CAA News Today
Meet the 2023 CAA Annual Conference Edwards Support Grant Recipients
posted by CAA — January 30, 2023
Meet this year’s grant recipients and find information about their presentations at the conference and their corresponding session below. Dozens of other support grants were given to CAA members through the Presidents Council of CAA and the “Pay it Forward” initiative.
CAA TRAVEL GRANT IN MEMORY OF ARCHIBALD CASON EDWARDS, SENIOR, AND SARAH STANLEY GORDON EDWARDS
The CAA Support Grant in Memory of Archibald Cason Edwards, Senior, and Sarah Stanley Gordon Edwards was made possible by Mary D. Edwards. The grant supports women who are emerging scholars at either an advanced stage of pursuing a doctoral degree or who have received their PhD within the two years prior to the submission of the application.
Amanda Gutierrez, Concordia University
Presentation: “Walking away from the Western Flâneuse, moving forward to perspectives from the Global South”
Session: The Art of Walking
This presentation frames a critique to the concept of the Flâneuse, which reduces the walking experience of all women into a hegemonic Western perspective, not considering the ontologies of violence that women and LGBGT+2 bodies from the Global South experience every day. Women’s safety cannot exist where gender violence, war, political conflicts, and economic crises are present. Therefore, reflecting on the privilege and political conditions needed to walk safely and with freedom is essential. Considering the colonial implications of industrialized countries holding infrastructural and economic power is also critical, as is reflection on the creation of safe public spaces for citizens. We also need to consider that racialized immigrants living in Western countries hold additional risks in confronting racist bias experiences in the public spaces due to their race, ethnicity, gender, and citizenship status. Understanding these political dimensions, these questions arise:
Are we aware of these political implications when romanticizing the Flâneuse as a universal agent of walking freedoms in public space? Is this figure of agency excluding many women and non-conforming bodies who cannot experience these freedoms under political crises? Can we think of other subaltern figures besides the Flâneuse to consider the walking experiences of women and LGBGT+2 in the Global South?
This paper will reflect on these questoins while looking at examples of collectives from India, such as Blank Noise and Women Walk at Midnight as well as the artistic practices of BIPOC feminist artists approaching walking as a form of resistance and enunciation.
Sila Ulug, The University of Chicago
Presentation: “The Blind Man(et): On the Aesthetics of the Blind Man after European Painting” Session: The Art of the Periodical
The Blind Man (1917) is a two-issue magazine published by Henri-Pierre Roché; Marcel Duchamp; and Beatrice Wood in coordination with the First Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York. The Blind Man introduced Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) to the public as a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, shortly after it was physically disappeared. My presentation examines The Blind Man against a history of rejected, Modernist painting. I demonstrate that The Blind Man distinguishes itself from contemporaneous magazines affiliated with the New York avant-garde in three notable respects: (1) its multiple levels of self-referentiality; (2) its direct address of the reader in multiple figurative roles; and (3) its concomitant incorporation and rejection of the reader as part of its dramatic world. I suggest that the incongruence of The Blind Man’s representational scheme can be resolved when examined against the work of Édouard Manet, especially as its reception aesthetics take after those of Diego Velazquez’s Las Meninas (1656). Positioning The Blind Man alongside critical terms associated with the reception of work by Manet and others who exhibited in the 1863 Salon des Refusés suggests that The Blind Man may have aspired to the condition of tableau, while remaining a morceau to the public.
Michael S. Roth, President of Wesleyan University, to give keynote address at CAA’s 111th Annual Conference Convocation
posted by CAA — January 17, 2023
Michael S. Roth, President of Wesleyan University.
We are thrilled to announce that Michael S. Roth, President of Wesleyan University, will give the keynote address at CAA’s Convocation during the organization’s 111th Annual Conference.
Michael S. Roth ’78 became the sixteenth president of Wesleyan University in 2007, after having served as Hartley Burr Alexander Professor of Humanities at Scripps College, Associate Director of the Getty Research Institute, and President of the California College of the Arts. At Wesleyan, Roth has overseen the launch of such academic programs as the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life and the Shapiro Center for Writing as well as four new interdisciplinary colleges that emphasize advanced research and cohort building in the areas of the environment, film, East Asian studies, and integrative sciences. Under his leadership, Wesleyan experienced its most ambitious fundraising campaign in its history, raising more than $482 million, primarily for financial aid. Roth has undertaken several initiatives that have energized the curriculum and helped to make a Wesleyan education more affordable and accessible to students from under-represented groups, creating a supportive and diverse campus community that inspires students to achieve their personal best.
Author and curator (most notably of the exhibition Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture, Library of Congress, 1998–99), Roth describes his scholarly interests as centered on “how people make sense of the past.” His 2015 book Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters (Yale University Press) has been a powerful tool for students, their families, faculty, and policymakers who are wrestling with the future of higher education in America. It was recognized in 2016 with the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Frederic W. Ness award for a book that best illuminates the goals and practices of a contemporary liberal education. Roth’s newest book, Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness (Yale University Press), addresses some of the most contentious issues in American higher education, including affirmative action, safe spaces, and questions of free speech. Roth regularly publishes essays, book reviews, and commentaries in the national media and in scholarly journals. He continues to teach undergraduate courses and has offered MOOCs through Coursera, most recently, “How to Change the World.”
CAA’s Convocation will be held on Wednesday, February 15, 6:30–8 p.m. ET, in Grand Ballroom East.
The CAA 111th Annual Conference will be held February 16–18, 2023 at the New York Hilton Midtown. Register now!
Finalists for the 2023 Morey and Barr Awards
posted by CAA — November 28, 2022
CAA is pleased to announce the 2023 finalists for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the two Alfred H. Barr Jr. Awards. The winners of the three prizes, along with the recipients of other Awards for Distinction, will be announced in January 2023 and presented during Convocation in conjunction with CAA’s 111th Annual Conference, February 15–18, 2023.
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award Shortlist, 2023
Cécile Fromont, Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022
Sylvia Houghteling, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India, Princeton University Press, 2022
Sonya S. Lee, Temples in the Cliffside: Buddhist Art in Sichuan, University of Washington Press, 2022
Natalia Majluf, Inventing Indigenism: Francisco Laso’s Image of Modern Peru, University of Texas Press, 2021
Thy Phu, Warring Visions, Duke University Press, 2022
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award Shortlist, 2023
Darsie Alexander and Sam Sackeroff, eds., Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art, Yale University Press and the Jewish Museum, New York
Kristin Juarez, Rebecca Peabody, and Glenn Phillips, eds., Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures, X Artists’ Books and Art + Practice
Victoria I. Lyall and Terezita Romo, eds., Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche, Yale University Press and Denver Art Museum
Julia Burtenshaw, Héctor García Botero, Diana Magaloni, and María Alicia Uribe Villegas, The Portable Universe / El universo en tus manos: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia, DelMonico Books and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Jessica Niebel, Hayao Miyazaki, DelMonico Books and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions Shortlist, 2023
Katherine D. Alcauskas, ed., Michael Rakowitz: Nimrud, DelMonico Books and Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College
Janet Dees, ed., A Site of Struggle: American Art against Anti-Black Violence, Princeton University Press and The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University
Adriano Pedrosa and Tomás Toledo, eds., Afro-Atlantic Histories, DelMonico Books and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand
Janice Glowski, ed., The Pandemic Portraits by Nicholas Hill, The Frank Museum of Art, Otterbein University
Announcing the 2023 Distinguished Scholar
posted by CAA — November 15, 2022
We are delighted to announce the Distinguished Scholar Session at the 111th CAA Annual Conference will honor Edward J. Sullivan. This session will highlight his career and provide an opportunity for dialogue between and among colleagues. This event will be held in-person at the New York Hilton Midtown during the 111th Annual Conference, February 16, 2022 at 4:30–6:00 pm.
Established in 2001, the Distinguished Scholar Session illuminates and celebrates the contributions of senior art historians. The Annual Conference Committee identifies a distinguished scholar each year who then invites a group of colleagues to create the session. The honoree’s involvement is fundamental to the series, which has become a tradition that gives voice to the continuities and ruptures that have shaped art-historical scholarship from the twentieth century into the new millennium.
Access to this program requires registration and is included with an All Access–level registration. Recordings will be accessible to registrants after the event. Register here.
Sullivan’s work has been transformative for the field of art history, especially in relation to the study and elevation of Latin American and Caribbean, Latina/o/x art and artists, and for the advancement of women and the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities in these regions.
Edward J. Sullivan is the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art at New York University (Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art History). Since receiving his PhD from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts in 1979 (with a dissertation on painting in Madrid after the death of Velázquez) he has taught at Hunter College, Williams College, the University of Miami, and Trinity College, Dublin. However, his service as professor and administrator at New York University has been the defining aspect of his professional career. Sullivan has mentored hundreds of students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His fields of research and teaching focus on a wide variety of geographical and temporal areas from Viceregal art in the Americas and the Philippines, to nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century art in Mexico, Central and South America, the United States, and the Caribbean. Sullivan has also had a parallel career as an independent curator and has worked on exhibitions in museums and cultural institutions throughout the US, Latin America, and Europe. He is the author of more than thirty books and exhibition catalogs, among which are The Language of Objects in the Art of the Americas (Yale University Press, 2007), Fragile Demon: Juan Soriano in Mexico 1935–1950 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2008), Continental Shifts: The Art of Edouard Duval Carrié (Haitian Cultural Institute 2008), Nueva York 1613–1945 (Scala Books, 2010), From San Juan to Paris and Back: Francisco Oller and Caribbean Art in the Era of impressionism (Yale University Press, 2014), Making the Americas Modern: Hemispheric Art 1910–1960 (Laurence King, 2018), and Brazilian Modern: The Living Art of Roberto Burle Marx (New York Botanical Garden, 2018).
The panel will include Ilona Katzew (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Estrellita Brodsky (Another Space), Sean Nesselrode-Moncada (Rhode Island School of Design), Joseph Shaikewitz (Institute of Fine Arts), and Lynda Klich (City University of New York, Hunter College) as moderator.
Global Conversations: Mentoring Beyond the Classroom
posted by CAA — April 21, 2022
Filmed at the National Museum of Mexican Art, this program features a discussion about mentoring between two Chicago-based artists, Rubén Aguirre and Dan Ramirez, mediated by Cesáreo Moreno, Director and Curator of the National Museum of Mexican Art. Their conversation takes place inside the Aguirre’s exhibition Tectonic Reflections, open at the National Museum of Mexican Art until July 24. This program was a part of the session, “Mentoring Beyond the Classroom: The Continuing Relationship Over Time,” at CAA’s 2022 Annual Conference in February, chaired by Richard Serrano, a member of CAA’s Services to Artists Committee.
Distinguished Scholar, Kirsten P. Buick
posted by CAA — April 14, 2022
On February 17, 2022, Kirsten P. Buick was featured as the Distinguished Scholar at CAA’s 110th Annual Conference. The Distinguished Scholar session highlighted her career and provided an opportunity for dialogue between and among colleagues. Moderated by Annual Conference Chair, Theresa Avila, the session also featured presentations by a few of Buick’s students, including Shana Klein, Abbey Hepner, Annette M. Rodriguez, and Emmanuel Ortega. Watch the session in full below!
Established in 2001, the Distinguished Scholar Session illuminates and celebrates the contributions of senior art historians. The Annual Conference Committee identifies the distinguished scholar each year and each session typically brings together the distinguished scholar and a group of colleagues. The honoree’s involvement is fundamental to the series as a way of demonstrating a living tradition that gives voice to the continuities and ruptures that have shaped art-historical scholarship from the twentieth century into the new millennium.
We are inviting nominations for next year’s Distinguished Scholar at CAA’s 2023 Annual Conference in New York. Nominate individuals here!
On her career, Buick explains:
“I identify as a scholar of the visual and material culture of the first British Empire, and the British diaspora in the US, Caribbean, and India. My teaching encompasses topics such as surveys of British Colonial and U.S. Art, American Landscape representation, African American Art, Pro- and Anti-Abolitionist Images in the Atlantic World; and seminars such as Photographing Jim Crow, 1890-1965, Patronizing Women: Taste and Collecting in the 19th and 20th Centuries, and The Victorian Nude: Representing Women, Men, Intersex, and Children. My research and teaching interests encompass histories of science, medicine, religion, as well as monuments, and the use of public space. Increasingly, I am interested in the racialization of mobility—what I characterize as critical mobility studies. I publish primarily in the realm of the history of African American art and its roots in US cultural formations. My first book, “Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject,” is a good example of how I wed my teaching and publication imperatives together with my challenge to art history and visual studies to be more and to do better. Ultimately, teaching is my passion; and I tell my students that job # 1 is surviving the damage, and job # 2 is to never concede the center.”
Kirsten Pai Buick is a professor of art history at the University of New Mexico. She received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Michigan and was a SAAM Predoctoral Fellow and a Charles Gaius Bolin Fellow at Williams College. Buick is a recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize for African American Art and has published extensively on African American art, including her book Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject (Duke Univ. Press, 2010). Her second book, In Authenticity: “Kara Walker” and the Eidetics of Racism, is in progress.
Annual Artist Interview, Willie Cole
posted by CAA — April 05, 2022
On February 18, 2022, Willie Cole was featured in the Annual Artists’ Interviews at CAA’s 110th Annual Conference. Watch the interview in full below!
Beginning in 1997, the Annual Artists’ Interviews were established to provide the opportunity for esteemed artists to have one-on-one conversations with colleagues at the Annual Conference. Each year, the Services to Artists Committee (SAC) identifies two distinguished artists to participate. The interviews are held annually as part of the Services to Artists Program at the conference.
Willie Cole is a contemporary American sculptor, printer, and perceptual engineer. His work uses contexts of postmodern eclecticism, and combines references and appropriation from African and African American imagery. Cole is best known for his Dada and Surrealist readymades, which assemble and transform ordinary domestic and used objects such as irons, ironing boards, high-heeled shoes, hair dryers, bicycle parts, wooden matches, lawn jockeys, and other discarded appliances and hardware. Cole grew up in Newark, NJ. He attended the Boston University School of Fine Arts, received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1976, and continued his studies at the Art Students League of New York from 1976 to 1979.
Recent exhibitions of Cole’s work include To Reclaim, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, USA; New Concepts in Printmaking 2: Willie Cole, MoMA, New York, NY, USA; Reconfiguring an African Icon: Odes to the Mask by Modern and Contemporary Artists from Three Continents, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA; Chicago, Surrealism: The Conjured Life, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, USA; and Afro: Black Identity in America and Brazil, Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, NM, USA. Cole’s work is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; MoMA, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; and many others.
Annual Artist Interview, Jessica Stockholder
posted by CAA — March 28, 2022
Jessica Stockholder, Assist: Sidled, 2016 (Photograph © Jessica Stockholder)
On February 18, 2022, Jessica Stockholder was featured in the Annual Artists’ Interviews at CAA’s 110th Annual Conference, interviewed by Christine Mehring. See below to watch the interview in full!
Beginning in 1997, the Annual Artists’ Interviews were established to provide the opportunity for esteemed artists to have one-on-one conversations with colleagues at the Annual Conference. Each year, the Services to Artists Committee (SAC) identifies two distinguished artists to participate. The interviews are held annually as part of the Services to Artists Program at the conference.
Jessica Stockholder is an internationally acclaimed visual artist and educator who lives and works in Chicago. In addition to earning her BFA from the University of Victoria in Canada and her MFA from Yale University, she was awarded two honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees: one from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2010, and one from Columbia College in 2013. Stockholder was Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2018.
Stockholder’s works sit at the intersection of painting with sculpture, and often incorporate the architecture in which it has been conceived. Employing a wide range of ordinary everyday materials Stockholder orchestrates an intersection of pictorial and physical space. She probes how meaning derives from physicality, and engages the sensuality and pleasure evoked by color and formal order in an effort to call attention to the edges of understanding.
Stockholder’s work has been exhibited in many of the world’s most influential art venues, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Dia Center for the Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Venice Biennale. It is included in such museum collections as the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA, and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Stockholder is currently the Raymond W. & Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, a position she accepted in 2011, after 12 years as Director of the Sculpture Department at the Yale School of Art.
CAA’s 109th Annual Business Meeting Minutes
posted by CAA — February 11, 2022
COLLEGE ART ASSOCIATION
109TH ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2021 2:00 P.M. EST
MINUTES
- Call to Order/Opening Remarks
- President Elizabeth Schlatter called the meeting to order at 2:02 p.m. EST. She thanked the staff for their enormous efforts. She then acknowledged the diverse people linked to the land on which she works and lives, particularly those who have been displaced from that land.
- Executive Director’s Report
- Meme Omogbai offered a reflection on the importance of this conference. It is amazing we were able to offer the extensive content we did during a pandemic, specifically:
- 365 sessions, over 1100 individual presentations in addition to a book and trade fair. Intersectionality between the visual arts, climate change, eco-feminism, and many other topics.
- The virtual format of the conference has offered a new level of access. Content is available across the world and for a month after the conference.
- The conference will serve as an important turning point in the history of CAA toward achieving the four pillars of its Strategic Repositioning:
- Long term sustainability of the organization through attention to meeting the needs of all segments of our constituency and maximizing the value of membership
- Social Entrepreneurship and e-commerce
- Technological infrastructure towards a digital transformation to ensure effective and efficient operations and delivery of content
- Robust development activities
- Meme Omogbai offered a reflection on the importance of this conference. It is amazing we were able to offer the extensive content we did during a pandemic, specifically:
- Approval of the minutes from the February 2020 annual meeting.
- Approval of Minutes of 108th Annual Business Meeting, held in two parts, February 12, and February 14, 2020
- Jaqueline Francis moved; Laura Anderson Barbata seconded. The minutes were approved unanimously.
- Financial report
- CFO Bob Tofolo reported on the following items:
- The association posted a breakeven operating budget for FY20.
- The association continues to operate under a break-even budget for FY21. This includes $3.3M in current expenses against equivalent revenue.
- A PPP loan of $372,000 was awarded to CAA. That loan was subsequently forgiven last December.
- The endowment market value on June 30, 2020 was $9.825M vs prior year of $9.6M
- Member count for this year vs. last: As of June 30, 2020, there were 6,699 (7,773, -14%) individual members. There were 443 (464) organizational members and an additional 586 (617, -5%) subscribers to The Art Bulletin and/or Art Journal through our co-publisher Taylor and Francis. These numbers are not exactly comparative as prior year memberships reflect exaggerated increases due to discounts that are absent this year.
- 3938 registered attendees at the conference as of this morning. It is expected to be over 4000 by tomorrow.
- Question (posed by a member in attendance): how did numbers compare to the last NYC conference? 2019 attendance was over 5000, but the numbers from this year’s count include registrations for Free and Open sessions which we would not have tracked in prior years so some additional work needs to be done so that we can compare apples to apples.
- CFO Bob Tofolo reported on the following items:
- New Business
- The following question was posed by a member in attendance: Considering technical issues that have emerged this year, will CAA be evaluating Confex and considering whether they are the best vendor to use moving forward? Elizabeth indicated that the organization would be evaluating all aspects of the conference, including the platform. Meme added that in the midst of this digital transformation, there will be a consolidation of different systems that will address some of the issues that emerged. She encouraged people to fill out the conference surveys that are being administered.
- Results of Election of New Directors
- Elizabeth announced the newly elected CAA Board Members:
- Roland Betancourt
- Lara Evans
- Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz
- Kelly Walters
- Kelvin Parnell Jr. (Emerging Professional)
- Elizabeth announced the newly elected CAA Board Members:
- Adjournment
- The meeting was adjourned at 2:25 p.m. EST.
Respectfully submitted by Colin Blakely, Secretary.
CAA’s 110th Annual Business Meeting Agenda
posted by CAA — February 11, 2022
CAA Annual Business Meeting Agenda
Friday, February 18, 2022
1 p.m. CT
The 110th Annual Business Meeting of the members of the College Art Association will be called to order at 1 p.m. CT on Friday, February 18 at the 2022 Annual Conference. Access to this meeting is included in paid registration and can also be accessed by registering for ”No-cost registration”. Once you have registered, please log into the online conference schedule to attend the meeting.
CAA President, N. Elizabeth Schlatter will preside.
- Welcome + Call to Order – N. Elizabeth Schlatter, CAA President
- Executive Director’s Report – Meme Omogbai, CAA Executive Director + CEO
- Approval of Minutes of 109th Annual Business Meeting [ACTION ITEM]
- Financial Report – Georgia Harrell, CAA Treasurer + Robert Tofolo, CAA Head of Operations
- Old/New Business
- Board Member Election Results – N. Elizabeth Schlatter, CAA President
- Adjourn
Proxies
If you are unable to attend the Annual Business Meeting, kindly complete a proxy online to appoint the individuals named thereon to (i) vote, as directed by you, for directors, and, at their discretion, on such other matters as may properly come before the Annual Business Meeting; and (ii) vote on any and all adjournments thereof. A proxy, with your vote for directors, must be received no later than 5 p.m. CT Thursday, February 17th, 2022.
Next Meeting – 2023
The 111th Annual Business Meeting of the College Art Association will be held in New York in 2023, precise date to be announced.