CAA News Today
CAA Board President’s Open Letter to North American College and University Presidents
posted by CAA — February 09, 2024
On behalf of the College Art Association (CAA) and its Advocacy Committee, I write in support of an open letter from the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) written on December 18, 2023. As a partner learned society under the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), we urge you to uphold and protect academic and creative freedom on your campuses.
Since October 2023, we have seen a surge in threats to faculty, students, and college staff. The current Gaza-Israel conflict has generated widespread academic and scholastic debate; we call upon you during this difficult time to protect free speech and to defend academic freedom for all campus community members. We also urge you to refrain from censoring artist exhibitions in your campus galleries and museums.
CAA honors diversity and reflects an extraordinary range of cultures, perspectives, education, and experiences that make the advancement of art and design integral to our global constituencies and to culture at large.
CAA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of artistic expression and exhibition. We agree with MESA that “free speech is essential for any democratic polity, and this country’s institutions of higher education should be places in which even the most controversial and unpopular views can be expressed, debated and criticized. At the same time, all students deserve equal access to education, free from harassment and discrimination. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a dramatic increase in antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim harassment and discrimination on our campuses.”
As university leaders, you bear responsibility during charged political times to safeguard academic freedom, freedom of expression and artistic practice, as well as the physical welfare of all members of your community. We urge you to protect students, faculty, and staff and honor their right to freedom of speech without fear of intimidation, harassment, or retaliation.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Rissler, PhD
President, Board of Directors
CAA | Advancing Art and Design
CAA Signs ACLS Statement on Proposed Cuts at West Virginia University
posted by CAA — September 14, 2023
CAA has signed on to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) statement, Fighting for an Ambitious Vision of Public Higher Education in America, in response to proposed cuts at West Virginia University. CAA stands with ACLS in the belief that the stewards of the university are “duty-bound to protect the creation and circulation of knowledge for the public good in all its diverse aspects, across disciplines and interdisciplinary areas.”
“By proposing major cuts in its undergraduate and graduate programs, including engineering, environmental planning, languages other than English, law, linguistics, mathematics, music, public administration, and theater, the university is denying its students and the people of West Virginia access to the wide range of knowledge necessary to fulfill that mission. The path WVU is treading is unprecedented for a public flagship and dangerous for American higher education and society.”
Other learned societies and higher education institutions who have signed the ACLS statement:
American Academy of Religion
American Folklore Society
American Historical Association
American Society for Environmental History
Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Association of University Presses
College Art Association
Dance Studies Association
Linguistic Society of America
Medieval Academy of America
North American Conference on British Studies
Rhetoric Society of America
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Society for Ethnomusicology
Society for Music Theory
CAA Signs ACLS Statement on SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling
posted by CAA — July 07, 2023
Following the June 30 CAA Executive Director’s response to the US Supreme Court ruling invalidating race-conscious admissions considerations, CAA signed on to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) statement on affirmative action.
The SCOTUS ruling stands in stark contrast to CAA’s commitment to meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. We concur with ACLS that “the active participation of diverse people in the scholarly enterprise is the best way to combat historic and systemic inequities,” and we remain dedicated to the contributions of all art scholars and practitioners.
Other learned societies and higher education institutions who have signed the ACLS statement:
American Academy of Religion
American Folklore Society
American Historical Association
American Philosophical Association
American Political Science Association
American Society for Environmental History
American Society for Theatre Research
Association for Jewish Studies
Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
Association of University Presses
German Studies Association
Medieval Academy of America
National Women’s Studies Association
North American Conference on British Studies
Oral History Association
Organization of American Historians
Rhetoric Society of America
Shakespeare Association of America
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Society for Ethnomusicology
Society for Social Studies of Science
Society of Architectural Historians
Society of Biblical Literature
SCOTUS Ruling on Affirmative Action: CAA ED Response
posted by CAA — June 30, 2023
The US Supreme Court ruling invalidating race-conscious admissions considerations at colleges and universities is antithetical to CAA’s mission, specifically our commitment to the diversity of practices and practitioners in the visual arts and academia. This is another in a series of blows to the field, the reverberations of which will be felt for generations to come.
Justice Clarence Thomas dismissing affirmative action policies at universities as “rudderless, raced-based preferences” demonstrates a deliberate suppression of the entire history of institutional racism in this country, which by design actively obstructs opportunity and access for so many.
Now more than ever, we must come together as an organization and develop alternative strategies for ensuring equity and representation in a meaningful way, without performativity or tokenism. Even with affirmative action policies in place, many important voices were relegated to the margins; this ruling will only serve to repress them further. We have a responsibility to continue fighting to center and amplify such voices.
Despite this current era of national regression in the realm of human rights, I still have faith we can have an impact, learn from a problematic past, and reshape the future of the field. Join me in continuing to transform pain into purpose.
Meme Omogbai
Executive Director & CEO
CAA | Advancing Art and Design
CAA Signs ACLS Statement on Florida House Bill 999
posted by CAA — March 07, 2023
CAA has signed on to a statement issued by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) regarding Florida HB 999. This bill would radically shift Florida’s approach to higher education in a manner that negatively impacts diversity and academic freedom; this is antithetical to CAA’s mission.
CAA stands with ACLS, together with other academic societies, and shares their belief that, if passed, the bill “ends academic freedom in the state’s public colleges and universities, with dire consequences for their teaching, research, and financial well-being.”
The full ACLS statement on Florida HB 999 can be viewed here. CAA encourages individual and institutional members to visit the ACLS website and sign on to the ACLS statement, as well as contact legislators, write op-eds, and proliferate information on social media to fight this bill.
Other learned societies and higher education institutions who have signed the ACLS statement:
American Academy of Religion
American Anthropological Association
American Association for Italian Studies
American Folklore Society
American Historical Association
American Musicological Society
American Philosophical Association
American Political Science Association
American Society for Environmental History
American Sociological Association
Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
Association of University Presses
College Art Association
German Studies Association
Latin American Studies Association
Linguistic Society of America
Medieval Academy of America
Modern Language Association
National Council of Teachers of English
National Council on Public History
National Women’s Studies Association
Organization of American Historians
Rhetoric Society of America
Sixteenth Century Society & Conference
Society for Ethnomusicology
Society for Music Theory
Society for the History of Technology
Society of Biblical Literature
World History Association
CAA has also signed on to a Florida HB 999 statement issued by the American Historical Association (AHA) which can be viewed here.
Other organizations who have signed the AHA statement:
African American Intellectual History Society
American Anthropological Association
American Association for the History of Medicine
American Association of University Professors
American Folklore Society
American Philosophical Association
American Society for Environmental History
American Sociological Association
Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
Association of Ancient Historians
Association of University Presses
Berkshire Conference of Women Historians
Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire
Central European History Society
College Art Association
Committee on LGBT History
Conference on Latin American History
Executive Committee of the Czechoslovak Studies Association
French Colonial Historical Society
German Studies Association
H-France
Historians for Peace and Democracy
Immigration and Ethnic History Society
Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library
Labor and Working Class History Association
LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida
Linguistic Society of America
Medieval Academy of America
National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education
National Council on Public History
National Council of Teachers of English
New England Historical Association
North American Conference on British Studies
North American Society for Oceanic History
Organization of American Historians
PEN America
Polish American Historical Association
Radical History Review
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Shakespeare Association of America
Social Welfare History Group
Society for Austrian and Habsburg History
Society for French Historical Studies
Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Society for Textual Scholarship
Society for the History of the Early American Republic
Society for the History of Technology
Society for the History of the Early American Republic
Society for U.S. Intellectual History
Southern Historical Association
Texas Institute of Letters
Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University
Western Society for French History
Woodhull Freedom Foundation
World History Association
CAA Signs On to NCAC Letter Regarding Arkansas Tech University Exhibition
posted by CAA — February 08, 2023
CAA has issued a joint letter with the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) regarding a recent exhibition on display at Arkansas Tech University (ATU). The subject matter in the exhibit centers on issues of race and representations of troubling components of American history. After students of color voiced objections to the exhibition, the artist withdrew her exhibition.
We believe context is essential for artists to produce and display their work, and for others to consume that work with a critical gaze. The drafted letter states, in part, “by abdicating its responsibility as an educational institution to stand by its exhibition programming and actively create productive dialogue around it, the University has failed its students and the artist.” Previously, CAA collaborated with a number of agencies to create Museum Best Practices for Managing Controversy, a set of guidelines offering best practices for institutions “concerned about or confronted with accusations of inappropriate, objectionable, or offensive content.”
The full letter can be viewed here.
CAA Issues Statement On Hamline University Termination of Dr. Erika López Prater
posted by CAA — January 18, 2023
CAA has been following the termination of Professor Erika López Prater at Hamline University. As of last Friday, the Board of Trustees at the university has been engaged in a review of institutional policies, including those focused on academic freedom and inclusion. CAA strongly urges the Board and the administration to uphold the tenets of academic freedom with respect to Dr. López Prater for their public statements that have defamed and damaged her person and her professional reputation.
Academic freedom is a core principle of both Hamline University’s mission and CAA’s charter, and Dr. López Prater’s termination is a tacit rejection of everything that principle stands for in higher education. Beyond an infringement on academic freedom, Hamline’s actions are a dangerous precedent of academic administrators endorsing one side of a religious controversy.
Hamline University’s characterization of Dr. López Prater’s action as “Islamophobic” contradicts widely held definitions of the term from prominent public interest advocacy groups, including the national organizations CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), and MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Council). Dr. López Prater met and exceeded pedagogical standards for teaching by providing advance written and verbal notice of the intention to illustrate her lecture with two images of the Prophet Muhammed. Additionally, the images she used are historic and symbolic works of art of significance, essential to teaching the long and rich art history of Islam.
CAA calls upon Hamline University, President Fayneese Miller, and AVP David Everett to apologize to Dr. López Prater formally and publicly. Furthermore, this would be the appropriate time to affirm their commitment to both the informed pedagogy that Dr. López Prater demonstrated, and the academic freedom to pursue truth that all professors should expect. CAA speaks on behalf of a membership base that is facing increasingly precarious standards of employment—which is the very reason Hamline University was so easily able to terminate Dr. López Prater. Amends would be made if they recommitted to a tenure-line position for the teaching of art history.
Additional Signatories:
American Sociological Association
Other Statements of Support:
Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA)
Mesa (Middle Eastern Studies Association)
CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts Annual Recognition Award, 2006
posted by CAA — August 18, 2022
Photo of the 2006 CWA Award recipients, Moira Roth and Trinh T. Minh-ha holding paintings
Moira (left) talking at the podium while Eleanor Dickinson (middle), then chair of CWA getting ready with the award gift created by Carolyne Manosevitz
In 2006, during the CAA Annual Conference in Boston, the Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) honored Moira Roth (Trefethen Professor of Art History at Mills College in Oakland, CA) and Trinh T. Minh-ha (Professor of Women’s Studies and Rhetoric/Film at the University of California at Berkeley) with the CWA Annual Recognition Awards. Then CWA member, Carolyne Manosevitz, offered her own paintings as the award gifts. Roth, who recently passed away, was one of the first scholars to publish on feminist performance art. Her books, The Amazing Decade: Women in Performance Art in America (1983)and Rachel Rosenthal (1995), were groundbreaking. Minh-Ha is a Vietnam-born filmmaker, writer, and composer, whose practice is positioned within the fields of feminist and post-colonial studies.
After 2008, this award became a part of CAA’s Distinguished Awards program as the Distinguished Feminist Awards. The Distinguished Feminist Award is presented annually to a visual artist or designer who, through outstanding efforts in their practice or advocacy, has advanced the cause of equality for women in the arts; as well as a scholar who, through outstanding efforts in their scholarship, curatorial practice, or advocacy, has advanced the cause of equality for women in the arts. Read more about this award and its recipients here.
Post by Midori Yoshimoto
Midori Yoshimoto is associate professor of art history and gallery director at New Jersey City University. Yoshimoto specializes in post-1945 Japanese art and its diaspora with a focus on women artists, Fluxus, and intermedia. Her 2005 book, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York, led to numerous publications including an essay in Yoko Ono One Woman Show (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015). Yoshimoto co-curated a major survey exhibition of Japanese American artist Shigeko Kubota, which traveled three museums in Japan in 2021-22. Its catalog, Viva Video! The Art and Life of Shigeko Kubota was published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha and received the Ringa Art Encouragement Award in Japan. She is also a co-editor and author of a recent publication, Women, Aging, and Art: A Crosscultural Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2021).
In 1972, CAA founded its first committees devoted to women in the arts. As a part of this yearlong 50th anniversary celebration, we are sharing historic materials from CAA members and archives that intersect with feminism at the organization, including CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) and our Affiliated Societies, Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) and The Feminist Art Project (TFAP).
This celebration culminates in a program and reception at Boston University’s Joan and Edgar Booth Theatre on Friday, September 23, 2022. This program will reflect upon the incredible history of feminist pioneers at the organization while looking toward a more inclusive, equitable future through the continued work of the CWA. The members of CWA are carrying the torch of feminism during this crucial time of precarity for women’s rights.
Over the next couple months, visit this site (CAA News) and our social media pages to explore more about this history and items from our archives.
Countering Feminist Indifference: Notes from the Women’s Caucus for Art
posted by CAA — August 15, 2022
See full text reproduced below. Article also available on Jstor.
“Notes from the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA),” a column featured in Art Journal during the 1970s, created an important forum for critical debates in the feminist art movement. In Summer 1975, for example, Meredith Rode shared evidence of fatigue with the feminist struggle in her letter “The High Price of Indifference.” Rode’s letter generated numerous responses in the winter 1975 issue, including Ann Sutherland Harris’s practical advice on how to counter this exhaustion.
The first President of WCA advocated both passive and activist gestures, ranging from sending a check to the National Organization of Women to pressuring local museums to display works by women in their collections, organizing group shows of women artists, mentoring female students, and buying women’s art.
This snapshot of WCA’s essential role in feminism art and activism reminds us how we can individually act to demand equity while working in conjunction with the collective efforts of essential national organizations, such as WCA and CAA. Read the full text below.
Post by Joanna Gardner-Huggett
Sources:
- Meredith Rode, “Notes from the Women’s Caucus for Art: The High Price of Indifference,” Art Journal (Summer 1975): 345.
- Ann Sutherland Harris, “Notes from the Women’s Caucus for Art,” Art Journal (Winter 1975/76): 147.
Biography of post author: Joanna Gardner-Huggett is an Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture at DePaul University and Chair of the Committee on Women in the Arts. She teaches courses on twentieth-century art and feminist theory, while her research focuses on the intersection between feminist collaboration and arts activism and has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Joanna’s most recent scholarship explores the history of the Chicago based women artists’ collectives Artemisia Gallery in Chicago (1973-2003), ARC Gallery (1973-present), and Sapphire and Crystals (1987-present).
FULL TEXT (from image): Ann Sutherland Harris, “Notes from the Women’s Caucus for Art,” Art Journal (Winter 1975/76): 147.
The comments of Meredith Rode, which appeared in this column last summer (see Art Journal, Summer 1975, p. 345), provoked two types of responses. Rode addressed herself to the problem of the indifference and fatigue that have begun to plague the women’s movement. Some of our respondents felt that this new phase was entirely natural and that women could now get on to other things. Other agreed with Rode that efforts should be made to continue the kinds of organized activities that have characterized the women’s movement in the past. We have included comments from both sides of the argument because, together, they establish a provocative, and constructive, dialogue.
In the going battle for excellence in artistic endeavors, or at the very least in the battle for the recognition of such, women are necessarily well prepared for the fight. The feminist movement is in fact successful in the degree of professionalism that is shown by its members. This professionalism is engendered not by participation in marches or in a common philosophy, but by sincere individual effort and personal discipline in pursuit of excellence. The social situation that has given rise to the feminist movement has been a difficult and unrelenting taskmaster. The professional woman is necessarily strengthened by the unrelenting standards and demands and thereby becomes an effective standard-bearer of the women’s movement—even though she may be completely remove from any organized feminist actions.
If the feminist movement can focus on excellence, then all its desire ends will follow naturally. The primary concern should not be one of the numbers but rather one of quality. If the aforementioned standards are met, the feminist movement will be self-perpetuating and self-evidently justified. The urge and tendency to slacken standards in order to ameliorate quickly quantitative inequities is suicide. The feminist movement needs to look to the demands of professionalism as the method to success. To turn from marches to a concern for excellence is not to abandon the movement but rather to ensure and shore up a movement against indifference and apathy.
Art is similarly embattled but, with the help of highly qualified professionals, has the opportunity to meet and surpass levels of excellence so often forgotten and more often ignored through ineptitude. Excellence is the challenge and when met continuously cannot be denied forever. This, then, is the method, slow and unheadlined, certain, desperately needed, and opportunely waiting for women to pursue.
Ursela Gilgulin, College of Saint Elizabeth, Convent Station, New Jersey
Meredith Rode’s important letter to members of the Women’s Caucus for Art must have struck many sympathetic chords. All who have become involved in the women’s movement will have recognized her feelings of exhaustion and discouragement and the internal pressure to “get back to normal.” But that is impossible once one has become a feminist.
One way to counteract the feeling that the movement is losing energy is to subscribe to Women Today. It brings you lots of evidence twice a month that the women’s movement is thriving and growing, which is not what you will sense reading the national daily press. I also recommend joining at least one of the national women’s organizations like N.O.W. or W.E.A.L. Their publications will also keep you in touch with the movement. Sometimes I think that no hidden nook or cranny of male-chauvinism will be left untouched by enterprising American feminists!
This is pass support—signing a check, posting off a membership form, and sitting back while others do the work. But it is much better than nothing and maybe it is all that some of us can manage for a while and at least you will have the contacts to move back to a more active role when the energy returns. Even those who are being—temporarily, we hope—in active, should be able to manage an occasional letter to their state or national legislators. It takes very little time to do (the letter should only be a short indication of your stand) and it is effective precisely because most of us are too lazy to do it. Keeping affirmative action programs strong and equalizing pension benefits for women are two issues that everyone should be concerned about and should write at least one letter on behalf of. We have almost 1000 members; 1000 letters would make anyone pay attention!
There are also lots of little things that we can do to help. If you are an art historian, make sure that women artists get a fair share of your courses and that you are aware of the way women are seen by artists in general. Because all the survey texts leave out Käthe Kollwitz, Mary Cassatt, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, and Barbara Hepworth, to name only a few who could as well represent their centuries as the male artists chosen, this does not mean that you cannot discuss them. If you work in a museum, find out what works by women your museum owns and whether they are displayed regularly. Even more helpful, find out what postcards and slides of women’s works are available (all museums need prodding here—MOMA has cards of only one Nevelson, one Frankenthaler, and Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined tea cup, saucer, and spoon). Maybe you can help originate an exhibition devoted to a woman or a group of women artists, or at least make sure they are fully represented in group shows. If you teach, you can be sure your women students get the encouragement they deserve. If you have anything to do with the hiring of anyone, you can do your best to locate able women candidates and makes sure that their candidacy gets fair consideration. If you are employed full-time, you might consider all the marvelous women artists who are not and buy their work—some very fine and quite well-known women ask very reasonable prices for their work.
I doubt that anyone interested enough to read this far has not done at least one of these things this past year. Perhaps we are all unaware of how much the movement has become “normal.” But never underestimate the power of an accumulation of small actions like these to contribute to major social change. This much all of us can surely manage most of the time. If some of us can occasionally do more, then the momentum will be sustained. It must be—we all have too much to lose.
Ann Sutherland Harris, S.U.N.Y at Albany
In 1972, CAA founded its first committees devoted to women in the arts. As a part of this yearlong 50th anniversary celebration, we are sharing historic materials from CAA members and archives that intersect with feminism at the organization, including CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) and our Affiliated Societies, Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) and The Feminist Art Project (TFAP).
This celebration culminates in a program and reception at Boston University’s Joan and Edgar Booth Theatre on Friday, September 23, 2022. This program will reflect upon the incredible history of feminist pioneers at the organization while looking toward a more inclusive, equitable future through the continued work of the CWA. The members of CWA are carrying the torch of feminism during this crucial time of precarity for women’s rights.
Over the next couple months, visit this site (CAA News) and our social media pages to explore more about this history and items from our archives.
CAA Signs On to Statement Expressing Dismay Over Dobbs vs. Jackson
posted by CAA — July 07, 2022
The College Art Association has signed on to this statement from the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians (OAH). The statement expresses dismay over the Supreme Court majority opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. It argues that the decision misrepresents history, instead “adopt[ing] a flawed interpretation of abortion criminalization that has been pressed by anti-abortion advocates for more than thirty years.” It warns that the Court’s majority opinion does not meet the standards of historical scholarship and that “[t]hese misrepresentations are now enshrined in a text that becomes authoritative for legal reference and citation in the future.”