CAA News Today
The CAA Board in Action
posted by CAA — November 22, 2017
CAA board members at the 105th Annual Conference in New York, 2017. Photo: Ben Fractenberg
This has been a busy time for the CAA Board of Directors. In the end of October, they attended a two-day meeting and retreat, addressing a variety of issues facing the organization and the field.
Under the leadership of President Suzanne Preston Blier, the Board looked at potential changes to the governance structure, updates on finances and membership enrollment, the impact of the Annual Conference, the recent staff reorganization and progress on our 2015-2020 strategic plan.
In addition to hearing detailed reports from the various committees, the Board spent time on the process to rebrand and rename the Association. We have narrowed down the choices and members will be asked for their input in the coming weeks. Many thanks to the 800 members who responded to the survey this summer. That survey feedback was valuable in directing our thinking. We are hopeful that a new name and identity will be launched at the 106th Annual Conference in Los Angeles in February 2018.
The board also elected new officers: Jim Hopfensberger was elected to succeed Suzanne Blier. She finishes her term as president in Spring 2018. Melissa Potter was elected secretary and Peter Lukehart was elected treasurer.
Roberto Tejada was elected to serve in the newly created office of vice president of Diversity and Inclusion.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by CAA — November 22, 2017
Salvator Mundi on view at Christie’s. Image: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images
Each week CAA News summarizes articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Why A $450 Million Painting Attributed To Leonardo Da Vinci Worries Art Historians
The artwork has been hotly debated for years, but its sale signals one thing absolutely. (Huffington Post)
Arts Alumni Deeply Engaged in Their Communities
A report released by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project demonstrates that arts majors – whether they went on to work in the arts or not – continue to strengthen the arts in their local communities. (SNAAP)
Olga Viso, Embattled Leader of Walker Art Center, Steps Down
In a surprise announcement, the Walker said Viso will leave by year end. (The New York Times)
Paying for the Job Search
Fordham’s English department is giving those finishing doctorates $4,500 each. (Inside Higher Ed)
Explore Guernica with a Sprawling Visual Timeline
A website launched by Madrid’s Reina Sofia museum serves as an interactive library. (Hyperallergic)
How Picasso Bled the Women in His Life for Art
“For [Picasso] there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats.” (The Paris Review)
Found: The Last Piece of a Jigsaw Masterpiece by René Magritte
The fourth and final part of a painting ends an 80-year mystery. (Atlas Obscura)
CAA Statement on Conference Hiring Process [UPDATED]
posted by CAA — November 21, 2017
For many years, CAA’s Annual Conference has been a good place for prospective academic employers and job candidates to meet and talk about working together.
Over the years, CAA has developed standards and guidelines for candidates and interviews. Those guidelines were last updated in 2015.
At the Annual Conference in 2018 and going forward, interviewing will take place in our newly created Cultural and Academic Network Hall. There will be plenty of spaces for interviews to be conducted.
As a supporter of the highest standards in professional practices, CAA does not condone or support employment interviews occurring in hotel guest rooms. If presented with the possibility of a professional interview in a hotel guest room, candidates should feel free to inform prospective employers that CAA has created interview rooms in the Cultural and Academic Network Hall and express their preference that the interview be conducted there.
UPDATE, November 28, 2017: If anyone doesn’t feel comfortable raising the issue with a prospective employer, they can reach out in confidence to Hunter O’Hanian, executive director of CAA, who will contact the employer and let them know that we have received a general concern about a hotel room interview and offer the prospective employer the opportunity to conduct the interview in the Cultural and Academic Network Hall.
The 2018 Annual Conference takes place February 21-24, 2018, in Los Angeles, CA. Click here to explore the conference schedule.
Advocacy Works
posted by CAA — November 20, 2017
Supported by the NEH, Louisville’s Cultural Pass Program gives youth the chance to take art classes, in addition to providing them access to museums and other institutions. Image: Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government
Last week, I attended a talk by Stephen Kidd, the executive director of the National Humanities Alliance. Steve reported that despite the White House’s attempt to zero out the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the current House budget proposes level funding for the Title VI programs and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Their budget also envisions $145 million for the NEH, only a $5 million cut from last year.
Today, the Senate released a draft bill that provides $149.8 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities for Fiscal Year 2018. Providing the same funding level as FY 2017 and $2 million above FY 2016, this bill is a forceful rejection of the administration’s call to eliminate the NEH.
Steve pointed out that these developments are a direct result of the grassroots advocacy by many artists and scholars, in particular, members of organizations such as CAA. All told, more than 200,000 messages were sent to members of Congress and they clearly had an impact.
If you get a moment, take a look at NEH for All: https://nehforall.org/. The Mellon-funded project highlights the impact that NEA-funded projects have across the nation.
Many thanks for all of your advocacy!
Hunter O’Hanian
Executive Director and Chief Executive
Jason Bernagozzi and Victoria Bradbury
posted by CAA — November 20, 2017
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, Jason Bernagozzi, assistant professor of Electronic Arts at Colorado State University and co-founder of experimental media arts residency program Signal Culture, and Victoria Bradbury, a new media artist, researcher @CRUMB, and assistant professor of New Media at University of North Carolina Asheville, discuss teaching new media.
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — November 17, 2017
Mark Rosen discusses Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence by Lia Markey. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Stephanie Porras reviews Jan Brueghel and the Senses of Scale by Elizabeth Alice Honig. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Action Needed! The House’s Bill on Tax Reform Punishes College Students
posted by CAA — November 17, 2017
Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a tax reform bill, titled the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” that harms the lower and middle class, and puts harsh financial burdens on college students and recent graduates of college. Additionally, the House bill contains a provision that would end the deduction of student loan interest for tax payers. Nearly 12 million people claimed this deduction in 2015.
“This is a very cynical approach to higher education,” said CAA executive director Hunter O’Hanian. “To tax students on money they don’t earn and not allow them to deduct the amount of their student loans will have a chilling effect on higher education in America. These are the future scholars of this country. They are the ones who will preserve our cultural heritage as a nation. It is absurd to imagine that the US House of Representatives seeks to dumb-down future generations in this way. Everyone needs to contact their representatives in the House and Senate and strongly advocate that that this measure never becomes law.”
Under the House version of the bill, graduate students and doctoral candidates would be taxed on the waivers their schools provide them in return for working on campus as part of their professional development in their fields. The New York Times published a piece yesterday by Erin Rousseau, a graduate student at M.I.T., who receives nearly $50,000 in waivers each year. These waivers make school affordable for students, a financial support lifeline to those who otherwise would not be able to pursue graduate educations. The new House tax bill would increase Erin’s taxable income to an imaginary $80,000 a year, pushing her tax burden up by $10,000 a year.
With Congress aiming to pass this bill just as quickly as the House did, it is urgent to speak out now.
Click here to urge Congress to oppose this provision
Read more on the issue:
The House just passed its big tax bill. Here’s what is in it. (The Washington Post)
The House Just Voted to Bankrupt Graduate Students (New York Times)
The Republican Tax Plan Could Financially Devastate Graduate Students (The Verge)
A Call for Dialogue and Discussion | Embracing and Supporting Diverse Voices: Writing About and Making Art in the 2010s
posted by CAA — November 17, 2017
In June 2017, Scaffold, a sculpture by the artist Sam Durant, ignited protests among Dakota Sioux activists in Minneapolis where it was being installed at the Walker Art Center. After meeting with tribal elders, Durant and the Walker announced that the piece would be dismantled and burned in a Dakota ceremony. Announced recently, the Walker’s executive director Olga Viso will be stepping down at the end of 2017. Photo: Minneapolis Star Tribune/Zuma Press
As artists, designers, scholars, and other arts professionals, CAA members encompass an enormous range of voices and perspectives. Each of us has found an outlet for our intellectual and creative energies in a passionate commitment to a particular subfield or mode of cultural production.
We would like to open up a conversation about the relation between these two things: our diverse individual and collective positionalities and the subjects and questions we address in scholarly and artistic practices.
We find ourselves at a moment in which the individual and collective stakes of writers, artists, and curators are central to conversations, debates, and judgments about scholarly expertise and responsibility.
We are spurred in part by our observation that for some in the CAA community, these polarizations are having a chilling and possibly stunting effect on the research and creative directions one might choose to engage. The ways this ripples out into the field in the years to come can be imagined, but has yet to be realized in full.
CAA is committed to the open exchange of ideas and to nurturing and supporting scholars and artists in all fields, regardless of their individual ethnic, gendered, sexual, class-based, religious, or regional and national identification. We also acknowledge the deep asymmetries within societies in North America and around the world, and seek to work actively and incisively to challenge the hierarchies that still characterize our disciplines, our scholarly practices, and our lives as artists.
- What active and activist strategies and interventions might we pursue in the current polarized climate?
- Are there limits to what topics scholars and artists should address given their specific positionalities?
- Are there best practices to guide individuals in navigating these difficult waters with grace and attentiveness?
- How can CAA support scholars and artists whose work might come under attack because their positionality differs from the parameters of their subject matter?
We invite your thoughts, input, experiences, and wisdom: we are initiating this conversation so we can think or rethink our practices with the benefit of as much input as possible.
Affiliated Society News for November 2017
posted by CAA — November 16, 2017
Affiliated Society News shares the new and exciting things CAA’s affiliated organizations are working on including activities, awards, publications, conferences, and exhibitions. For more information on Affiliated Societies, click here.
Public Art Dialogue
The Fall 2018 issue of Public Art Dialogue journal will be devoted to the theme of “Public Art as Political Action.” The call for papers follows:
Public art is a process that often requires collaboration and compromise and, in the popular imagination, public art is also associated with the need for consent. However, the public sphere is an important place of dissent and many public art forms serve as interventions by critiquing the status quo, expressing dissatisfaction with the political powers that be, and questioning and reinterpreting historical narratives. This issue aims to examine topics surrounding protest art in the public realm. Submissions might explore the visual culture of protest movements; performances, projections, and posters that start public dialogues (physical and virtual) using visual means; historic or contemporary public art projects engaged with political protest. Submissions may also address how photography operates as a language of protest in the public realm. Though a resurgence in political art and protest brings contemporary art to the forefront, this issue also hopes to look at historic precedents for contemporary public protest art by revisiting the ephemera, public actions, and protest art of the past. Public Art Dialogue welcomes submissions from art historians, critics, artists, architects, landscape architects, curators, administrators, and other public art scholars and professionals, including those who are emerging as well as already established in the field.
Manuscripts are due March 1, 2018 and should be sent to PAD editorial assistant Sierra Rooney at r.sierra.rooney@gmail.com. PAD also seeks original artist projects submissions. All manuscripts and artist project submissions must follow the guidelines posted here. Original artist projects should be sent to PAD art editor Ashley Corbin-Teich at pad.artistprojects@gmail.com.
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
AAMG Welcomes New VP of Membership Anna-Maria Shannon
Anna-Maria Shannon is the Interim Director for the Museum of Art at Washington State University. She has been part of the Museum of Art/Washington State University team for 21-years and is also assigned as the Associate Director. She is currently working to complete a 15-million dollar campaign for a new facility to be named the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art/WSU in the spring of 2018. Anna-Maria has a bachelor’s degree in Art History from the University of Puget Sound (’93), Tacoma, Washington and a Master’s in Design from Washington State University (’05), Pullman, Washington. She serves on various boards and committee both on campus and within the town of Pullman, Wa, where she lives happily (in her garden) with her husband, two sons and mother. More online: aamg-us.org
Association of Research Institutes in Art History
East Asia Fellowship Program
The Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH) is a consortium of 27 museums and research centers based in North America. ARIAH’s goal is to promote scholarship in art history and to foster intellectual exchange among art historians from different parts of the world. In pursuit of that goal, ARIAH has established a fellowship program that will enable scholars from countries in East Asia to conduct research at an ARIAH member institute on any topic in the visual arts.
Facts about the ARIAH East Asia Fellowship program:
- Applicants should hold an advanced degree and/or demonstrate a record of scholarly achievement. Scholars from the following countries are eligible to apply: Japan, Mongolia, People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Republic of China (Taiwan), and South Korea. English-language competence (spoken and written) is required.
- Fellowships will last three to four months.
- Deadline for applications is December 31, 2017. ARIAH will notify awardees by April 1, 2018. Fellowships may begin no earlier than September 1, 2018, and must be completed by August 31, 2019.
- Fellowship awards will include cost of international travel, lodging, and other expenses.
- Number of fellowships offered: Four fellowships will be offered per year.
Complete information about the ARIAH East Asia Fellowship Program can be found at www.ariah.info/EAF. For more information, contact ea-fellowship@ariah.info.
Generously Funded by:
Association for Latin American Art
ALAA Graduate Student Travel Award
We are pleased to announce the annual ALAA Graduate Student Travel Award. The award, generously funded by former ALAA president Patricia Sarro, will provide $500 toward expenses related to attending the CAA annual conference, ALAA business meeting, and ALAA sponsored sessions. Funds may be put towards hotel costs, registration, or airfare/ground travel. The awardee need not be presenting (although presenters are encouraged to apply), but should demonstrate a specific need to attend sessions or visit archives in the conference city. To apply, please send a letter of interest, including your current research area, name of your university, program, advisor, and specific purpose for attending to the conference by email to Michele Greet (mgreet@gmu.edu) by October 31. The awardee will be selected by the executive committee and will be notified of his/her acceptance by November 15. Funds will be paid upon receipt of the award, but awardee must submit receipts to ALAA verifying that funds have gone toward conference expenses (within 2 weeks of returning from the conference). The awardee is also expected to attend the ALAA business meeting at the conference where he/she will be recognized as an award recipient. The awardee will also receive one year of complimentary ALAA membership.
Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art and Architecture
The Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art and Architecture (HGSCEA) will sponsor a session at the annual CAA conference in Los Angeles on Saturday, February 24 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Chaired by Allison Morehead, “Critical Race Art Histories in Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe” will include papers by Rebecca Houze on the art colony at Gödölló, Patricia G. Berman on Nordic Vitalism, Bart Pushaw on Nordic art’s colonialist turn, and Kristin Schroeder on the paintings of Christian Schad.
HGSCEA members are also cordially invited to attend our annual dinner reception, which will take place on Thursday, February 22 from 7 to 9 p.m. near the LA Convention Center (location TBA). As always, the event is free for current members and provides an opportunity to meet old friends and make new acquaintances.
The winner of this year’s Emerging Scholar Publication Prize will be announced at the reception; this award of $500 is given to a current HGSCEA member who is either a graduate student or has received a PhD within the last five years, in recognition of a distinguished essay published in 2017 on any topic in the history of German, Scandinavian, or Central European art, architecture, design, or visual culture (submission deadline: December 18). Current HGSCEA members who are either graduate students or have received a PhD within the last five years may also apply to HGSCEA for a small travel stipend to attend the conference.
For more details on the session, dinner, prize, and travel stipend, please go to HGSCEA’s website: http://hgscea.org/
Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History
Member Publications
Books
Liana De Girolami Cheney, et al. Radiance and Symbolism in Modern Stained Glass: European and American Innovations and Aesthetic Interrelations in Material Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholar Publisher, 2016.
Sara Nair James, Art in England from the Saxons to the Tudors: 600-1600. Oxford: Oxbow/Casemate Books, 2016.
Articles
Tina Waldeier Bizzarro, Rosemount College, “The Politics of Domesticating the Eternal: The Roadside Shrines of Sicily,” in Iconocrazia, 10 (2016), Issue on Arts & Politics: Rhetorical Quest in Cultural Imaging. Online. http://www.iconocrazia.it/category/iconocrazia-102016-arts-and politics/w.iconocrazia.it.
Charles Burroughs, Visiting Professor at GENESEO, “Fluid City: River Gods in Rome and Contested Topography.” Mediaevalia 36/37 (2015/6): 187-222.
Charles Burroughs, Visiting Professor at GENESEO, “The Nymph in the Doorway: Revisiting a Central Motif of Aby Warburg’s Studyof Culture.” California Italian Studies 6.1 Issue title: “The Fixity and Flexibility of Images: Italian Art and Identity over Time” (2016). Online. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1md337mp
Giuseppe Cascione, University of Bari, “The Icon and the imperium, ” in Iconocrazia, 10 (2016) Issue on Arts & Politics: Rhetorical Quest in Cultural Imaging, http://www.iconocrazia.it/category/iconocrazia-102016-arts-and politics/w.iconocrazia.it.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Giorgio Vasari’s Justice: Political Glory for the Farnese Family” in Iconocrazia, 10 (2016) Issue on Arts & Politics: Rhetorical Quest in Cultural Imaging http://www.iconocrazia.it/category/iconocrazia-102016-arts-and-politics/
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Giorgio Vasari’s Last Supper: A Thanksgiving Celebration,” Cultural and Religious Studies, December 2016, Vol. 4, No. 12, 735-77.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Giorgio Vasari’s Conception of Our Lady: A Divine Fruit,” Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter 2016), 87-115.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Edward Burne-Jones’s The Planets: Musical Spheres and Visions of a Benevolent Cosmos,” Journal of Literature and Art Studies, July 2017, Vol. 7, No. 7, 1-57.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “The Labor of the Months and The Zodiac Signs in the Cathedral of Otranto: Symbols of Labor and Time,” Journal of Culture and Religious Studies, November 2016, Vol. 4, 11: 682-70.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Giorgio Vasari and Niccolò Machiavelli: A Medicean Appetite,” Journal of Arts and Humanities, Vol. 5, Issue 12 (2016), 35-48.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Giorgio Vasari’s Fine Arts in the Vite of 1550:” Journal of Literature and Art Studies, David Publishing Company Vol. 7, No. 2 (February, 2017), 140-78.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Edward Burne-Jones’s The Planet Mars,” Pre-Raphaelite Studies Vol. XXIV, No. 3 (Fall 2016), 15-27.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano and Federico Zuccaro,” Journal o Cultural and Religious Studies, Vol. 4, No. 8 (August 2016), 488-519.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Giorgio Vasari’s Saint George: A Christian Liberator,” Notes on Early Modern Art, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Summer 2016), 1-9.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Giorgio Vasari and Mannerist Architecture: A Marriage of Beauty and Function in Urban Spaces,” Journal of Literature and Art Studies, Vol. 6, No. 10 (October 2016), 1150-71.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Jacopo Tintoretto’s Female Concert: Musica Arcadia,” Notes on Early Modern Art, Vol. 3, No.1 (Winter 2016), 27-39.\
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Independent Scholar, “Humanism, Italian Renaissance and Islamic Culture in the Arts,” Sabah Ülkesi, ed. Ahmet Faruk Caglar, (SAYI 46, Ocak, 1- 2016), 55-59 (in Turkish)
Liesbeth Grotenhuis, “Finger on the Lips:Poussin’s Animation of the Hieratic in the Moses Tableaus,” in Iconocrazia, 10 (2016) Issue on Arts & Politics: Rhetorical Quest in Cultural Imaging, http://www.iconocrazia.it/category/iconocrazia-102016-arts-and politics/w.iconocrazia.it.
Sara Nair James, Mary Baldwin University, emerita, “Wit and Humor in Ugolino di Prete Ilario’s Life of the Virgin at Orvieto,” Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 36, nos. 3 and 4 (Spring/Summer 2017), 159-67.
Sara Nair James, Mary Baldwin University, emerita, “ St. Joseph in Ugolino di Prete Ilario’s Life of the Virgin at Orvieto: Pater Familias and Artisan of the Soul.” Gesta, vol 55 no 1 (spring, 2016),79-104.
Sara Nair James, May Balwin University emerita,“A Retrospective of Fine American Stained Glass: The Windows of Trinity Church, Staunton, Virginia,” in Radiance and Symbolism in Modern Stained Glass: European and American Innovations, Liana De Girolami Cheney, ed. Cambridge [UK]: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2016,
William R. Levin, Centre College, emeritus, “Franciscan Influences on Charitable Practice at the Early Florentine Misericordia,” in The World of St. Francis of Assisi: Select Proceedings from the First International Conference on Franciscan Studies, Siena, Italy, July 16-20, 2015 (Siena: Betti Editrice, 2017).
Sarah J. Lippert, University of Michigan a Flint, “Canova’s Perseus as Emblem of Italy,” in Iconocrazia, 10 (2016) Issue on Arts & Politics: Rhetorical Quest in Cultural Imaging, http://www.iconocrazia.it/category/iconocrazia-102016-arts-and politics/w.iconocrazia.it.
Donato Mansueto, Independent Scholar, “ Who Holds the Reins? Notes Equestrian Metaphors and Politics in Some Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century Emblems,” in Iconocrazia, 10 (2016) Issue on Arts & Politics: Rhetorical Quest in Cultural Imaging, http://www.iconocrazia.it/category/iconocrazia-102016-arts-and politics/w.iconocrazia.it.
Maureen Pelta, Moore College, “The Power of Cheese Redux: Reconsidering Church and State in Early Cinquecento Parma,” in Iconocrazia, 10 (2016) Issue on Arts & Politics: Rhetorical Quest in Cultural Imaging http://www.iconocrazia.it/category/iconocrazia-102016-arts-and politics/w.iconocrazia.it.
Brian D. Steele, “The Politics of Representation: Paolo Veronese, Benedetto da Mantova, and the Wedding at Cana for S. Giorgio Maggiore,” in Iconocrazia, 10 (2016) Issue on Arts & Politics: Rhetorical Quest in Cultural Imaging, http://www.iconocrazia.it/category/iconocrazia-102016-arts-and politics/w.iconocrazia.it.
Historians of Netherlandish Art
We invite members of the Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) to apply for the 2018 HNA Fellowship. Scholars of any nationality who have been members in good standing for at least two years are eligible to apply. The topic of the research project must be within the field of Northern European art ca. 1400-1800. Up to $2,000 may be requested for purposes such as travel to collections or research facilities, purchase of photographs or reproduction rights, or subvention of a publication. Preference will be given to projects nearing completion (such as books under contract). Winners will be notified in February 2018, with funds to be distributed by April. The application should consist of: (1) a short description of project (1-2 pp); (2) budget; (3) list of further funds applied/received for the same project; and (4) current c.v. A selection from a recent publication may be included but is not required. Pre-dissertation applicants must include a letter of recommendation from their advisor.
Applications should be sent, preferably via e-mail, by December 14, 2017, to Louisa Wood Ruby, Vice-President, Historians of Netherlandish Art. E-mail: WoodRuby@frick.org; Postal address: The Frick Collection and Art Reference Library, 10 East 71 Street, New York NY 10021.
European Postwar & Contemporary Art Forum
After seven years of hard work and dedication, EPCAF’s founder, Catherine Dossin, has decided to step down from her position as President. Impressively, Catherine has produced an international organization that provides a scholarly resource as well as opportunities for research dissemination. Under her leadership, EPCAF has organized panels at conferences in the US and France, has initiated an annual EPCAF colloquium in Paris, and has edited a volume of scholarly essays titled France and the Visual Arts since 1945: Remapping European Postwar and Contemporary Art,which is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic Press. We are grateful for Catherine’s hard work, as well as that of the counselors who are stepping down: Noit Banai, Adrian Duran, Maud Jacquin, Karen Kurczynski, and Rosemary O’Neill.
Lily Woodruff, Assistant Professor of Art History at Michigan State University, is assuming the role of President, and Emmanuel Guy, Assistant Professor of Art and Design History at Parsons, Paris, will be serving as Director of Research. An announcement of the list of new counselors will be made soon and posted on our website: http://epcaf.org.
In coming weeks, EPCAF will be sending out a call for contributions to a panel we will be proposing for the annual Festival de l’histoire de l’art in Fontainebleau. If you wish to receive our quarterly circulaire which announces research opportunities and EPCAF events, please email Lily at woodru56@msu.edu. Membership in EPCAF is free.
International Sculpture Center
Sculpture magazine, a publication of the International Sculpture Center, rings in the new year with a very special Jan/Feb 2018 Education issue. The issue will feature reviews of university exhibitions, interviews with emerging and established artists and updates on upcoming exhibitions.
The Board of Trustees of the International Sculpture Center are proud to honor Alice Aycock and Betye Saar with the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. A gala and awards ceremony held in their honor will occur next April in New York City.
The International Sculpture Conference was held October 25-28, 2017 in Kansas City, MO with approximately 300 attendees from around the world who experienced panel discussions with artists and arts professionals, keynote Willie Cole, hands-on workshops, a gallery hop, receptions, networking opportunities, and much more. Thank you to everyone that joined the ISC In Kansas City, and we can’t wait for 2018. More information on the 2018 conference location is coming soon.
Association of Print Scholars
The Association of Print Scholars is pleased to announce our 2018 CAA panel “Now you see it, now you don’t: Materialism and Ephemeral Prints,” chaired by Dr. Yasmin Railton of Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Research into the production, function, and reception of ephemeral materials in printmaking has recently become a fertile line of inquiry. From the early modern period to twenty-first century interest in materiality, recent theoretical approaches to matter offer new insight into the production and consumption of prints. Speakers include Ruth Pelzer-Montada (University of Edinburg), Margherita Clavarino (Warburg Institute), James Denison (University of Michigan), and Margaret Holben Ellis (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University).
Galina Mardilovich has been awarded a grant from APS to support the publication of her forthcoming book about Russian printmaking in the late Imperial period. Mardilovich is an independent scholar specializing in the history of prints of the long nineteenth century. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2013. Her research has been supported by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Research Institute, and the Francis Haskell Memorial Fund, among others. Her work has been published in Print Quarterly, Art History, and most recently, The Burlington Magazine.
The APS Collaboration Grant funds public programs and projects that foster collaboration between members of the print community and/or encourage dialogue between the print community and the general public. The grant carries a maximum award of $1,000. Projects should provide new insights into printmaking and introduce prints to new audiences. Deadline is February 1, 2018. For eligibility requirements and proposal submissions visit the APS website, printscholars.org
Africa at the Quai Branly Museum and the Mohammed VI Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art: Challenges for Exhibitions of African Art
posted by CAA — November 16, 2017
Colette Apelian, an art historian based in Rabat, Morocco and Los Angeles, California, was invited to submit the following article by Pearlie Rose S. Baluyut, a member of CAA’s International Committee. Apelian holds a PhD in art and architectural history and an MA in Islamic studies from UCLA.
Do museums fail visitors and benefactors when they allow the use of objects to present what many might consider selective histories and definitions of identities? The answer may well be yes, a response that struck me after I visited Picasso Primitive or Primitive Picasso (Picasso Primitif) at the Quai Branly Museum (Musée du Quai Branly; MQB) in Paris, France (March 28–July 23, 2017) and Africa in the Capital City (L’Afrique en Capitale) at the Mohammed VI Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art (Musée Mohammed VI d’Art Moderne et Contemporain; MMVI) in Rabat, Morocco (March 28–July 31, 2017).
Quai Branly Museum façade. Photo by author.
At the MQB, what can be described as Pablo Picasso’s peccadillos were vaulted as examples of artistic genius and the result of his contact with African artifacts. As visitors walked through the exhibition, they could see Picasso’s art and writings, or reproductions thereof, juxtaposed with African masks, sculptures, and seminude postcard representations of Malinke and Sudanese women. The exhibition included objects Picasso collected, viewed in the Trocadero Ethnography Museum, and/or traded with fellow, mostly male, artists. Curatorial wall texts and a brochure in French and the occasional English explained how Picasso’s figural abstraction defined modern art.
Still, the exhibition could have used more clarification. I wondered why, especially in light of displays in other Parisian museums, the MQB thought visitors would find the Picasso-great-man and artist myth appropriate. The privileging of Picasso and his primitivism in an undefined modern art history was underexplained. Most of the nude bodies and, according to wall texts, the “disfigured” “monster” faces he created were predominantly of females with apparently unremarkable lives or histories beyond Picasso’s use. The suggestion that Picasso made tableaus of stylized penises in response to his exposure to African statues with erect phalluses did not seem to adequately explain his fascination with human sexuality.
Picasso Primitive brochure cover detail. Photo by author.
Perhaps odder still was how the MQB left unpacked and decontextualized the notion of the primitive. The museum’s (and/or Picasso’s ?) definition all but ignored the history of this term and, as such, the discourse about it and the Other. In so doing, the show affirmed yet again an ethnocentric characterization of the MQB that James Clifford, among others, criticized the museum for entrenching after its 2006 opening. (See James Clifford, “Quai Branly in Process,” October, Spring 2007, 3–23.) The effects of refusing to detangle and define primitive were compounded by the relative lack of wall and brochure text explaining the history, circumstances of acquisition and display, and the socioreligious significances of most masks and statues shown or referenced in the exhibition. It was compounded by the MQB not sufficiently clarifying the sociopolitical and economic contexts in which Picasso traded images of unclothed Africans and created and sold art. In the 2010 Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Center in Brentwood, California (June 15–September 12, 2010), visitors learned that Gérôme’s prurient Orientalism was cultivated in relation to the contemporary European marketplace. The perhaps unintended impression that Primitive Picasso organizers hoped to titillate for monetary profit at the expense of the Other was accentuated by the absence of a similar analysis, if indeed the artworks on display were created for public, not private, consumption. Consumption was also underclarified.
More explanation was additionally necessary in the wall texts and brochures for Africa in the Capital. The largest section of the show was staged in the museum named after the king of Morocco, Mohammed VI. Here, visitors walked through rooms of paintings, sculpture, and photography that, according to one brochure, celebrated African creativity, African identity, African culture, the African art scene, and, in the case of at least one artist, humanity removed from racial identifiers. Exhibition materials informed us that the works of art were created by North and/or sub-Saharan Africans, including artists born and/or living off the continent. One example is the Moroccan-French photographer Leila Alaoui, who died shortly after a 2015 Burkina Faso terrorist attack while she was on assignment for Amnesty International. She was born in Paris and resided and worked in Europe, the United States, and Morocco. Alaoui, with her strong sense of injustice and interest in immigration, would probably note that the ability of some artists to easily move across borders is an elite privilege, an important distinction I could not find in exhibition materials. I could also see little discussion about the influences and significance of living and making art in diaspora cultures. The contradictions of an exhibition that was meant to celebrate diversity, yet included artists based upon ancestry alone, appeared lost on the organizers.
Africa in the Capital brochure cover. Photo by author.
Though the organizers intended Africa in the Capital City to celebrate African identity and creativity, the March 2017 opening and governmental support suggests an ulterior motive: to publicize Morocco’s reentry into the African Union (AU), made official in January 2017. The membership signifies a majority of AU member states’ acceptance of Morocco’s claims to the Western Sahara and its natural resources, a point of contention resulting in Morocco’s exit from a precursor to the AU and, over the decades, international condemnation of what former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the Moroccan occupation. The controversy behind Morocco’s AU membership and actions in the Western Sahara was not part of the exhibition.
Also difficult to locate were critical artworks or narratives about contemporary Africa. One might conclude that there are no artworks that comment on accusations of corruption and cronyism, misuse of the environment, or violations of human rights, not to mention a lack of development; genocide; violence against women, the LGBT community, and minorities; and, of course, forced displacement and illegal immigration. The lacunae were all the more bizarre considering the inclusion of Alaoui, who depicted sub-Saharan immigrants in her 2014 Marrakesh Biennial submission Crossings and other artwork. As painfully indicated by the circumstances surrounding her demise and the deaths of African, European, and United States military and civilians, sticking one’s head in the proverbial sand cannot make problems disappear. Worse, the silence, like the silence at the MQB, arguably revictimizes her and others. The silence ignores the legacy of their work and sacrifice while leaving a door open to future transgressions. It is frankly unbefitting Morocco’s role and influence as an AU member in an exposition at a museum named after Morocco’s monarch and an exposition in 2017.
Again, I wonder if the MMVI and the MQB failed patrons, benefactors, and themselves. Perhaps we can ask the four vendors across the busy highway in front of the MQB on the day I visited. Of African descent, they were placing their wares for sale—miniature reproductions of the Eiffel Tower and similar iconic trinkets—on corded ground cloths used to collect items quickly should the police arrive to chase them away.