CAA News Today

Statement

As an intersectional minority, I understand, first-hand, the challenges that underrepresented groups face in higher education—whether as a student or an academic. For this reason, I have endeavored to specifically address diversity and inclusion inequities through my teaching and service initiatives.

I first had the pleasure to deep-dive into these issues when, while at Harvard University, I was part of a small cohort of university leaders across the entire university tapped to join the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging—a one-year working group of key faculty and administrators selected to 1) analyze the pedagogical and infrastructural landscape of the university, and 2) catalyze a set of recommendations that have since started to be implemented. Since then, I’ve continued my advocacy through my scholarship on teaching—especially as it relates to interdisciplinary pedagogy and practices—using art and design as a point of departure and cross-fertilization with other disciplines. Most recently, I was invited be an official delegate and speaker at the 2019 Hispanic Leadership Summit at the United Nations in New York City. Part of the summit’s opening panel (“Access to Education for Hispanics/Latinxs”), I was the youngest speaker sharing the stage with such leaders as Emmanuel Caudillo (Senior Advisor at the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics), Raquel Tamez (CEO of the Society of Hispanic Engineers), and Nancy Lee Sanchez (Executive Director of the Kaplan Education Foundation). In the presence of 500 delegates, I advocated for an emphasis on STEAM (rather than STEM) disciplines, more decisive support at the university level, and renewed legislation with regards to DACA students.

With this context in mind, and building on the CAA’s previous advocacy in enhancing equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education, I believe a strong path forward for the College Art Association is to establish a renewed commitment to bringing the arts to underrepresented populations, in particular black and indigenous students, and catalyze them in existing STEAM conversations—promoting unconventional program partnerships and university-to-job pipelines. An interdisciplinary education, with creativity, design thinking, and the arts at the core, will be key to careers responsive to existing climate-change challenges and resilient to the coming technological upheaval of the “4th industrial revolution.” Moreover, due to the challenges wrought on by the on-going global pandemic, the CAA will need strong and visionary leadership on part of its Directors to help the organization navigate the uncertain times ahead. The arts have always been the soul of civilization, and to avoid their continued defunding across colleges in North America, innovative thinking will be crucial to forge a strong tomorrow.

Download Alberto De Salvatierra’s CV

Statement

My career has been in the educational environment, focusing on graphic design and critical studies. I see intellectual engagement as a place of possibilities. In addition to teaching design, I practice professionally, and am an active member of many design organizations. But the structure of life has changed. The global pandemic, compounded with continuing issues of basic human rights and a deteriorating climate, has affected much that we value.

The MFA class of 2020 has experienced not only a loss of employment opportunity, but a loss of the support that contributed to our wellbeing. Loss, like the disbanding of The Type Director’s Club, an organization that I’ve actively supported for years, contributes to our overwhelming isolation. I am a member of the first class to graduate into this state of precarity. But uncertainty weighs heavily on the entire profession. When I facilitated a round-table discussion at the AIGA Design Educators conference, our chat box overflowed with requests for resources and advice to help navigate in isolation.

Apprehension during the transition from student to professional is not a recent phenomenon. The scarcity in teaching positions existed long before this pandemic. And a lack of guidance in writing and publishing, continuing to make work without a deadline, the expectations of maintaining scholarship and service, can daunt.

Resources like CAA assist by providing everything from creating CVs to webinars on interviewing, with efforts to demystify salaries, create mentorship programs, adjunct and labor advocacy, and sessions such as “Get Up, Stand Up: Contingent Faculty and the Future of Higher Education in the Visual Arts.” In CAA’s Art Journal Open (AJO) Kristen Galvin and Christina M. Spiker addressed the system itself. “The Cost of Precarity: Contingent Academic Labor in the Gig Economy” stated that robust discourse depends on a viable institutional ecosystem—healthy interaction and balance between populations to ensure resilience to various types of external stressors.

Today, our resilience is being tested as COVID-19 social distancing magnifies existing issues and forces us to adapt. However, our adopted platforms for communication have integrated and flattened traditional hierarchal structures of engagement. Event participation, although limited by technological advantage, is no longer limited by location. This expanded engagement has diversified communities as isolated transactions grow into ongoing relationships. Many of our “wicked problems” are being addressed through this immediate connection of people, ideas, and action.

I offer the first-hand experience of a recent student and emerging professional navigating the unpredictable. If elected, I will represent the organization’s future leaders, a group honed by adopting to crisis. But I’ve found this crisis to be a catalyst for possibilities. Platforms that provide social fraternization and leadership can build stable foundations for the future. These systems not only build relationships—but build platforms that allow others to build relationships. Through engagement, we can build for the new normal.

Download Patrica Childers’ CV

Statement

As a queer Latinx medievalist, I am intimately aware of the challenges faced by art historians of color. These challenges extend from the systematics of graduate training and the tenure and promotion system, as well as the unique precarities faced by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ scholars doing research in the field. Recognizing my place as a tenured, full Professor, my aim is to use the privileges afforded to me to support early career scholars. My goals on CAA’s Board of Directors are twofold: first, to champion the needs and successes of BIPOC scholars, offering my understanding of the challenges faced particularly by Latinx scholars; second, to speak to the needs of pre-modern art historians, particularly from my expertise as a Byzantinist working across the medieval Mediterranean world.  

Having received my PhD in 2014, I have faced the realities of today’s academy with dwindling job prospects and newfound publishing challenges amidst unchanging demands. At the same time, I have also moved swiftly through the tenure and promotion process at a large public institution. In my commitment to early career scholars, I wish to lead conversations as to how we rethink publication and peer review processes for a more ethical, equitable, and constructive scholarly landscape. As a medievalist, I also recognize that the needs of my field are severely underrepresented within CAA, which in past years has led to steep drops in membership due to a lack of representation and also in protest of said lack. My goal is to revitalize the visibility of and avenues of conversation for our constituents working on the ancient and medieval worlds.   

Over the past ten years and since my early graduate school days, I have been committed to service responsibilities that enrich our field, from programming to administration. Currently, I am the Director of the PhD Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where I am also a Professor of Art History and Chancellor’s Fellow. Starting next year, I am the Series Editor for the Viewpoints book series, run in conjunction with the International Center for Medieval Art (ICMA) and the Pennsylvania State University Press. I have an extensive record of serving on the governing boards and steering committees of a host of organizations, including the Medievalists of Color (MoC), the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BASANA), and the Gender in Byzantium Bibliography Project at Dumbarton Oaks / Harvard. And, at the Medieval Academy of America, I serve on the Inclusivity and Diversity Prize Committee. At UC, Irvine, I have served on three search committees for positions diversifying our curriculum in the areas of Armenian history, Iranian archaeology, and Latinx art history, film, and media studies. Additionally, my efforts have been focused on largescale fundraising for my institution, including our new LGBTQ+ Fundraising Committee, the Faculty Development Committee for the School of Humanities, and the department of Art History’s fundraising committee.   

As we look ahead, my goal is to make CAA a safe, supportive, and affirming space for BIPOC, queer, and trans scholars working across our organization’s multifaceted areas. I intend to use my extensive service background alongside my extensive research and publication experience to guide CAA into the coming decade, acknowledging my personal experience in the field as a queer Latinx art historian.

DOWNLOAD Roland Betancourt’s CV

STATEMENT

As a member of CAA, I have been a witness to its progress in different directions and aspects. At this moment of time, however, I am more interested to see CAA further grow in diversity and inclusion of subjects, membership and global connections. Given the current worldwide calls to decolonize art history and practice, CAA can play a pivotal role to facilitate this in the US, and consequently in a wider sphere of influence. For the survival, strengthening and to remain effective, this is the future direction I see for CAA. Moreover, my goal as an art historian who specializes in modern Arab art is to continue to reinforce the field of study that I helped build in academia and push for its further recognition and inclusion in the canon of art history as an equal sphere of knowledge, history and production. It is within these two interrelated scopes that I would locate my contributions and accomplishments as a board member. I want to see CAA become a more active participant in exacting change in the fields it represents and I want to see Arab art become part of its mainstream representation.

Download Nada Shabout’s Resume

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STATEMENT

I am running for the CAA Board because, as both an artist and an educator, my mission is to cultivate a creative space for all further. Working under an art institution as an Assistant professor and mentor regularly teach me this; that creative opportunity, freedom, and accessibility are of utmost importance. One of the most rewarding experiences for me has been teaching diverse groups of first-year students, and senior thesis students from all over the world and developing lesson plans for inter-disciplinarian practices and Art History. This environment profoundly resonates with my creative work around the politics of inclusion within my own art practice. In addition to serving as an educator, I have extensive advising experience with students of color as coordinator of the Altos de Chavon/Parsons partnership, advising Dominican and Latinx students through their college experience. Through this mentoring experience, I have also reached out to African American, Asian, and Middle Eastern students to navigate them through school and make sure their communities are represented. I also organize lectures and activities to both maintain and cultivate those communities within the university to help expose them to opportunities within their fields. As a board member, my immediate priorities would include diversifying our membership through community outreach, artistically and politically engaging more people, and facilitating more democratic decision-making within a renowned association. I am eager to play a role in utilizing the CAA’s resources to continue supporting artists, aligning myself with its academic, creative, and professional values. I believe the CAA needs more artists serving on its board to ensure a cohesive, effective, and grounded advocacy of the arts. The CAA is the body that ties our art advocacy work to our communities. I wish to uphold its inclusive legacy.

Download Scherezade Garcia-Vazquez’s Resume

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STATEMENT

I am an independent curator from Mexico City with vast experience in assembling international transdisciplinary exhibitions. My curatorial practice mainly revolves around exploring the relationships between body and territory through different artistic mediums. My research touches on topics of migration, feminism, politics of visibility and space. I am interested in assembling exhibitions that put into question gender binary concepts and propose alternative dynamics of power between bodies and spaces. A very important aspect of my practice is to gather artists from different backgrounds in order to observe how they approach the concept of territory. From my ongoing research about bodies and spaces I have become very interested in the notion of representation.

Download Ixchel Ledesma’s Resume

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