CAA News Today
Affiliated Society News for January 2016
posted by CAA — January 09, 2016
Art Council of the African Studies Association
The current board members of the Art Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) are: President – Silvia Forni, Curator, Anthropology, Department of World Cultures, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; President Elect/Vice President – Shannen Hill, Associate Curator for African Art and Head of the AAAPI Department, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Senior Fellow, National Museum of African Art; Past President – Dominique Malaquais, Senior Researcher, Centre d’Etudes des Mondes Africains, CNRS; Secretary – Liese Van der Watt, Independent Writer and Researcher, London; Treasurer – Jordan Fenton, Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art, Miami University, Ohio; Website Editor – Cory Gundlach, PhD student (ABD) in African Art History, and Associate Curator of African and Non-Western Art at the University of Iowa Museum of Art; Newsletter Editor – Deborah Stokes, Curator for Education, National Museum of African Art; Assistant Newsletter Editor – Leslie Rabine, Professor Emerita at the University of California, Davis; ASA Liaison – Cécile Fromont, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History at the University of Chicago; CAA Liaison – Yaëlle Biro, Associate Curator for African Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Eric Appau Asante, Lecturer of African Art and Culture; Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology; Boureima Diamitani, Executive Director of the West African Museums Programme; and Sidney Kasfir, Professor Emerita, Art History Department, Emory University.
Art Libraries Society of North America and the Visual Resources Association Foundation
A Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management (SEI 2016) will be held at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill from June 7 to 10, 2016. Founded over ten years ago, SEI is a joint project of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF). It is designed to serve a wide range of professionals eager to learn about new technologies and update job skills: museum staff, visual-resources curators, librarians, archivists, art educators, and all those managing digital image media. This intensive workshop offers a mix of hands-on and lecture sessions presented by expert instructors. Registration for SEI 2016 opened in January. Please feel free to contact the SEI cochairs with any questions: Greta Bahnemann, University of Minnesota; and Jesse Henderson, University of Wisconsin.
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) Leadership Seminar will take place June 19–24, 2016, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The application deadline is January 15, 2016. Join colleagues from throughout the United States and beyond for AAMG’s flagship professional development program at Northwestern’s prestigious Kellogg School Center for Nonprofit Management. Dynamic, engaging, highly interactive by design, and interspersed with team and individual problem-solving exercises in leadership and management, this intensive five-day certificate program will allow you to learn from one another and be guided and inspired by nationally recognized scholars drawn principally from Kellogg’s renowned faculty. To learn more about the program and to download an application, please visit the AAMG website.
Association of Art Editors
The Association of Art Editors (AAE) website underwent a major remodeling in the summer of 2015. The New York–based graphic designer Matt See created the fresh and attractive template, which was refined, detailed, and implemented by DataCom Ota of Duluth, Minnesota. The site’s format is now simpler, easier on the eyes (more legible type and appealing colors), and more flexibly viewable (including via smartphone). Among other improvements, the member entries and services index have greater clarity, and job opportunities are linked via the homepage rather than incorporated in the Services section, as before. Over all, navigation has been much enhanced. The AAE website is accessible—free to all.
International Center of Medieval Art
The International Center of Medieval Art (IMCA) is pleased to announce and solicit applications for two recently created awards. First, the Graduate Student Travel Award. Three grants will be awarded this year, at $3,000 each, for PhD students in the early stages of dissertation research. Applications are due on March 1, and applicants must be ICMA members. The second award, the new ICMA book prize, will be awarded in 2017 to the best single-authored, printed book on any topic in medieval art published in 2016. Books published in English, French, Spanish, Italian, or German are eligible for consideration. For more information, please contact Ryan Frisinger.
Italian Art Society
The annual members’ business meeting of the Italian Art Society (IAS) will take place at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference on Friday, February 5, 2016, 7:30–9:00 AM in the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington 4, Exhibition Level. In addition to reports on IAS activities and election results, three IAS founders will be honored, the 2016 IAS/Kress lecturer will be announced, and recipients of various grants and awards will be recognized. The IAS long session, “Beyond Texts and Academies: Rethinking the Education of the Early Modern Italian Artists,” organized by Jesse Locker of Portland State University, will follow at 9:30 AM in Washington 1, Exhibition Level. The IAS-sponsored short session, “Rethinking the Rhetoric and Force of Images,” organized by Robert Williams of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Anna Marazuela Kim of the Courtauld Institute of Art, will take place the same day, 12:30–2:00 PM, in the Maryland Suite, Lobby Level.
The deadline for the new IAS Conference Grant for Modern Topics is February 15, 2016. Up to $1,000 will be provided to subsidize transoceanic travel to present in an IAS-sponsored session on the art, architecture, or visual culture of Italy from the early nineteenth century to the present.
Public Art Dialogue
Public Art Dialogue (PAD) is excited to announce two events at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC. On Thursday, February 4, 6:00–8:00 PM, PAD will host a Public Art Salon and Award Reception in conjunction with Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) at the WPA gallery at 2124 8th Street NW. Local artists will show slides and talk about their public art projects in and around DC. At the event, Kirk Savage, professor of history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, will receive the 2016 PAD Award for Achievement in the Field of Public Art. On Friday, February 5, 5:30–7:00 PM, Savage will chair a roundtable, “Public Art: Process and Practice,” with Thomas Luebke of the US Commission of the Fine Arts and Lucy Kempf of the National Capital Planning Commission.
The Fall 2015 Public Art Dialogue (PAD) Newsletter has an interview by Marisa Lerer and Jennifer K. Favorite with Sarah Beetham on “Confederate Monuments and the Black Lives Matter Movement.” As Lerer and Favorite note: “Countries around the world, from Syria to Spain to Argentina, have grappled with the bronze and stone sculptural legacy of leaders who represent a dark chapter in their nation’s past.” This issue has a strong link PAD’s forthcoming journal issue, “The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence,” edited by Erika Doss. Also in the newsletter, Marisa Lerer has an essay “Public Art’s Role in International Biennials.” She considers the role of public-art practices in contemporary biennials and includes responses from curators, artists, and academics from Cuba, the United States, Ireland, and Canada. The guest editors of two special issues of PAD’s journal are seeking papers and artists’ projects for the topics “Borders and Boundaries” (coeditors: Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie; submission deadline: March 1, 2016); and “Higher Ed: College Campuses and Public Art” (editor: Monika Burczyk; submission deadline: September 1, 2016). For more information, go to the PAD website.
SECAC
The SECAC board and membership voted to change the name of the organization from the Southeastern College Art Conference to SECAC.
Awards presented at SECAC’s annual meeting, which took place October 22–24, 2015, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are:
- Excellence in Teaching: Debra Murphy, University of North Florida
- Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication: Bibiana Obler, George Washington University
- Outstanding Artistic Achievement: Matthew Kolodziej, University of Akron
- Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of Contemporary Materials: Hannah Israel and Michele McCrillis, Columbus State University
- Outstanding Professional Achievement in Graphic Design: Jerry Johnson, Troy University; and Scott Fisk, Samford University
The President’s Awards are:
- Award for Exemplary Achievement: Michael Aurbach, Vanderbilt University
- Certificates of Merit: Thomas Brewer, University of Central Florida; Carol Crown, University of Memphis; and Virginia Derryberry, University of North Carolina, Asheville
The Juried Exhibition featured:
- First-place award: Michael Holsombeck, Chattanooga State Community College
- Second-place awards: Efram Burk of Curry College; and Sara Madandar, University of Texas at Austin
- $5,000 Artist’s Fellowship: Duane Paxson, Troy University
- $5,000 William R. Levin Award for Research in the History of Art: John Ott, James Madison University
Society of Architectural Historians
The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) will hold its next annual international conference April 6–10, 2016, at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 East Green Street, in Pasadena, California. Over seven hundred people from around the world will convene to share new research on the history of the built environment from antiquity to the critical present. “New Local/Global Infrastructures” is the theme of the 2016 Pasadena/Los Angeles conference, which includes forty-two sessions with papers, as well as roundtables, exhibits, talks, and public architecture tours. Regional sessions include “Los Angeles Infrastructure: Design, Aesthetics, Publics,” “Styles, Revival Styles, California Styles,” and “Reappraising California Counterculture.” Speakers include Eric Avila, professor of urban cultural history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Dana Cuff, UCLA architecture professor and director of the cityLAB research center. SAH will present “Surveying L.A.: Past, Present, Future,” a public seminar that will take an in-depth look at SurveyLA, the city’s comprehensive study of historic resources funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the City of Los Angeles. Panelists will discuss the local and global implications and applications of SurveyLA and its website, HistoricPlacesLA. Early registration ends February 3, 2016. View the complete program and register online.
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
Following voting in December 2015, the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has elected Ksenia Nouril as its new secretary/treasurer for a two-year term, succeeding Yelena Kalinsky. In addition, Amy Bryzgel will replace Ksenya Gurshtein as the web news editor for a one-year term.
On December 11–12, several SHERA members participated in “The 100 Years of Suprematism Conference” at the Harriman Institute, organized by the Malevich Society. The conference proved to be an important international event, bringing together scholars from the United States, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. The program of the conference is available on the website of the Malevich Society.
At CAA’s Annual Conference in February 2016, SHERA will sponsor the following sessions: “Collecting, Curating, Canonizing, Critiquing: The Institutionalization of Eastern European Art,” chaired by Ksenia Nouril; and a double session led by Alison Hilton called “Exploring Native Traditions in the Arts of Eastern Europe and Russia.”
Committee on Diversity Practices highlights for January/February 2016
posted by CAA — January 09, 2016
The CAA Committee on Diversity Practices highlights exhibitions, events, and activities that support the development of global perspectives on art and visual culture and deepen our appreciation of political and cultural heterogeneity as educational and professional values. Current highlights are listed below; browse past highlights through links at the bottom of this page.
January/February 2016
30 Americans
Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit, Michigan
October 18, 2015–January 18, 2016
“Identity, triumph, tragedy, pride, prejudice, humor and wit. 30 Americans: An exhibition bound by one nation and divided by 30 experiences. A dynamic showcase of contemporary art by African American artists, this exhibition explores issues of racial, political, historical and gender identity in contemporary culture. See more than 50 paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs and video drawn from the Rubell Family Collection, created by many of the most important African American artists working over the past 30 years, including Kerry James Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kara Walker, Nick Cave, Kehinde Wiley, Carrie Mae Weems, Robert Colescott, Glenn Ligon and Lorna Simpson.”
Walid Raad
Museum of Modern Art
New York, New York
October 12, 2015–January 31, 2016
“MoMA presents the first comprehensive American survey of the leading contemporary artist Walid Raad (b. 1967, Lebanon), featuring his work in photography, video, sculpture, and performance from the last 25 years. Dedicated to exploring the veracity of photographic and video documents in the public realm, the role of memory and narrative within discourses of conflict, and the construction of histories of art in the Arab world, Raad’s work is informed by his upbringing in Lebanon during the civil war (1975–91), and by the socioeconomic and military policies that have shaped the Middle East in the past few decades.
The exhibition focuses on two of the artist’s long-term projects: The Atlas Group (1989–2004) and Scratching on things I could disavow (2007–ongoing). Under the rubric of The Atlas Group, a 15-year project exploring the contemporary history of Lebanon, Raad produced fictionalized photographs, videotapes, notebooks, and lectures that related to real events and authentic research in audio, film, and photographic archives in Lebanon and elsewhere. Raad’s recent work has expanded to address the Middle East region at large. His current ongoing project, Scratching on things I could disavow, examines the recent emergence in the Arab world of new infrastructure for the visual arts—art fairs, biennials, museums, and galleries—alongside the geopolitical, economic, and military conflicts that have consumed the region. The exhibition emphasizes the importance of performance, narrative, and storytelling in Raad’s oeuvre.”
Nari Ward: Sun Splashed
Pérez Art Museum Miami
Miami, Florida
November 19, 2015–February 21, 2016
“In the fall of 2015, Pérez Art Museum Miami will present a mid-career retrospective of Nari Ward (b. 1963, Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica; lives in New York). This exhibition, Sun Splashed, will be the largest survey of the artist’s work to date and will offer a close consideration of his diverse production. Sun Splashed will examine Ward’s career through interrelated frameworks that reveal the ongoing investigations, both material and intellectual, that have guided his practice across more than 20 years. Rather than chronologically, this exhibition will be organized around vital points of reference for the artist, including urban space, performance and the body, the dynamics of power and politics, ideas of migration and movement, vernacular traditions, and his native Jamaica.
Ward’s practice is defined by its embrace of varied media and in particular the recurrent use of found objects, which imbue his works with a tactile and visceral relationship to history and the real world. The ambitious scale of his works and his continued experimentation with new materials and media will be brought to the fore in this exhibition, which will feature mixed-media collages, photography, assemblage, sculpture, interactive works, video, and architectural installations.”
Drawn From Courtly India: The Conley Harris and Howard Truelove Collection
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
December 6, 2015–March 27, 2016
“This exhibition presents masterful drawings from the royal courts of northern India. Lovingly amassed by artist Conley Harris and architectural designer Howard Truelove, the collection features practice sketches, preparatory drawings, subtly modeled scenes, and lightly colored compositions created between the 1500s and 1800s. With images at different stages of completion, the collection allows for a fascinating look at Indian workshop practice. Although the majority of the drawings served as studies for paintings, they are accomplished works of art in their own right. Included are striking portraits, vivid battle scenes, illustrations of popular religious stories, and explorations of love. Gentle yet robust lines convey the creativity of workshop-trained artists with compelling immediacy—from the delicate shading of a ruler’s facial hair to the strong contours of a god’s upstretched arm in battle. Not only do these drawings highlight the artists’ expert handling of medium, they illuminate how workshops labored in artistic collaboration and transmitted skills from one generation to the next. Drawings reveal what paintings conceal, and the works in this exhibition offer new ways of looking and thinking about the art of Indian drawing. By presenting works at distinct moments during the creative process, Drawn from Courtly India showcases how the Indian draftsman transformed a blank sheet of paper into a masterful work of art.”
Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Before Now After (Mama, Mummy and Mamma)
Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, New York
November 23, 2015–
“Over the course of the next five years, a series of public art installations by key American artists will appear across from the Whitney’s new building and the southern entrance to the High Line, on the facade of 95 Horatio Street. Njideka Akunyili Crosby is the third artist to present work as part of the series, which was initiated by the Whitney in partnership with TF Cornerstone and the High Line. This is the artist’s first solo presentation in an institution in New York.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby (b. 1983; Enugu, Nigeria) is a Los-Angeles based artist who makes large-scale, representational work that combines collage, drawing, painting, and printmaking. Her work routinely fuses both Nigerian and American influences and source material, reflecting on contemporary African life (often her family) along with her experience as an expatriate living in the U.S, and the inherent difficulty of navigating these two realms. The works simultaneously become intimate while more broadly exploring the cultural complications of the dual worlds that she inhabits.
Akunyili Crosby’s new work for the billboard, Before Now After (Mama, Mummy and Mamma), continues her ongoing exploration of her relationship to her family, and in this case to her sister, mother, and grandmother specifically. The image is closely based on an existing painting entitled Mama, Mummy and Mamma from 2014, now expanded for this site. Like much of her work, the composition fuses both a portrait (in this case of her sister), photographs of both her mother and grandmother, and an elaborate array of objects arranged carefully on the table, suggesting a still life composition. Additionally, the work’s placement at the foot of the High Line seems to implicate the viewer within Akunyili Crosby’s composition—now able to peer into this carefully composed and invented world reflective of her complex personal history.”
Solo Exhibitions by Artist Members
posted by CAA — December 22, 2015
Solo Exhibitions by Artist Members
See when and where CAA members are exhibiting their art, and view images of their work.
Solo Exhibitions by Artist Members is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
December 2015
Abroad
Patricia Cronin. Chiesa di San Gallo, 56th Venice Biennale Collateral Event, Venice, Italy, May 6–November 22, 2015. Shrine for Girls, Venice.
Lindsey Landfried, Recursive, 2015, acrylic on folded paper, 70 x 96 in. (artwork © Lindsey Landfried)Lindsey Landfried. Kwadrat Gallerie, Berlin, Germany, October 17–November 14, 2015. Scripture. Drawing installation.
Mid-Atlantic
H. K. Anne, Rainy Spring, 2014, Leesburg, VA, 2015, oil on canvas, 45 x 58 in. (artwork © H. K. Anne; photograph by Suzanne K. Serway)H. K. Anne. George Washington University, Virginia Science and Technology Campus, Enterprise Hall, Ashburn, Virginia, September 16–December 31, 2015. Goose Creek, the Four Seasons. Oil painting.
Midwest
Sharon Louden. Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota, October 22, 2015–May 29, 2016. Windows. Site-specific multimedia installation.
Northeast
Craig Drennen. Temporary Storage Gallery, Gallery 104, Brooklyn, New York, September 8–October 9, 2015. New Mistress vs. Old Athenians. Painting and mixed media.
Michael Rich, The Desert Places, 2014, oil and wax on canvas. 64 x 70 in. (artwork © Michael Rich)Michael Rich. Candita Clayton Gallery, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, September 24–October 15, 2015. Large Scale! New and Recent (Big) Paintings. Painting.
South
Michael Aurbach, Cassandra, 2016, mixed media, 96 x 96 x 48 in. (artwork © Michael Aurbach)Michael Aurbach. Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee, January 14–March 3, 2016. The Last Laugh: Selections from Michael Aurbach’s Secrecy Series. Sculpture.
West
Ellen Carey. M+B, Los Angeles, California, November 6, 2015–January 16, 2016. Ellen Carey: Polaroid 20 x 24 Self-Portraits. Photography.
Julie Green, studio view of Wallpaper, Embarrassment of Dishes, and My New Blue Friends, 2015, sumi ink on mulberry paper, kiln-fired porcelain, and egg tempera airbrushed on panel, dimensions variable (artwork © Julie Green)Julie Green. Upfor, Portland, Oregon, November 5–December 19, 2015. My New Blue Friends. Painting.
Steven Labadessa, hijikata 1, 2015, oil on copper, 12 x 7¾ in. (artwork © Steven Labadessa)Steven Labadessa. COS Art Gallery, College of the Sequoias, Visalia, California, October 6–30, 2015. Steven Labadessa: Hallucinatory Realism. Painting, drawing, and mixed media.
People in the News
posted by CAA — December 17, 2015
People in the News lists new hires, positions, and promotions in three sections: Academe, Museums and Galleries, and Organizations and Publications.
The section is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
December 2015
Academe
Adair Rounthwaite has been appointed assistant professor of art history in the School of Art, Art History, and Design at the University of Washington in Seattle. The position is tenure track.
Michael SchrefflerMichael Schreffler, formerly a faculty member in the Department of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, has joined the Department of Art, Art History, and Design at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana as associate professor of the art and architecture of Spain and Latin America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Museums and Galleries
Cassandra Albinson has been appointed the new Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of European Art at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Christopher Atkins, coordinator of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Art since 2009, has joined the Minnesota Museum of American Art in Saint Paul as curator of exhibitions and public programs.
Ethan LasserEthan Lasser has been named head of the Division of European and American Art at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was also promoted to Theodore E. Stebbins Jr. Curator of American Art—the first person to hold this endowed position.
Anne Manning, formerly deputy director for education and interpretation at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland, has been appointed director of education and interpretive programs at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.
James Meyer, associate curator for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has been hired to serve as deputy director and chief curator of the Dia Art Foundation in New York.
Leslee Katrina Michelsen has left her position as head of curatorial research for the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. She is now a curatorial consultant for UNESCO Afghanistan.
Peter Nesbett, formerly associate director for programs at the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has been appointed executive director of the Washington Project for the Arts in Washington, DC.
Stephen Pinson, formerly Robert B. Menschel Curator of Photography for the New York Public Library, has joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as curator of photography.
Elizabeth M. Rudy, who has been with the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, since 2011, has been named the new Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Associate Curator of Prints.
Rachel Saunders has been named Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Associate Curator of Asian Art in the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the first to hold this endowed position.
Emily Stamey, previously curator of contemporary art at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, has become curator of exhibitions at the University of North Carolina’s Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro.
Elizabeth VarnerElizabeth Varner has left her position as executive director of the National Art Museum of Sport in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is now staff curator at US Department of the Interior in Washington, DC.
Aileen June WangAileen June Wang has joined the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, part of Kansas State University in Manhattan, as associate curator. Prior to the appointment she was assistant professor of art history at Long Island University Post in Brookville, New York.
Gregory Wittkopp, director of the Cranbrook Art Museum and the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, both in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, since 2011, has stepped down from the museum position. He will continue to lead the center.
Organizations and Publications
Tanya SheehanTanya Sheehan, associate professor of art and chair of the Art Department at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, has been appointed guest editor of the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art Journal.
Institutional News
posted by CAA — December 17, 2015
Institutional News
Read about the latest news from institutional members.
Institutional News is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
December 2015
The University of Virginia in Charlottesville has received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the testing and implementation of a prototype for digitizing artist’s books by a group of curators, artists, critics, and scholars.
Grants, Awards, and Honors
posted by CAA — December 15, 2015
CAA recognizes its members for their professional achievements, be it a grant, fellowship, residency, book prize, honorary degree, or related award.
Grants, Awards, and Honors is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
December 2015
Carol Becker, dean of faculty for Columbia University’s School of the Arts in New York, has received the Dayawait Modi Award for Art, Culture, and Education, given by Arts for India.
Henry Colburn, who recently completed a doctorate in the Interdepartmental PhD Program in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has been awarded the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award from the university’s Rackham Graduate School for the superior quality of his 2014 dissertation, “The Archaeology of Achaemenid Rule in Egypt.”
Craig Drennen, assistant professor of painting and drawing at Georgia State University in Atlanta, has accepted a fall 2015/winter 2016 residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Barbara Foster, an artist based in Oakland, California, has received a spring 2016 residency at Playa in Summer Lake, Oregon.
Greg Hull at work during an IUPUI student art installationGreg Hull, professor of sculpture in the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, has been awarded a Transformational Impact Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis.
Larry A. SilverLarry A. Silver, James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has been named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for the 2015–16 academic year.
Noah Simblist has won a 2015 Exhibition Grant from Artis for an exhibition, False Flags, he is organizing for Pelican Bomb in New Orleans, Louisiana, to take place in March 2016.
Exhibitions Curated by CAA Members
posted by CAA — December 15, 2015
Check out details on recent shows organized by CAA members who are also curators.
Exhibitions Curated by CAA Members is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
December 2015
Alexandra Keiser. Archipenko: A Modern Legacy. Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, September 22–December 13, 2015.
Valérie Rousseau. Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet. American Folk Art Museum, New York, October 13, 2015–January 10, 2016.
Books Published by CAA Members
posted by CAA — December 15, 2015
Publishing a book is a major milestone for artists and scholars—browse a list of recent titles below.
Books Published by CAA Members appears every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
December 2015
Irina D. Costache. The Art of Understanding Art (Beijing: Publishing House of Electronics Industry, 2015).
Myroslava M. Mudrak and Tetiana Rudenko, ed. Staging the Ukrainian Avant-Garde of the 1910s and 1920s (New York: Ukrainian Museum, 2015).
Valérie Rousseau, ed. Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2015).
Andrew Jay Svedlow. Thirty Works of Art Every Student Should Know (Dubuques, IA: Kendall Hunt, 2015).
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for December 2015
posted by CAA — December 10, 2015
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.
December 2015
Marks Made: Prints by American Women Artists from the 1960s to the Present
Museum of Fine Arts
255 Beach Drive N.E., St. Petersburg, FL
October 17, 2015–January 24, 2016
The Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida, presents Marks Made, examining women in printmaking. Featuring over 75 works, including those from the printmaking pioneers Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and Anni Albers, the exhibition “conveys the breadth of innovation of both technique and conceptual approaches that have emerged in printmaking over the past 50 years.”
The exhibition draws on the private holdings and from the museum’s extensive collection of prints by American women, including Vija Celmins, Janet Fish, Ellen Gallagher, Yvonne Jacquette, Joyce Kozloff, Barbara Kruger, Hung Liu, Elizabeth Murray, Judy Pfaff, Susan Rothenberg, and Pat Steir. Limited-edition prints by the artists Elisabeth Condon and Jane Hammond were also created in collaboration with the University of South Florida and Bleu Acier Editions. Related programming events include film screenings, drawing workshops, and lectures.
“The printmaking process is an intensely collaborative one, between artist and printer. It is also a highly physical process, requiring strength, stamina, and technical prowess—Marks Made tells the story of what happens in the studio and the resulting artworks.” The themes of the exhibition vary from artist to artist and are loosely grouped, allowing interconnected exploration between themes of abstraction, realism, craft, appropriation strategies, and activism.
Linda Stein: The Fluidity of Gender
Noyes Museum of Art
Stockton University, 733 Lily Lake Road, Oceanville, NJ
September 21, 2015–January 3, 2016
The artist Linda Stein at the Noyes Museum of Art presents sculpture exploring “the continuum between the binaries of masculinity and femininity,” with her mixed-media figurative work. The leather and metal figures, along with use of pop0-cultural icons, embody both the essence of a warrior’s armor and comforting protection. Stein’s work concerns gender, oppression, bullying, strength, power, and justice in contemporary culture.
“My goal as an artist is to use my art to transform social consciousness and promote activism for gender justice,” Stein has said. “With my androgynous forms I invite the viewer to seek diversity in unpredictable ways, to ‘try on’ new personal avatars and self-definitions, knowing that every new experience changes the brain’s structure and inspires each of us toward a more authentic self.”
The tall, vertical sculptures of metal, wood, stones, leather, and images of Wonder Woman, among other materials, are wearable, body-swapping armor. “In my art,” Stein said in a June 2015 interview with A&U Magazine, “I place the female front and center for a social idealism that aims to transform violence, destruction, and fragility into strength for anyone who finds themselves bullied, harassed, or abused.” But while, the armor is distinctively female in many cases, with curves for hips and breasts, the body-swapping moment happens when a woman wears materials normally associated with male warrior attributes and a man wearing armor made to resemble a female form. Other creations by Stein, remain more androgynous, presenting what is normally associated as a male figure from behind, but female when viewed from the front.
what’s INSIDE HER never dies … a Black Woman’s Legacy
Yeelen Gallery
294 NW 54th Street, Miami, FL
December 1, 2015–February 28, 2016
Following Mariette Pathy Allen’s solo exhibition TransCuba, Yeelan Gallery continues its exhibition programming on gender with what’s INSIDE HER never dies … a Black Woman’s Legacy, in collaboration with Poets/Artists Magazine. The opening coincides with Art Basel Miami Beach. This group show features two images from Allen, as well as from twenty-four other artists and activists, including Sylvia Parker Maier, Tim Okamura, Joseph Adolphe, Jerome Siomaud, and Numa Perrier.
The exhibition showcases work in a variety of mediums—portraiture, drawing, photography, and installation—all seeking to “pay homage to the beauty and resiliency of the Black Woman,” said Karla Ferguson, the gallery owner and director. A reception for the artists will take place on Saturday, December 5, 2015, at 10:00 PM.
In her photographs, Allen gained access to photograph transgender peoples and friends in the privacy of their homes, as well as out in public during several visits to Cuba in 2012 and 2013. “The transgender people Allen depicts in TransCuba savor their new freedom to be able to be themselves publicly, while continuing to overcome challenges, such as health issues, and lack of steady work and money.”
In contrast, another artist in the exhibition, Judith Peck, often paints on broken plaster shards, “a world falling apart held together with the very same figure depicted within.” In her painting Pulled Over, a young woman sits in what appears to be the driver’s seat of a vehicle, her arm resting on the window and her head looking down, perhaps waiting. “The paintings are about the more universal message of meaning and preciousness of life healing a broken world.”
In addition to the exhibition, Yeelen Gallery will host a panel discussion at 1:00 PM on December 2, 2015, with Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Kadiatou Diallo, the mother of Amadou Diallo, who will share their stories and grief along with other activist women.
Ebony G. Patterson: Dead Treez
Museum of Art and Design
2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019
The Museum of Art and Design presents Dead Treez,the first solo New York museum show by the Jamaican-born artist Ebony G. Patterson. The exhibition, which spreads across the museum’s second floor, includes installations, floor tapestries, and a life-sized figural tableau of ten male mannequins dressed in a kaleidoscopic mix of floral fabrics.
Dead Treez is a meditation on dancehall fashion and culture, regarded as a celebration of the disenfranchised in postcolonial Jamaica. Borrowing from social media, her tapestries depict murder victims camouflaged in utterly adorned patterns to seduce viewers into witnessing the underreported brutality experienced by those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. Furthermore, the artist fusions her collage sensibility with a selection of jewelry from the museum’s permanent collection, transforming the Tiffany Jewelry Gallery’s vitrines into gardenlike environment of poisonous plants, in which bodies wrapped in patterned fabrics have succumbed to the violence often present in marginalized communities. Here, Patterson addresses how choices in jewelry, clothing, or other forms of personal adornment are means of visibility of populations rendered invisible by poverty and racism. Noting that the names of impoverished communities in Jamaica often include the word “garden” in them, Patterson’s …buried again to carry on going… exacerbates the contrast between places that are designed to be about beauty, growth, life, and the hardships that are daily obstacles in her native country’s inner city.
Patterson, (b. 1981, Kingston, Jamaica) splits her time between Kingston and Lexington, Kentucky. Through her extremely adorned mixed-media installations, the artist seduces viewers, with the intention to challenge them to look closer. Throughout Dead Treez the artist explores and reflects on the concept of “visibility,” raising questions about body politics, performance of gender, gender and beauty, beauty and stereotyping, race and beauty, and body and ritual. Throughout this exhibition, Patterson suggests that the popularity of skin alteration, such as skin bleaching and tattooing, may mean a form of “erasure” motivated by the desire of presence rather than a simple adornment.
The Rocca Family (RTF) is an ongoing project located in the everyday gestures of togetherness. A togetherness that could be much broader than just two people, proposing not to separate art/work from daily life, while dreaming of not being attached. Defying the traditional concept of traditional family as a terrible structure that imposes the pressure to be happy and the feeling of shame otherwise, TRF proposes a series of moving spaces that encourage art to take on new forms and identities. One of its ongoing research projects, Family, is an examination of different family structures, dynamics, demands, and expectations, and in that offers a reflection of the reasons behind the strict assumption of the family as a core unit to community.
Named after a cat and with a base in San Francisco, TRF challenges also the identity of art, proposing “events” that are simply moments in the timeline of relationships: conversation, meals, and phone calls. Furthermore, displacement, transit, and immigration help form the core of TRF discussions, with a particular attention on personal politics and an international awareness, as well as a sensitivity for domestic, mundane, flashy, sustainable, and unexpected things.
As Amanda Eicher describes the prohect in Who is TRF Series, #1-b: “Round is another way to describe it—leaving the scientific and transportative world of paths, flights, lines, and planes, we can say that it is a space in which many people come around a table, and they are all not necessarily leading not following either but learning—all parts of something which turns or presses outward from a center to meet a margin-frontier. Or it might be they are pressing together from the outside.”
Women Speaking to Power: An Evening of Conversation with Tania Bruguera and Shirin Neshat
School of Visual Arts Theatre
333 West 23rd Street, New York, NY
December 11, 2015
Organized by SVA’s MA Curatorial Practice program, “Women Speaking to Power” will open a conversation between two of the most significant and influential international contemporary practicing today: Tania Bruguera and Shirin Neshat. They will speak with each other about their experiences as citizens and artists, reflecting on how their works approach to gender and politics in their respective homelands, Cuba and Iran, and beyond. This event, which starts at 7:00 PM, is free and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.