CAA News Today

The December 2008 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of art history in English, has just been published. Your copy will arrive in the mail in the coming days.

In his essay for the journal’s Interventions series, Partha Mitter interrogates the nexus of power and authority that has effectively marginalized non-Western modernism and proposes a revisionist methodology. Alastair Wright, Rebecca M. Brown, Saloni Mathur, and Ajay Sinha write brief responses to Mitter’s text.

For “The Body of Eve in Andrea Pisano’s Creation Relief,” Jack M. Greenstein examines the artist’s treatment of the figures in the fourteenth-century Creation of Eve panel on the campanile of Florence Cathedral, which set a new standard for naturalism in relief sculpture.

With “In Form We Trust: Neoplatonism, the Gold Standard, and the Machine Art Show,” Jennifer Jane Marshall considers the Museum of Modern Art’s 1934 exhibition as a case study for investigating interwar American modernism’s negotiation between meaning, materiality, and value. Also in twentieth-century art, Claude Cernuschi and Andrzej Herczynski clarify the mechanics of Jackson Pollock’s handling of liquid paint under gravity and the broader implications for the meaning and ethos of his work.

The reviews section includes Ellen T. Baird’s assessment of Elizabeth Hill Boone’s recent book Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate, and Kymberly N. Pinder’s evaluation of the exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love at the Walker Art Center, among other reviews. Please read the full table of contents for more details.

As the current term of the Art Bulletin reviews editor is coming to its conclusion, CAA invites applicants for the next term, July 1, 2009–June 30, 2012 (with service as incoming reviews editor designate from February to June 2009). The Art Bulletin, published quarterly by CAA, is the leading publication of art history in English.

Candidates should be art scholars with stature in the field and experience in editing book and/or exhibition reviews; institutional affiliation is not required. Candidates should be published authors of at least one book.

The reviews editor is responsible for commissioning all book and exhibition reviews in The Art Bulletin. He or she selects books and exhibitions for review, commissions reviewers, and determines the appropriate length and character of reviews. The reviews editor also works with authors and CAA’s director of publications in the development and preparation of review manuscripts for publication. He or she is expected to keep abreast of newly published and important books and recent exhibitions in the fields of art history, criticism, theory, visual studies, and museum publishing. This is a three-year term, which includes membership on the Art Bulletin Editorial Board.

The reviews editor attends the three annual meetings of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board—held in the spring and fall in New York and in February at the CAA Annual Conference—and submits an annual report to CAA’s Publications Committee. CAA reimburses the reviews editor for travel and lodging expenses for the spring and fall New York meetings in accordance with its travel policy, but he or she pays these expenses to attend the conference.

Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, CV, and at least one letter of recommendation to: Director of Publications, Art Bulletin Reviews Editor Search, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Deadline: September 15, 2008; finalists will be interviewed on October 24, 2008, in New York.