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Affiliated Society News for May 2012

posted by May 09, 2012

American Council for Southern Asian Art

The American Council for Southern Asian Art(ACSAA) welcomes Cathleen Cummings, assistant professor of art history at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, as its new webmaster. Lisa N. Owen, an ACSAA board member, and Catherine Becker, the ACSAA secretary, have each agreed to serve an additional term.

Past newsletters from 1974 to 2007 and annual bulletins from 2008 to the present have been scanned and are now available to all members on the ACSAA website. Members are invited to submit news regarding publications, exhibitions, or conferences for inclusion in the 2012 bulletin. Please send your information to Melody Rod-ari, ACSAA bulletin editor.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) is offering a leadership seminar for thirty-five participants, in partnership with the Kellogg Center for Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Taking place June 24–29, 2012, the course is designed for directors and director-curators of academic museums and galleries who are at any career stage and who work in any collecting field. The seminar includes museum and gallery leaders from institutions ranging from large state universities to small private colleges. Visit the AAMG website for a list of faculty members and seminar details.

Association of Historians of American Art

The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) has awarded a $500 AHAA Travel Grant to Rebecca Uchill, a PhD candidate in art history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Uchill presented a paper, “Processing History, Forming Transactions: Preservation and Exchange in the Work of Allison Smith,” at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference session, “Trading Zones: Strategies for the Study of Artists and Their Art-Making Practices.”

Save the date for the second AHAA symposium, “American Art: The Academy, Museums, and the Market,” to be held October 11–13, 2012, and hosted by the Boston Athenaeum and Boston University in Massachusetts. Visit AHAA online for more information or contact the symposium cochairs, David Dearinger and Melissa Renn.

Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art

The Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) has received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a three-year capacity-building initiative to maximize the possibilities of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, the organization’s scholarly electronic journal. The grant is intended to help authors in the development phase of their articles as well as to aid the journal in the implementation phase. Therefore, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide seeks scholarship that engages in one or more of the following interrelated areas of investigation: data mining and analysis; geographic information systems and mapping; and high-resolution imaging and dynamic image presentation. Authors should be generally knowledgeable about the technological possibilities related to their project and able to articulate how both specific computer-based research methods and the online publication format connect with the research questions on which their project focuses. In addition, authors should expect to collaborate with technical experts to help complete their projects. Proposals should outline projects that are relatively small scale, able to be realized within about three to six months, and requiring approximately one hundred hours of development work. Interested contributors may review the proposal guidelines for more details. For further information, contact Petra Chu or Emily Pugh.

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) will hold its national biennial conference in Savannah, Georgia, April 3–6, 2013, at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s School of Foundation Studies. Titled “postHaus,” the conference has the theme “Instructing, Constructing, and Connecting with Students in the Twenty-First Century.” The question posed is: “As models of education evolve, what new teaching models are forming?” Each FATE biennial conference attracts a fantastic group of first-year studio professors and instructors from two- and four-year colleges across the United States and internationally. For “postHaus,” FATE seeks to expand its reach. Topics can include but are not limited to: innovation in studio courses, curriculum development, approaches to art history, liberal-arts instruction, the importance of research librarians, and the vital role of lab technicians. Proposals for papers and presentation must be submitted by June 1, 2012.

Need FATE sooner? The next FATE regional workshop, “Removing the Curse of the Demo,” will take place on August 11, 2012, at the Art Institute of Atlanta–Decatur in Georgia. Participants should bring their favorite demo and share the way they approach the subject through perspective drawing, cutting paper straight, paint mixing, paint application, finding proper proportions, obtaining proper value, or anything else related to the topic.

Historians of British Art

John Everett Millais, Isabella, 1848–49, oil on canvas, 102.9 x 142.9 cm. National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery (artwork in the public domain)

Please join the Historians of British Art (HBA) and the English-Speaking Union (ESU) for a preview of the exhibition Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde on Thursday, May 24, 2012, 6:30–8:30 PM, in New York. Two of the show’s three curators, Tim Barringer of Yale University and Jason Rosenfeld of Marymount Manhattan University, will give American audiences an early look at this important exhibition—addressing its key themes and its evolution as a project—during an informal, richly illustrated conversation, moderated by Peter Trippi, HBA president and a cocurator of J. W. Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite. The discussion will be followed by a wine reception.

In September 2012, Tate Britain in London will open Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde. Inspired by early Renaissance painting and led by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood rebelled against the establishment of the mid-nineteenth century and became Britain’s first modern art movement. The curators, which include Alison Smith of Tate London, will bring together more than 150 works in different media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and the applied arts, revealing the Pre-Raphaelites to be advanced in their approach to every genre. After closing at Tate in January 2013, the exhibition will move to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and then to Moscow and Tokyo.

Advance registration for the conversation is required: $20 for HBA and ESU members; $25 for nonmembers. Payment may be made by credit card or by check payable to “The English-Speaking Union.” Checks should be mailed to: Caitlin Murphy, English-Speaking Union, 144 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016. You will receive a confirmation of payment if you provide your email address. Call 212-818-1200 or write to mnicoll@esuus.org for more information. For content-related questions, please email Peter Trippi. For questions about payment, please contact Caitlin Murphy.

International Association of Art Critics

The International Association of Art Critics (AICA/US) held its annual awards ceremony at the Asia Society in New York on April 2, 2012. These awards honor artists, curators, museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions in recognition of excellence in the conception and realization of exhibitions. AICA’s four hundred active members nominated and voted on outstanding exhibitions from the previous season (June 2010–June 2011). The twenty-four winners of first and second places in twelve categories, selected from over one hundred finalists, included exhibitions of work by the contemporary artists Christian Marclay, Sarah Sze, and Ai Weiwei and by the twentieth-century artists Pablo Picasso, Sonia Delaunay, Kurt Schwitters, and Paul Thek, as well as thematic exhibitions dealing with the history of drawing through the twentieth century, contemporary Japanese art, and Fluxus. Lowery Sims, Peter Plagens, and Sanford Biggers presented the awards. This year’s nominating committee comprised Eleanor Heartney (chair), Marek Bartelik (AICA/US president), Rebecca Cochran, Peter Frank, Francine Miller, and Susan Snodgrass.

International Association of Word and Image Studies

The International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS/AIERTI) seeks proposals for “From the Wall, to the Press, to the Streets,” its affiliated-society session for CAA’s 2013 Annual Conference in New York, that reflect on contemporary art practices that occur outside the traditional framework of the gallery or museum space. Topics to consider include: public art rhetoric (how language challenges elitist/populist divides); working around the frame (spatial transgression as institutional critique); art’s new open-access sites (the internet and social networks); and institutional responses (marketing and copyright laws). Please submit your proposal and a CV to Eve Kalyva and Ignaz Cassar by June 1, 2012. IAWIS/AIERTI membership is not required.

International Sculpture Center

The International Sculpture Center (ISC), in collaboration with the National Academy Museum and School in New York, will present the year’s first ISConnects panel, “Against the Grain: Strategies, Choices, and Controversies of Women in Sculpture,” at the National Academy on May 30, 2012. Joan Marter, professor of art history at Rutgers University in New Jersey, will moderate; a list of participating artists is forthcoming. For more information and to view videos from previous ISConnects events, please visit the website.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) would like to congratulate its new officers and committee members: Alison Perchuk, treasurer; Kay Arthur, newsletter editor; Catherine McCurrach, secretary and membership coordinator; Anne Leader, webmaster; Nicola Camerlenghi and Esperança Camara, program committee; and Brian Curran, Frances Gage, and Mark Rosen, nominating committee.

IAS seeks proposals for papers and presentations for its two sponsored sessions at CAA’s 2013 Annual Conference in New York: “Bad Boys, Hussies, and Villains” and “Disegno.” Please visit the proposal guidelines for more information on how to participate.

IAS is sponsoring four linked sessions, entitled “Italian Art and Confluence of Cultures (I–IV),” at the forty-seventh International Congress on Medieval Art, taking place May 10–13, 2012, at the University of Western Michigan in Kalamazoo.

The organization welcomes all to the third annual IAS/Kress Lecture in Italy, to be given by Debra Pincus on June 6, 2012, at the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti in Venice, seat of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti. Pincus’s talk is entitled “The Lure of the Letter: Renaissance Venice and the Recovery of Antique Writing.”

Mid-America College Art Association

The James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, will host the next Mid-America College Art Association (MACAA) conference, taking place October 3–6, 2012. The event has two themes: “Community and Collaboration” and “Meaning and Making.” Programming will include three featured speakers, panel presentations, studio workshops, MACAA member exhibitions, and museum visits. You may register for the conference and find out how to become a MACAA member on the Detroit conference website.

National Council of Arts Administrators

National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) congratulates a member, Charles A. Wright, who was recently elected to serve on CAA’s Board of Directors. NCAA members Georgia Strange, Denise Mullen, and Leslie Bellavance were elected in 2011 to serve on the same board, where they had worked with three fellow members, Judith Thorpe, Jean Miller, and Jay Coogan.

At the 2012 CAA Annual Conference, several NCAA members—Sergio Soave, Tom Berding, Donna Meeks, Lee Ann Garrison, Amy Hauft, John Kissick, Jim Hopfensperger, Tom Loeser, and David Yager—presented a concise and compelling session, “Hot Problems/Cool Solutions in Arts Leadership.” In addition, the annual NCAA Reception at CAA, cohosted by the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine, was an amazing affair. Thanks to all who attended.

It’s not too late to submit a proposal for the next NCAA meeting. The thirty-first annual conference, “Granting Permission,” will take place November 7–10, 2012, hosted by Ohio State University and Columbus College of Art and Design. The NCAA board seeks proposals for presentations, sessions, and/or panels for the annual Arts Administrators Workshops. Topics may include, but are not limited to: leadership and management; promotion and tenure; interpersonal communication; budget management, personnel evaluation, and growth; career paths; and case studies related to arts administration. Proposals and inquiries should be sent to Jim Hopfensperger, NCAA president. Initial proposals of no more than 350 words are due by May 21, 2012.

Public Art Dialogue

Public Art Dialogue (PAD) welcomes two new officers: Sarah Schrank begins her first term as cochair; and Sierra Rooney begins her first term as secretary.

Public Art Dialogue, a scholarly journal published biannually, invites submissions for its upcoming special issue, “Memorials: The Culture of Remembrance.” This issue seeks to explore memorials in regard to their range of subjects, various formal and conceptual strategies, and the critical issues pertaining to their study. PAD welcomes submissions that address related topics (except war or peace, covered in the previous issue) from any time period or place. The deadline for the submission of papers is September 15, 2012.

Society for Photographic Education

Each spring the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) hosts a forum for the presentation of artistic work and research to a community of peers. SPE is accepting proposals for its fiftieth annual conference, “Conferring Significance: Celebrating Photography’s Continuum,” which will be held March 7–10, 2013, in Chicago, Illinois. Proposals will be accepted until June 1, 2012. Topics are not required to be theme-based and may include, but are not limited to: image making, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. SPE membership is required for submission; proposals are peer reviewed.

Society of North American Goldsmiths

The Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) will hold its forty-first annual conference, “The Heat Is On,” from May 23 to 26, 2012, at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona. The keynote speaker is Garth Clark, an art dealer, historian, and critic. Other guest speakers include Megan Auman, Kim Cridler, Steve Midgett, Kevin O’Dwyer, and Bettina Speckner. The spotlight is also on these emerging artists: Allyson Bone, Andrew Hayes, Caitie Sellers, Loring Taoka, and Amy Tavern. Join the Professional Development Seminar and the Education Dialogue, and also spend an evening on the annual Exhibition Crawl in Scottsdale, Phoenix, and Mesa. View outstanding craftsmanship in the annual juried exhibition, the student digital presentation, and SNAG members’ work on SNAG TV.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) has transitioned the VRA Bulletin from a print journal to an electronic journal, published by the Berkeley Electronic Press, also know as Bepress. In order to celebrate the inaugural issue and to spread the word, the first issue is readily accessible to read, but succeeding issues will be available to VRA members only for the first six months after publication, after which time the journal will be open access. Feature articles include Janice L. Eklund’s “Cultural Objects Digitization Planning: Metadata Overview,” which provides a discussion of image metadata types, applications, and best-practice considerations for such projects. In Maureen Burns’s “Musings on Electronic Publishing,” the former VRA president summarizes the open-access movement, new models of electronic publishing, and how traditional publication processes change in an electronic environment. In this issue you can also find the complete text of Visual Resources Association: Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study, endorsed by CAA and published with an executive summary.

Filed under: Affiliated Societies

HUNG(A)RY FOR ART: DÓRA SALLAY

posted by May 09, 2012

Geraldine A. Johnson is a university lecturer in history of art and associate head of the Humanities Division at Oxford University.

The Hungarian curator and scholar Dóra Sallay (left) with Anne Helmreich, senior program officer at the Getty Foundation (photograph by Bradley Marks)

Rice congee, miso soup, and nori are not usually on the breakfast menu for most Hungarian museum curators. But when I met Dóra Sallay at the crack of dawn at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles during the 2012 CAA Annual Conference, the truly global offerings of the lavish breakfast buffet were a sign of things to come. As Sallay herself observed, “It made me realize just how international the conference was likely to be.”

Sallay, curator of early Italian painting at the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest’s Museum of Fine Arts, was one of twenty international scholars awarded travel grants to attend this year’s conference through a new program administered by CAA and funded by the Getty Foundation. Hosts for each grant recipient were selected from CAA’s International Committee, led by its outgoing committee chair, Jennifer Milam, and from the National Committee for the History of Art, led by Frederick M. Asher. The trip to Los Angeles was Sallay’s first experience not only of the annual meeting, but also of California. Both proved to be eye-opening encounters for a curator who had previously only been to small, specialized art-history conferences. “This was the first time,” Sallay said, “that I was able to hear talks on such a wide range of subjects, including new methodological approaches and innovative research tools.”

Among the many sessions she attended, Sallay gave special praise to the Getty Research Institute’s presentation of its Digital Art History Texts project. She described it as a “cozy, relaxed, and genuinely interactive event, where I felt I really had a chance to influence how a major new research tool was being developed. As a curator working in a small country with limited financial resources, such digitalization projects are absolutely crucial.”

Sallay was also able to hear about the latest research being done in her field of specialization, Italian Renaissance art. She particularly enjoyed Max Grossman’s talk, “Brick Architecture and Political Strategy in Early Modern Siena,” and while at the Book and Trade Fair she saw publications not yet available in Budapest, such as Anne Leader’s 2011 book, The Badia of Florence: Art and Observance in a Renaissance Monastery. Unsurprisingly, Sallay’s suitcases were noticeably heavier upon her return to Hungary, filled with many such coveted finds, as well as new discoveries.

Giovanni di Paolo, Branchini Madonna, 1427, tempera and gold leaf on panel, 72 x 39 in. (182.9 x 99.1 cm). Norton Simon Foundation. F.1978.01.P (artwork in the public domain; photograph © 2012 Norton Simon Foundation)

Sallay was very enthusiastic about the opportunities she and her fellow travel-grant recipients had to take in some of southern California’s world-famous art collections, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art during the CAA Centennial Reception to the J. Paul Getty Museum on a trip arranged by the International Committee, now led by its new chair, Ann Albritton. A visit to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena was particularly significant for Sallay’s research as she was able to view Giovanni di Paolo’s panel painting, the Branchini Madonna (1427), which she had known only through reproductions. The museum’s chief curator, Carol Togneri, “was absolutely wonderful,” according to Sallay. “Not only did she show me all the files on the painting, but she even arranged for me to look at the work outside normal museum hours and provided a ladder for some productive close-up viewing.”

The social aspect of the conference was particularly important for the international scholars. Sallay praised the extensive program of activities that CAA provided for travel-grant recipients and enthused about making “fantastic connections with scholars and curators from all over the world: South Africa, India, Pakistan. We discussed problems of common interest such as, when curating exhibitions, how to find the right balance between the needs of the general public and the demands of academics.” She also noted, somewhat ironically, that she met a number of fellow researchers from Central and Eastern Europe, such as Daniel Premerl from Croatia’s Institute of Art History, for the first time in Los Angeles.

Getting to know members of the International Committee, who served as hosts to the travel-grant recipients, was also a terrific way to forge valuable new links across continents. Indeed, as Sallay’s official host, I am pleased to report that, thanks to email, we have continued the conversation we began over the breakfast table in Los Angeles—although the next time we meet in person, rice congee is much less likely to be on the menu!

Read about another travel-grant recipient, Judy Peter from South Africa, and review a report on all activities from the 2012 CAA International Travel Grant Program.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags:

Solo Exhibitions by Artist Members

posted by April 22, 2012

See when and where CAA members are exhibiting their art, and view images of their work.

Solo Exhibitions by Artist Members is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.

April 2012

Abroad

Sue Johnson. Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, Oxford, England, United Kingdom, January 24–June 10, 2012. The Nature of Curious Objects: Sue Johnson’s Paper Museum. Painting.

Joan Marie Kelly. Visual Arts Gallery, Habitat Center, New Delhi, India, April 11–17, 2012. Initial Encounters. Painting and drawing.

Mid-Atlantic

Margaret Murphy. Kresge Foundation Gallery, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, New Jersey, March 28–May 2, 2012. Margaret Murphy, A Ten-Year Survey; Decoding the Marketplace: Coupons, Dollar Stores, and eBay. Painting.

Margaret Murphy. Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery, New Jersey City University, Hepburn Hall, Jersey City, New Jersey, January 30–March 7, 2012. Margaret Murphy, A Ten-Year Survey; Decoding the Marketplace: Coupons, Dollar Stores, and eBay. Painting.

Midwest

Michelle Grabner. Green Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, January 21–February 26, 2012. Cottage Work. Painting.

Julie Green. UNO Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Omaha, Nebraska, January 13–February 8, 2012. The Last Supper. Painted ceramic plates and video.

Sharon Louden. Burnet Gallery, Le Méridien Chambers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 1–May 6, 2012. Movement and Gesture. Painting, drawing, sculpture, and animation.

Northeast

Ellen Carey. Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, New York, March 3–April 11, 2012. Struck by Light. Photography.

Nayda Collazo-Llorens. LMAKprojects, New York, March 16–April 22, 2012. Across Doom Hopes the Guiding Fever. Drawing.

Janet Goldner. Corridor Gallery, Interchurch Center, New York, March 15–April 13, 2012. i ni ce, thank you, merci. Sculpture.

Eve Ingalls. SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, February 28–March 24, 2012. Out of Place and Time. Sculpture.

Debra Ramsay. Blank Space Gallery, New York, April 19–May 19, 2012. Desire Lines. Painting.

Linda Stein. Flomenhaft Gallery, New York, May 17–June 23, 2012. The Fluidity of Gender: Sculpture by Linda Stein. Sculpture.

Marianne Weil. Kouros Gallery, New York, May 3–31, 2012. Fusion: Glass and Bronze. Sculpture.

South

Leigh-Ann Pahapill. Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, January 28–May 13, 2012. Likewise, as technical experts, but not (at all) by way of culture. Installation.

West

Michael Darmody. New Mexico Arts Centennial Project Space, Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 13–February 17, 2012. House of Cards. Installation.

Gerit Grimm. Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California, March 15–July 8, 2012. Gerit Grimm: Beyond the Figurine, Contemporary Inspirations from the Museum’s Collection. Ceramic sculpture.

Ellen Mueller. Pueblo Fine Art Gallery, Colorado State University, Pueblo, Colorado, March 9–April 6, 2012. Ladders in the Desert. Video, photography, and installation.

Olga Ponomarenko. 825 Gallery, Los Angeles Art Association, Los Angeles, California, March 10–April 2, 2012. Romantic Punks. Painting.

Ruth Weisberg. Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, California, February 18–June 30, 2012. Ruth Weisberg: Now & Then. Painting, drawing, and printmaking.

Edie Winograde. Robischon Gallery, Denver, Colorado, March 29–May 5, 2012. Appropriated Histories: Recent and Past Photographs. Photography.

Angela Young. Gallery 100, Tempe Center, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, April 23–27, 2012. Human Nature. Printmaking and drawing.

People in the News

posted by April 17, 2012

People in the News lists new hires, positions, and promotions in three sections: Academe, Museums and Galleries, and Organizations and Publications.

The section is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.

April 2012

Academe

Luba Freedman, a scholar of Italian Renaissance art and a member of the Renaissance Studies editorial board and the Sixteenth Century Journal editorial committee, has been promoted to the rank of full professor in the History of Art Department at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.

Scott Johnson, a sculptor, photographer, and installation artist, has received tenure in the Art Department at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

Susan Yelavich, a longtime faculty member at Parsons the New School for Design in New York, has been appointed director of the master of arts in design studies program at her school.

Museums and Galleries

Emily Beeny will join the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in June 2012 as assistant curator of nineteenth-century painting in Art of Europe. Beeny is presently a doctoral candidate completing a year in Paris on the Rudolf Wittkower Dissertation Fellowship from Columbia University in New York.

Olivier Meslay, senior curator of European and American art and Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas, has been named associate director of curatorial affairs at his institution.

Joanne Pillsbury, formerly director of Precolumbian studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, has been named associate director of scholarly programs at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Joel Smith, currently Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at the Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey, has been appointed curator of photography at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Smith begins his new position in September 2012.

Institutional News

posted by April 17, 2012

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.

April 2012

The Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has received a $500,000 grant from the Indian government in support of a four-year exchange program with museums in India. The Art Institute is the first American museum to receive the grant, named the Vivekananda Memorial Program for Museum Excellence, in honor of Swami Vivekananda, an Indian musician, playwright, and philosopher.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has taken steps to make its digital-image collection more comprehensive and accessible to the public by integrating staff from the analogue-image library into the digital-media department.

The Rhode Island School of Design in Providence has partnered with the US Department of State’s Office of Art in Embassies to create a permanent, large-scale outdoor artwork for the future American embassy in Rabat, Morocco. An artist and RISD alumnus, Jim Drain, spearheaded the project with a special six-week course called “Art in Embassies: Morocco,” which he taught in winter 2012, collaborating with students and a visiting Moroccan artist. The artwork will debut on November 30, 2012, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Grants, Awards, and Honors

posted by April 15, 2012

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.

April 2012

Craig Clunas, a professor of art history at the University of Oxford in England, will deliver the sixty-first A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Clunas’s six-part lecture series, titled “Chinese Painting and Its Audiences,” will take place on Sundays from March 11 to April 22, 2012.

Brianne Cohen, a doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, has been awarded a grant from the National Committee for the History of Art to attend the thirty-third International Congress of the History of Art in Nuremberg, Germany, taking place July 15–20, 2012.

Jennifer Cohen, a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has received a grant from the National Committee for the History of Art to attend the thirty-third International Congress of the History of Art in Nuremberg, Germany, taking place July 15–20, 2012.

Dana Cowen, a doctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, has accepted a travel grant from the National Committee for the History of Art. She will apply the funds to attend the thirty-third International Congress of the History of Art, to be held July 15–20, 2012, in Nuremberg, Germany.

Vidya J. Dehejia, the Barbara Stoler Miller Professor of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University in New York, has received a Padma Bhushan award from the government of India. Equivalent to British knighthood, the award recognizes the distinguished service of an individual to the nation, in any field.

Muriel Hasbun, a photographer and associate professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC, has been awarded a 2012 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Photography for encarnado: embodied, a series of color photographs taken in a Mexican slaughterhouse.

John Hawke, a New York–based artist who creates public art installations, has been chosen to attend the 2012 Art and Law Residency, a program developed by Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in New York. The residency provides a platform for artists, writers, and curators to examine their visual practice and critical writing in the context of contemporary and historical legal issues.

Jill Holaday, a doctoral student at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, has been awarded a grant from the National Committee for the History of Art to attend the thirty-third International Congress of the History of Art in Nuremberg, Germany, taking place July 15–20, 2012.

Jennifer A. Morris, a PhD candidate at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, has earned a travel grant from the National Committee for the History of Art. She will use the funds to attend the thirty-third International Congress of the History of Art, which takes place July 15–20, 2012, in Nuremberg, Germany.

Stephanie E. Rozman, a PhD student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, has received a grant from the National Committee for the History of Art to attend the thirty-third International Congress of the History of Art in Nuremberg, Germany, taking place July 15–20, 2012.

Diana Shpungin, a Brooklyn-based artist who works in installation, drawing, and animation, will take part in the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts’ 2012 Art and Law Residency. The residency, taking place in New York, provides artists, curators, and writers with an opportunity to examine their art practice and critical writing within a framework of historical and contemporary legal issues.

Erin Sullivan, a PhD student at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has been awarded a grant from the National Committee for the History of Art to attend the thirty-third International Congress of the History of Art in Nuremberg, Germany, taking place July 15–20, 2012.

Exhibitions Curated by CAA Members

posted by April 15, 2012

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.

April 2012

Joachim Pissarro, Bibi Calderaro, Julio Grinblatt, and Michelle Yun. Notations: The Cage Effect Today. Hunter College Time Square Gallery, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, February 17–April 21, 2012.

Anne L. Poulet, Colin B. Bailey, and Susan Grace Galassi. A Passion for Drawings: Charles Ryskamp’s Bequest to the Frick Collection. Frick Collection, New York, February 14–April 8, 2012.

Books Published by CAA Members

posted by April 15, 2012

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.

April 2012

Anna Sigrídur Arnar. The Book as Instrument: Stéphane Mallarmé, the Artist’s Book, and the Transformation of Print Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Sarah Betzer. Ingres and the Studio: Women, Painting, History (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).

Frederick N. Bohrer. Photography and Archeology (London: Reaktion Books, 2011).

Christine Hult-Lewis and Weston Naef. Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011).

Lynn F. Jacobs. Opening Doors: The Early Netherlandish Triptych Reinterpreted (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011).

Anne Leader. The Badia of Florence: Art and Observance in a Renaissance Monastery (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

Véronique Plesch, Catriona MacLeod, and Jan Baetens, eds., Efficacité/Efficacy: How To Do Things with Words and Images? (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011).

Donald A. Rosenthal. An Arcadian Photographer in Manhattan: Edward Mark Slocum (Portsmouth, UK: Callum James Books, 2012).

Vanessa Bezemer Sellers. Gijsbert van Laar’s “Magazijn van Tuin-sieraaden” or “Storehouse of Garden Ornaments” (New York: Foundation for Landscape Studies, 2012).

Vivian Tsao. Paintings by Vivian Tsao (Taipei City, Taiwan: National Museum of History, 2009).

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

April 2012

Kate Gilmore, Rock, Hard, Place, 2012, high-definition color video with sound, 11:15 min. (artwork © Kate Gilmore; photograph provided by David Castillo Gallery)

Kate Gilmore: Rock, Hard, Place
David Castillo Gallery
2234 NW Second Avenue, Miami, FL 33127
April 14–May 31, 2012

Kate Gilmore’s work has drawn comparisons with numerous pioneers of performance art, such as Marina Abramović and Yoko Ono. Captured in video, photography, and sculpture, Gilmore’s actions are visually compelling statements in which the artist play-acts different female stereotypes, while also referencing the materials and processes of manual labor and art-making. In Rock, Hard, Place (2012), hot-pink paint is wedged into a gridded structure of bowls, overflowing and leaving a unique mark, as a rock is smashed into each unit. For her show at David Castillo Gallery, the artist debuts two new videos, Pot Kettle Black and Break of Day. Each depicts Gilmore as an actor engaged in Sisyphean tasks that call into question the role of women in society; the works also forward the idea of the artist as a free-willed magician.

Elaine Sturtevant, Elastic Tango, 2010, video installation of a three-act play on nine monitors (artwork © Elaine Sturtevant; photograph by Åsa Lundén and provided by Moderna Museet, Stockholm)

Sturtevant: Image over Image
Moderna Museet
Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden
March 17–August 26 2012

Elaine Sturtevant, an American-born artist based in Paris, creates masterful handmade replicas of artwork by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and Joseph Beuys that challenge narratives of authenticity and originality, while also speaking to the artistic possibilities that arise from cloning and cybernetics. More recently she has made “cover versions” of noted works by Paul McCarthy, Felix Gonzales-Torres, and Robert Gober. Sturtevant: Image over Image showcases thirty works of art, including four recent video installations, and new pieces that were produced specifically with the Moderna Museet’s collection in mind, such as a copy of Marcel Duchamp’s freestanding sculpture Fresh Widow (1920/1964). Sturtevant’s mode of production, bemusing to audiences and critics when it first appeared in the mid-1960s, has now assumed the mantel of a postmodern feminist critique, albeit one that still leaves room for analysis, debate, and pleasure.

Zoe Leonard, Arkwright Road, 2012, camera obscura using a lens and darkened room (artwork © Zoe Leonard; photograph by Andy Keate and provided by the Camden Arts Centre)

Zoe Leonard: Observation Point
Camden Arts Centre
Arkwright Road, London, NW3 6DG, United Kingdom
March 31–June 24, 2012

Zoe Leonard has transformed one gallery of the Camden Arts Centre into a room-sized camera obscura, creating a live, inhabitable photographic image that is time based and always changing. In two other rooms, she exhibits a series of photographs taken with the lens pointed directly at the sun and presents a wall installation of found postcards of Niagara Falls. All three installations stretch the limits of photography and ask, what exactly constitutes a “photograph”? The exhibition also considers how we experience and shape the world through accumulation and manipulation of photographs.

Jaune Quick-To-See Smith: Landscapes of an American Modernist
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
217 Johnson Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
January 27–April 29, 2012

An exhibition of oil paintings and works on paper by Juane Quick-To-See Smith, a New Mexico–based artist and a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, evokes the Southwestern landscape and recalls certain modernist masters, such as Georgia O’Keeffe, and Marsden Hartley, who joined symbolism to abstraction. Quick-To-See Smith’s work also deals with political and ecological themes in the Petroglyph Park Series (1985) and in a group of paintings from the late 1980s created in honor of Chief Seattle, a nineteenth-century Native American leader who prophesized the environmental damage of the twentieth century.

Dara Friedman: Dancer
CAM Raleigh
409 West Martin Street, Raleigh, NC 27603
January 28–May 14, 2012

CAM Raleigh is screening Dancer, the latest film by the German-born artist Dara Friedman, which she created in Miami in 2011. Originally filmed in 16mm and transferred to high-definition digital video, Dancer captures sixty-six performers in forty separate segments representing all forms of movement and dance, from hip-hop to modern, flamenco to skateboarding, and classical ballet to skipping down the street. Dancer is the third installment in an unofficial trilogy that includes Musical (2007–8) and Frankfurt Song (2010). All three films explore spontaneous actions and synchronized performances in international urban settings.

Sarah Braman, Calling Wendy, 2012, aluminum, Plexiglas, paint, and radio, 67 x 63 x 32½ in. (artwork © Sarah Braman; photograph provided by International Art Objects Galleries)

Sarah Braman: These Days
International Art Objects Galleries
6086 Comey Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90034
March 31–May 5, 2012

Sarah Braman works in painting and sculpture, frequently creating mash-ups of the two media. These Days presents playful and wide-ranging work in oil and spray paint on wood boards, shipping crates, and cardboard. Freestanding Plexiglas chambers, resembling sci-fi coffins of pleasure, are paired with the occasional found object (like a 1980s boombox) in works such as Time Machine, TV in bed, andDawn Dog. Braman’s art is without a predetermined conceptual underpinning; instead it is “engineered entirely to fulfill the dream of desire,” according to Rupert Winkelsnap, the author of the gallery’s press release.

Jacqueline Humphries
Greene Naftali Gallery
508 West 26 Street, Eighth Floor, New York, NY 10001
March 28–April 28, 2012

The New York–based painter Jacqueline Humphries is known for her large-scale canvases and expressionistic mark-making, as well as the frequent use of metallic silver paint evocative of industrial coloring, gelatin-silver photographs, and the cinema’s fanciful silver screen. The new paintings from her seventh solo show at the Greene Naftali Gallery continue these formal investigations while introducing an exploration of the push–pull between abstract flatness and pictorial space, framing within the picture plane, and the immense variety found in the repetition of painterly motifs.

Yayoi Kusama, The Passing Winter, 2005, mirror and glass, 1800 x 805 x 805 mm. Tate Modern, London (artwork © Yayoi Kusama; photograph provided by Tate Modern)

Yayoi Kusama
Tate Modern
Bankside, London SE1 9TG, United Kingdom
February 9–June 5, 2012

In New York in the early 1960s, the Japanese-born Yayoi Kusama often performed her art in public as a staged “happening,” exploring a newfound territory between theater and visual art that Claes Oldenburg was charting at the same time. Yet she stood out against the male-dominated Pop and Fluxus scenes. Active as an artist for over four decades, and a voluntarily inmate in a mental institution since 1977, Kusama has created work that remains as arrestingly obsessive, spontaneous, and unabashedly colorful as ever. The Tate Modern retrospective includes a cinema series, Kusama on Film, which runs from April 15 to May 27, 2012. Screenings include landmark records of the artist’s rarely seen performances, Kusama’s Self-Obliteration and Love-In Festival (both 1968), which provide a window onto this artist’s unique, hybrid art practice.

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David Craven: In Memoriam

posted by April 03, 2012

The following obituary was compiled by the deceased’s family and submitted by Patricia Mathews, professor of art history at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, and a member of the CAA Board of Directors.

David Craven

David Craven

David Lee Craven, distinguished professor of art history at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, passed away on February 11, 2012. He was 60 years old. Craven was beloved by all who knew him for his passionate dedication to writing, lecturing, and teaching art history. He is recognized by his peers as one of the most informed and incisive art historians in the world, a leading scholar in twentieth-century art from Latin America, post-1945 art in the United States, and the critical theory and methodology of art history and visual culture. His ten books and over 150 articles have appeared in twenty-five different countries and been translated into fifteen different languages. Craven’s close friend and fellow professor at the University of New Mexico, Susanne Baackmann, recalled his “generous spirit” and remembered that “his love for life and work, two concepts that were synonymous in his mind, was as intense as it was infectious.” He had taught at New Mexico since 1993 and was affiliated with the university’s Latin American and Iberian Institute.

Craven earned a PhD in art history from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1979, an MA degree in art history from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1974, and a BA in European history from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1972. Fluent in Spanish, German, and French, Craven gave lectures in universities and museums in the United States and internationally, traveling to Russia, Mexico, Spain, Germany, England, and France. His art-history books are respected as authoritative in the field, and many are popular with a general audience, such as the widely read Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910–1990 (2002), which was nominated for a 2004 Mitchell Prize. His other books include Diego Rivera as Epic Modernist (1997); The New Concept of Art and Popular Culture in Nicaragua since the Revolution in 1979 (1989); Poetics and Politics in the Life of Rudolf Baranik (1997); and Abstract Expressionism as Cultural Critique: Dissent during the McCarthy Period (1999). He recently edited Dialectical Conversions: Donald Kuspit’s Art Criticism (2011) with Brian Winkenweder.

Jenny Saville

Among the many awards and recognitions Craven received during his long teaching career are a Medal for Excellence from the state of New York in 1991 for his work at Cortland College at the State University of New York, and a Faculty Acknowledgement Award at the University of New Mexico in 2003. In 2007 he was chosen to be the Rudolf Arnheim Professor at Humboldt University in Berlin. Craven won more than fifteen major national and international grants and fellowships from numerous organizations, such as the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ministerio de Cultura de Espana, and the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes de Mexico. His work on Latin and Central American art has earned him the praise of Ernesto Cardenal Martínez, Nicaragua’s minister of culture from 1979 to 1987.

Craven was born in Alexandria, Louisiana, on March 22, 1951, to Peggy and Albert Craven. He lived with his family in Houston, Texas, before moving to Oxford, Mississippi, where his father taught at the University of Mississippi. Craven’s parents encouraged his early interest in art, and he began taking art classes in fourth grade. A gifted athlete, Craven was the star quarterback for the Oxford High School football team and won MVP honors in the 1969 season. He also brought his high school’s basketball team into the state championship.

Craven was preceded in death by his father Albert Craven; his sisters Anita and Peggy Melinda; and his brother Jonathon. He is survived by his mother Peggy Craven; his sister Laura Duncan and her husband Lee, and a niece and nephew, Caroline and Lee Duncan; his brother Brian Craven and his wife Pam and nephews Jonathon, Allen, and Mark Craven; his brother Paul Craven; his niece Edy Dingus and nephew Charles Dingus, and nephew John Phillip Dingus, as well as his dear friends Susanne Baackmann and Hannah Baackmann-Friedlander of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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