CAA News Today

Take the 2011 Annual Conference Survey

posted by Christopher Howard — March 16, 2011

Last week, CAA sent an email blast to 2011 Annual Conference attendees, asking for feedback on all aspects of last month’s event. Please complete the survey, which has several fields for open-ended answers, by Friday, March 25, 2011.

The survey asks you to identify yourself (e.g., artist, art historian, or student) and your type of affiliation and then to rate your experiences with various conference events and services—from online registration and the conference hotels to session content and Career Services activities. If you attended the Book and Trade Fair or used your conference badge for free museum admission, let CAA know. The survey also asks your thoughts about the conference website and how CAA can better deliver conference information.

Filed under: Annual Conference, Membership, Surveys —

CAA Gives Four Centennial Awards at the 2011 Annual Conference

posted by Christopher Howard — March 09, 2011

The CAA Board of Directors has selected five extraordinary individuals as the distinguished recipients of CAA’s four Centennial Awards in recognition of the extraordinary time and expertise they have contributed to the visual arts in New York and across the nation. The honorees are:

Philippe de Montebello, Centennial Award for Leadership
Agnes Gund, Centennial Award for Service to the Field
Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, Centennial Award for Patronage
Stuart E. Eizenstat, Centennial Award for Protecting Art as a Cultural Product

Special guests presenters gave the Centennial Awards during Convocation at the 99th Annual Conference and Centennial Kickoff at the Hilton New York on Wednesday evening, February 9, 2011.

Filed under: Annual Conference, Awards, Centennial, People in the News —

2011 Annual Conference Summary

posted by Nia Page — March 02, 2011

The College Art Association recently held its 99th Annual Conference and Centennial Kickoff at the Hilton New York in midtown Manhattan. Taking place February 9–12, 2011, the conference began the organization’s yearlong celebration of its one hundredth anniversary. The program comprised four days of presentations and discussions on art, art history, and visual culture; career-development workshops, mentoring programs, and job interviews with colleges and universities; a Book and Trade Fair featuring publishers of art books and journals, manufacturers of artists’ materials, and providers of various services for artists and academics; and a host of special events throughout the New York area.

Attendance

The New York conference was not only the largest CAA has produced, it was also the best attended. More than seven thousand art professionals from across the United States and around the world—including artists, art historians, students, educators, curators, critics, collectors, and museum staff—came the event.

Sessions

The conference offered more than two hundred sessions, panels, and talks—all developed by CAA’s members, affiliated societies, and committees. These sessions, which featured presentations from participants and institutions across the country and internationally, addressed a wide range of topics. With papers and presentations as manifold as “The Aesthetics of Sonic Spaces,” “Gender and Sexuality in the Art Museum,” and “Civic Performance and the Genesis of the Roman Social Cityscape,” the 2011 conference was highly diverse.

CAA also organized seven special Centennial Sessions in which invited panelists from different corners of the visual arts—among them Mark Tribe, Griselda Pollock, and James Elkins—came together to debate core concepts, such as diversity, experience, feminism, globalization, medium, technology, and tradition.

Career Services

Career Services included three days of mentoring and portfolio-review sessions, workshops and roundtables on professional-development issues, and job interviews. Approximately one hundred schools, academic departments, and institutions conducted interviews at the conference. Workshops addressed such topics as planning for retirement, advice for new instructors, securing a job in the arts, and self-marketing for artists.

Book and Trade Fair

The Book and Trade Fair presented 149 exhibitors, including participants from the United States, Turkey, Spain, England, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium, displaying new publications, artists’ materials, digital resources, and innovative products of interest to artists and scholars. The Book and Trade Fair also featured book signings, lectures, and demonstrations, as well as three exhibitor sessions on artists’ materials and publishing.

ARTspace and ARTexchange

ARTspace, a “conference within the conference” tailored to the needs and interests of practicing artists, presented the Annual Artists’ Interviews with Krzysztof Wodiczko and Mel Chin, as well as wealth of presentations and programming by and for artists. ARTexchange, an open-portfolio event in which artist members displayed their small paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and work on laptops, hosted over fifty artists this year.

Convocation and Centennial Awards

More than six hundred people attended Convocation and the Centennial Awards Presentation, held at the Hilton New York on Wednesday, February 9. Jim Leach, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, spoke about the importance of the humanities, and eco-art pioneers Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison delivered a lively keynote address.

On the occasion of CAA’s centennial year, the Board of Directors presented four awards to living individuals who have contributed significantly to the advancement of the visual arts in the United States. The recipients of CAA’s four Centennial Awards are:

Stuart E. Eizenstat, attorney and former US ambassador, Centennial Award for Protecting Art as a Cultural Product, presented by Paul Jaskot of DePaul University
Agnes Gund, arts advocate and philanthropist, Centennial Award for Service to the Field, presented by Ann Temkin of the Museum of Modern Art
Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centennial Award for Leadership, presented by Linda Downs, CAA executive director
Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, collectors of contemporary art, Centennial Award for Patronage, presented by Anne Goodyear of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Awards for Distinction

Each year CAA recognizes the accomplishments of individual artists, art historians, authors, conservators, curators, and critics whose efforts transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large. More than four hundred people attended the presentation of the 2011 Awards for Distinction in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Thursday, February 10.

The recipients of CAA’s 2011 Awards for Distinction are:

Lynda Benglis, Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement
John Baldessari, Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
Mieke Bal, Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art
Luis Camnitzer, Frank Jewett Mather Award
Faith Ringgold, Distinguished Feminist Award
William Itter, Distinguished Teaching of Art Award
Patricia Hills, Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award
Molly Emma Aitken, Charles Rufus Morey Book Award for The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting
Darielle Mason, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal
Yasufumi Nakamori, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions for Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture
Ross Barrett, Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize for “Rioting Refigured: George Henry Hall and the Picturing of American Political Violence”
Kirsten Swenson, Janet Kraynak, Paul Monty Paret, and Emily Eliza Scott, Art Journal Award for “Land Use in Contemporary Art”
Joyce Hill Stoner, CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation

Centennial Book

CAA introduced The Eye, the Hand, the Mind: 100 Years of the College Art Association, a new book that surveys the impressive history of the organization from 1911 to the present. Susan Ball, executive director emerita, edited the 330-page hardcover book, which was published jointly by CAA and Rutgers University Press.

Special Events

The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted CAA’s Centennial Reception in the Great Hall and the Temple of Dendur. Hunter College offered its expansive galleries for the CAA Regional MFA Exhibition, which surveyed work by artists from twenty institutions within one hundred miles of New York. The New York Center for Art and Media Studies (NYCAMS) hosted the CAA Regional BFA Exhibition, which featured seventeen undergraduate student artists from seven area BFA programs. Sold-out tours explored the riches of New York’s cultural attractions, from a Chelsea Gallery District excursion to a preview tour of the Museum for African Art.

Save the Date

CAA will conclude its Centennial Celebration at the 100th Annual Conference, to be held February 22–25, 2012, in Los Angeles, California.

About CAA

The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally, offering forums to discuss the developments in art and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other avenues. CAA focuses on a wide range of issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, and workforce topics in universities and museums. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching.

Filed under: Annual Conference, Centennial —

Audio Downloads from the 2011 Annual Conference

posted by Christopher Howard — March 01, 2011

The 2011 Annual Conference in New York boasted an incredibly diverse array of sessions. Audio recordings for sixty-three of the panels—including “Performative Tendencies,” “Color and Nineteenth-Century American Painting,” and “The Erasure of Contemporary Memory”—are now available for sale.

A set of MP3 audio recordings from the New York conference is available for only $149.95, either as a download or on CD-ROMs. Individual sessions, available only as downloads, are $24.95 each. Please visit Conference Media to view the list of sessions and to order.

The full range of art history is represented in sessions such as “The Afterlife of Cubism,” “The Global Eighteenth Century,” and “(Re)Contextualizing Precolumbian Art in the Twenty-First Century.” CAA also recorded many other popular 2011 sessions, such as “Parallel Practices: When the Mind Isn’t Focused on Art,” which featured the artists Robert Gober, Vija Celmins, Petah Coyne, Janine Antoni, and Philip Taafe, as well as the two-part “Dark Matter of the Art World.” Other topics about contemporary art include “Contemporary Drawing: Purpose, Practice, Performance,” “Textiles and Social Sculpture,” and “The Art of Pranks.” Curators will be especially interested in “Recurating: New Practices in Exhibition Making” and “Artist as Curator.”

Whether you took part in, attended, or missed a particular conference session, these recordings are a must-have for your library, research, or teaching. Listen to them while walking across campus, while driving in your car or using public transportation, or while relaxing in your home.

In addition to the New York sessions, you can also purchase recordings from the past five conferences: Boston (2006), New York (2007), Dallas–Fort Worth (2008), Los Angeles (2009), and Chicago (2010). See CAA’s Conference Audio section for details.

Filed under: Annual Conference —

Propose a Paper or Presentation for the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles

posted by Emmanuel Lemakis — February 28, 2011

The 100th Annual Conference in Los Angeles—which concludes CAA’s Centennial year—takes place February 22–25, 2012. Listing more than one hundred sessions, the 2012 Call for Participation will arrive in the mailboxes of all individual and institutional members in March; you can also download a PDF of the twenty-four-page document from the CAA website immediately.

The 2012 Call for Participation describes many of next year’s panels and presentations. CAA and session chairs invite your participation: please follow the instructions in the booklet to submit a proposal for a paper. This publication also includes a call for Poster Session proposals and describes the eleven Open Forms sessions.

The deadline for proposals of papers and presentations for the Los Angeles conference is Monday, May 2, 2011.

In addition to dozens of wide-ranging panels on art history, studio art, contemporary issues, and professional and educational practices, CAA conference attendees can expect participation from many area schools, museums, galleries, and other institutions. The Los Angeles Convention Center is the conference headquarters, holding most sessions and panels, Career Services and the Book and Trade Fair, receptions and special events, and more.

Filed under: Annual Conference, Calls for Papers, Centennial, Publications —

Thanks to 2011 Career Services Leaders

posted by Lauren Stark — February 22, 2011

CAA wishes to thank the artists, art historians, curators, critics, and educators who generously served as mentors in two Career Services programs at the 2011 Annual Conference in New York: the Artists’ Portfolio Review and Career Development Mentoring. The organization also thanks the leaders of the Roundtable Discussions, the presenters of the Professional Development Workshops, and the speakers at Orientation.

Artists’ Portfolio Review

Pam Aloisa, US Air Force Academy; Aaron Bible, Robischon Gallery; Michael Bzdak, Johnson & Johnson; Susan Canning, College of New Rochelle; Brian Curtis, University of Miami; Les Joynes, TransContemporary; Peter Kaniaris, Anderson University; Jason Lahr, University of Notre Dame; Julie Langsam, Rutgers University; Suzanne Lemakis, Citigroup; Sharon Lippman, Art Without Walls; Craig Lloyd, College of Mt. St. Joseph; Margaret Murphy, New Jersey City University; Judith Pratt, Judith Pratt Studio; Jeannene Przyblyski, San Francisco Art Institute; Habibur Rahman, Claflin University; John Silvis, New York Center for Art and Media Studies; Katherine Smith, Agnes Scott College; Steve Teczar, Maryville University; and Midori Yoshimoto, Jersey City University.

Career Development Mentoring

Edward A. Aiken, Syracuse University; Susan Altman, Middlesex County College; Michael Aurbach, Vanderbilt University; Roann Barris, Radford University; Ruth Bolduan, Virginia Commonwealth University; Jeffery Cote de Luna, Dominican University; Michelle Erhardt, Christopher Newport University; James Farmer, Virginia Commonwealth University; Reni Gower, Virginia Commonwealth University; Courtney Grim, Medaille College; Amy Hauft, Virginia Commonwealth University; Jim Hopfensperger, Western Michigan University; Simeon Hunter, Loyola University; Dennis Y. Ichiyama, Purdue University; Sue Johnson, St. Mary’s College of Maryland; Arthur Jones, University of North Dakota; Carol Krinsky, New York University; Seth McCormick, Western Carolina University; Heather McPherson, University of Alabama, Birmingham; Mark O’Grady, Pratt Institute; Morgan Paine, Florida Gulf Coast University; Pamela Patton, Southern Methodist University; Doralynn Pines, Metropolitan Museum of Art (emerita); Andrea Polli, University of New Mexico; David Raizman, Drexel University; Martin Rosenberg, Rutgers University; Paul Ryan, Mary Baldwin College; Betsy Schneider, Arizona State University; Gerald Silk, Tyler School of Art, Temple University; David Sokol, University of Illinois, Chicago (emeritus); Kim Theriault, Dominican University; Larry Thompson, Samford University; Ann Tsubota, Raritan Valley Community College; Jenifer K. Ward, Cornish College of the Arts; and Barbara Yontz, St. Thomas Aquinas College.

Roundtable Leaders

Susan Altman, Middlesex County College; Michael Aurbach, Vanderbilt University; John Silvis, New York Center for Art and Media Studies; and Annie V. F. Storr, Corcoran College of Art and Design.

Professional Development Workshops

Michael Aurbach, Vanderbilt University; Barbara Bernstein, Rhode Island School of Design and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; Steven Bleicher, Coastal Carolina University; Mika Cho, California State University, Los Angeles; Kim Potvin, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC; Susan Schear, ArtIsIn; and David M. Sokol, University of Illinois, Chicago (emeritus).

Orientation

Emmanuel Lemakis, College Art Association; Sheila Pepe, Pratt Institute; Harriet Senie, Graduate Center and City College, City University of New York; and David Sokol, University of Illinois, Chicago (emeritus).

Filed under: Annual Conference, Career Services, People in the News, Service —

Thanks to Conference Sponsors and the Annual Conference Committee

posted by CAA — February 15, 2011

Support for the 99th Annual Conference and Centennial Kickoff, which took place February 9–12, 2011, in New York, was provided by: American Airlines; the American Folk Art Museum; the Art Institute of Atlanta; ARTstor; Blick Art Materials; Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology; the Courtauld Institute of Art; D.A.P. Distributed Art Publishers; Design Technology and Industry; the Graduate Center, City University of New York; Hunter College, City University of New York; the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; McVicker and Higginbotham; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York Center for Art and Media Studies, Bethel University; Pearson Higher Education; Prestel; the School of Visual Arts; Troy University; and the University of North Texas.

The organization is deeply grateful to Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for hosting the Centennial Reception.

CAA also extends special thanks to the Annual Conference Committee, whose members were responsible for the 2011 program: Sue Gollifer, University of Brighton, chair and vice president for Annual Conference; Sharon Matt Atkins, Brooklyn Museum; Brian Bishop, Framingham State University; Connie Cortez, Texas Tech University; Ken Gonzales-Day, Scripps College and CAA board; Randall Griffin, Southern Methodist University and CAA board; Norie Sato, independent artist, Seattle; Judith Thorpe, University of Connecticut and CAA board; and William Wallace, Washington University in St. Louis and CAA board. Regional representatives for the committee were: Nicola M. Courtright, Amherst College; and Sheila Pepe, Pratt Institute.

CAA also thanks all volunteers and staff members who made the conference possible. Additional acknowledgments for those serving as mentors in Conference Mentoring Sessions, as well as participants in other programs and events, are forthcoming.

Filed under: Annual Conference, Centennial, Committees —

Speak Your Mind about CAA’s Future

posted by Christopher Howard — February 09, 2011

With its Centennial in mind, CAA invites members to discuss the future of the organization in three conference forums. The Board of Directors is hosting two Strategic Plan Focus Group Discussions on Thursday and Friday mornings on topics in communication and career enhancement. A third opportunity, the Annual Members’ Business Meeting, takes place on late Friday afternoon.

Strategic Plan Focus Group Discussion Part I: Communication

This first Strategic Plan Focus Group Discussion, led by Sue Gollifer, CAA vice president for Annual Conference, will explore new forms of communication using innovative and improved technology. The session will take place on Thursday, February 10, 7:30 AM–9:00 AM in the Madison Suite, 2nd Floor, Hilton New York.

After presentations by invited participants, who will talk about new forms of CAA communication. The informal panel will be straightforward, quick moving, and guided in the spirit of conversation and sharing. Next, the floor will open to discussion, enabling CAA members to give their input and to raise concerns of their own. The ideas from this session will then feed the Annual Members’ Business Meeting (see below).

CAA’s Nia Page and Christopher Howard will talk about the organization’s traditional and digital communications, and Randall Griffin of Southern Methodist University and Paul Jaskot of DePaul University will discuss e-publishing. Two speakers on social media, Bonnie Mitchell of Bowling Green State University and Cora Lynn Deibler of the University of Connecticut, will close the introductory presentations. Andrea Kirsh, CAA vice president for external affairs, and Judith Thorpe of the University of Connecticut will also be present.

Strategic Plan Focus Group Discussion Part II: Career Enhancement

Jean Miller of the University of North Texas and a CAA board member will lead a conversation about how CAA can improve its advocacy efforts, career-development activities, and workforce issues in order to assist professional growth. The focus group takes place on Friday morning, February 11, 7:30–9:00 AM in Beekman Parlor, 2nd Floor, Hilton New York.

Participants include these leaders from leading nonprofits and arts organizations: Steve Bliss, a former board member of the Society for Photographic Education; Sally Block, executive director of the Association of Art Museum Curators; Michael Fahlund, CAA deputy director; Jim Hopfensperger, 2011 president of the National Council of Art Administrators; and Richard Grefé, AIGA executive director. Randall Griffin of CAA’s board will also be present.

Annual Members’ Business Meeting

CAA invites all members to attend the Annual Members’ Business Meeting, taking place on Friday, February 11, 2011, 5:30–7:00 PM in the Rendezvous Trianon Ballroom, Third Floor, Hilton New York. Barbara Nesin, CAA board president will lead the meeting and welcome discussion on new organizational business and projects in progress.

In addition, the meeting’s agenda will include summaries of ideas presented in the two Strategic Plan Focus Groups, a financial report from Teresa Lopez, CAA’s chief financial officer, and an update on the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles from Ruth Weisberg. At the end of the meeting, Nesin will announce the results of the current board election. To celebrate CAA’s Centennial, a reception will follow the business meeting.

Filed under: Annual Conference, Board of Directors, Career Services, Governance — Tags: Digital Issues —

2011 Regional BFA Exhibition at NYCAMS

posted by Christopher Howard — February 08, 2011

Hosted by the New York Center for Art and Media Studies (NYCAMS) in Manhattan, the College Art Association Regional BFA Exhibition celebrates current perspectives from seventeen undergraduate student artists enrolled in seven area BFA programs. Curated by John Silvis and Brent Everett Dickinson, both professors of art at NYCAMS, the exhibition demonstrates the distinctiveness of each artist’s work and cultivates an engaging conversation among the participating programs. It will be on view for three weeks: February 7–25, 2011.

The seven schools in the College Art Association Regional BFA Exhibition are: Brooklyn College, City University of New York; the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York; Long Island University, C. W. Post Campus; Pratt Institute, School of Art and Design; Purchase College, State University of New York; the School of Visual Arts; and St. John’s University.

The seventeen exhibiting artists are: Marcel Bornstein (FIT), Christina Carlsson (Brooklyn), Matthew Chavez (FIT), Theresa Daddezio (Purchase), Alexander Derwick (Purchase), Alex Gavryushenko (Pratt), Su Yeon Ihm (SVA), Saskia Kahn (Brooklyn), Elizabeth Maroney (LIU), Katherine Mias (St. John’s), Anna Niedermeyer (Pratt), Zoey B. Scheler (Pratt), Olivia Taylor (FIT), Matthew Uebbing (Pratt), Allison M. Walters (St. John’s), Samantha Wolf (SVA), and Phillip Wong (Purchase).

The opening reception for the artists, their professors, and CAA conference attendees is Friday, February 11, 6:00–9:00 PM. NYCAMS is located twenty-five blocks south of the Hilton New York, at 44 West 28th Street, 7th Floor, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. (Take the F or M train to the 34th or 23rd Street stops.) The NYCAMS gallery is open Monday–Friday, 10:00 AM–4:00 PM or by appointment. For more information, please call Janna Dyk at 212-213-8052. CAA is also sponsoring the College Art Association New York Area MFA Exhibition, which opens on the same evening at the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery.

RSVP to the exhibition on Facebook.

About NYCAMS

Affiliated with Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, NYCAMS offers a semester-long, sixteen-credit residency in art and writing for its undergraduate students. The program provides a concentrated educational experience to prepare students for an effective career in the arts. The core of its mission is to pursue excellence in all academic and artistic endeavors, and to provide a stimulating and nurturing environment that encourages the creative process. NYCAMS is committed to exploring issues in contemporary culture in a rigorous academic environment, enabling students to become astute contributors to the current cultural discourse.

Filed under: Annual Conference, Exhibitions, Students —

CAA Bloggers at the Annual Conference

posted by Christopher Howard — February 07, 2011

CAA has invited a diverse group of artists, scholars, teachers, and students to contribute to the 2011 Annual Conference Blog, with the hope of capturing the full and exciting range of experiences, points of view, and opinions that is expected in New York in 2011.

Since the Boston conference in 2006, CAA has sponsored a team blog to accompany the organization’s main event. From longtime members to first-time attendees, past writers for each year have chronicled all aspects of the conference: sessions and panels, exhibitions and parties, Career Services and the Book and Trade Fair, and more.

The seven bloggers this year are: Dwayne Butcher, an artist, teacher, and connoisseur of chicken wings who lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee; Patricia Flores, a historian of decorative arts and art history from San Francisco, California; Charlotte Frost, a UK-based academic, broadcaster, and self-described glamour puss focusing on art’s relationship with technology; Joy Garnett, a New York–based artist, writer, and blogger whose paintings explore the “apocalyptic sublime”; William T. Gassaway, who studies Precolumbian art in the doctoral program at Columbia University in Manhattan; Tempestt Hazel, a recent art-history graduate from Columbia College Chicago who cofounded a nonprofit art organization, Sixty Inches From Center; and Alisha McCurdy, an artist pursuing her MFA at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York. Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, will also post during the week.

Filed under: Annual Conference, Blogs, Centennial —