 84 x 60 x 36 in. (artwork © Virginia Maksymowicz; photograph by Blaise Tobia)Virginia Maksymowicz. Holy Family University Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 13–February 3, 2016. Architectural Overlays. Sculpture, photography, drawing, and printmaking.
South
Tuba Öztekin Köymen, Untitled, 22¾ x 26 in. (artwork © Tuba Öztekin Köymen)Tuba Öztekin Köymen. Wilma and Terence Dennis Gallery, Forster Art Complex, Austin College, Sherman, Texas, February 15–March 18, 2016. Quiddity. Photography, unique inkjet prints, and mixed media.
People in the News
posted by CAA — April 15, 2016
People in the News lists new hires, positions, and promotions in three sections: Academe, Museums and Galleries, and Organizations and Publications.
The section is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
April 2016
Academe
Robin Kelsey, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography and chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been appointed dean of art and humanities at his school.
Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, has resigned from his position.
Museums and Galleries
Adrienne Edwards, a curator for Performa in New York, has been appointed curator at large for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Katharine Martinez, director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, has retired.