CAA News Today
Kelvin Parnell
posted by Allison Walters — December 02, 2020
Statement
My name is Kelvin Parnell Jr, and I am grateful to be one of the College Art Association’s candidates for the Emerging Professional Director. Aligning myself with CAA’s mission of building a more diverse and inclusive scholarly community, I understand the Emerging Professional Director position to be critical to this goal’s progress. To do so, I want first to expand the scope of the position to include undergraduate students. As a young, Black undergraduate attending a university that did not support the humanities, especially the visual arts, I found it difficult to build community and the support needed to further my career. Although I knew about CAA, I often understood it as something that was not meant for me. Therefore, one of my top priorities will be to uplift and highlight the voices and concerns of those traditionally underrepresented in the field, whether they be students, professionals, or lifelong learners and admirers of the visual arts. I believe the future of CAA depends on ensuring that the association becomes more integrated with the careers and development of visual arts professionals at all stages of their careers. I want to establish that our organization’s value will continue to develop and progress beyond the annual conference by emphasizing how we are a vital and necessary resource to our members and those whose membership we wish to court.
As the world and visual arts continue to change, adapt, and evolve, so must CAA. Our organization’s emerging professionals are some of our most valuable resources as they will take up the mantle and lead the field into the future as so many have before them. But to do so, CAA must also be an active agent in the development of their careers to guarantee that change occurs. CAA must be an organization wherein we prepare our young scholars and professionals for today’s challenges and brainstorm solutions together with our more senior and experienced members about the problems of the future that have yet to manifest. During my tenure, I hope that I will be able to help bridge generational and professional divides amongst scholars, artists, and visual arts professionals through new, robust programming and mentorship, both formal and informal. Further, we must listen to, learn from, and reach out to communities and spaces we have not looked to typically to engender the change we seek. Our presence in the world of visual arts must be one that is welcoming and active. We should ensure that we engage with the public in meaningful ways and create the public’s desire to engage with us. To do so, we should work tirelessly to fulfill our mission and advocate the critical need for the arts’ study and practice.
I believe CAA should and can be an organization that provides various opportunities and venues for all of us in the visual arts to gather and exchange our ideas and experiences not just once a year, but throughout the year and throughout our careers and lifetimes. It seems to me that now, more than ever, that deep community building is desired and necessary.
Thank you for considering me for this honorable and privileged position.
Charles Kanwischer
posted by Allison Walters — December 02, 2020
Statement
Currently, I serve as the Director of Bowling Green State University’s School of Art, a large and comprehensive program comprised of 550 students and 34 faculty members. In addition to my administrative duties, I teach courses in drawing and maintain an active studio practice focused on drawing and photography.
I believe that my strong record of national-level professional service has well-qualified me for Board service. Since 2016, I’ve served on CAA’s Professional Practice Committee. Perhaps the highlight of my PPC service was co-chairing the sub-committee that last year completed revisions to the guidelines for retention and tenure of art historians. In addition, I’ve served or continue to serve on PPC sub-committees charged with revising CAA’s guidelines for distance education, teaching digital media, baccalaureate degrees in studio art, assessment in studio art as well as CAA’s overview statement on standards/guidelines. I’m also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA), a CAA affiliated organization dedicated to addressing pressing issues in arts administration. In my role as Co-Chair of NCAA’s Conference Committee, I’ve co-organized three NCAA/CAA affiliate panel sessions for CAA conferences. Last year’s session, “So Who Wants to be an Arts Administrator?”, was devoted to recruitment and support of emerging administrators, an issue of great importance to the future of visual arts education. Finally, I serve as an institutional on-site evaluator for National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) accreditation and re-accreditation reviews.
Leadership of a School of Art situated within a region-focused public university with a substantial population of first-generation college students has made me especially sensitive to the issue of preserving academic access. I see this as an urgent matter. If education in the arts and humanities becomes inequitably available, then the voices and experiences of a large part of our society won’t be heard, resulting in a profound negative impact on the quality of cultural and political discourse in our country. Given what’s at stake, keeping educational and cultural institutions accessible, inclusive and diverse in the face of pandemic accelerated enrollment declines and budget cuts is a challenge we must take up collectively. As the preeminent professional organization in visual arts education, CAA is uniquely positioned to bring together its various constituencies for the purpose of jointly developing programs, strategies and advocacy language required to navigate in our present circumstances and to re-imagine our futures. It would be a singular honor to offer my experience to CAA’s Board of Director’s in a moment when the organization’s mission to assure the vitality and inclusivity of visual arts interpretation and practice has never been more necessary.
Lara Evans
posted by Allison Walters — December 02, 2020
Statement
With your support, I would be pleased to join the CAA Board of Directors and contribute to increasing the organization’s diversity and inclusivity during this challenging time. Improving opportunities for artists and scholars of color has been a central priority during my career as an art historian specializing in contemporary Native American art. I was one of the first tribally enrolled individuals to receive a PhD in art history, and know how difficult the field is for students without financial resources and from groups underrepresented in the field. I have experience at a variety of institutions. I was faculty at a public liberal arts college for 8 years, and have been at a tribal college art school for the past 8 years. Because there are so few specialist in this area, I have worn many “hats,” sometimes simultaneously: faculty teaching art history and studio art courses, curator, artist-in-residence program director, Department Chair, Associate Academic Dean, grant administrator, and now also the founding director of a new research center for Native arts. I have found myself doing things I never imagined, things that have created real changes for the Native and First Nations communities I work with. Navigating through the dynamics of various institutions and working with diverse communities is a completely normal and necessary foundation of my work with students, artists, and colleagues and other educational institutions and museums. I listen, observe, and keep an eye out for ways I can serve to build relationships and opportunities. I am particularly attentive to designing programs that actively counter the structural barriers that prevent participation by underrepresented groups. It may occasionally get annoying, but I ask questions about the established “norms.” I consider how they may produce exclusion, rather than inclusion, and get creative with possible solutions.
Thank you for considering me for service to the CAA Board of Directors.
Alberto De Salvatierra
posted by Allison Walters — December 02, 2020
Statement
As an intersectional minority, I understand, first-hand, the challenges that underrepresented groups face in higher education—whether as a student or an academic. For this reason, I have endeavored to specifically address diversity and inclusion inequities through my teaching and service initiatives.
I first had the pleasure to deep-dive into these issues when, while at Harvard University, I was part of a small cohort of university leaders across the entire university tapped to join the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging—a one-year working group of key faculty and administrators selected to 1) analyze the pedagogical and infrastructural landscape of the university, and 2) catalyze a set of recommendations that have since started to be implemented. Since then, I’ve continued my advocacy through my scholarship on teaching—especially as it relates to interdisciplinary pedagogy and practices—using art and design as a point of departure and cross-fertilization with other disciplines. Most recently, I was invited be an official delegate and speaker at the 2019 Hispanic Leadership Summit at the United Nations in New York City. Part of the summit’s opening panel (“Access to Education for Hispanics/Latinxs”), I was the youngest speaker sharing the stage with such leaders as Emmanuel Caudillo (Senior Advisor at the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics), Raquel Tamez (CEO of the Society of Hispanic Engineers), and Nancy Lee Sanchez (Executive Director of the Kaplan Education Foundation). In the presence of 500 delegates, I advocated for an emphasis on STEAM (rather than STEM) disciplines, more decisive support at the university level, and renewed legislation with regards to DACA students.
With this context in mind, and building on the CAA’s previous advocacy in enhancing equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education, I believe a strong path forward for the College Art Association is to establish a renewed commitment to bringing the arts to underrepresented populations, in particular black and indigenous students, and catalyze them in existing STEAM conversations—promoting unconventional program partnerships and university-to-job pipelines. An interdisciplinary education, with creativity, design thinking, and the arts at the core, will be key to careers responsive to existing climate-change challenges and resilient to the coming technological upheaval of the “4th industrial revolution.” Moreover, due to the challenges wrought on by the on-going global pandemic, the CAA will need strong and visionary leadership on part of its Directors to help the organization navigate the uncertain times ahead. The arts have always been the soul of civilization, and to avoid their continued defunding across colleges in North America, innovative thinking will be crucial to forge a strong tomorrow.
Patricia Childers
posted by Allison Walters — December 02, 2020
Statement
My career has been in the educational environment, focusing on graphic design and critical studies. I see intellectual engagement as a place of possibilities. In addition to teaching design, I practice professionally, and am an active member of many design organizations. But the structure of life has changed. The global pandemic, compounded with continuing issues of basic human rights and a deteriorating climate, has affected much that we value.
The MFA class of 2020 has experienced not only a loss of employment opportunity, but a loss of the support that contributed to our wellbeing. Loss, like the disbanding of The Type Director’s Club, an organization that I’ve actively supported for years, contributes to our overwhelming isolation. I am a member of the first class to graduate into this state of precarity. But uncertainty weighs heavily on the entire profession. When I facilitated a round-table discussion at the AIGA Design Educators conference, our chat box overflowed with requests for resources and advice to help navigate in isolation.
Apprehension during the transition from student to professional is not a recent phenomenon. The scarcity in teaching positions existed long before this pandemic. And a lack of guidance in writing and publishing, continuing to make work without a deadline, the expectations of maintaining scholarship and service, can daunt.
Resources like CAA assist by providing everything from creating CVs to webinars on interviewing, with efforts to demystify salaries, create mentorship programs, adjunct and labor advocacy, and sessions such as “Get Up, Stand Up: Contingent Faculty and the Future of Higher Education in the Visual Arts.” In CAA’s Art Journal Open (AJO) Kristen Galvin and Christina M. Spiker addressed the system itself. “The Cost of Precarity: Contingent Academic Labor in the Gig Economy” stated that robust discourse depends on a viable institutional ecosystem—healthy interaction and balance between populations to ensure resilience to various types of external stressors.
Today, our resilience is being tested as COVID-19 social distancing magnifies existing issues and forces us to adapt. However, our adopted platforms for communication have integrated and flattened traditional hierarchal structures of engagement. Event participation, although limited by technological advantage, is no longer limited by location. This expanded engagement has diversified communities as isolated transactions grow into ongoing relationships. Many of our “wicked problems” are being addressed through this immediate connection of people, ideas, and action.
I offer the first-hand experience of a recent student and emerging professional navigating the unpredictable. If elected, I will represent the organization’s future leaders, a group honed by adopting to crisis. But I’ve found this crisis to be a catalyst for possibilities. Platforms that provide social fraternization and leadership can build stable foundations for the future. These systems not only build relationships—but build platforms that allow others to build relationships. Through engagement, we can build for the new normal.
Roland Betancourt
posted by Allison Walters — December 02, 2020
Statement
As a queer Latinx medievalist, I am intimately aware of the challenges faced by art historians of color. These challenges extend from the systematics of graduate training and the tenure and promotion system, as well as the unique precarities faced by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ scholars doing research in the field. Recognizing my place as a tenured, full Professor, my aim is to use the privileges afforded to me to support early career scholars. My goals on CAA’s Board of Directors are twofold: first, to champion the needs and successes of BIPOC scholars, offering my understanding of the challenges faced particularly by Latinx scholars; second, to speak to the needs of pre-modern art historians, particularly from my expertise as a Byzantinist working across the medieval Mediterranean world.
Having received my PhD in 2014, I have faced the realities of today’s academy with dwindling job prospects and newfound publishing challenges amidst unchanging demands. At the same time, I have also moved swiftly through the tenure and promotion process at a large public institution. In my commitment to early career scholars, I wish to lead conversations as to how we rethink publication and peer review processes for a more ethical, equitable, and constructive scholarly landscape. As a medievalist, I also recognize that the needs of my field are severely underrepresented within CAA, which in past years has led to steep drops in membership due to a lack of representation and also in protest of said lack. My goal is to revitalize the visibility of and avenues of conversation for our constituents working on the ancient and medieval worlds.
Over the past ten years and since my early graduate school days, I have been committed to service responsibilities that enrich our field, from programming to administration. Currently, I am the Director of the PhD Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where I am also a Professor of Art History and Chancellor’s Fellow. Starting next year, I am the Series Editor for the Viewpoints book series, run in conjunction with the International Center for Medieval Art (ICMA) and the Pennsylvania State University Press. I have an extensive record of serving on the governing boards and steering committees of a host of organizations, including the Medievalists of Color (MoC), the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BASANA), and the Gender in Byzantium Bibliography Project at Dumbarton Oaks / Harvard. And, at the Medieval Academy of America, I serve on the Inclusivity and Diversity Prize Committee. At UC, Irvine, I have served on three search committees for positions diversifying our curriculum in the areas of Armenian history, Iranian archaeology, and Latinx art history, film, and media studies. Additionally, my efforts have been focused on largescale fundraising for my institution, including our new LGBTQ+ Fundraising Committee, the Faculty Development Committee for the School of Humanities, and the department of Art History’s fundraising committee.
As we look ahead, my goal is to make CAA a safe, supportive, and affirming space for BIPOC, queer, and trans scholars working across our organization’s multifaceted areas. I intend to use my extensive service background alongside my extensive research and publication experience to guide CAA into the coming decade, acknowledging my personal experience in the field as a queer Latinx art historian.
CAA Table Talk, November 18, 2020
posted by Allison Walters — November 24, 2020
We’re delighted to introduce CAA members to a new series of conversations between Meme Omogbai, our executive director and CEO, and N. Elizabeth Schlatter, the president of the CAA Board of Directors. Amidst so much change in our lives, workplaces, and world, CAA leadership sat down for an informal chat on how CAA is reshaping its efforts to provide access and resources where members need it most. Meme and Elizabeth will speak on the economic implications of COVID-19, the urgent importance of members’ scholarship, and the changing terrain of this cultural moment.
This discussion is centered around the Annual Conference and CAA’s pivot towards a digital-first platform, inspired by many of the questions submitted by members.
We would love to hear your questions for future CAA Table Talk conversations. Please send them in advance to: caanews@collegeart.org
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Meme Omogbai is Executive Director and CEO of College Art Association (CAA). Before joining CAA, Omogbai served as a member and past Board Chair of the New Jersey Historic Trust, one of four landmark entities dedicated to preservation of the state’s historic and cultural heritage and Montclair State University’s Advisory Board. Named one of 25 Influential Black Women in Business by The Network Journal, Meme has over 25 years of experience in corporate, government, higher education, and museum sectors. As the first American of African descent to chair the American Alliance of Museums, Omogbai led an initiative to rebrand the AAM as a global, inclusive alliance. While COO and Trustee, she spearheaded a major transformation in operating performance at the Newark Museum. During her time as Deputy Assistant Chancellor of New Jersey’s Department of Higher Education, Omogbai received Legislative acknowledgement and was recognized with the New Jersey Meritorious Service Award for her work on college affordability initiatives for families. Omogbai received her MBA from Rutgers University and holds a CPA. She did post-graduate work at Harvard University’s Executive Management Program and has earned the designation of Chartered Global Management Accountant. She studied global museum executive leadership at the J. Paul Getty Trust Museum Leadership Institute, where she also served on the faculty.
Elizabeth Schlatter is the President of the CAA Board of Directors and Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums, Virginia. A museum administrator, curator, and writer, she focuses on modern and contemporary art and on topics related to curating and issues specific to university museums. At UR, she has curated more than 20 exhibitions, including recent group exhibitions of contemporary art such as “Crooked Data: (Mis)Information in Contemporary Art,” “Anti-Grand: Contemporary Perspectives on Landscape,” and “Art=Text=Art: Works by Contemporary Artists.” She also serves on and chairs various University and School of Arts & Sciences committees. Prior to the University of Richmond, she worked with exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in Washington, D.C, and in fundraising at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. She is author ofMuseum Careers: A Practical Guide for Novices and Students (Left Coast Press, Inc.) and a contributor to A Life in Museums: Managing Your Museum Career (American Association of Museums). She has a BA in art history from Southwestern University in Texas, and an MA in art history from George Washington University.
2021 Distinguished Scholar: Salah M. Hassan
posted by Allison Walters — November 20, 2020
We’re delighted to announce the Distinguished Scholar session at the 109th CAA Annual Conference will honor Salah M. Hassan.
Salah M. Hassan. Photo: Jason Koski, Cornell University Photography (UREL)
Salah M. Hassan is the Goldwin Smith Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture in the Department of Africana Studies and Research Center, as well as in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, and also serves as Director of the Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. Hassan is also the Director of The Africa Institute, Sharjah, UAE. Hassan served as Professor of History of Art in African and African American Studies and Fine Art at Brandeis University, where he previously awarded the Madeleine Haas Russell Professorship in the Departments of African and Afro-American Studies and Fine Arts (2016-2017).
Hassan is a founding-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (Duke University Press). He currently serves as a member of the editorial advisory board of Atlantica, Journal of Curatorial Studies, and international Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and served as consulting editor for African Arts. Hassan has contributed numerous essays to journals, anthologies, and exhibition catalogues of contemporary art, and has guest edited a special issue of SAQ: South Atlantic Quarterly, entitled African Modernism (2010). He has authored, edited, and co-edited several books, including Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist (2013); Darfur and the Crisis of Governance: A Critical Reader (2009); Diaspora, Memory, Place (2008); Unpacking Europe (2001); Authentic/Ex-Centric (2001; Gendered Visions: The Art of Contemporary Africana Women Artists (1997); and Art and Islamic Literacy among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria (1992), among others. Most recently, Hassan edited and introduced Ibrahim El-Salahi: Prison Notebook (MoMA and Sharjah Art Foundation Publications, 2018), and the forthcoming Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2020).
Hassan has curated a number of international exhibitions in museums and at major Biennales such as Venice and Dak’Art, including Authentic/Ex-Centric (49th Venice Biennale, 2001), Unpacking Europe (Rotterdam, 2001-02), and 3×3: Three Artists/Three: David Hammons, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Pamela Z (Dak’Art, 2004), among others. He curated Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist was published in 2012 held at The Tate Modern in London (2013) after premiering at the Sharjah Art Museum in Sharjah, UAE (2013). In addition, he also co-curated The Khartoum School: The Making of the Modern Art Movement in Sudan, 1945-2016 (2016-2017) and When Art Becomes Liberty: The Egyptian Surrealists (1938–1965) (2016) funded by the Sharjah Art Foundation.
He is the recipient of fellowships including the J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship as well as major grants from Sharjah Art Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Afrique en Créations, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Prince Claus Fund.
This session will highlight his career and provide an opportunity for dialogue between and among colleagues. The panel will include Dr. Hassan as well as the following: Chika Okeke-Agulu (Princeton University); Elizabeth Giorgis (University of Addis Ababa); and Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell University).
The live online Q&A will be held Thursday, February 11, 2021, 10:30-11:15 am EST.
International News: Letters from the Asia Art Archive UnderLockdown (Part II)
posted by Allison Walters — November 17, 2020
This is Part II of an article that began last week in CAA News. It continues the coverage of life and work at the Asia Art Archive during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mutual Aid, Cici Wu, Research Assistant, Asia Art Archive, New York
New York declared a state of emergency on March 7, 2020. I couldn’t foresee then that this would be my last chance to be in an art museum for many months. I was looking at the Portrait of America by Diego Rivera in the Whitney Museum, which he painted in 1933 for the Communist New Workers School in New York. The text panel said, “In keeping with the politics of the school, Rivera chose not to celebrate American values but instead to highlight uncomfortable truths about the class struggle and the country’s violence against African Americans.” In 1929, the crash of the US stock market caused many to question a capitalist system that seemed no longer compatible with the country’s democratic ideals. Artists resolved to use their art to effect change. Looking back at this period in history, when Mexican muralists were invited to make artworks by the State, it’s striking how artists were allowed to use their creativity and imagination so freely. They also imbued their art with a social role by depicting the real struggle of workers. It was uplifting.
A month before March 7, a memorial gathering for the Chinese doctor Li Wenliang was quietly held in Central Park (Fig. 1). The event was organized to stand against the further erosion of free speech in Mainland China. The park was not crowded. People were dispersed into smaller groups on a sunny afternoon, with murmurs, sighs, and tears. The flowers and banners carried words from the bottom of people’s hearts. At that moment, there was a hope that a little change could happen this time.
Figure 1. Memorial for Li Wenliang, Sheep Meadow in Central Park, New York, February 9th, 2020. Photo provided by the author.
After March 7, events seemed to accelerate, further unveiling lies, alongside vulnerability, rage and confusion. A wound was suddenly ripped open, resulting in a flowing river of blood. Sad news stories kept coming, one after another, from Italy, Iran, the UK, the Philippines, and the rest of the world. Airlines were collapsing. Small businesses were at risk. Middle-class and working-class people started worrying about their future. All of a sudden, restaurant workers, airline employees, and gig workers were on the verge of being laid off. Immigrants and undocumented residents without families were most at risk. More than ever, we learned that our social welfare was deeply tied to our immigration status in this country. We wondered, how are we going to collectively survive other crises, such as the huge environmental shifts and resulting displacements, that will come in the future?
Figure 2. A mutual aid poster on display at 172 Henry Street in Chinatown, New York, April 25th, 2020. Photo provided by the author.
For a short time, New York became a site of discombobulation, isolation, and helplessness. The city was pale and empty. Workers in the arts, who were lucky enough to keep their jobs, started to work from home. Essential workers, including doctors, nurses, delivery drivers, and home caretakers, were getting off from work shattered. After a period of panic, some artists started to break out of their isolation and regather in small volunteer communities, helping food pantries, protesting against evictions, and organizing mask donations, all built upon the principle of Mutual Aid Community Agreements: “We Keep Us Safe” (Fig. 2).
The city began returning, bursting with idealistic energy. Most precious for the Asia Art Archive in America during this time has been the support and care we have been able to provide for each other. Invaluable weekly virtual meetings helped us stay connected and in dialogue, discussing together our changing thoughts throughout this critical time.
Our research collection, the Joan Lebold Cohen Archive Phase II was successfully launched online in the height of lockdown, on April 1. Three years after the launch of Phase I, the trips Joan Cohen took to China from the 1970s–2000s are finally fully available to explore and learn from: 16,453 color photographs of artists, artworks, studios, academies, exhibitions and scenes of everyday life. These images of a past world travelled through the years and arrived at a moment when nations are drifting apart towards isolation. In the midst of reimagining a new spatiotemporal organization of the world, the looks, smiles, and gestures Joan captured on film brought to mind air and light (Fig. 3).
Figure 3. Students in art and design class at Guangzhou Art Academy, Guangzhou, China, 1980. Photo: Joan Lebold Cohen Archive, Asia Art Archive, NY
In Beijing and Hong Kong before returning to New York in February, I was saddened to have witnessed the virus hitting the collective body multiple times. Working through the Joan Lebold Cohen Archive was a healing process, to imagine myself traveling in time and giving light to the gaps of multiple pasts. I want to end here with a quote from the essay Solidarity/Susceptibility by Judith Butler (Social Text, 2018), from her remarks on José Muñoz, the Cuban American scholar of performance and queer studies who died in 2013, as an inspiration to think about archives and the new imaginary: “The potentialities that appear as rips and tears in the otherwise seamless future of no future for those abandoned by progress are immanent and furtive possibilities within the present, indicating that this time is also another time, and always has been; it opens toward a past and a future even when, politically, the force of oblivion seeks to cover over those very openings.”
Erasures and Experiments: The COVID-19 Story in India, Noopur Desai, Researcher, Asia Art Archive, India
Today, we are experiencing an unprecedented moment as we brave the COVID-19 crisis across the world. In India, the situation is complex, similar to many parts of the world, bearing multiple strands, with implications for various aspects of our lives. When the pandemic hit India in March of this year, though early cases were found in January, the country was going through a massive political movement demanding democratic constitutional rights. The announcement of a sudden lockdown across the country on March 22 resulted in the suspension of all social gatherings including, most importantly, the ongoing nationwide sit-in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens in various cities and towns.
Figure 1. Graffiti and artworks at protest sites, removed by the police during the lockdown, “The Logical Indian,” March 27, 2020. Photo: Hindustan Times
In the midst of panic and uncertainty in conjunction with the mismanagement of the crisis, the previous two months began to appear a distant past with the erasure of politics and the transformation of public space during the lockdown. In effect, the public space was rather transformed, with images of a mass exodus as hundreds of thousands of migrant workers journeyed home from big cities after the closing down of markets, manufacturing units, and various laborer jobs. Combined with a sense of amnesia brought on by the spectacle surrounding the pandemic, the government actions (mis)used the situation to crackdown on dissenting voices, either by arresting social and political activists, defacing artworks and graffiti at protest sites (Fig. 1), or by exercising certain restrictions on media. Taken together these actions have highlighted the systemic inequality and repressive nature of the current regime.
Surrounded by this grave situation, various arts organizations, artists, and museums have had to reconfigure themselves. Several exhibitions and programs were canceled or postponed, and young arts practitioners moved back to their birthplaces or are struggling to survive in metropolitan centers like Delhi or Mumbai. Responding to the severity of the crisis, many arts practitioners and arts organizations have stepped up to create support systems, including grants for young artists, online displays of artworks, and the formation of chain-systems, wherein artists buy each other’s work. The arts community also created online auctions and other fundraising events to contribute to the relief work for migrant workers and other vulnerable populations.
Figure 2. Migrant workers walk in front of a coronavirus graffiti in Mumbai, May 14, 2020. Photo: The Hindu
Physical distancing quickly resulted in digital proximity with the arrival of webinars and online exhibitions organized by museums and galleries, although the graph of the webinars seems to be “flattening” in recent times! However, the digital world has become an intrinsic part of our lives, whether it is through virtual studio visits, webinars, and simulated gallery tours or by creating online resources for teaching and learning. In terms of art education, studio-based practice has been replaced by experimentation with the digital, though only at a few schools, as most of them do not have the resources to run online programs. Nevertheless, there have been important instances where students have used digital platforms to organize their annual exhibitions, which are required for graduation, and which for the most part have not been able to take place physically. Though physical space is crucial in contemporary art practice, this intense effort to use alternative platforms has certainly paved the way for forming new aesthetic possibilities.
While we all are grappling with this strange time, at Asia Art Archive in India we continue building our online research collections and shaping new projects. As an online platform, we have been able to continue several aspects of our work by sharing digital resources and programming via our website. Despite this, we have also faced challenges in light of changing situations. Though our collections are available online, the groundwork to build those collections requires in-person visits to archives and libraries, access to review personal archives, resources to digitize the documents, and programs to introduce the archival collections; most of these activities have been brought to a halt for now. In the meantime, we are maintaining our spirits by planning and carrying out whatever aspects of our work we can, keeping in mind the need for physical distancing. At the same we are recalibrating our working methods as we venture into the “new normal.”
CWA Picks for November 2020
posted by Allison Walters — November 13, 2020
November CWA Picks
November Picks from the Committee on Women in the Arts celebrate an array of exhibitions and public artworks featuring feminist and womxn artists in this transitional time. As always, our global highlights are informed by shows and events that explore social justice issues and intersectional feminism.
© Eunice Golden 2006
“Metamorphosis #17” Acrylic on Canvas
48″ x 60″
- The Shape Of Play: Sari Carel’s recent public art installation at Waterfront Park in Boston pushes the boundaries of modern art, sound art, childhood and play through this heavily researched and process oriented, interactive work. For more information on the piece, you can also visit here and here.
- Eunice Golden: Metamorphosis: SAPAR Contemporary presents the gallery’s first exhibition devoted to renowned artist and radical feminist Eunice Golden’s (b. 1927, Brooklyn) late paintings and prints, and an opportunity to celebrate her enduring contributions to feminism and activism since the earliest years of the feminist art movement. The exhibition features her recent large-scale series, Metamorphosis (2003-2007) and Flora (2009), evoking her early sexual bodyscapes and exploring through gestural expanse of color, rapid brushwork, and hypnotic patterning, contemporary issues around ecological uncertainties and challenges. Through Nov. 28, 2020.
- Feminist perspectives in artistic productions and art theories: The Artium Museum 2-day course directed by Directed by Xabier Arakistain, art curator, and Lourdes Méndez, professor of anthropology of art at the UPV / EHU, includes a variety of speakers around contributions of feminist artists and theorists of art and the theoretical and political problems that must be faced today in order to continue developing and disseminating art and knowledge free from androcentric and ethnocentric biases. Nov. 14-15, 2020.
- Jo Ractliffe: DRIVES: Chicago Art Institute presents the first survey of South African photographer Jo Ractliffe (b. 1961), featuring more than 100 large scale color prints, video and documentary photographs spanning her career, including dreamlike photographs made in the 1990s of the port city of Durban and on a cross-country road trip, the unsettling installation N1 Incident/End of Time(1997/99), and much more. Through April 26, 2021.
- Baltimore Museum of Art presents several current exhibitions centered on women artists and ideas. Perfect Power: Motherhood and African Art includes 40 representing the power of African mothers and maternal imagery, through Jan. 17, 2021. Candice Breitz: Too Long, Didn’t Read features two muiltichannel video installations by the South-African born artist on privilege, visibility and the fetishizing of celebrity, through Jan. 10, 2021. Shinique Smith: Grace Stands Beside, is a new deity-like figurative sculpture by the artist who was raised in Baltimore, using Baltimore resident’s donated fabric to exude, said the artist “a complex state of being that Black people and other who have endured tragic prejudice have embodied to survive and rise beyond,” through Jan. 3, 2021. SHAN Wallace: 410 is an immersive collaged environment installation by the Baltimore based artist SHAN Wallace, through Jan. 3, 2021. Other notable exhibits include: Katharina Grosse: Is It You?, Valerie Maynard: Lost and Found; Ana Mendieta: Blood Inside Outside; Howardena Pindell: Free, White and 21; Jo Small: Flying with Remnant Wings; Elissa Blount Moorhead and Bradford Young: Back and Song; all through Jan. 3, 2021.