CAA News Today

American Council for Southern Asian Art

The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) held its fifteenth biennial symposium from September 22 to 25, 2011, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A report of the proceedings is available online.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

Registration has opened for the annual conference of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG), to be held April 28, 2012, at the Weisman Art Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Titled “Tools of Engagement: Securing Commitment on Campus,” the event will focus on positive strategies for getting the buy-in needed from our faculty, academic administrators, presidents, and other campus stakeholders.

In addition, AAMG has recently been granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service. This status will allow the organization the opportunity to gain access to new funding sources in order to execute its mission to establish and support best practices, educational activities, and professional development, enabling member organizations to fulfill their educational missions.

Association of Historians of American Art

The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) is sponsoring two sessions at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. The professional session, “Ideology, Industry, and Instinct: The Art of Labor,” cochaired by Wendy Katz and Brandon Rudd, is scheduled for Friday, February 24, 2012, 12:30–2:00 PM, Concourse Meeting Room 402AB at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The scholarly session, “American Symbolism,” chaired by Erika Schneider, will take place on Saturday, February 25, 2012, 9:30 AM–NOON, West Hall Meeting Room 502A. Following this session, the AHAA business meeting will be held 12:30 PM–2:00 PM in the Concourse Meeting Room 408B. Light refreshments will be served. All members and other interested parties are invited to attend these events.

Save the date for the second AHAA symposium, “American Art: The Academy, Museums, and the Market,” to be held October 12–13, 2012, hosted by the Boston Athenaeum and Boston University in Massachusetts. For more information, 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) will sponsor several activities at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. Scott Allan, assistant curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, will moderate the annual “Future Directions” panel on Thursday, February 23, 12:30–2:00 PM in the Concourse Meeting Room 402AB at the Los Angeles Convention Center. David O’Brien of the University of Illinois will chair AHNCA’s main session, the two-part “Civilization and Its Others in Nineteenth-Century Art,” taking place on Thursday, February 23, and Saturday, February 25. Finally, AHNCA’s annual business meeting will take place on Thursday, February 23, at 5:30 PM in Concourse Meeting Room 402AB.

In addition, AHNCA invites its members to attend a free private tour of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena on Wednesday, February 22. The curator Leah Lehmbeck will present highlights and rarely exhibited holdings from the museum’s collection. The visit will conclude with a reception generously hosted by the Norton Simon. There is no cost for AHNCA members, but space is limited. To reserve your place, please contact Elizabeth Mansfield. Deadline: January 15, 2012

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) will hold a regional workshop, titled “Spicing It Up: Critique Strategies,” at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, on January 28, 2012. FATE urges those who teach art foundation courses and are located in Texas, Oklahoma, or Louisiana to consider attending. The workshop, to be held 10:00 AM–3:00 PM, will focus on practical techniques and strategies for critiquing theme-based and idea-driven artwork created in foundation courses. If interested, please contact Valerie Powell at 936-294-4451. Deadline: January 15, 2012.

Please save the date for FATE’s next national conference, to be held during the spring of 2013. The Savannah College of Art and Design in beautiful Savannah, Georgia, will host the event.

For a limited time you can review past issues of FATE in Review online. You can also find FATE Newsletters and information about submitting a paper for inclusion in the next issue of FATE in Review.

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) has elected Ladan Akbarnia to the position of secretary for the next two years. Akbarnia previously served as interim secretary in 2011. HIAA also would like to draw attention to the recent establishment of the Oleg Grabar Memorial Fund to support the annual award of Grabar Grants and Fellowships. This new program, in honor of the late eminent historian of Islamic art and architecture, is intended to encourage and further the professional development of graduate students and recent postdoctoral scholars in all areas of the history of Islamic art, architecture, and archaeology. Contributions from CAA members are most welcome. Instructions for contributing to the Grabar Memorial Fund can be found online.

Historians of Netherlandish Art

The Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, a peer-reviewed, open-access ejournal published by the Historians of Netherlandish Art, has announced its next formal deadline for the submission of manuscripts for articles: March 1, 2012. Please consult the journal’s submission guidelines and contact Alison Kettering for additional information.

International Association of Art Critics

The International Association of Art Critics (AICA) has elected Marek Bartelik as its new president during its general assembly in Asunción, Paraguay, on October 20, 2011. Bartelik succeeds Yacouba Konaté from Ivory Coast, who had served as AICA’s president since October 2008. Originally from Poland, Bartelik is the association’s fifteenth president. Previous presidents include: James Johnson Sweeney (American, 1957–63), René Berger (Swiss, 1969–75), Jacques Leenhardt (French, 1990–96), and Henry Meyric Hughes (British, 2002–8).

International Sculpture Center

The International Sculpture Center (ISC) seeks papers for the twenty-third International Sculpture Conference, called “Process, Patron, and Public” and taking place October 4–6, 2012, in Chicago, Illinois. The conference will bring together artists, educators, art administrators, museum directors, collectors, patrons, students, and sculpture enthusiasts to explore how sculpture becomes part of contemporary culture. ISC invites individuals to submit proposals for papers and panel discussions that can provoke critical exchange and debate in relation to the broad thematic areas referred to in the conference title. Presenters are encouraged to support opportunities for interaction among participants and to enable conference attendees to engage a truly international exchange of ideas and viewpoints. For more information, please call 609-689-1051, ext. 302.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) will hold its business meeting at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference on Friday, February 24, 7:30–9:00 AM in Concourse Meeting Room 406AB of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Those interested in Italian art and architecture from the prehistoric period to the present are welcome to attend. IAS congratulates the recipients of its 2012 travel grants: Karen Lloyd will present “A New Samson: Scipione Borghese and the Representation of Nepotism in the Vatican Palace” at CAA, and Kristin Huffman Lanzoni will speak on “Ducal Fraternity and Family Glory: Girolamo and Lorenzo Priuli” at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. IAS welcomes exhibition reviews, short articles, and announcements related to Italian art and architecture for its winter newsletter. Please send your contributions to the newsletter editor. Deadline: January 15, 2012. Please like IAS on Facebook.

Leonardo Education and Art Forum

The Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF) has recently sponsored several events. The LEAF chair Patricia Olynyk and the former chair Ellen Levy hosted a post-Thanksgiving NY LASER (Art/Sci Salon) on Sunday, December 11, at Levy’s studio. To encourage deeper discussion, the meeting focused on summarizing projects presented at NY LASER events throughout 2011.

Paul Thomas, an international LEAF affiliate, moderated LEAF Education Workshops in collaboration with the Australian Forum at the 2011 International Symposium on Electronic Art in Istanbul, Turkey, and at Rewire, the fourth International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science, and Technology in Liverpool, England. The workshops focused on transdisciplinary visual arts, science and technology renewal, and post–new media assimilation.

The LEAF business meeting will be held at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles on Thursday, February 23. Other panels of potential interest to Leonardo members include: “Is It Time to Question the ‘Privileging’ of Visual Art?” on Friday, February 24, chaired by Levy and Greta Berman of Juilliard School; “Headlines! Environmental News, Artist Presenters, Audience Respondents,” on Wednesday, February 22, chaired by Linda Weintraub of Artnow Publications; “Sustainable Futures: New Cultural Movements in Art and Ecology,” on Saturday, February 25, chaired by Olynyk; and a LEAF Education Roundtable, “Education at the Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology,” on Thursday, February 23, led by Eddie Shanken.

Mid-America College Art Association

The James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University will host the next Mid-America College Art Association (MACAA) conference, to be held October 3–6, 2012, in downtown Detroit, Michigan. Programming will include three featured speakers and numerous panels on art, design, art history, and visual resources, as well as studio workshops, MACAA member exhibitions, and museum visits. The conference will have two areas: “Meaning and Making” and “Community and Collaboration.” The call for session proposals, and for the MACAA membership exhibition, has been announced online.

National Council of Arts Administrators

The National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) held its 2011 annual meeting, called “Push/Pull: The Artistic Engine of Innovation,” from November 2–5, in Savannah, Georgia. The organization owes a debt of gratitude to the conference chair, Steve Bliss of the Savannah College of Art and Design, and to Carolyn Henne, NCAA’s executive director, for organizing a first-rate affair.

NCAA wishes to thank outgoing board members Cora Lynn Deibler of the University of Connecticut, Georgia Strange of the University of Georgia, and Carolyn Henne of Florida State University. Three new board members have been elected: Amy Hauft of Virginia Commonwealth University, Lydia Thompson of Mississippi State University, and Mel Ziegler of Vanderbilt University. Returning board members include: Andrea Eis of Oakland University, treasurer; Jim Hopfensperger of Western Michigan University, president; John Kissick of the University of Guelph; Sally McRorie of Florida State University; Kim Russo of the Ringling College of Art and Design, secretary; and Sergio Soave of Ohio State University.

Organizational activities at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles include the annual NCAA reception, a lively forum for networking on issues related to arts leadership and management, to be held on Thursday, February 23, 5:30–7:30 PM. The session “Hot Problems/Cool Solutions in Arts Leadership” will be a series of five-minute presentations on problem solving and leadership, taking place on Friday, February 24, 12:30–2:00 PM. NCAA enthusiastically welcomes new members, current members, and all other interested parties to its events.

Society for Photographic Education

Registration is now open for the ninth annual conference of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), called “Intimacy and Voyeurism: The Public/Private Divide in Photography” and taking place March 22–25, 2012, in San Francisco, California. Join over one thousand artists, educators, and photographic professionals for presentations, industry seminars, and critiques designed to stimulate and engage. Explore a fair of over seventy exhibitors showcasing the latest equipment, processes, publications, and schools with photo-related programs. Participate in one-on-one portfolio critiques or informal portfolio sharing. For reduced admission, take advantage of student volunteer opportunities. Other conference highlights include a print raffle, silent auction, film screenings, exhibitions, tours, receptions, and a dance party. Sally Mann will be the keynote speaker; other featured speakers include Sharon Olds and Trevor Paglen. Preview the conference schedule and register online.

Society for the Study of Early Modern Women

At its most recent annual meeting, held on October 20, 2011, the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW) formally announced the recipients of its awards for books, catalogues, articles and other scholarship published in 2010. The Book Award went to Margaret P. Hannay, Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010); Honorable mention was awarded to Marie-Louise Coolahan, Women, Writing and Language in Early Modern Ireland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). The Collaborative Project award went to Caroline Bicks and Jennifer Summit, eds., The History of British Women’s Writing, Volume 2: 1500–1610 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The Josephine A. Roberts Scholarly Edition was awarded to Michael G. Brennan, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Margaret P. Hannay, eds., The Correspondence (ca. 1626–1659) of Dorothy Percy Sidney, Countess of Leicester (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010). The Translation or Teaching Edition award was given to Domna Stanton and Rebecca Wilkin, eds., for Gabrielle Suchon, A Woman Who Defends All the Persons of Her Sex: Selected Philosophical and Moral Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Honorable Mention went to David F. Hult, ed., for Chirstine de Pizan, Debate of the “Romance of the Rose” (Chicago: University of Chiciago Press, 2010). The award for Essay or Article went to Paula McQuade, “A Knowing People: Early Modern Motherhood, Female Authorship, and Working-Class Community in Dorothy Burch’s“A Catechism of the Several Heads of the Christian Religion,” Prose Studies 32, no. 3 (December 2010): 167–86; Honorable Mention went to Allyson M. Poska, “Babies on Board: Women, Children and Imperial Policy in the Spanish Empire,”Gender and History 22, vol. 2 (August 2010): 269–83. Finally, for Arts and Media, the award was given to the compact disc for La Donna Musicale, with Laury Gutierrez (director), Julianne Baird (soprano), and Renee Rapier (contralto), Anna Bon: La virtuosa di Venezia.

Society of Architectural Historians

Registration will open January 4, 2012, for the sixty-fifth annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), to be held in Detroit, Michigan, April 18–22, 2012. The conference will present more than 140 scholarly papers and thirty-five special thematic sessions. The local committee has planned numerous tours of Detroit and cities in the surrounding region, including Cranbrook, Dearborn, and Ann Arbor. A daylong preservation seminar will examine the challenges of “right-sizing” this historic city in light of its current economic pressures and shrinking population. At the meeting, SAH will launch a revised edition of its award-winning book, Buildings of Michigan, as well as a new online encyclopedia of American architecture called SAH Archipedia. Developed in collaboration with the University of Virginia Press, SAH Archipedia is a richly illustrated database of all the building histories, illustrations, maps, sidebars, interpretive essays, glossaries, and bibliographies contained in fifteen authoritative books produced as part of SAH’s Buildings of the United States series. SAH Archipedia will be available to individual SAH members and to the public through library subscriptions. Concurrently, SAH will launch an open-access version of the database, SAH Archipedia Classic Buildings, which will contain a subset of one hundred of the most representative buildings from each state.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) will host the session “Paint, Prints and Pixels: Learning from the History of Teaching with Art” at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles, Thursday, February 23, 12:30–2:00 PM. The session will explore how historic and current imaging paradigm shifts have informed twenty-first-century classroom teaching; the implications of increased access to digital images; intersections of photographic and scientific technologies; interdisciplinary uses of images for teaching and research; and recently developed visual literacy competency standards. The session will conclude with a question-and-answer session.

Online registration starts on December 7, 2011 for the thirtieth annual VRA conference, to be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 18–21, 2011. Headquartered at the Hotel Albuquerque in historic Old Town, the conference is within easy walking distance to restaurants, museums, and notable landmarks. As part of the “Broadening Horizons” theme, the opening speaker will be Todd Martin, the founder of Tagasauris, an online image-tagging source. Amy Herman, who uses art to teach observation and communication skills, will deliver the closing talk at the conference.

Women’s Caucus for Art

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA), a momentous occasion not only for WCA but for all women. For forty years, WCA has fought to ensure the future of women in the arts. The 2012 WCA conference—a diverse celebration that will include panels, speakers, exhibitions, bus tours, workshops, awards, and a gala—will be held February 23–27, 2012, in Los Angeles, in conjunction with the 2012 CAA Annual Conference.

On Thursday, February 23, 7:30–10:00 PM, WCA will present its first Media Award to the filmmaker and feminist Lynn Hershman Leeson. The event will be held at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum and includes a presentation of the award, a viewing of her film !Women Art Revolution, and a dessert reception. This is a ticketed event. On Saturday, February 25, 6:00–7:30 PM at the Kyoto Hotel, the WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards and Gala will honor Whitney Chadwick, Suzanne Lacy, Ferris Olin, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Bernice Steinbaum, as well as the recipients of the President’s Art and Activism Award: Karen Mary Davalos and Cathy Salser. The awards presentation is free and open to the public. The Momentum Gala will be held from 8:00 to 10:00 PM at Japanese American National Museum. The gala includes three food stations and an open bar, an opportunity to meet the awardees and to network, tours of the museum, and the kickoff of the Sylvia Sleigh Legacy campaign. This is a ticketed event.