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Notice of the CAA 113th Annual Business Meeting

posted by November 26, 2024

CAA Annual Business Meeting
Friday, February 14, 2025
12:00 p.m. ET

The 113th Annual Business Meeting of the members of the College Art Association will be called to order at 12:00 p.m. ET on Friday, February 14, 2025, at the New York Hilton Midtown. Access to this meeting is included in paid and no-cost registration. Once registered, please log into the online conference schedule to view more details about this meeting. CAA President, Dr. Denise Baxter will preside.


AGENDA

  1. Welcome + Call to Order – Denise Baxter, CAA Board President
  2. Executive Director Report – Meme Omogbai, CAA Executive Director + CEO
  3. Approval of 112th Annual Business Meeting Minutes [ACTION ITEM] 
  4. Financial Report – Anthony Crisafulli, CAA Treasurer
  5. Old/New Business 
  6. Board Election Results – Denise Baxter, CAA Board President
  7. Adjourn

 SPECIAL DISCUSSION

Immediately following the CAA 113th Annual Business Meeting, Robert B. Townsend, Director of Humanities, Arts, and Culture Programs and Codirector of Humanities Indicators at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will lead a discussion on the state of the field based on the Mellon Foundation-funded Arts and Humanities national survey of department chairs in each discipline.


BOARD VOTING

The 2025 Board of Directors slate will be announced in December 2024 along with an online voting form. Please submit your voting form for the 2025 election no later than 5:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, February 13, 2025. 


NEXT MEETING–2026

The 114th Annual Business Meeting of the College Art Association will be held in February 2026 at the Hilton Chicago during the CAA Annual Conference; precise date and time to be announced.

Filed under: Annual Conference, Governance — Tags:

CAA 112th Annual Business Meeting Minutes

posted by November 26, 2024

CAA 112th Annual Business Meeting Minutes
Hilton Chicago
February 16, 2024 | 1:00 p.m. CT 

  1. Welcome + Call to Order – Jennifer Rissler, CAA President
    1. Jennifer Rissler called the meeting to order at 1:05 pm. CT.
    2. Staff were thanked for their incredible work on the conference.
  2. Approval of 111th Annual Business Meeting Minutes [ACTION ITEM] 
    1. Denise Baxter moved to approve minutes from the CAA 111th Annual Business meeting; Lynne D. Allen seconded the motion.
    2. The minutes were unanimously approved by those present.
  3. President Report – Jennifer Rissler, CAA President
    1. Jennifer reflected on her tenure as president which began during the pandemic and said that this year’s attendance numbers have exceeded our registration target, demonstrating the Association’s collective desire to convene in person.
    2. Citing her own professional challenges during her tenure such as the closure of her institution, SFAI, Jennifer underscored the current challenges in the field with institution and department closures, departmental budgets, adjunctification, and overall threats to higher education and academic livelihoods.
    3. Jennifer highlighted the resilience of CAA membership in the face of such challenges.
    4. The Board continues to support the vision of the Executive Director and the 2020 Board-approved strategic repositioning plan.
    5. Jennifer thanked Board members whose term ends in May 2024: Scherezade Garcia-Vazquez, Lynne D. Allen, Ken Wissoker, Mora Beauchamp-Byrd, Tiffany Holmes, Nada Shabout, and Victoria McCraven.
  4. Executive Director Report – Meme Omogbai, CAA Executive Director + CEO
    1. Statutorily, CAA is required to provide the financial status of the Association, based on the audited financial reports:
      1. For the year ending June 30, 2023, the Association made significant progress and posted an operating deficit of $177,000 as compared to the prior year deficit of $429,000.
      2. The Association posted a breakeven operating budget with revenue including investment spinoff matching expenses and meeting our forecast and budget expectations.
      3. After considering the non-operating government grants, the Association posted a net surplus of $551,000 as of June 30 compared to a $1.5 million technically net loss—but it is not an actual loss due to investments and the variance is driven by unrealized gains from the investment portfolio. As a result, it partially offsets the PPP loan forgiveness that became a grant of $352,000.
      4. We had a favorable portfolio balance of $727,000 for FY23 as opposed to an unrealized loss in FY22.
      5. The Association continues to manage expenses within our means and is in stronger financial condition than we have been.
      6. Complete audited financial statements have been provided and will be made available via guidestar.org and charitiesny.com.
    2. Membership Updates:
      1. As of June 30, 2023, there were just over 400 institutional members and nearly 4000 individual members, reflective of continued systemic higher education and pandemic impacts.
      2. There were nearly 500 subscribers to The Art Bulletin and Art Journal through co-publisher Taylor & Francis.
      3. Though we are operating on a breakeven goal basis, our membership numbers are declining. In response, we reduced membership dues and created an installment plan to make entry to CAA more accessible.
    3. Updates on the CAA Strategic Repositioning Plan and Operations Activities:
      1. Cost of operation continues to rise and membership-related activities, grants, and Annual Conference revenue only account for approximately 40 percent of the budget, so there is a need for increased support.
      2. The Association continues to strive, invest, and build out infrastructure to support our service to the field globally.
      3. We continued work on digital transformation efforts, a crucial step in the Board-approved strategic repositioning plan, to build infrastructure to serve member needs and the needs of the field.
      4. The Getty Foundation has generously given us a second digital transformation grant of a quarter of a million dollars. As one of the first funders of this effort, Getty made possible to have a virtual conference in 2021.
      5. We continue to reevaluate and refine the conference each year and expand accessibility, but balance that against rising costs; this year, for example, given overwhelming demand last year in New York, we have reintroduced day passes.
      6. Meme acknowledged Paul Skiff, Mira Friedlaender, and Maeghan Donohue for their partnership in negotiating contracts with Hilton and other conference service providers to get us competitive pricing.
      7. As of the Annual Business meeting, there are 2,671 registrants, which exceeds our target of 2500. We also exceeded our required 70% room block well in advance of the conference, helping us to avoid a contractual liability charge.
      8. As CAA aims to expand our global footprint, Meme reiterated from her Convocation speech that it is important to remember that CAA staff is comprised of only 8–10 individuals.
    4. A question was raised about why the Book and Trade Fair was notably smaller this year. Meme and staff responded to say that historically Chicago Book and Trade Fairs have always had less exhibitors than conferences in New York, but also worth noting that with rising costs and limited budgets, exhibitors are having to make tough decisions about which conferences to attend.
  5. Old/New Business
    1. No old business was raised by meeting attendees.
    2. No new business was raised by meeting attendees.
  6. Board Member Election Results – Jennifer Rissler, CAA President
    1. The 2024 Board of Directors slate was announced on December 18, 2023, along with an online voting form. Voting closed on Thursday, February 15, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. CT.
    2. The following individuals will join the Board of Directors in May 2024 (4-year term): Damon Arhos, Theresa Avila, Nozomi Naoi, and Eric Wolf.
    3. Congratulations to Emily Rice who will also join the Board as a CAA Emerging Professional Director (2-year term).
    4. All who were not elected were encouraged to run again next year. Some of the most productive board members in CAA history ran several times before they were elected, including some past CAA Board presidents.
    5. The CAA Nominating Committee was thanked for their contributions to this election cycle.
  7. Adjourn
    1. The CAA 113th Annual Conference will be held February 12–15, 2025 at the New York Hilton Midtown. The date of the Annual Business Meeting will be February 14, 2025; time will be announced in late 2024.
    2. The 112th Annual Business Meeting adjourned at 1:28 p.m. CT.
Filed under: Annual Conference, Governance

Jack Flam Named CAA113 Distinguished Scholar

posted by November 21, 2024

The Distinguished Scholar Session at the CAA 113th Annual Conference will honor the career of Dr. Jack Flam, explore the broad range of Dr. Flam’s scholarly interests, and celebrate his ongoing legacy of support and amplification of innovative voices in the field. 

Dr. Flam is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art and Art History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, where he taught from 1975–2010. Dr. Flam was also President of the Dedalus Foundation from 2002–24.   

His career in education took hold at Rutgers University and the University of Florida, and he subsequently taught a wide range of courses at CUNY, where he was mentor to many students, both undergraduate and graduate, in studio art as well as art history. In addition to serving as a dissertation and thesis advisor, he continues to steadfastly support the professional lives of his former students.  

Dr. Flam is the author of several books, articles, and exhibition catalogs on various aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, and on African art. He is a leading authority on Henri Matisse, and his influential book Matisse on Art has been in print since its publication in 1973. His Matisse: The Man and His Art, 1869–1918 received CAA’s Charles Rufus Morey Award in 1988. Dr. Flam’s other books include Motherwell (1991); Richard Diebenkorn: Ocean Park (1992); Matisse: The Dance (1993); Western Artists/African Art (1994); Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship (2003); Manet: Un bar aux Folies-Bergère ou l’abysse du mirror (2005). He has written extensively on postwar American art, especially on Robert Motherwell. He is coauthor of Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941–1991 (2012) and of Robert Motherwell: 100 Years (2015). 

He is the series editor of the Documents of Twentieth-Century Art (currently published by the University of California Press) and in addition to Matisse on Art, has edited two volumes for it: Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (1996) and Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art (2003). He has served on a number of juries, committees, and boards focused on supporting artists and art historians, including the advisory board of Source: Notes in the History of Art and the board of directors of the United States section of the International Association of Art Critics. Dr. Flam was also the art critic of the Wall Street Journal from 1984–92.  

He has been the recipient of several awards and honors, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He won the Art World Manufacturers Hanover Prize for Distinguished Newspaper Criticism in 1987.  

His articles and reviews have appeared widely, including in African Arts, American Heritage, Apollo, The Art Bulletin, Artforum, Art in America, Art International, Art Journal, ARTnews, Connaissance des Arts, Arts Magazine, Connoisseur, Journal of African Studies, Journal de la Société des Africanistes, Leonardo, New York Review of Books, Storia dell’Arte, The Sciences, Source, and the Times Literary Supplement. 


Dr. Flam’s career and his impact on the field will be celebrated with presentations and a dialogue with scholars and colleagues: 

Session Chair:  

Lisa Farrington, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York 

Session Participants:  

Deborah Cullen-Morales, Mellon Foundation 

Jennifer Farrell, Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Julie Reiss, Columbia University 

Nari Ward, Hunter College, City University of New York 

John Yau,  Rutgers University 

Register now for the CAA 113th Annual Conference, February 12–15, 2025, in New York City!  

The CAA113 Distinguished Scholar Session will be held on Thursday, February 13, 4:30–6:30 p.m. ET at the New York Hilton Midtown. This event will also be livestreamed via YouTube.  

Filed under: Annual Conference — Tags:

Finalists for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Awards have been announced. The winners, alongside recipients of other Awards for Distinction, will be named in January 2025 and presented on Wednesday, February 12, during Convocation at the CAA 113th Annual Conference, in New York City. Congratulations to all of the finalists! 


Charles Rufus Morey Book Award Shortlist 

Named in honor of one of the founding members of CAA and first teachers of art history in the United States, the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award was established in 1953 to recognize an especially distinguished English-language book in the history of art.  

Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography by Siobhan Angus (Duke University Press, 2024) 

Grief Made Marble: Funerary Sculpture in Classical Athens by Seth Estrin (Yale University Press, 2023) 

Not Native American Art: Fakes, Replicas, and Invented Traditions by Janet Catherine Berlo (University of Washington Press, 2023) 

Pearls for the Crown: Art, Nature, and Race in the Age of Spanish Expansion by Mónica Domínguez Torres (Penn State University Press, 2024) 

Risk Work: Making Art and Guerrilla Tactics in Punitive America, 1967–1987 by Faye Raquel Gleisser (University of Chicago Press, 2024) 


Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award Shortlist 

Named for the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art and a scholar of early-twentieth-century painting, the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award is presented to the author or authors of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published in English by a museum, library, or collection. 

Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900–1939, edited by Robyn Asleson (The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Yale University Press, 2024) 

Camille Claudel, edited by Emerson Bowyer and Anne-Lise Desmas (J. Paul Getty Museum/The Art Institute of Chicago, 2023) 

The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism, edited by Denise Murrell (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2024) 

Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper by Adam Greenhalgh (Yale University Press, 2023) 

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, edited by Lynne Cooke (The University of Chicago Press, 2023) 


Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions Shortlist 

Established in 2009, the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions is presented to the author(s) of catalogues produced by an institution with an operating budget of less than $10 million. 

A Model Workshop: Margaret Lowengrund and The Contemporaries, edited by Lauren Rosenblum and Christina Weyl (Print Center New York/Hirmer, 2023) 

Never Broken: Visualizing Lenape Histories, edited by Joe Baker and Laura Igoe (James A. Michener Art Museum/University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) 

Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now, edited by Emma Chubb, Omar Berrada, Alexandra Keller, Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa, et al. (Smith College Museum of Art/Zamân Books & Curating/Kunsthalle Mulhouse/Kulte Editions, 2024) 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Annual Conference, Awards

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Mariët Westermann, Director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, will deliver the Convocation keynote address at the CAA 113th Annual Conference! 

As Director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, Dr. Westermann directs the Guggenheim’s flagship in New York and oversees the Guggenheim sites in Venice, Bilbao, and Abu Dhabi.  Previously, Dr. Westermann was founding Provost at NYU Abu Dhabi, and later Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive. She has also served as Executive Vice President of the Mellon Foundation and Director of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts.  

A historian of art of the Netherlands, Dr. Westermann has authored numerous books, articles, and exhibition essays on Dutch art and artists, museums, and the state and future of higher education. On behalf of the Mellon Foundation, Dr. Westermann commissioned and published (with Roger Schonfeld and Liam Sweeney) two critical research studies on staff diversity in the museum sector.  

Dr. Westermann was the lead curator and catalogue author of the exhibition Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt, shown at the Denver Art Museum and The Newark Museum (1997–2001). She served as curatorial consultant, researcher, and essayist for the National Gallery’s presentation of Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller (1994–96), in partnership with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 

In 2020, Dr. Westermann co-convened Reframing Museums, a major international conference on the future of museums, organized with NYU Abu Dhabi and Louvre Abu Dhabi. In 2010, on behalf of the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute, she co-hosted Art Museums Here and Now, a conference with Philippe de Montebello on what it means to build art museums in countries that have not had them or reinvent traditional art museums to stay connected to their changing societies. 

Dr. Westermann is a trustee of ALIPH and the Rijksmuseum and chairs the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund.  

Join us for the CAA 113th Annual Conference, February 12–15, at the New York Hilton Midtown! Convocation will be held on February 12, 6:00–8:30 p.m. ET and will also be livestreamed via YouTube. Register now!

Filed under: Annual Conference — Tags: