CAA News Today
Finalists for the 2017 Morey and Barr Awards
posted by Christopher Howard — November 22, 2016
CAA is pleased to announce the 2017 finalists for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and two Alfred H. Barr Jr. Awards. The winners of the three prizes, along with the recipients of nine other Awards for Distinction, will be announced in late January and presented during Convocation in conjunction with CAA’s 105th Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 15–18, 2017.
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in any language between September 1, 2015, and August 31, 2016. The three finalists for 2017 are:
- Niall Atkinson, The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016)
- Elizabeth Kindall, Geo-Narratives of a Filial Son: The Paintings and Travel Diaries of Huang Xiangjian (1609–1673) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016)
- Kishwar Rizvi, The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
The Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for museum scholarship is presented to the author(s) of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published between September 1, 2015, and August 31, 2016, under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. The five finalists for 2017 are:
- Ruth Fine, ed., Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in association with the University of California Press, 2015)
- Barbara Haskell and Harry Cooper, Stuart Davis: In Full Swing (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; New York: DelMonico Books, 2016)
- Alisa LaGamma, Kongo: Power and Majesty (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015)
- Helen Molesworth, ed., Kerry James Marshall: Mastry (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2016)
- Adrian Sudhalter, Dadaglobe Reconstructed (Zürich: Kunsthaus Zürich/Scheidegger & Spiess, 2016)
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions
In 2009, CAA established a second Barr award for the author(s) of catalogues produced by smaller museums, libraries, and collections with an annual operating budget of less than $10 million. The five finalists for the second Barr award for 2017 are:
- Zdenka Badovinac, Eda Čufer, and Anthony Gardner, eds., NSK from “Kapital” to Capital: Neue Slowenische Kunst—An Event of the Final Decade of Yugoslavia (Ljubljana, Slovenia: Moderna galerija; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015)
- Geoffrey Batchen, Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph (New Plymouth, New Zealand: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery; New York: DelMonico Books, 2016)
- Andreas Marks, ed., Tōkaidō Texts and Tales: Tōkaidō “gojūsan tsui” by Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015)
- Carmella Padilla and Barbara Anderson, eds., A Red Like No Other: How Cochineal Colored the World (New York: Skira Rizzoli, in association with the Museum of International Folk Art, 2015)
- Valérie Rousseau, Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2015)
The presentation of the 2017 Awards for Distinction will take place on Wednesday evening, February 15, 5:30–7:00 PM, at the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan. The event is free and open to the public. For more information about CAA’s Awards for Distinction, please contact Katie Apsey, CAA manager of programs.
Complimentary Conference Registration + $250 Scholarship
posted by CAA — November 21, 2016
with support from
Registration is in full swing for the 2017 Annual Conference in New York, February 15-18.
We are always listening to what our members want and seeking out the benefits to fit your needs. That is why we have partnered up our sponsors, multinational publisher, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, and art materials specialist, Blick Art Materials, to create a student scholarship fund to assist CAA Student Members with conference costs.
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Student Scholarship
CAA’s Annual Conference Partner Sponsor, Routledge, Taylor & Francis will award four (4) CAA Student Members with complimentary registration and an additional $250 in scholarship money to help with conference expenses such as travel, housing, or meals. Receipts will be required for reimbursement.
Blick Art Materials Student Scholarship
CAA’s Annual Conference Presenter Sponsor, Blick Art Materials will also fund conference registration fees for four (4) CAA Student Members. No travel expenses are available.
Criteria for the Scholarship
Awardee will be chosen by lottery on the following criteria:
- Individuals must be registered for the Annual Conference by the Early Registration deadline
- Individuals must be current CAA student members (proof of student status will be required by the 8 winners chosen)
- Individuals cannot receive conference registration or travel reimbursement from their institution or employer
What does this mean for you? It means register today for the 2017 Annual Conference before the Early Registration deadline for a chance to be one of the lucky 8 CAA Student Members to receive one of these scholarships. Recipients will be randomly selected by CAA and announced in mid January.
We look forward to seeing you in New York!
Staff Interview: Doreen Davis
posted by CAA — November 21, 2016
In our first staff interview, we spoke with Paul Skiff, assistant director for Annual Conference. Continuing in the staff interview series, we spoke with Doreen Davis, who currently holds the record for longest-serving CAA staff member.
How long have you worked at CAA?
Twenty-six years.
What do you do at CAA?
I am the manager of member services.
What does CAA mean to you?
CAA has many meanings, but the greatest meaning to me is that it represents the opportunity for me to grow, for me to share what I have learned, for me to plant the seed of possibilities and leave behind a bigger, better organization than the one I first started working for. CAA will always be the organization that challenged me to be better and to have the flexibility to make our members feel that we are not just an organization. We are their partner for as long as they are members, whether active or lapsed.
Can you talk about one of your favorite member moments?
One member was very dissatisfied on several occasions and continued to be very mean on the phone. Even after I resolved her membership issues, she did not say “thank you” but instead hung up. The conference was approaching, and I am usually stationed at the “Problem Information Booth.” I hoped and prayed that I would not see her at the conference, because she would definitely come to that booth. Well, I was not so lucky. She showed up and, after reading my badge, said, “Hi Ms. Davis, I am so and so. I want to apologize for my behavior—it was so unlike me. I was going through a rough period, but thank you for your patience and your help.” I responded, “You are very welcome, and enjoy the conference.” Whew!
What do you like best about the arts and working in the arts?
I love that art can transcend time, and if art is good it will last forever. I also love that we can have an unlimited number of interpretations of art. Everyone sees or hears roughly the same thing, but each of us has our own opinion of it. Our experiences in life help shape our opinions of art. No two people experience the exact same thing, so our interpretations are bound to vary. I love working for the arts because I see how my efforts positively affect people in need. Nonprofits are a great place to maximize your mental talents along with your compassion.
Do you have a favorite moment from the Annual Conference each year?
One of my favorite moments was encountering a job seeker who had an interview, but because she was not a current member she was not allowed in the Interview Hall to meet with the employer. I gave her an individual-membership brochure with an application and walked her into the hall. She took it and thanked me. I said to myself, maybe she will join. She came back later and informed me that the interview went well. I said, “Congrats!” I forgot all about her until a few months later, when she sent me an email telling me she had been hired. Because of that, she took out a membership!
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — November 18, 2016
Mary Manning visits Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition “presents ninety-two works that depict members of the artist’s vast social circle” and shows how Sargent’s “personal relationships and growing prestige afforded him substantial access to creative personalities who would influence his understanding of the arts.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Angelina Lucento reviews Hyperrealism: When Reality Becomes an Illusion, an exhibition at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The show illustrates how the photo-realist members of the Union of Artists of the USSR used painting “to examine the role of the technologies of reproduction and transmission on the perception of the postwar socialist body and the spaces of its existence.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Grace Lees-Maffei provides a summary of design history in the essay “Design History: The State of the Art.” The author sketches “the history of design history for those unfamiliar with it, including the international spread of the subject,” and focuses “on the current state of the field with reference to several key topics and work currently in progress.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
caa.reviews publishes over 150 reviews each year. Founded in 1998, the site 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 the College Art Association. Publications and projects reviewed include books, articles, exhibitions, conferences, digital scholarship, and other works as appropriate. Read more reviews at caa.reviews.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — November 16, 2016
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Donald Trump, Taste, and the Cultural Elite
It’s said that taste defines us. The music I like lets you know, to some degree, what kind of person I am. Yet though this year’s presidential election has raised issues of racism, sexism, and classism, not much has been said about taste, and the role it may or may not have played in getting Donald Trump to the White House. (Read more from the Washington Post.)
Now, More Than Ever, Designers Must Transform America
Thoughtful design, whether it’s a logo, an object, or a well-organized protest, has always had the ability to effect political change. And yet, in days following the election, the power of design felt—at least momentarily—diminished. Graphic design didn’t affect the outcome. (Read more from Wired.)
The Obligation to Explain
One of the striking aspects of the controversy around Kelley Walker’s exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis is how many important issues it raises: the perilous state of race relations; the dilemmas that arise when one person’s freedom of speech is perceived as hate speech; whether white artists can tackle the subject of black experience without engaging in cultural appropriation; and the extent to which social media pressures museums to bring more transparency to their curatorial process. (Read more from Artcritical.)
Iconic Ancient Sites Ravaged in ISIS’s Last Stand in Iraq
Recently released satellite imagery of archaeological sites around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul has revealed extensive destruction at two capital cities of ancient Mesopotamia, according to researchers with the American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives. (Read more from National Geographic.)
The Future of the Tiny Liberal-Arts College
At first glance, it sounds like a grim affair: a group of fifteen presidents from the country’s tiniest liberal-arts institutions met in New York in June, even amid experts’ predictions of small-college mergers and closings. Attendees who were at the meeting report the mood was far from somber, though. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Crash and Burn
Your course plan looked great on paper. It passed departmental faculty review. Perhaps it even integrated some progressive pedagogical experimentations. In sum, the class held real promise. But when it got to the classroom, your first-run of the course was received with far less enthusiasm than you anticipated. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
Auditioning for the Role of Colleague
Far too many graduate students earnestly prepare for their job talk as if the talk itself is what matters most. It was not until a casual meeting with a member of my dissertation committee in her cozy office that I learned the secret to delivering a great job talk: nothing matters more than how you manage the Q&A portion. (Read more from Vitae.)
Makeover Mania: Inside the Twenty-First-Century Craze for Redesigning Everything
In theory, the redesign begins with a problem. The problem might be specific or systemic or subjective. A logo makes a company’s image feel out of date. A familiar household object has been overtaken by new technology. A service has become too confusing for new users. The world is, after all, full of problems. (Read more from the New York Times Magazine.)
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for November 2016
posted by CAA — November 16, 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.
November 2016
This is Political (painting): Kajsa Dahlberg, A K Dolven, VALIE EXPORT, Claire Fontaine and Alexandra Pirici
Kunsthall Trondheim
Kongens gate 2, 7011 Trondheim, Norway
October 20, 2016–February 26, 2017
Kunsthall Trondheim is inaugurating its new permanent space with the international women exhibition project this is a political (painting). The exhibition, curated by Helena Holmberg, borrows its title from A. K. Dolven’s work this is a political painting (2013) and presents work by Dolven (Norway), Kajsa Dahlberg (Sweden), VALIE EXPORT (Austria), Claire Fontaine (France), and Alexandra Pirici (Romania) that reflects on the complex relationship between the individual human body and the social backgrounds that support it from diverse perspective and visual languages.
Dolven presents a personal and politically meaningful fingerprints pattern-work that speaks about a body that perseveres to remind of its existence, its place and conditions in society, and the carried identity along the boundaries for its potentials. Fontaine’s large neon work series Foreigners Everywhere addresses to us all as being foreigners in most places, with the exception of a very limited part of the world. For the exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere has been translated into the fifteen most spoken languages, including the local minority language South Sami. EXPORT’s presents Body Configurations (1972–82) and Body Sign Action (1970), two emblematic images of the female body’s relation to society, a critical oeuvre that is constantly scrutinizing the societal structures from a feminist and conceptual viewpoint that always proposes resistance. In her film Reach, Grasp, Move, Position, Apply Force (2015), Dahlberg revisits the early history of film and film’s appliance in experiments and research on the systemized movement of the working human body. In Monument to Work, Pirici has undertaken interviews and research on movements performed by industrial workers through their working life, movements that will be choreographed by the artist herself and enacted by a group of people forming a living monument at the Kunsthall Trondheim exhibition space.
Root Connection: 20 Years of the Patti Smith Collection
Mills College Art Museum
5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613
September 14–December 11, 2016
Mills College presents an expansive display of rarely exhibited and unique materials from the special collections of the Mills F. W. Olin Library. The exhibition includes photographs both of and by Smith, publications, recordings, and ephemera that are showcased together to highlight the breadth of Smith’s artistic experimentation across disciplines, including (and not limited to) poetry, music, and photography.
Displayed throughout both the art museum and the library and curated by three people—Stephanie Hanor, Mills College Art Museum Director; Janice Braun, Library Director and Special Collections Curator; and Robert Byler, Smith donor and collector—this double exhibition presents an intimate examination of Smith’s work from multiple perspectives that unveils in a comprehensive approach the artist’s ongoing innovativeness and inspirational influences.
The exhibition includes a screening room hosting short films in which Smith introduces places, people, and cultural moments that have inspired and informed her practice, including Jean Genet, Robert Frank, and the punk eclecticism of 1970s New York’s “Downtown Scene,” as well as listening stations featuring music and readings. The displayed collection of ephemera includes broadsides and concert announcements, personal effects from her childhood, and international versions of releases of her published works. The intimate installation is conceived in such a way that visitors to the library and museum are welcome to hang out and spend time in the lounge of the museum and in the library reading rooms, digging into the evocative spread of materials presented.
Mary Reid Kelley: Two solo exhibitions in Europe
A Marquee Piece of Sod: The WWI Films of Mary Reid Kelley
Kunsthalle Bremen
Am Wall 207, 28195 Bremen, Germany
September 10, 2016–February 19, 2017
Kunsthalle Bremen presents the first solo exhibition in a European museum of work by the American artist Mary Reid Kelly. Her four-part film cycle on the First World War, A Marquee Piece of Sod, is contextualized by a selection of works on paper from the Kunsthalle Bremen’s collection of prints and drawings, opening an artistic discourse with Reid Kelley’s videos.
Interweaving her films to form total works of art that are rich in both innuendo and punning wordplay, Reid Kelley (Greenville, South Carolina, 1979) creates performances, drawings, and sculptures in collaboration with her partner, Patrick Kelley. Her narratives examine cultural gender roles and struggles, reflecting on the realities of women’s lives during historical periods of political, social, economic, and cultural upheaval, such as the French Revolution and WWI.
In Reid Kelley’s first solo exhibition in a European museum, her black-and-white films, based on extensive research, oscillate between drawings that are brought to life and stop-motion animation that combines the artist’s concise aesthetic, which ironically synthesizes art-historical styles such as Cubism, Expressionism, and Surrealism. In this way, Reid Kelley explores how dramatic historical events have affected and inform the changes in identity, gender roles, behavior, sexuality, and speech.
Mary Reid Kelley
M – Museum Leuven
Grote Markt, B, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
September 30, 2016–August 1, 2017
Coinciding with Kunsthalle Bremen, the M – Museum Leuven presents the first Belgian solo exhibition of work by Mary Reid Kelley. Under the curation of Valerie Verhack, the artist features her video trilogy about the myth of the Minotaur—Priapus Agonistes (2013), Swinburne’s Pasiphae (2014), and The Thong of Dionysus (2015)—along with The Syphilis of Sisyphus (2011) and drawings. Playing with these historical figures, Reid Kelley utilizes costumes, masks, and poetic wordplay to create black-and-white films that are strongly reminiscent of the graphic novel, reflecting on gender, desire, and vanity through the connection of classical tragedies with pop culture and contemporary literature.
Patty Carroll: Anonymous Women
Book
Paper over Board, 10 X 10 In. / 112 Pages / 50 Color
ISBN 9781942084198
Released this year, Anonymous Women is a new collection of fifty photographs by Patty Carroll depicting models heavily camouflaged in drapery and household objects.
The beginning of the work coincided with the start of the Iraq War, as Carroll explains in an earlier publication, as issues of vulnerability, trust, and safety were present daily. “Anonymous Women presents images that symbolize the psychological states of women around the world by showing them hidden behind, and intertwined with, visually stunning domestic scenes.”
Although the women are obscured by often colorful, and sometimes flamboyant surroundings, the photographs are more than commentary on oppression. Instead, Carroll likens them to portraits, “because some women like very flowery, fussy things, and other women like very stark, modern things, so in a way they’re like portraits of people that you know even though you don’t see their faces.” (Guardian, January 25, 2014).
Likewise, the photographs consistently reference classic draped statues, nuns in habits, the burka, the Virgin Mary, priests’ robes, ancient Greek and Roman dress, as well as covered furniture.
Renée Green: Facing
Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124, Toronto, Canada
October 6–November 25, 2016
For the first time in the history of Prefix ICA, they have dedicated all of their exhibition spaces to one artist, the writer and filmmaker Renée Green. Facing, curated by Betty Julian, is anchored by the digital film projection Begin Again, Begin Again (2015) and built upon previous aspects of the artist’s journey, including Spacing in Lisbon, Placing in Berlin, and Tracing in Lake Como.
“Her excavation of locations, perceptions, memory and movement is developed as a series of ‘nodes,’ which refer to her own private acts and processes as an artist. Once transformed into a public exhibition or other presentation, each node is given a name and an association with a specific location, which has its own forms of resonance for both the artist and audience.”
The exhibition includes more than four hours of time-based work, featuring sound works, space poems, prints, and digital films from ongoing work.
NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Ave NW, Washington, D.C.
September 30, 2016–January 8, 2017
Featuring work by thirty-seven artists from fifteen countries, No Man’s Land is comprised of work collected by the Rubell Family, one of the largest privately owned collections of contemporary art.
In No Man’s Land, curators worked with both new acquisitions and those that had been in the collection for decades to present a conversation focused on the process of making and images of the female body. “Many artists in the exhibition use labor-intensive techniques to alter conventional notions of ‘women’s work’ and handcraft. Some sculpt or paint semi-abstract shapes that reference the body obliquely, while others depict the female form directly, forcefully reclaiming its visualization and interpretation.”
The inspiration for the title of the exhibition comes from a visit Don and Mera Rubell made to the studio of the painter Kaari Upson in 2008. As explained in the audio guide by Mera Rubell: “We went to visit the artist’s studio and it turned out that the way she made these paintings was about Larry, who she had an obsession about, and she painted herself and then what she did is merge the two paintings face to face with each other as though they were actually kissing … she invented a way for these two figures to merge into something different … what she found in this merger was a new territory of identity, of maybe compromise, maybe psychological interactiveness.”
Works on display range from more traditional examples of painting and sculpture to artists who use a variety of raw materials in their assemblages, from painting with neon to weaving with Carnival beads.
Affiliated Society News for November 2016
posted by CAA — November 15, 2016
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) asks for your support in reaching 3,800 listserv members! Join the most active academic museum and gallery discussion board on the web and get answers to your questions about student engagement, faculty partnerships, and more. Visit us online.
Association of Print Scholars
The Association of Print Scholars (APS) recently celebrated its second anniversary, and the organization continues to grow through the dedicated work of its officers and members. According to its by-laws, APS must elect two officers biannually. In the coming weeks, online voting will take place for the positions of vice president and treasurer. Officers will also appoint a website coordinator.
The International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) and APS collaboratively presented a panel discussion on the market for contemporary prints. The event marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the IFPDA Print Fair, the largest and most celebrated art fair dedicated to fine prints. “Publishing the Contemporary: The State of Printmaking Today” took place on Saturday, November 5, 2016, in the Board of Officers Room at the Park Avenue Armory. The print specialist and critic Sarah Kirk Hanley moderated the conversation.
APS will host its affiliated-society panel at CAA’s 2017 Annual Conference in New York. “Collaborative Printmaking” is scheduled for Friday, February 17 at 3:30 PM in the Petit Trianon, 3rd Floor. Chaired by Jasper van Putten from Harvard University, the panel brings together a diverse group of print scholars and artists to explore the wide-ranging impact of collaboration in printmaking across cultures and times—from the European Middle Ages and colonial Peru to contemporary Johannesburg and Chicago. Speakers include: Suzanne Boorsch, Yale University Art Gallery; Emily C. Floyd, Tulane University; Kim Berman, University of Johannesburg; and Kate McQuillen, Independent Visual Artist. Please stay tuned for further updates on APS’s session, reception, and print-related activities.
APS members might enjoy reading the recent issue of Art in Print, which includes the National Gallery of Art curator Peter Parshall’s APS Inaugural Lecture, as well as responses from scholars and APS members.
Feminist Art Project
The Feminist Art Project has announced a call for submissions for “Bodies, Borders, Homes.” We live in a world of migratory population flows, resurgent nationalisms, and state-sanctioned violence. The next issue of Rejoinder web journal will explore the theme of bodies and borders in the context of these geopolitical phenomena. We invite submissions that focus on how the relationship between borders and bodies shapes our understandings of selfhood, exile, and home. Writing (including essays, commentary, criticism, fiction, and poetry) and artwork should address these relationships from feminist, queer, and social justice–inspired perspectives. We particularly welcome contributions at the intersection of scholarship and activism. For manuscript preparation details, please see our website. Rejoinder is published by the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University, in partnership with the Feminist Art Project, Rutgers University. Please send completed written work (2,000–2,500 words max), JPEGs of artwork, and short bios to the editor, Sarah Tobias, by December 9, 2016.
Italian Art Society
Next year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Italian Art Society (IAS). To celebrate this milestone, the organization has initiated both membership and fundraising campaigns that will run through the end of 2016. Please encourage colleagues, students, friends, and aficionados working on or appreciative of Italian art, architecture, and visual culture to join IAS. We are encouraging our members to offer gift memberships to emerging scholars, contingent faculty, and independent scholars. Membership options begin at $20 for graduate students and include three other membership levels ($30 regular; $60 patron, and $100 institution/benefactor). New or newly renewed lapsed memberships paid by December 31, 2016, are valid until January 1, 2018.
IAS has also launched an anniversary-specific campaign to celebrate the growth and longevity of the organization. We ask members and others to consider donations in permutations of three and/or thirty ($3, $30, $300, 2 x $30, 30 x $2) to support IAS’s mission, programs, grants, charitable activities, and publications. Thus far we have raised nearly $2,000 in this fall’s fundraising campaign. During CAA’s annual meeting next February, IAS will host a gala reception to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary at the beautiful New York restaurant Il Gattopardo (13–15 West 54th Street, New York, NY 10019, less than a block from CAA’s conference headquarters, the New York Hilton Midtown). At the event we will honor several early presidents of IAS. The early history of the society may be found on our website.
Next year’s IAS/Kress Lecture will take place in Bologna in the Aula Magna of the former monastery of Santa Cristina, which now houses the Arts Department of the University of Bologna. Proposals to present the eighth annual IAS/Kress Lecture, on a topic related to Bologna or its environs, will be due in early January.
Japan Art History Forum
The Japan Art History Forum (JAHP) has announced two recent developments. First, the Japanese Art Society of America (JASA) will provide funding in support of the Chino Kaori Memorial Essay Prize. JASA will award $1,000 to the 2016 prize winner and has committed to provide a $1,000 award for the prize winner in each of the next four years, for a total of $5,000. Established in 2003 in memory of the distinguished art historian Chino Kaori, the Chino Kaori Memorial Essay Prize is awarded annually to a graduate student who has written an outstanding essay on a topic in the study of Japanese art history or visual culture. The award recognizes excellence in scholarship, with several past prize-winning essays later published in peer-reviewed journals. More information, including a list of past winners, can be found on the JAHF website. The prize continues to be supported by the University of Hawai‘i Press, which provides $400 in books from the press’s catalogue.
Second, former curatorial interns at the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford, California, have created the Clark Center Graduate Travel Grant, which will award $500 annually to a graduate student of Japanese art wishing to visit a public or private collection of Japanese art for the purpose of in-person, hands-on research. The grant was created in commemoration of the closing of the Clark Center and in recognition of and heartfelt gratitude for the experience the Clarks and the center provided to the former interns and to many more young and emerging scholars in the field.
In June 2015, the Clark Center closed its doors after twenty years of offering exceptional exhibitions and programs for visitors from the local community in California’s Central Valley as well as Japanese art specialists from across the country and around the world. From its inception, the Clark Center also hosted an unparalleled curatorial internship program, which graduated a total of nineteen interns with valuable hands-on experience handling and caring for artworks, planning exhibitions, and working with the public. Bill and Libby Clark, founders of the center, not only created this rare opportunity for young scholars in the field; they also opened their home to us and welcomed us as part of their family. Seed money for this fund has been donated by the past interns of the Clark Center, and additional contributions to the fund are welcome on an ongoing basis. Donations to the Clark Center Graduate Travel Grant program can be made by visiting the JAHF website.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The forty-fourth annual conference of the National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) convened September 28–October 1, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The organization is indebted to Hester Stinnett of Tyler School of Art at Temple University for organizing a truly exceptional conference. Featured speakers included Sean Kelley, senior vice president and director of public programming at Eastern State Penitentiary; Pepon Osorio, artist and Tyler professor; Greg Anderson, sociologist and dean of Temple University’s College of Education; and Blake Bradford, director of the Lincoln University-Barnes Foundation Museum.
The membership elected three new board members: Joe Poshek (Irvine Valley College); Jeni Mokren (State University of New York, New Paltz); and Peter Chametzky (University of South Carolina). They join returning directors Leslie Bellavance (Kendall College of Art and Design, Secretary), Lynne Allen (Boston University), Elissa Armstrong (Virginia Commonwealth University, President), Cathy Pagani (University of Alabama, Treasurer), Tom Berding (Michigan State University), Nan Goggin (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), A. Blake Pearce (Valdosta State University), David LaPolombara (Ohio University), Michael Fels (Elon University), Andrea Eis (Oakland University, Past Treasurer) and Amy Hauft (University of Texas at Austin, Past President). Special thanks to Steve Bliss (Savannah College of Art and Design), Cora Lynn Deibler (University of Connecticut) and Jim Hopfensperger (Western Michigan University) for their excellent service and who rotated off the board this year.
Activities at the 2017 CAA Annual Conference include the annual NCAA reception (Thursday, February 16, 7:00–9:00 PM) and an NCAA-CAA affiliate session, “Entrepreneurship as Research, Teaching, Learning, or Service,” a fast-paced series of presentations on leadership (Thursday, February 16, 5:30–7:00 PM). NCAA welcomes new and current members, and all interested parties.
Public Art Dialogue
Public Art Dialogue (PAD) has announced the 2017 winner of its annual award for lifetime achievement in the field of public art. The artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles will be honored with an award reception during the CAA Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 15–18, 2017. PAD’s awards ceremony will take place at the Queens Museum. For more information, please see http://publicartdialogue.org/news
Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
The Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has welcomed several new members, including three institutions: St. Petersburg Arts Project, the Getty Research Institute, and ARTMargins. The organization has also received its first donation to establish the Maya Semina Graduate Student Travel Grant. Several SHERA members are participating in the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies convention, taking place November 17–20, 2016, in Washington, DC. The SHERA membership meeting will take place on Friday, November 18, 6:15–7:45 PM at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park.
At the CAA Annual Conference in February 2017, SHERA will host two emerging-scholar sessions and a membership meeting. “Emerging Scholars: Politics and the Collective in East European and Russian Art, Part I” will take place on Wednesday, February 15, 10:30 AM–NOON, and “Emerging Scholars: Russian Artists and International Communities, Part II” will transpire on Friday, February 17, 8:30–10:00 AM. The SHERA membership meeting will happen on Friday, February 17, 5:30–7:00 PM. All events will take place in the conference hotel.
Visual Resources Association
The Visual Resources Association (VRA) expresses gratitude to CAA and its membership for the distribution of the VRA Professional Status survey in fall 2015. VRA is pleased to announce the completion and availability of the VRA 2015-16 Professional Status Task Force Report on Professional Status. This report provides extremely valuable information about the landscape of the profession and the needs of colleagues working within a variety of visual-resource and related environments. Almost half of the 446 survey respondents identified themselves as non-VRA members, which is a good indication of how support from an organization like CAA increased the survey’s reach and our understanding of the professional status and needs of our colleagues working across related fields. Thanks again to all affiliated-society members who assisted in this important work. Please do not hesitate to contact the VRA board with questions about the report by sending a message to board@vraweb.org.
VRA has once again been included in the important Cross-Pollinator collaboration with Digital Library Federation/Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (DLF-GLAM). Through the cross-pollinator grant last year, Andrea Schuler from Tufts University attended the DLF meeting; Meagan Duever of the University of Georgia attended the VRA-ARLIS/NA joint conference in Seattle. Since this year’s grant was funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the grant can support eight new travel awards to foster collaboration among museum and digital library communities. Four $1,000 fellowships will be offered to non-DLF-affiliated GLAM professionals to attend the 2016 DLF Forum, and four DLF-affiliated practitioners will receive a $1,000 award plus free registration to attend one of the upcoming conferences of the following partnering organizations: the American Institute for Conservation; the Art Libraries Society of North America; the Museum Computer Network; and VRA.
Women’s Caucus for Art
The Women’s Caucus for Art will present its 2017 Lifetime Achievement Awards to Mary Schmidt Campbell, Audrey Flack, Martha Rosler, and Charlene Teters on Saturday, February 18, 2017, at the New York Institute of Technology in midtown Manhattan. CAA members are invited to attend the ticketed VIP Awards celebration from 6:00 to 7:30 PM that precedes the public awards presentation at 8:00 PM. The WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards were first presented in 1979 to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Like those women, this year’s awardees have made significant contributions to the visual arts. The art historian Mary Schmidt Campbell is president of Spellman College. The work of the photorealist painter and sculptor Audrey Flack is in major museum collections. Martha Rosler is a nationally known video, text, and performance artist, as well as a frequent contributor to Artforum. Charlene Teters is academic dean at the Institute of American Indian Arts as well as an artist, writer, and activist. The 2017 President’s Award for Art and Activism will be presented to the feminist curator and educator Kat Griefen.
The Lifetime Achievement Awards are the culminating event at WCA’s annual conference (held during CAA, February 16–18) that includes a Thursday evening reception for the exhibition Wage On! Women, Art, and Money at Ceres Gallery in Chelsea, professional workshops, caucus sessions, and other opportunities for networking. WCA’s affiliated-society panel on “Maternal Art and Activism” with cochairs Rachel Buller and Margo Hobbs will take place on Friday, February 17 at 10:30 AM in the Rendezvous Ballroom. Be sure to visit WCA in the CAA Book and Trade Fair, too. Early bird tickets are available for the awards VIP reception until January 7, 2017.
The Artist as Entrepreneur
posted by CAA — November 14, 2016
New York Foundation for the Arts, 20 Jay Street, Seventh Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Participants: 60
Pricing: $50
Date: Tuesday, February 14, 2017
9:30 AM – 4:00 PM
This Valentine’s Day, the College Art Association (CAA) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) are showing their love for artists by partnering to offer professional development programming, “The Artist as Entrepreneur,” the day before the CAA Annual Conference. This day-long event has been customized to fit the needs of CAA artist members but is open to all artists. It allows participants the opportunity to attend part of the CAA Annual Conference with a ticket to a session of their choice. Participants are also welcome to join numerous conference events that are open to the public.
NYFA’s “The Artist as Entrepreneur” is a course that teaches the fundamental principles of sustainability—and ultimately profitability—in the arts. This includes topics such as strategic planning, finance, and marketing. Additional material is drawn from NYFA’s popular textbook which accompanies this curriculum, The Profitable Artist (Allworth Press, 2011). The structure is a blend of formal lectures, breakout groups, and one-on-one meetings. Participants work through a flexible and dynamic “action plan,” which provides a blueprint for their practice or specific projects. Each receives specific feedback from experts in the field as well as their peers in the course.
Register for “The Artist as Entrepreneur.”
First come, first served.
To learn more about NYFA Learning, please see a list of programs on their website.
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — November 11, 2016
Andy Campbell visits Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics at the Dallas Contemporary. Consisting of artworks, mostly from the 1970s, by Joan Semmel, Anita Steckel, Betty Tompkins, and Cosey Fanni Tutti, the exhibition “unapologetically centralize[s] representations of the embodied experiences of (heterosexual) sex and eroticism.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Jeremy George reads At Home with the Sapa Inca: Architecture, Space, and Legacy at Chinchero by Stella Nair. “A critical addition to Andean studies,” the book discusses the Inca royal estate at Chinchero, Peru, and “examines the experiential aspects of this site in relation to indigenous ideologies of space and the built environment.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Jeannie McKetta discusses Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots at the Dallas Museum of Art. The exhibition spotlights an overlooked period of Pollock’s career: his “black paintings” made between 1951 and 1953. The works were negatively received at the time, but the show “contextualizes the monochromes by displaying them among a few of Pollock’s earlier paintings and experimental ink drawings.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Caa.reviews publishes over 150 reviews each year. Founded in 1998, the site 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 the College Art Association. Publications and projects reviewed include books, articles, exhibitions, conferences, digital scholarship, and other works as appropriate. Read more reviews at caa.reviews.
2017 CAA-Getty International Program Reunion
posted by CAA — November 10, 2016
CAA Names Recipients for
2017 CAA-Getty International Program Reunion
Celebrating five successful years of the CAA-Getty International Program, the College Art Association (CAA) is pleased to announce the selection of twenty alumni to participate in a reunion program during the 2017 CAA Annual Conference, taking place in New York City from February 15-18. Funded by a generous grant from the Getty Foundation, the alumni will join distinguished scholars from the United States for a series of four conference sessions on international topics in art history.
The twenty alumni chosen for the reunion program will travel to the Annual Conference from home countries as varied as Malaysia, Cameroon, and Argentina, to name a few. As scholars, their work encompasses an equally wide spectrum, including topics such as international modernism, Islamic architecture in Southeast Asia, and contemporary aesthetics and art. Connecting the diverse mix of cultural, environmental, and scholarly backgrounds is central to the mission of CAA.
2017 CAA-Getty International Program Reunion participants
Since 2012, the Getty Foundation has supported CAA in bringing between fifteen and twenty scholars from countries around the world to its Annual Conference. Open to professors of art history, curators, and artists who teach art history, the program boasts ninety alumni from forty-one countries. Many scholarly collaborations and exchanges have ensued, both between these international scholars and North American members of CAA, and among the international scholars themselves. The 2017 reunion will celebrate these accomplishments and deepen ties with these international scholars.
“It is a pleasure to work with CAA on the international program, which has brought so many interesting scholars from all over the world to the United States for the Annual Conference,” said Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation. “We have learned so much from the scholars’ participation and are delighted to support the upcoming reunion program. Congratulations to CAA and these remarkable alumni.”
This past summer, alumni helped to shape the reunion plans, working with members of CAA’s International Committee. Using CAA Connect, CAA’s new digital discussion platform, committee members Elisa Mandell (California State University, Fullerton), Judy Peter (University of Johannesburg, South Africa), and Miriam Paeslack (University of Buffalo), in consultation with committee chair Rosemary O’Neill (Parsons The New School for Design), moderated an online discussion about a wide range of international issues, looking for ideas that would make particularly good topics for the four conference sessions to be held in February. Linked under the heading “Global Conversations,” the daily sessions will address the following topics: “Decolonizing the Curriculum, “Dominant Ideologies and Political Trauma,” “The Trouble with (the Term) Art,” and “Transnational Collaborations and Interdisciplinarity.”
Joining the alumni at these sessions will be four members (or former members) of the National Committee for the History of Art (NCHA). Since it began, the CAA-Getty International Program has benefitted from the participation of NCHA members, both as speakers and hosts to the international colleagues. This year, Frederick Asher (University of Minnesota), Michael Ann Holly (Research and Academic Program, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute), Mary Miller (Yale University), and David Roxburgh (Harvard University) are each moderating one of the Global Conversations, adding their expertise to the discussions.
CAA is grateful to the Getty Foundation for its ongoing support of this program, and to the members of CAA’s International Committee and NCHA who have contributed their time and expertise to making the program a success.
About CAA
The College Art Association (CAA) is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other programs, services, and events. CAA focuses on a wide range of advocacy issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching. Learn more about CAA at www.collegeart.org.
About the J. Paul Getty trust and the Getty Foundation
The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts that includes the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades.
The Getty Foundation fulfills the philanthropic mission of the Getty Trust by supporting individuals and institutions committed to advancing the greater understanding and preservation of the visual arts in Los Angeles and throughout the world. Through strategic grant initiatives, the Foundation strengthens art history as a global discipline, promotes the interdisciplinary practice of conservation, increases access to museum and archival collections, and develops current and future leaders in the visual arts. It carries out its work in collaboration with the other Getty Programs to ensure that they individually and collectively achieve maximum effect. Additional information is available at www.getty.edu/foundation.
For more information about the CAA-Getty International Program contact Janet Landay, Project Director.