CAA News Today
Explore the Latest Issue of The Art Bulletin
posted by CAA — January 30, 2018
Cover: The Art Bulletin, December 2017.
The portrait of a lavishly dressed young nun, an example of a genre of the “crowned nun,” appears on the cover of the December 2017 issue of The Art Bulletin. Baroque in several senses of the word, the painting by José de Alcíbar dates from ca. 1795 and appears in Cristina Cruz González’s essay “Beyond the Bride of Christ: The Crucified Abbess in Mexico and Spain.”
In other essays featured in the issue: Jenifer Neils assesses the Apollo Sauroktonos, the bronze statue of a boy killing a lizard, traditionally attributed to the fourth-century BCE sculptor Praxiteles, and concludes that the work is neither by Praxiteles nor of the mid-fourth century. Alice Isabella Sullivan relates the miraculous deliverance of Constantinople depicted in sixteenth-century Moldavian church murals to contemporary struggles over Ottoman rule in Eastern Europe. Jessica Maratsos examines the artistic tokens of friendship exchanged between Michelangelo and his patron Vittoria Colonna, and the dissemination of copies of these works in paint, manuscript, and print. Jennifer Van Horn considers the iconoclasm of enslaved and newly freed men and women during the American Civil War, who defaced and repurposed portraits of their former masters as a means of resisting dehumanization and asserting their own agency. Harmon Siegel finds that the interiors of Louise Nevelson’s homes, filled with dark sculptures and assemblages, borrow a page from gothic literature, critiquing domesticity as a trap and troubling the stability of modernist claims to autonomy.
The reviews section, on the theme of “Architectural Networks,” features recent books on the architecture of the Roman world, medieval Spain, Japan, the Caribbean, and the contemporary mosque.
Finally, the art historians Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Tamar Garb present tributes to the pioneering historian Linda Nochlin, who died in October.
CAA sends print copies of The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and individual members who choose it as a benefit of membership. The digital version at Taylor & Francis Online is available to all CAA individual members regardless of their print subscription choice.
Recipients of the 2017 Professional Development Fellowships
posted by CAA — January 29, 2018
CAA has awarded two 2017 Professional Development Fellowships—one in art history and one in visual art—to graduate students in MFA and PhD programs across the United States. In addition, CAA has named one honorable mention in art history and one in visual art. The fellows and honorable mentions both receive a complimentary one-year CAA membership and free registration for the 2018 Annual Conference in Los Angeles.
The recipient of the $10,000 fellowship in art history is Sooran Choi, a PhD candidate in Art History at CUNY Graduate Center. Accepting the $10,000 fellowship in visual art is Brenna K. Murphy, a MFA candidate in Studio Art at the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design.
The honorable mention for art history goes to Murad Khan Mumtaz, a PhD candidate in the Department of Art and Architectural History at the University of Virginia. The recipient of an honorable mention in visual art is Courtney N. Ryan, a MFA candidate in Ceramics and Sculpture at Georgia Southern University.
Suzanne Preston Blier, president of the CAA Board of Directors, will formally recognize the two fellows and two honorable mentions at the 106th Annual Conference during Convocation, taking place on Wednesday, February 21, 2018, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
CAA’s 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 2019 fellowship cycle will open in the late spring.
FELLOW IN ART HISTORY
Sooran Choi
Sooran Choi will complete her PhD in Art History at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, in summer 2018. Her dissertation The South Korean “Avant-Garde,” 1967-1992: Subterfuge as Radical Agency concerns the South Korean avant-garde under Cold War military dictatorships from 1967 to 1992, and focuses on the social and political tension between the military dictatorships and the opposition of political dissidents comprised mostly of artists, students, and intellectuals, who defined themselves as “avant-garde artists.” By examining various forms of performative and conceptual art along with the recontextualized rhetoric of the avant-garde in South Korea, Choi argues South Korean artists appropriated and repurposed various Euro-American post-WWII avant-garde practices such as Fluxus, Happenings, Conceptualism, and Environmental art to mask their social and political critique to evade censorship and torture by the military juntas. A re-purposed avant-garde as covert political agency, Choi contends, proved useful for the South Korean artists to further their own social and political ends, and requires a renewed and nuanced interpretation of non-Western art historical trajectories beyond the binary of center/periphery model, and expands the existing discourse on the avant-garde.
Choi has received a Center for Place, Culture and Politics Dissertation Fellowship, and research grants from The Academy of Korean Studies, and the City University of New York. Choi’s scholarly interest in diverse art historical trajectories has carried over into her teaching as an Adjunct Lecturer at the City University of New York and the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) where she teaches art history. Her past writing included topics such as East Asian artists in diaspora, alternative art spaces in South Korea, Gwangju Biennials, the Korean War Memorial in Battery Park (NYC), Japanese students at the Bauhaus, and the eroticism of Japanese Shunga art.
FELLOW IN VISUAL ART
Brenna K. Murphy
Brenna K. Murphy explores the experience of loss and its relationship to the body using fiber-based techniques such as weaving, embroidery, and lace-making. She holds a B.F.A. from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill where she graduated with Highest Honors and was the recipient of the Alexander Julian Prize, an award for the Department of Art’s “best students making work with a high standard of design,” and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design.
A working artist for many years, Brenna has exhibited widely throughout the U.S. and internationally in China, Nepal, and France in community art centers, commercial galleries, and corporate venues. Her work has also been featured in exhibitions at museums and universities such as the Hunter Museum of American Art in Tennessee, the Patan Museum in Kathmandu, the University of Pennsylvania, Moore College of Art & Design, and the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. She has taught courses, led workshops, and given lectures at venues such as the Kathmandu University Center for Art & Design, the Nepal Art Council, and the Tyler School of Art, and her work has been collected by the Henry-Copeland Permanent Art Collection at the University of North Carolina and the prestigious West Collection. She is the recipient of many awards, including a competitive two-year fellowship from the Center for Emerging Visual Artists and the Fleisher Art Memorial Wind Challenge Award in Philadelphia, and has attended several artist residencies, such as the Santa Fe Arts Institute in New Mexico, the Kathmandu Contemporary Arts Centre in Nepal, and the CAMAC Centre d’Art and Cité Internationale des Arts in France.
HONORABLE MENTIONS IN ART HISTORY AND VISUAL ART
Murad Khan Mumtaz
Murad Khan Mumtaz is a Pakistani-American scholar who examines historical intersections of art, literature and religious expression in South Asia. His primary research focuses on devotional portraiture with a special interest in representations of Muslim saints in early modern India. He is also an artist trained in the traditional practices of North Indian painting, which he exhibits, researches and teaches internationally.
A native of Lahore, Mumtaz was educated at Pakistan’s National College of Arts, where he first studied Indian painting under the guidance of Ustad Bashir Ahmed. He later completed an MFA in visual art as a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art and Architectural History at the University of Virginia and is working toward the completion of his dissertation, “Objects of Devotion: Representations of Muslim Saints in Early Modern South Asian Painting,” which he expects to defend in April 2018.
Mumtaz has been awarded fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the American Institute of Pakistan Studies and the CLIR-Mellon Program for dissertation research in original sources. As a Theodore Rousseau Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art he has carried out research in European museums and libraries. He was recently appointed an art history research fellow of the Freer-Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Courtney N. Ryan
Receiving her Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics and Sculpture this May, Courtney Ryan is known for her intricate clay sculptures that appear to have emerged organically from their surroundings. She currently resides in Statesboro, Georgia, near Savannah, where she teaches Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional design courses as an Instructor of Record at Georgia Southern University. Upon graduation, Courtney intends to continue her studio practice while exhibiting work as she searches for her future career. As an aspiring professor of art, she wants to continue teaching and remain involved within the art world both professionally and academically.
Over the course of her graduate career, Courtney has had the opportunity to travel abroad to experience the Venice Biennale, as well as spend two summers in Ireland on residency through the European Council. As an avid presenter, Courtney has participated in conferences such as SECAC, SLSA, and of course CAA. Last August, she had her first solo exhibition, Domestic Consumption, at Columbus State University, and has since shown her work at other universities including the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, and Augusta University. Featured in Sculpture Magazine as an Honorable Mention for the 2017 Outstanding Student Achievement Award, Courtney continues to push her work into new realms. Currently she is exhibiting in The Delaware Contemporary Museum’s 2017 MFA Biennale: Domestic, as well as an upcoming show-swap with Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. Having just completed a 40-foot mural and a public arts sculpture, Courtney is also heavily involved in her local community.
Bobby Tso and Andrew Casto
posted by CAA — January 29, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Bobby Tso, assistant professor of Fine Art at Northwest Missouri State University, and Andrew Casto, head of Ceramics at the University of Iowa, discuss teaching Contemporary Craft – Materiality and Concept in Ceramics.
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — January 26, 2018
Earnestine Jenkins discusses Clementine Hunter: A Sketchbook by Richard Gasperi. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Rashmi Viswanathan reviews the exhibition After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary India, 1947/1997. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Peter Christensen examines Noah’s Ark: Essays on Architecture by Hubert Damisch. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Lozana Rossenova writes on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Fiona Banner. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Fred Rush discusses The Brain-Eye: New Histories of Modern Painting by Éric Alliez. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
CAA Announces 2018 Awards for Distinction Recipients
posted by CAA — January 25, 2018
Honorees this year include Pepón Osorio, Firelei Báez, Kellie Jones, Joseph Masheck, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lowery Stokes Sims, and many other scholars, artists, authors, and teachers
CAA Annual Conference, Los Angeles, CA, February 21-24, 2018
Pepón Osorio. Courtesy the artist.
CAA is pleased to announce the recipients and finalists of the 2018 Awards for Distinction and the creation of a new Award for Excellence in Diversity. Honorees this year are among the leading scholars, artists, teachers, and authors in the field of visual arts. The CAA Awards for Distinction are presented during Convocation at the CAA Annual Conference on Wednesday, February 21 at 6:00PM at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The CAA Annual Conference runs from February 21-24, 2018.
Among the winners this year is Pepón Osorio, recipient of the 2018 Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement. Osorio is the first artist of Puerto Rican descent to receive the award from CAA. Drawing on his childhood in Puerto Rico and his adult life as a social worker in the Bronx, Osorio creates meticulous installations incorporating the memories, experiences, and cultural and religious iconography of Latino communities and family dynamics. “The work is created when I bring together where I am and where the rest of society is,” said Osorio in an Art21 documentary about his work. Osorio is a professor in the Community Arts Practices Program at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. He is also the recipient of a 2018 United States Artists Fellowship, among many other awards and fellowships.
Firelei Báez. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
Firelei Báez is the winner of the 2018 Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work. Báez was born in the Dominican Republic and works in New York City. Her work on paper, canvas, and in sculpture explores black female subjectivity, myth, and science fiction. Baez is a creator of fantastical figures that transmute through ornate pattern and vivid color. She has held residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, Joan Mitchell Center, Fine Arts Work Center, Lower East Side Print Shop, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace, and is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Award in Painting, the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting, and the Chiaro Award from Headlands Center for the Arts.
The newly created Award for Excellence in Diversity recognizes the work of an individual in the visual arts whose commitment to inclusion in scholarship or in practice stands out as groundbreaking and unifying.
The inaugural winner of the Award for Excellence in Diversity is Kellie Jones, Associate Professor in Art History and Archeology and the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. Jones’s research and teaching concerns African American and African Diaspora artists, Latinx and Latin American artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory. Her most recent book, South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s, was published by Duke University Press in 2017.
CAA will also award for the first time two Distinguished Feminist Awards, one to a visual artist and one to a scholar. The winners of the 2018 Distinguished Feminist Awards are Lynn Hershman Leeson (visual artist) and Lowery Stokes Sims (scholar).
In publishing, CAA recognizes the achievements of several authors and editors.
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
Benjamin Anderson
Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art, Yale University Press, 2017
Laura Anne Kalba
Color in the Age of Impressionism: Commerce, Technology, and Art, Penn State University Press, 2017
Finalists:
Susanna Berger
The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment, Princeton University Press, 2017
Dorothy Ko
The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China University of Washington Press, 2017
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
Barbara Drake Boehm and Melanie Holcomb, editors
Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016
Finalists:
Wanda M. Corn
Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern, Brooklyn Museum, DelMonico Books, Prestel, 2017
Matthew Affron
Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910–1950, Yale University Press, 2016
Robert Cozzolino, Anne Classen Knutson, and David M. Lubin, editors
World War I and American Art, Princeton University Press, 2016
Pilar Silva Maroto
Bosch: The 5th Centenary Exhibition, Thames & Hudson, 2016
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions
Melissa Rachleff
Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965, Grey Art Gallery, New York University and DelMonico Books, Prestel, 2017
Finalists:
Jane A. Sharp, editor
Thinking Pictures: The Visual Field of Moscow Conceptualism, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 2016
Kevin Sharp, editor
Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art, University of Oklahoma Press, 2016
Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism
Elise Archias
The Concrete Body: Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, Vito Acconci, Yale University Press, 2016
Art Journal Award
Heather Igloliorte
“Curating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: Inuit Knowledge in the Qallunaat Art Museum,” Art Journal, Summer 2017
Finalists:
Nazar Kozak, “Art Embedded into Protest: Staging the Ukrainian Maidan,” Art Journal, Spring 2017
Allison Young, “Visualizing Apartheid Abroad: Gavin Jantje’s Screenprints of the 1970s,” Art Journal, Fall/Winter 2017
Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
Aaron M. Hyman
“Inventing Painting: Cristóbal de Villalpando, Juan Correa, and New Spain’s Transatlantic Canon,” The Art Bulletin, June 2017
AWARDS FOR DISTINCTION IN TEACHING, WRITING ON ART, AND CONSERVATION
Helen Frederick is the winner of the 2018 Distinguished Teaching of Art Award.
Edward S. Cooke, Jr., and Alex Potts are the winners of the 2018 Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award.
Joseph Masheck is the winner of the 2018 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art.
The CAA/American Institute for Conservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation award for 2018 will be given to Paul Messier.
Learn about the juries that select the recipients of the CAA Awards for Distinction.
Contacts
Nick Obourn, Director of Communications, Marketing, and Membership
nobourn@collegeart.org, 212-392-4401
Joelle Te Paske, Media and Content Manager
jtepaske@collegeart.org, 212-392-4426
IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
Hashtags: #CAA2018 #CAALA #CAAworks #CAAadvocacy #CAAfairuse
CAA Statement on Deaccession of Artworks at La Salle University
posted by CAA — January 24, 2018
La Salle University. Image: Wikimedia Commons
CAA, the largest professional organization of visual artists and art historians, was disappointed to learn that La Salle University in Philadelphia plans to sell part of its art collection at the university’s museum. The university is currently planning to sell 46 works of art at a Christies’s auction estimated to bring in between $4.8 and $7.3 million. The university states that the proceeds from the sale will be “invested in the future of our university to help grow and to be financially sustainable. More importantly, we are really looking to enhance student experience and student outcome.” A university spokesperson further points out that the decision to deaccession the works was the result of months of careful consideration by its Board of Trustees, which examined all of the university’s assets and made a decision that select artworks from their art museum could be reallocated for funding the university’s new strategic five-year plan. Read the Artnet News story about the deaccession.
Similar to other cultural professional organizations, CAA has set guidelines for conditions under which items in museums collections are to be divested or deaccessioned. CAA Executive Director Hunter O’Hanian said, “We join our colleagues from the American Alliance of Museums and Association of Art Museum Directors in questioning this sale. CAA’s guidelines make it clear that art held by museums is not to be considered ‘an asset’ in the traditional sense. Museums should sell work from their collection only under very limited circumstances. And best practices dictate that the sale of the proceeds should only be used to acquire new works of art. We hope that the university Board of Trustees rethinks this position about selling the works that it holds in public trust.”
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by CAA — January 24, 2018
Members of activist-artist collective We Make America at the NYC Women’s March. Photo: Deborah Stein, via Hyperallergic.
Each week CAA News summarizes articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Signs of Creative Resistance at the 2018 Women’s March
For the second year in a row, creativity was on full display. (Hyperallergic)
The Artist Questioning Authorship
Danh Vo’s art recasts the historical events and political ideas that have shaped his world. (The New Yorker)
Recovering Our Lost Public Esteem
Three ways higher education leaders can respond to declining public support and confidence. (Inside Higher Ed)
The Farewell to Utopia in Revolutionary Cuban Art
An interview with Rachel Weiss, author and professor of Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. (Walker Reader)
The Ballets Russes Showcased Some of Picasso’s and Matisse’s Most Experimental Work
A look at the work of the groundbreaking dance company, active between 1909 and 1929. (Artsy)
A Checklist for Transformative Leaders
Transformative leadership is about shared ownership — buy-in rather than buying. (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Elliott King and Abigail Susik
posted by CAA — January 22, 2018
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
This week, Elliott King, assistant professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University, and Abigail Susik, associate professor of Art History at Willamette University in Oregon, discuss teaching Surrealism.
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — January 19, 2018
Tania Tribe discusses El Hadji Sy: Painting, Performance, Politics edited by Clémentine Deliss and Yvette Mutumba. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Will Rea reviews African Masters: Art from the Ivory Coast edited by Eberhard Fischer and Lorenz Homberger. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Andrea Korda examines Pictures-within-Pictures in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Catherine Roach. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Robert Williams discusses Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action by Julian Brooks. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
An Interview with Andrea Iaroc, Founder and Executive Director of the CORAI Project
posted by CAA — January 18, 2018
Andrea Iaroc created the CORAI Project to help art historians, in particular those without the privileges to access professional networks and generous financial resources. For more than ten years, her passion for historical research, teaching, writing, and philanthropy have advanced her work in museums and other art institutions, and forwarded her understanding of non-profits and intentional community work. An iconographer at heart, her current independent research interests focus on cultural hybridity and identity art.
Joelle Te Paske, CAA media and content manager, spoke with Andrea to learn more about the work CORAI is doing, her thoughts on CAA, and fundraising for inclusive art history.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Andrea Iaroc: I’ve been a member of CAA since 2007. I see the way the organization has moved in the past years—it’s definitely a different direction.
Joelle Te Paske: Most definitely. That’s part of the reason why I’m here, too.
AI: It used to be a little bit more traditional. That’s one of the things I’m focused on—moving art history away from that traditional foundation, [which is] very ivory tower. It’s exclusive and I wanted to change that in founding the CORAI Project.
It was frustrating as a woman of color—but, I admit that I do have privilege. I don’t have college debt, but I saw friends in school sometimes struggle with simple things, such as professors asking us to go to a gallery, or buy a membership to CAA for instance. The question was always: “Okay, do I use this money to pay for my books for this class, or do I …?” It was this thought in the back of my head, and those things happen because art history has been a “girls with the pearls” academic field. We still have that image problem.
JTP: Yes. That’s the stereotype.
AI: When you’re trying to do fundraising for art history, a lot of people ask: “What exactly are you doing, are you going to save the world?” It’s not a practical STEM field, but we need to equalize it in reflection of current sociocultural changes. We need to amplify the voices that have not been heard because of European ethnocentrism and patriarchy. The way that we experience the world, the way we grow up, our background—all inform the way we interpret things. That is important for me.
In August 2016, I finally managed to realize the idea of creating something new [the CORAI Project]—getting a logo, a mission, values, and building up a board. We’re just over a year old. CORAI stands for Creating Opportunities for Representing Art History Inclusively. Our logo features a heliconia plant, a South American Heliconia Bihai (even though I was born in Brooklyn, NY my parents are Colombian). The foundation of the logo is very Greco-Roman, but the heliconia is breaking through that ionic capital, moving up and breaking through. Our logo is pretty much what we want to do.
From the CORAI website: The Greek Ionic order is studied in every art history 101 class. It is part of classic architecture and, to this day, is used in governmental and certain religious buildings. It very much represents the Western roots of the field, as well as the palm that opens up on the background. Both Romans and Greeks were fond of foliage to adorn their capitals. In the middle, however, is a South American heliconia shooting upwards – transcending the heavy and old marble foundation. Design by Bella Hall.
JTP: I love that.
AI: Yes, it’s time to break through and do different things. [CORAI Project] gives away springboard grants, small grants to give a little ‘push’, to art historians who identify as PoC, people of color, in the state of Washington. So far, our first grantee back in the spring of 2017 used her money to go to the Rubin Museum of Art so that she could use their collections to complete her thesis.
JTP: That’s terrific.
AI: She was studying thangka paintings of Tibet [Tibetan painting using ground mineral pigment on cotton or silk]. She was the only person in the University of Washington, Seattle, doing this which therefore will change the records of art history in the university because she’s only one of two students this year that are graduating with a focus on Chinese art history.
The person that received the grant in fall 2017 is going to invest it in Japanese translation to ensure her thesis is correct. Although she’s faced resistance to her art historical Japanese art focus, she’s following through. One of the things that happens is that professors who do not have experience in what they call “non-western” arts, question PoC’s methodologies, settings, and interpretations because a traditional art history is the only thing they know. You need to do what you want to do.
That’s what this is about, and it’s small. But we’re out there and hopefully we can inspire other art history organizations to break the mold.
JTP: That is wonderful work. What would you say is the most exciting part for you personally?
AI: The moment the grants are given away. I see their motivation and enthusiasm for what they want to do in school or independently to shake things up in art history. That’s the best part.
JTP: Yes, you see the changes they’re putting in place.
AI: Exactly, because it gives results. It’s something solid. If the only thing I do in this life is to change one person’s take on art history, which is also my career, then so be it. So far we’ve helped a couple of them.
JTP: I’m with you. It’s definitely slow, but it’s exciting to see those changes happen.
I’m curious, have you heard about the recent Ford Foundation and Walton Foundation initiative?
AI: Yes, I read about it.
JTP: What do you think about it?
AI: I thought that CAA made an interesting question [on Facebook] at the end, like, “Do you think it’s a little too late?”
JTP: That was me [laughs]. Six million dollars is a lot of money, but spread over 20 organizations over three years…
AI: Exactly. That’s one of the things that I struggle with—I mean we’re a community organization—and I have been told by several people, “Oh, just talk to so-and-so, they’ll give you the money.” But the problem is, they’re very powerful and they want to jump on the bandwagon of “diversity and inclusion” and so their name is going to be attached to this project, but do they really mean it? What have they done that maybe goes against the integrity of who I am and what my organization is? This is the case when big organizations move the right way, but what does that mean? For instance, does that mean that they’re going to get Walmart to diversify?
JTP: Or let their workers unionize?
AI: Right, exactly.
JTP: A friend of mine online made the point of: we’re looking at how to get women and people of color and LGBTQ folks into leadership positions—we’re not talking internships.
AI: It’s good that people are a little bit more critical about these things because to [the Walton family] six million, it’s really nothing. What is this really about?
JTP: Yes, and I think it can be both good and bad. But asking the question is really important.
AI: Exactly.
Andrea Iaroc. Courtesy CORAI Project.
JTP: Have you attended CAA conferences in the past? What did you think?
AI: Yes. In 2012 I attended the 100th conference in Los Angeles. It was a big deal.
Back then, I was just coming out of five years of research for my thesis on Jewish art, specifically iconography. I looked for a relevant session and when I went, the organizer said it had taken them 16 years to get CAA to have a session on Jewish art. That it took them 16 years was disappointing, but there we were.
There were talks already of having another Jewish session in 2013 and now I can see that things have changed. The way that the conferences look now five years later is different.
Back then I went to a Pre-Columbian session where you had all these folks who, yes, of course, are excellent at their research profession and uphold conservation and believe in the return of a lot of these items to their countries. But at the same time I felt, “Really, you couldn’t find one Latin American professor that could talk about this? Just one?” You have all these folks that are white American and Canadian and they’re telling you about your heritage—it feels really strange.
When you look at [the conference sessions] now, the layout in terms of the list of people who are talking and where they come from and the sessions—it’s much better.
JTP: That’s good to know. I’ve been involved with the organization for less time than a lot of its members, including you, so I’m always curious to ask people. I think energy apart from the conference is also really important, making sure that people feel supported not just when they’re in one place together.
AI: Exactly.
JTP: Do you have suggestions for organizations besides CORAI that people should be following?
AI: There’s Art History That. It’s run by two women (Karen J. Leader and Amy K. Hamlin) and sometimes they post their own writings. They gave us our first Facebook shout out for our first grant. They’re very supportive about anything that’s changing in art history, the paradigms, the way that we even talk about women sometimes. In 2017 when you go to an Art History 101 class, women are still muses, but we’re not the artists. We’re still not taken into account as having a genius, especially when we’re talking about classics. The way that we talk—that language needs to be changed.
There’s also Smarthistory. They are from New York and they offer free resources for art history.
Material Collective, you may have heard of it because it’s connected to Art History Teaching Resources. They’re both connected and even have this big group of medievalists who are trying to fight the white supremacist narrative.
A piece featured in Smarthistory’s “South America before European colonization” section. Hands up close (detail), Seated Female Poporo, c. 500 B.C.E. – 700 C.E. Early Quimbaya, tumbaga (gold alloy), Colombia © The Trustees of the British Museum. Courtesy Smarthistory.
JTP: Excellent, thanks! What is the focus of your own research? You’ve mentioned it, but just to reiterate.
AI: Jewish art and iconography was my original focus, but because of it I’ve switched to cultural hybridity art.
JTP: Oh, interesting.
AI: Cultural hybridity includes artists who, because of the way our world has different heritages, draw inspiration from their mixed background. For instance, I had been researching contemporary Jewish artists and I ran across a work from Maya Escobar, who is from Missouri. Her dad is from Guatemala, he’s of Mayan ancestry, and her mom is Jewish, Ashkenazi, and so she made a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, using Mayan weaving techniques. That fusion of tradition—I’m very interested in it.
JTP: Do you think artists and art historians can change the world?
AI: Because I think that everything is connected, I always say art history does not exist in a vacuum.
JTP: I agree.
AI: Everything that’s happening scientifically, economically—it’s reflected. You’re going to see it in 50 years when you look back at art, you’re going to see it. Can it change the world? It can help change the world because humanities play a crucial role. The humanities help you see the world in a different way. They help your critical thinking skills and help you read humans. It helps you build community.