CAA News Today
CAA Update from the President
posted by DeWitt Godfrey — November 13, 2014
DeWitt Godfrey, professor of art and art history at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, is president of the CAA Board of Directors.
CAA is moving ahead on several strategic goals. After a year of investigation and discussion with over 200 artists, art historians, curators, editors and reproduction rights officers, Professors Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi are drafting the new Code of Best Practices in Fair Use in the Visual Arts which will be reviewed by the Task Force on Fair Use, the Committee on Intellectual Property, the Professional Practices Committee, and an independent Legal Advisory Committee. We anticipate that the code will be presented at the Annual Conference in February 2015.
At the October 26th Board meeting, the formation of two task forces was approved: one to review CAA’s governance structure, and one to review its professional committees. As a greater number of faculty are now part-time, the board and committee requirements have to be adjusted so that the best expertise is brought to CAA within the most economical timeframes. The Board also had a lively discussion on the best directions to be taken regarding advocacy and how CAA can respond quickly and efficiently to issues that affect members’ daily work. We are exploring the creation of a task force on advocacy.
The CAA Board and senior staff held a day-long retreat which focused on a vision for the future of the annual conference—a more flexible structure, greater opportunities for interdisciplinary discussion, serving the needs and interests at each stage of a career in the visual arts, and the ability to quickly address issues that arise in the field, have an international perspective and participation, and reach those members who are not able to attend the conferences.
New, updated volumes of the Directories of Graduate Programs are now available through CAA’s website. From the data published in the directories, CAA will draw statistical information about all the visual-arts subdisciplines, mapping important changes in the field regarding enrollment and employment. We plan to make information from the past four years available to members in the coming months.
The September issue of The Art Bulletin features the third essay in the “Whither Art History?” series, as well as essays on Jan van Eyck and commemorative art, Hans Burgkmair and recognition, Watteau and reverie, and contemporary Indian Art from the 1985-86 Festival of India. The latest issue of Art Journal includes a forum called “Red Conceptualismos del Sur/Southern Conceptualisms Network,” featuring articles printed in their original Spanish and Portuguese alongside new English translations—this is the first foray into multilingual publishing for CAA. Art Journal Open’s first web editor, Gloria Sutton, associate professor at Northeastern University, has commissioned features from the artist Karen Schiff and the new-media historian Mike Maizels, as well as a dialogue between the curator Becky Huff Hunter and the artist Tamarin Norwood. The vision for this website is to provide an online space for artists’ works, experimental scholarship, and conversations among arts practitioners. And caa.reviews, now open access, includes nearly 2,500 reviews of books, exhibition catalogues, and conferences on art, as well as an annual list of completed and in-progress art history dissertations. Thirty-four field editors commission reviewers to address new publications, exhibitions, and exhibition catalogues and videos in every area of the visual arts. The new copublishing relationship between CAA and Taylor & Francis that supports all three CAA journals will complete its first year this month with a marked increase in readership. We are encouraging authors to use the multimedia resources offered at Taylor & Francis Online as well as its citation app.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded CAA and the Society for Architectural Historians a grant to cooperatively carry out research and develop guidelines in digital art and architectural history for promotion and tenure in the workforce. With the increased use of digital platforms in research and publishing there is a need for guidelines that reflect the best practice in evaluating digital art and architectural history. A task force will be formed of two art historians, two architectural historians, a librarian, a museum curator, a scholar from another humanities or social science field with expertise in digital scholarship, and a graduate student or emerging professional in art history or architectural history. CAA will hire a part-time researcher to gather information on current practices from faculty members throughout the country. Please see the Online Career Center for the listing.
CAA, like other learned, membership societies, faces significant challenges and opportunities for the future. The changing landscape of publication, academic workforce issues, advocating for the arts and humanities, serving a changing membership and the field are areas where CAA has and will continue to make a difference, by building on our legacy of leadership and embracing the necessary changes required to meet our mission and vision.
Candidates for the 2015–19 Board of Directors Election
posted by Vanessa Jalet — November 10, 2014
The 2014–15 Nominating Committee has announced a slate of six candidates for the annual election of four new CAA members to serve on the Board of Directors for a four-year term (2015–19). Voting will begin on Monday, January 5, 2015. The webpages for the election, which will include the candidates’ statements, biographies, endorsements, and video presentations, will be published in late December 2014.
The six candidates are:
- Derrick Cartwright, Director of University Galleries, University of San Diego
- Jawshing Arthur Liou, Professor and Director, Hope School of Fine Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington
- Chika Okeke-Agulu, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Archeology and the Center for African American Studies, Princeton University
- Katerina Ruedi Ray, Director, School of Art, Bowling Green State University
- Rachel Weiss, Professor of Arts Administration and Policy, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Andrés Zervigón, Associate Professor, History of Photography, Art History Department, Rutgers University
If you have questions about the Nominating Committee, the candidates, or the voting process, please contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison.
CAA Seeks Members for Its Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committee
posted by Vanessa Jalet — July 01, 2014
Get involved in an issue that you care about! CAA invites members to apply for service on one of its nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees. These committees address critical issues in the visual arts in an attempt to deal with, and respond to, the pressing concerns of CAA’s members.
Communicating via listserv throughout the year, each committee takes on the objectives it has set for itself, which include: programming ARTspace at the Annual Conference; establishing best practices, standards, and guidelines; sharing and examining pedagogical practices; examining new and developing technologies; addressing issues critical to emerging professionals as well as concerns of diversity and gender; extending the reach of CAA internationally; and clarifying and debating matters of fair use, copyright, and open access. This vigorous exchange of information reveals common goals and leads to solutions that will help CAA members to weather their changing professional landscape.
Committees are active at the Annual Conference in February, where each presents one or two sessions on a subject of its choosing. These sessions, sometimes collaborations between committees and sometimes dealing with workforce issues, are meant to be of immediate value to CAA members. Also at the conference, the committees hold face-to-face business meetings and discuss the past year’s accomplishments while targeting ideas for future projects. Participation on a committee is an excellent and fruitful way to network with other CAA members; for some individuals it is a stepping-stone to service on the organization’s Board of Directors.
The public face of several CAA committees appears most visibly at the conference. The Services to Artists Committee, for example, conceives nearly all content and programming for ARTspace, ARTexchange, and the Media Lounge, while the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee organizes events on professional-development issues that take place in the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge during the conference.
Online, the Committee on Women in the Arts publishes the monthly CWA Picks of exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship, among other activities. CAA’s Museum Committee is currently reviewing several of CAA’s Standards and Guidelines as they relate to museums. This committee also organizes conference sessions on museum leadership and exhibition history and works to provide resources for professionals in academic art museums.
The International Committee warmly welcomed twenty travel-grant recipients from around the world at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago and will host fifteen travel-grant recipients at the 2015 conference in New York.
The Professional Practices Committee continues to study, develop, and revise CAA’s Standards and Guidelines, so that these documents, once approved by the CAA board, become authoritative, comprehensive documents for art-related disciplines. The Committee on Diversity Practices’ current projects include organizing a 2015 conference session called “Diversity and Pedagogy: The Global Factor,” overseeing the Resource Directory for Diversity Practices, and expanding CAA mentoring programs.
The Committee on Intellectual Property updated the Image Resources page on CAA’s website and continues to monitor the tricky terrain of copyright and fair use, which dramatically affects the work lives of artists and scholars. The Education Committee is currently launching new initiatives concerning curriculum, pedagogy, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. This committee especially seeks new members from studio art, design and/or museums.
Committee members serve three-year terms (2014–17), with at least one new member rotating onto a committee each year. Candidates must be current CAA members and possess expertise appropriate to the committee’s work. Members of all committees volunteer their services without compensation. Committee work is not for the faint of heart; it is expected that once appointed to a committee, a member will involve himself or herself in an active and serious way.
The following vacancies are open for terms beginning in February 2015:
- Committee on Diversity Practices: 3–4 members
- Committee on Intellectual Property: 3 members
- Committee on Women in the Arts: 6 members
- Education Committee: 2–3 members
- International Committee: 2 members
- Museum Committee: 4 members
- Professional Practices Committee: 5 members
- Services to Artists Committee: 5 members
- Student and Emerging Professionals Committee: 2–3 members
CAA’s president, vice president for committees, and executive director review all candidates in early November and make appointments in December, prior to the Annual Conference. New members are introduced to their committees during their respective business meetings at the conference.
Nominations and self-nominations should include a brief statement (no more than 150 words) describing your qualifications and experience and an abbreviated CV (no more than 2–3 pages). Please send all materials to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison. Deadline: October 17, 2014.
Juror Sought for the Millard Meiss Publication Fund
posted by CAA — June 30, 2014
CAA seeks nominations and self-nominations from an architectural historian or an art historian with a specialization in Islamic, East Asian, or contemporary art to serve on the jury for the Millard Meiss Publication Fund for a four-year term, ending on June 30, 2018. Candidates must be actively publishing scholars with demonstrated seniority and achievement; institutional affiliation is not required.
The Meiss jury awards subsidies to support the publication of book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art and related subjects. Members review manuscripts and grant applications twice a year and meet in New York in the spring and fall to select the awardees. CAA reimburses jury members for travel and lodging expenses in accordance with its travel policy.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on another CAA editorial board or committee. Jury members may not themselves apply for a grant in this program during their term of service. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a letter describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and contact information to: Millard Meiss Publication Fund Jury, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or send all materials as email attachments to Alex Gershuny, CAA editorial manager. Deadline: July 22, 2014.
New Appointments to CAA’s Editorial Boards
posted by Christopher Howard — June 24, 2014
The president of CAA’s Board of Directors, DeWitt Godfrey, has made appointments to the editorial boards of CAA’s three scholarly journals, in consultation with the editorial boards and the vice president for publications, Suzanne Preston Blier. The appointments take effect on July 1, 2014.
Art Journal
Two new members-at-large have joined the Art Journal Editorial Board. Tirza True Latimer is an associate professor at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and chair of its graduate program in visual and critical studies. Janet Kraynak is an associate professor of contemporary art history at the New School in New York, with joint appointment at Parsons the New School for Design and Eugene Lang College. The terms for Latimer and Kraynak extend until June 30, 2018.
The Art Bulletin
The Art Bulletin has announced its next reviews editor: Nancy Um, associate professor in the Department of Art History at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and a scholar of Islamic art and visual culture. For the past year, Um has been a scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. From 2011 to 2014, she served as the inaugural reviews editor of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. Um is the author of The Merchant Houses of Mocha: Trade and Architecture in an Indian Ocean Port (University of Washington Press, 2009), as well as many essays and book chapters. Um will succeed Rachael DeLue of Princeton University, beginning a three-year-term as reviews editor on July 1, 2015, with the preceding year as reviews editor designate.
caa.reviews
The caa.reviews Editorial Board welcomes two new members-at-large: Meredith Cohen and Suzanne Hudson. Cohen is a historian of the art, architecture, and urbanism of medieval Europe and an assistant professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Hudson is an assistant professor of art history and fine arts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and currently serves as the caa.reviews field editor for exhibitions of modern and contemporary art on the West Coast. Both Cohen and Hudson will serve four-year terms on the editorial board, from July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2018.
The caa.reviews Council of Field Editors has four new members. Phillip Bloom, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Indiana in Bloomington and a visiting researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo for 2013–14, will commission reviews of books on Chinese art. Edward A. Vazquez, assistant professor of history of art and architecture at Middlebury College in Vermont, will be the field editor for exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in the northeastern United States. Megan Cifarelli, an associate professor at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and chair of her school’s program in art history, will assign reviews of books on ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern art for the journal. Finally, Pamela M. Fletcher, a professor of art history and codirector of the Digital and Computational Studies Initiative at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, joins caa.reviews to oversee reviews of digital projects in the visual arts.
Report on the May 4, 2014, CAA Board of Directors Meeting
posted by Linda Downs — June 18, 2014
The Strategic Plan 2015-2020 was approved by the directors and the following priorities were established by the new president, DeWitt Godfrey:
- Advocate for workforce issues particularly for part-time faculty;
- Review the Professional Interests, Practices and Standards committees to ensure addressing critical issues in the visual arts field;
- Increase membership nationally, internationally and in terms of diversity; increase communication with members, including social communication;
- Find ways of extending the annual conference to a larger group of members; and
- Enhance utilization of digital capabilities by journal authors and promote digital expertise.
The directors are grateful to the Strategic Planning Task Force chaired by president emerita Anne Collins Goodyear and all the members who contributed to the development of this new plan.
The directors gratefully approved the endowment gift by Mary Douglas Edwards of $50,000 to support travel and registration to attend the CAA annual conference by women who are emerging scholars pursuing a doctoral degree or who have received their Ph.D. within two years prior to the submission of the application for the award of the grant and who will present research papers at an art history session at the conference with strong preference for papers on any topic pertaining to the art of ancient Greece or Rome, Medieval Europe from 400 – 1400, or Europe and North American from 1400 – 1950.
The directors approved the IRS Form 990 for Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2013.
The directors approved CAA joining the Partner Program of the Society of Architectural Historians.
The directors also approved the Resolution to commend the Women’s Art Journal requested by the Committee on Women in the Arts for the maintenance of high quality scholarship that serves as a forum for re-examining feminist concerns of the women’s art movement. A letter of commendation was sent to Joan Marter, Professor of Art History, Rutgers University and Editor, Women’s Art Journal.
The directors established a Task Force on Design, chaired by Debra Riley Parr, , to investigate and make recommendations to the directors on 1) tenure and promotion standards for designers; 2) CV guidelines for designers; 3) representation of design fields in all the professional committees; and 4) scheduling sessions at the annual conference on design issues.
The directors decided to evaluate the Professional- Development Fellowships in Art History and Visual Arts in light of the current job market and in the context of the Strategic Plan 2015-2020 and to temporarily suspend the program.
CAA Members Approve By-Laws Change on Membership Categories
posted by Nia Page — February 27, 2014
On February 14, 2014, CAA members voted to approve an amendment to the organization’s By-laws that will permit the Board of Directors to streamline the current categories of membership and develop a structure based on benefits rather than on income. The amendment also provides for flexibility in enabling CAA to make further changes to the membership structure as may be deemed desirable in the future.
The amendment grew from a detailed analysis of CAA’s current membership structure and reflects the results of a recent survey evaluating the most highly valued aspects of membership as well as the needs of contingent faculty. New benefits will include: online access to The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, and caa.reviews; additional online access to a non-CAA publication published by Taylor & Francis (the new copublisher of CAA’s journals); and JPASS access at a 50 percent discount. CAA will also offer part-time membership for contingent faculty.
Results of the 2014–18 Board of Directors Election
posted by Vanessa Jalet — February 14, 2014
The CAA Board of Directors welcomes four newly elected members, who will serve from 2014 to 2018:
- Helen C. Frederick, Professor, School of Art and Design, George Mason University
- Gunalan Nadarajan, Professor and Dean, Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan
- Dannielle Tegeder, Associate Professor of Art, Art Department, Lehman College, City University of New York
- David C. Terry, Director of Programs and Curator, New York Foundation for the Arts
Anne Collins Goodyear, CAA board president, announced the election results during the Annual Members’ Business Meeting, held on Friday, February 14, at the 102nd Annual Conference in Chicago.
The Board of Directors is charged with CAA’s long-term financial stability and strategic direction; it is also the association’s governing body. The board sets policy regarding all aspects of CAA’s activities, including publishing, the Annual Conference, awards and fellowships, advocacy, and committee procedures.
For the annual board election, CAA members vote for no more than four candidates; they also cast votes for write-in candidates (who must be CAA members). The four candidates receiving the most votes are elected to the board.
Art Journal Editorial Board Seeks Two Members
posted by Alyssa Pavley — February 13, 2014
CAA invites nominations and self-nominations for two individuals to serve on the Art Journal Editorial Board for a four-year term, July 1, 2014–June 30, 2018. Candidates may be artists, art historians, art critics, art educators, curators, or other professionals in the visual arts; institutional affiliation is not required. Art Journal, published quarterly by CAA, is devoted to twentieth- and twenty-first-century art and visual culture.
The editorial board advises the Art Journal editor-in-chief and assists him or her in seeking authors, articles, artists’ projects, and other content. The group also guides the journal’s editorial program and may propose new initiatives for it, performs peer review and recommends peer reviewers, and may support fundraising efforts on the journal’s behalf. Members also assist the editor-in-chief to keep abreast of trends and issues in the field by attending and reporting on sessions at the CAA Annual Conference and at other academic conferences, symposia, and events.
The Art Journal Editorial Board meets three times a year: twice in New York in the spring and fall and once at the CAA Annual Conference in February. CAA reimburses members for travel and lodging expenses for the two New York meetings in accordance with its travel policy, but members pay these expenses to attend the conference. Members of all editorial boards volunteer their services to CAA without compensation.
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. Members may not publish their own work in the journal during the term of service. 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, a CV, and your contact information to: Chair, Art Journal Editorial Board, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or email the documents to Alyssa Pavley, CAA editorial assistant. Deadline: April 15, 2014.
CAA Seeks Nominations for 2015–19 Board Service
posted by Vanessa Jalet — February 12, 2014
CAA seeks nominations and self-nominations from individuals interested in shaping the future of the organization by serving on the Board of Directors for the 2015–19 term. The board is responsible for all financial and policy matters related to the organization. It promotes excellence in scholarship and teaching in the history and criticism of the visual arts, and it encourages creativity and technical skill in the teaching and practice of art. CAA’s board is also charged with representing the membership on issues affecting the visual arts and the humanities.
Candidates must be current CAA members. Nominations and self-nominations should include a short statement of interest, a condensed résumé of no more than 3–4 pages, and the following information: the nominee’s name, affiliation, address, email address, and telephone number, as well as the name, affiliation, and email address of the nominator, if different from the nominee. Please send all information by mail or email to: Vanessa Jalet, Executive Liaison, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004. Deadline: Friday, April 4, 2014.