CAA News Today

American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies

The American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies (ASHAHS) has partnered with ARTES, a group based in the United Kingdom and Ireland dedicated to Iberian and Latin American art, to produce an annual issue of Hispanic Research Journal on the visual arts. To be released in December 2010, the issue will feature studies on Spanish and Latin American topics by Hilary Macartney, Jesusa Vega, Mercedes Cerón, and Rosemarie Mulcahy, plus a tribute to Nigel Glendinning by Marjorie Trusted.

Arts Council of the African Studies Association

The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) is currently seeking three new board members. If interested, please contact Karen Milbourne. Current issues of the new ACASA newsletter will now only be available to members; past issues are archived online. Please visit the website for more information on the upcoming 2011 triennial conference in Los Angeles.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

The University of Houston will host the 2011 AAMG annual conference. Clockwise from top left: the Blaffer Art Museum, the Moores Opera House, and the Roy G. Cullen Building (photographs provided by the University of Houston)

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) will hold its next annual conference, “Who’s Muse? Challenges to the Curatorial Profession in Academic Museums,” on May 21, 2011, at the University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum in Texas. Curatorial practices in academic museums and galleries are sometimes highly experimental. Faculty members from a wide variety of fields and with limited curatorial experience periodically recommend and help lead exhibition projects. The organization of exhibitions likewise engages both graduate and undergraduate students, museum-education professionals, librarians, and even area school classes in project leadership roles. Exhibitions thus generated offer unorthodox approaches to curatorial planning and execution. Appropriate to our scholarly mission, they can stretch disciplinary boundaries, cross-fertilize disciplinary methodologies, and generate wholly new paradigms for knowledge. Our academic museums and galleries thus become vital centers of original research, interdisciplinary dialogue, and participatory learning. While this democratic and laboratory approach to curatorial practice contributes in significant ways to the groundbreaking research and all-important teaching missions of our universities and colleges, it can also challenge conventional standards of the curatorial profession. Through the presentation of outstanding case studies and lively roundtable discussions, the 2011 conference will explore the pros and cons of the broad curatorial approaches found in academic museums and galleries. This year, AAMG will include a late-morning, lunch-period session, called HOT TOPICS, on current issues in academic museums and galleries. Submit your ideas for this session with your conference registration, vote, and select a HOT TOPICS table for lunchtime conversation.

Association of Historians of American Art

The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) is offering a travel grant to cover CAA Annual Conference expenses up to $500 for an ABD student of historical art of the United States who will travel to the 2011 meeting in New York to participate in the program. The successful recipient must be enrolled in a graduate program and an AHAA member. Deadline: February 1, 2011.

AHAA is seeking to sponsor a 1½-hour professional session at the CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles in 2012. Submission guidelines for session proposals are located online. Deadline: March 1, 2011.

Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art

Starting in September 2010, the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) will send its membership directory electronically as a searchable PDF. Members who do not have email will continue to receive a hardcopy by mail.

At the CAA Annual Conference in New York in 2011, AHNCA members are invited to a free, private visit to the New York Public Library Prints and Photographs Study Room on Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 11:00 AM–12:30 PM. Curators Stephen Pinson and David Christie will introduce members to highlights and rarely exhibited holdings in the library’s extensive collection of prints and photographs. There is no cost for AHNCA members, but space is limited. Please contact Elizabeth Mansfield before January 15, 2011, to reserve your place.

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) will hold its second biennial symposium on the theme of “Objects, Collections and Cultures” at the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, DC. Taking place October 21–23, 2010, the program features an opening address by Julian Raby, director of the Freer and Sackler; thematic sessions with formal presentations; seminar-style workshops on art objects in the museums’ collections; and a roundtable discussion on the arts of the object in Islamic art history today. The complete program and registration information are available online.

International Sculpture Center

The International Sculpture Center (ISC) is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York on October 22, 2010. The evening’s festivities will include a cocktail reception, entertainment, and an art sale featuring works by Fletcher Benton, Chakaia Booker, Mark di Suvero, John Clement, Carole Feuerman, John Henry, Jun Kaneko, Donald Lipski, Jesús Moroles, Manuel Neri, Tom Otterness, Albert Paley, Joel Perlman, Judy Pfaff, Kenneth Snelson, Stretch, James Surls, Boaz Vaadia, and Mia Westerlund, among others to be announced. Also taking place are a raffle—with top prize being a one-week vacation in Saint Martin—and a Chinese auction with fabulous prizes. Honorary hosts for the evening include di Suvero, Snelson, and Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz. Space is limited. Tickets are $350 per person, and tables are available for $3,000 and $5,000. Cocktails start at 6:00 PM with dinner at 7:30 PM. For questions or more information, please write to events@sculpture.org.

Japan Art History Forum

The Japan Art History Forum (JAHF) has awarded its the eight annual Chino Kaori Memorial Book Prize, which honors excellence in graduate-student scholarship in Japanese art history, to Christina Striker, a student in the PhD Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Striker’s winning essay is titled “Creating an Origin, Preserving a Past: Arnold Genthe’s 1908 Ainu Photography.”

Pacific Arts Association

The Pacific Arts Association (PAA) will present its affiliated-society session at the CAA Annual Conference in February 2011. Called “Documenting Oceania after the Twentieth Century,” the session focuses on how artists and scholars document Pacific identities in the first decade of the twenty-first century through expressive forms such as social documentary film, the internet, the museum, and poetry. The panel redefines the form and purpose of the “documentary” as a point of reference for current and future scholarship about Oceanic art. Chaired by Bernida Anne Webb-Binder, PhD candidate in the history of art and visual studies at Cornell University, the session includes presentations from: Ursula-Ann Aneriueta Siataga, MA candidate in social documentation, University of California, Santa Cruz; Julie Risser, director and curator at the American Museum of Asmat Art, University of St. Thomas; Luseane Nina Kinahoi Tonga, PhD candidate in art history, University of Auckland; and Craig Santos Perez, PhD candidate in comparative ethnic studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Radical Art Caucus

The Radical Art Caucus (RAC) is gearing up to celebrate its tenth birthday at the upcoming CAA Annual Conference in New York. Benj Gerdes and Nate Harrison are cochairing the 2½-hour session, “Video Art as Mass Medium,” and Travis Nygard is organizing the 1½-hour panel, “Environmental Sustainability in Art History, Theory, and Practice.” Plan now to join us for a birthday toast on Friday, February 11, 5:30–7:00 PM; see the Conference Program for location in the Hilton New York. Contact Joanna Gardner-Huggett, RAC secretary, if you have additional questions or news to share.

Society for Photographic Education

Student members of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) can apply online for scholarships to offset the cost of attending the 2011 national conference in Atlanta, Georgia, to be held March 10–13, 2011. Ten SPE Student Awards and the SPE Award for Innovations in Imaging in Honor of Jeannie Pearce feature a $500 travel stipend to attend the conference, one-year SPE memberships, and complimentary 2011 national conference passes. The Freestyle Crystal Apple Award for Outstanding Achievement in Black and White Photography offers a $5,000 cash prize, a one-year membership to SPE, and complimentary 2011 national conference pass. Download the form for complete rules and regulations. Direct questions to membership@spenational.org. Deadline: November 1, 2010.

Society of North American Goldsmiths

The Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) and Hoover and Strong have joined to create the Harmony Jewelry Design Competition, named after Harmony Metals, the environmentally sustainable metals from Hoover and Strong. Professional jewelry makers and students will compete in separate categories. The top-winning piece will be manufactured and distributed nationally by Hoover and Strong, with profits from sales benefiting the Nature Conservancy. Student winners will receive scholarships, and winners will receive a national award and have their names publicized nationwide; they will also be a part of a remarkable shift to environmentally sustainable materials in the industry. Visit the SNAG website or call 541-345-5689 for more information. Deadline: January 15, 2011.

The 2011 SNAG conference takes place May 26–29, 2011, in Seattle, Washington. Hosted by the Seattle Metals Guild and sponsored by Rio Grande, the exciting program of twelve speakers, exhibitions, and special events will address the theme of “FLUX.” Internationally recognized participants include: the keynote speaker Glenn Adamson; Valeria Vallarta Siemelink, cofounder of Otro Diseño Foundation for Cultural Cooperation and Development; the artist and sculptor John Grade; and Damian Skinner, an art historian, curator, and editor. Rising stars in the field—David Clemons, Masako Onodera, Miel-Margarita Paredes, Sarah Troper, and Stacey Lee Webber—will give talks on their work. Registration opens in mid-January 2011, and student and educator registration grants and discounts are available. For more information, please write to conference@snagmetalsmith.org.

SNAG seeks submissions of work for exhibitions held in conjunction with the Seattle conference. The Art Jewelry Forum will produce an exhibition onsite at the SNAG 2011 conference hotel in Seattle, curated by Susan Cummins and Mike Holmes. Additional exhibitions include Dual at Traver Gallery in Seattle and Co:Operation Tableware, an exhibition featuring work by pairs of artists who cooperatively create a set of tableware (functional or nonfunctional).

Southeastern College Art Conference

From November 9 to 12, 2011, the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) will hold its sixty-seventh annual meeting, hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia. The conference headquarters will be the DeSoto Hilton Hotel, located in the heart of historic Savannah. Featuring extensive panels and sessions for the exchange of ideas and concerns relevant to the practice and study of art, the conference will include the annual awards luncheon and the fourteenth annual members’ exhibition, as well as a rich array of tours, workshops, and evening events. The curator Dan Cameron will jury the SECAC members’ exhibition, to be held at one of SCAD’s premier venues, and present the plenary address. For more information, contact secac@secollegeart.org or secac2011@scad.edu.