CAA News Today
Meet the 2020 Professional Development Fellows
posted by CAA — April 19, 2021
CAA is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2020 Professional Development Fellowships. The recipient of the $10,000 fellowship in visual art is Ana Maria Farina, SUNY New Paltz. A fellowship in art history was not awarded this year.
The honorable mention in visual art is awarded to Sabrina Pastard, Columbia College Chicago. All fellows and honorable mentions receive a complimentary one-year CAA membership and registration for the 2022 Annual Conference in Chicago.
2020 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIP IN VISUAL ARTS

Ana Maria Farina, SUNY New Paltz
Ana Maria Farina paints using a gun––a tufting gun––along with needles, hooks, and knots. Repurposing a phallic signifier of violence, she conjures vibrant objects of comfort that inhabit a mystical pictorial space between abstraction and representation.
Ana Maria was born and raised in Brazil and is now based in the Hudson Valley, New York. She received her masters degree in Art and Art Education from Columbia University in 2016, and in 2018 she was awarded a fellowship to the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. In 2019, she received a scholarship to attend the MFA program at SUNY New Paltz, where she also served as the Visiting Artist Director and Instructor of Record. Ana’s work has been featured in many spaces throughout New York and she has upcoming exhibitions at the Wassaic Project, the Garrison Art Center, the Dorsky Museum, among others.
HONORABLE MENTION IN VISUAL ART

Sabrina Pastard, Columbia College Chicago
Sabrina Pastard is a visual artist who works with the poetics in the meta of the mundane. Often balancing her visuals on the borderline of familiarity and the abject, safety and crisis. Her multidisciplinary practice ranges in medium from ready-made sculptures and abstract prints to conceptual writings and poetry. Each new work invites an intellectual intimacy from the viewer as it inquires to the status of our assumed lives and societal taboos. Pastard was raised in St. Louis, MO and received her B.A. in studio art from George Fox University. She currently resides in Chicago and will complete her MFA at Columbia College Chicago in May 2021.
ABOUT THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIP
CAA’s Professional Development Fellowship program supports promising artists and art historians who are enrolled in MFA and PhD programs nationwide. Awards are intended to help them with various aspects of their work, whether for job-search expenses or purchasing materials for the studio. CAA believes a grant of this kind, without contingencies, can best facilitate the transition between graduate studies and professional careers. The program is open to all eligible graduate students in the visual arts and art history. Applications for the 2021 fellowship cycle will be due December 15, 2021. Learn more.
CAA at 2021 Advocacy Days
posted by CAA — April 16, 2021

Screenshot of CAA in virtual conversation with NY Senator Chuck Schumer, 2021
CAA representatives advocated for the arts and humanities with partners at the American Association of Museums (AAM) and the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) this spring for Museums Advocacy Day on February 23 and Humanities Advocacy Day on March 11, 2021. Alongside other academic societies, scholars, and museum professionals, CAA urged congressional representatives and senators to back full funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and particularly the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which provides grants for museums and arts organizations throughout the country, for the fiscal year 2022. Increased allocations for these programs would bring funding levels back to what they were over a decade ago in 1998. We met with the offices of New York representatives Tom Reed, Jerry Nadler, Carolyn Maloney, John Katko, and Yvette Clarke and senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer. Sen. Schumer joined Museums Advocacy Day in person to share his enthusiasm about moving forward with emergency relief funds for arts organizations and supporting more space for them in the next year’s congressional budget.
CAA has been participating in these meetings for the past three years. We noted that 1/3 of all museums in the US are at risk of closing without assistance. We also stressed the importance of museums as institutions that have served our community greatly during COVID and have come up with creative solutions for childhood education, community building, virtual exhibitions, and out-of-the-box engagement strategies. The arts and humanities have helped our communities cope and their spaces—schools, libraries, and museums—remain some of the only spaces in communities that can be accessed freely by the public.
Sean Nash and Stephanie Maroney: Microbial Teachers and Fermentive Pedagogies
posted by CAA — April 04, 2021
Join us for a conversation with Sean Nash, a visual artist and food fermentation experimentalist, and Stephanie Maroney, a feminist science and food studies scholar, as they discuss “Microbial Teachers and Fermentive Pedagogies.”
Sean Nash is a visual artist and food fermentation experimentalist. His multidisciplinary work integrates fermented foods with sculptures as edible, time-based, and socially engaged components of programs and exhibitions. Sean’s work has been shown nationally, with solo shows at the Kniznick Gallery at Brandeis (Krautsourcing, 2019), Plug Projects in Kansas City, MO (Lactobacillus Amongus, 2017), and Black Ball Projects in Brooklyn, NY (They/Them/Their, 2016). His work can be found at senash.com
Stephanie Maroney is a feminist science and food studies scholar creating collaborative projects on fermentation and mycology. She has published on the topics of queer fermentation praxis, the colonial afterlife of microbiome science, and probiotic dietary culture. Stephanie has a Ph.D in Cultural Studies and administers a community-engaged arts and humanities research program at UC Davis.
Stephanie Schwartz and Jorge Ribalta–Walker Evans: No Politics
posted by CAA — March 29, 2021
In this conversation, the pair discuss Schwartz’s new book Walker Evans: No Politics. The first book to take seriously Evans’s refusal to act or work politically, Walker Evans offers a sweeping reassessment of American documentary and its histories. Opening with a discussion of Evans’s place in the canon as well as Schwartz’s efforts to problematise canonical histories of documentary, the podcast covers a range of topics, from the publication of Evans’s short, but punchy, review of photographic books, his 1931 essay “The Reappearance of Photography,” to the 1971 retrospective exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art. At the centre of this conversation is a debate about Evans’s legacy, about how and why it needs to be reimagined today.
Stephanie Schwartz is an Associate Professor of the History of Art at University College, London.
Jorge Ribalta is an independent curator and photographer living and working in Barcelona.
CAA signs on to ACLS Statement in solidarity with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
posted by CAA — March 29, 2021
CAA joins 36 member societies in solidarity with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in signing a statement by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) condemning the appalling acts of racism, violence, and discrimination committed against these communities.
That statement asserts, “We find ourselves in a moment where, for good reason, we and many other Americans have been and continue to be focused intently on anti-Black racism. But we are reminded by the horrific events in Georgia this week and increased acts of violence over this past year linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, of the deep prejudices affecting Asians in this country. These and other attacks against the Asian-American community represent the latest chapter in our history of xenophobia, which tends to flare during times of crisis.” (ACLS American Council of Learned Societies)
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — October 16, 2020
Holly Shaffer discusses Aquatint Worlds: Travel, Print, and Empire, 1770–1820 by Douglas Fordham. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
CWA Picks for October 2020
posted by CAA — October 15, 2020
October Picks from the Committee on Women in the Arts celebrate the return of major international museum surveys dedicated to the creativity and power of women artists throughout the centuries, drawing attention to the seventeenth-century Italian Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi, Venezuela’s twentieth-century Concrete sculptor Gego, and the women of Surrealism. As always, our global highlights are informed by shows and events that explore social justice issues and intersectional feminism.

Cauleen Smith, Human_3.0 Reading List: Angela Davis. Women, Race, and Class, 2015 Graphite and acrylic on paper
One Million Roses for Angela Davis
October 10, 2020–January 24, 2021
Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden
Celebrating the singular life of Black activist and feminist Angela Davis, One Million Roses takes a closer look at Davis’s complex cultural relationship with East Germany almost fifty years after the launch of the postcard campaign, “A million roses for Angela,” in 1970-72, when she was held in prison under terrorism charges. This exhibition builds upon the formative commitment to Davis’s revolutionary aims, ideologies, and actions that was supported by the GDR, where she was welcomed as a state guest after release. On display are works by contemporary international artists who acknowledge and promote Davis’s calls for hope and non-racist democracy.
Until January 24, 2021
The National Gallery, London
A major retrospective dedicated to the Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi, following the artist’s career from Rome to Florence, Venice, Naples, and London; includes the artist’s recently discovered personal letters, and promotes virtual events unearthing Gentileschi’s dramatic life and tremendous production.
October 9, 2020–March 21, 2021
Guggenheim Museum, New York
The first major retrospective survey in New York dedicated to the career of Venezuelan artist Gertrud Goldschmidt, known as Gego (b. 1912, Hamburg, Germany), a pioneer of postwar geometric abstraction and kinetic art, whose early career as an architect and engineer galvanized new spatial modalities in sculpture, textile, print and drawing.
Real and Imagined: Fabric Works and Video Animations by Heidi Kumao
September 15, 2020–December 4, 2020
Stamps Schools of Art & Design, Ann Arbor, MI
Heidi Kumao’s narrative fabric works and experimental animations are on view in this singular exhibition that explores the pervasive dynamics of sexual power, trauma, and incident. The title, “Real and Imagined,” underscores the contradictions of women’s voices in the public realm, inspired by testimonials and experiences from the #MeToo movement, when ‘truth’ and ‘memory’ are inevitably questioned or dismissed. Kumao’s industrial felt works utilize interesting references to simple quotidian objects—chairs, roots, ladders—allowing narrative to unfold in subtle ways as the images and stories are constructed and abstractly revealed on the heavy felt surfaces.
Curator Sabine Folie
September 30, 2020–January 10, 2021
LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz
To honor Valie Export’s 80th birthday, LENTOS has organized an exhibition dedicated to the “history of the body,” a theme broadly negotiated throughout the artist’s early career and further explored in the context of the technological and digital age. On view are early works from the 1970s and contemporary projects, including performative actions, conceptual photographs, and “re-enactments” of Old Masters.
July 25–November 8, 2020
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, in cooperation with Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt
This presentation explores the contributions and positions of 34 women artists from Europe, the US, and Mexico who were identified with the art historical movement of Surrealism or connected to surrealistic activities beyond the status of muse or model. Fantastic Women features well-known figures, such as Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, and Meret Oppenheim, among other pivotal figures, such as Kay Sage, Leonor Fini and Toyen.
What Are You Voting For? A Virtual Exhibition
October 9–31, 2020
Woman Made Art Gallery, Chicago, IL
Jurors: Karen Gutfreund + Sherri Cornett | Gutfreund Cornett Art
In response to the November 2020 US elections, Woman Made Gallery (WMG) has organized a virtual exhibition of 37 “self-identified” women artists whose artworks address pressing topics about race, intersectionality, politics, privilege, health care, as well as other groundbreaking subjects. Exhibiting artists include: Beth Costello, Alicia Decker, Jacqueline DesForges, Karen Fiorito, Lisa Freeman, Christine Giancola, Linda Gleitz, Leah Golberstein, Jae Green, Susan Hale, LucyJulia Hale, Edwina Jaques, Tulika Ladsariya, Beth Lakamp, Holly Ballard Martz, Sandy Mayo, Penny McElroy, Cristin Millett, Cherie M Redlinger, Sawyer Rose, Caren Helene Rudman, Gigi Salij, Sarah Schneiderman, Suzannah Schreckhise, Durba Sen, Sarah Sipling, Pauline Hudel Smith, Laurie Szujewska, Salma Taman, Millette Tapiador, Amy Usdin, Winnie van der Rijn, Mary Vaneecke, Michelle Victoria, Dominique Vitali, Kelsey Merreck Wagner, Maria Wolf.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by CAA — October 14, 2020
|
|
|
|
|
|
Want articles like these in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletter:
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — October 09, 2020
Blake Smith reviews Liza Oliver’s book Art, Trade, and Imperialism in Early Modern French India. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by CAA — October 07, 2020
|
|
|
Want articles like these in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletter:






