CAA News Today
Member Spotlight: Meet New Art Journal Reviews Editor Richard Hylton
posted by CAA — March 17, 2026
Richard Hylton
Art Journal is pleased to announce its new reviews editor, Richard Hylton. CAA News is happy to introduce him here and has asked him a few questions to help members, readers, and future contributors get to know him a little better. Welcome, Richard!
Tell us about your current academic position and your research interests.
My trajectory into academia is somewhat unconventional, coming from an art school background and then spending many years facilitating and curating exhibitions. I was awarded my PhD from Goldsmiths, in London, in 2018; did postdoc work at the University of Pittsburgh (2019–21); then spent four years teaching at SOAS, London (2021–25). In July 2025, I was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. So, in a roundabout way I’m returning to the US. At Tyler, I contribute to teaching undergraduate and graduate programs, focusing on African diasporic practice which complements the department’s globally orientated syllabi. Currently, I’m aligning teaching fairly closely to areas of my own research, including transatlantic slavery and contemporary art and histories of African American art in the international arena.
Another area of my research concerns the interplay of historical recovery between academia and the museum. This is evident in my recently published book Donald Rodney: Art, Race and the Body Politic (Bloomsbury, 2025) which begins with an examination of the artist’s “posthumous career,” in order to delineate between his lifetime and belated appreciation. How does temporality inform constructions of legacy in art? I’m also interested how contemporary art functions within the ethnographic museum. Beyond the substantial body of critical work rightly being advanced around cultural restitution and plundered artifacts, I am specifically interested in the cultural, social, and economic forces at play when contemporary art practice is thrown into the ethnographic mix. I’m eager to explore how this museological, highly endowed, and often racialized context may or may not inflect the production, collection and reading of contemporary art.
What do you hope to accomplish as Art Journal’s new Reviews Editor? What makes a strong review and who are reviews for?
As Reviews Editor, I certainly hope to continue the good work of my predecessor Balbir Singh. Over the past few years, a key facet of my own work has been to review books and exhibitions. I think it is such a productive and collegial part of being a writer and researcher, to take time away from one’s own research and to engage with the work of other scholars.
The role of Reviews Editor will also enable me to expand my own knowledge and to operate beyond my immediate comfort zones. Bringing attention to scholarly material, be it books or exhibitions, within and beyond the United States, is my goal. I want to commission both book and exhibition reviews to reflect the interplay between academia and museums. I also hope to engage a breadth of scholars, from graduate students and professors to curators and archivists. A good review offers the reader insight integral to which must be critical perspective on any given book or exhibition. How does said book or exhibition fit within and expand the field.
How does your research and public scholarship dovetail with your view of the Reviews section of the journal?
As previously mentioned, the politics of historical recovery in art is an active area of my research. From which positions do acts of historical recovery originate and on whose behalf are they expressed. Such considerations may inform my role as Reviews Editor. The post-2020 world seems to be an important era in which substantial publications and exhibitions, as well as academia, are seeking not only to pluralize art history but also many of art history’s central tenets based on economics, race, gender, etc.
And finally, what are you reading/viewing outside your academic purview these days? What is inspiring you?
My current and future teaching currently demands much of my reading time. But I see this as a good opportunity and excuse to revisit material, relearn, or learn afresh for the classroom and my research. I recently read and reviewed Rebecca Zorach’s Temporary Monuments: Art, Land, and America’s Racial Enterprise (2024) and Eunsong Kim’s The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property (2025). In different ways, these two books are bold and insightful acts of historical revisionism and contemporary critique. Other books I’m attempting to read are Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture (2020) by Sudhir Hazareesingh; We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memories of Faith Ringgold (1995); and Jean Toomer: A Hunger for Wholeness by Cynthia Earl Kerman and Richard Eldridge (1987).
Although I am moderately familiar with aspects of Philadelphia’s (art) history—Quakers and slavery, abolitionism, MOVE, Andrea Fraser’s Museum Highlights, Henry Ossawa Tanner, etc.—living here brings a different dimension and perspective to this knowledge. Even the “Sound of Philadelphia,” which, though not an audible presence in the city, was such a part of my growing up in London, offers opportunities for reflection today.
caa.reviews Seeks Librarian Editorial Board Member
posted by CAA — March 17, 2026
caa.reviews seeks a new editorial board member to fill the post of Librarian, an ex officio position, for a four-year term, July 1, 2026–June 30, 2030.
CAA encourages applications from candidates with a strong record of professional service in the realm of art information who are committed to the imaginative development of caa.reviews. An online journal, caa.reviews is devoted to the peer review of recent books, museum exhibitions, and projects relevant to the fields of art history, visual studies, and the arts.
The editorial board advises the editor-in-chief and field editors for the journal and helps them to identify books and exhibitions for review and to solicit reviewers, articles, and other content for the journal. The editorial board guides the journal’s editorial program and may propose new initiatives for it. Members stay abreast of trends and issues in the field by attending and reporting on sessions at the CAA Annual Conference and academic conferences, symposia, and other events in their fields. The Librarian member is expected to advise on issues regarding institutional access to the journal’s content as well as advances in scholarly publishing.
The caa.reviews editorial board meets three times per year, twice in the spring and fall and once at the CAA Annual Conference in February. Members also attend the annual business meeting of the caa.reviews Council of Field Editors at the Annual Conference. Members pay their travel and lodging expenses to attend the meeting at the conference. Meetings in the spring and fall are currently held remotely. Members of all editorial boards volunteer their services to CAA without compensation.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not currently serve on the editorial board of a competing journal or 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 email a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and your contact information as a single PDF to Eugenia Bell, CAA Editorial Director, with the subject line caa.reviews Librarian.
Deadline: April 15, 2026
caa.reviews seeks Field Editors
posted by CAA — March 17, 2026
CAA invites nominations and self-nominations for individuals to join the caa.reviews Council of Field Editors for a three-year term July 1, 2026–June 30, 2029 (renewable once). An online, open-access journal, caa.reviews is devoted to the peer review of new books, museum exhibitions, and projects relevant to art history, visual studies, and the arts. Candidates may be artists, art historians, art critics, art educators, curators, or other art professionals with stature in the field and experience writing or editing books and/or exhibition reviews; institutional affiliation is not required.
CAA is searching for Field Editors in the following fields:
- African Diaspora Art
- Art of the Ancient Americas
- Art of Canada and the United States
- Chinese Art
- Cinema, Media, Performance
- Contemporary Art
- Early Modern European Art (North)
- Islamic Art
- Exhibitions (New York)
- Exhibitions (West Coast)
In collaboration with the caa.reviews Editor-in-Chief, the caa.reviews Editorial Board, and CAA’s Assistant Managing Editor, each Field Editor curates content for review, commissions reviewers, and evaluates manuscripts for publication. Field Editors specializing in books are expected to stay informed about newly released and significant books and related media within their areas of expertise, while those focused on exhibitions should remain updated on current and upcoming exhibitions (along with other related projects) in their respective geographic regions.
The Council of Field Editors meets once a year in February at the CAA Annual Conference. Members of all CAA committees and editorial boards volunteer their services without compensation or financial support for travel to and accommodations at the Annual Conference.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competing journal or another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a letter of nomination; self-nominations are also welcome. Please email a letter of nomination or interest that includes qualifications for appointment, the nominee’s CV, and contact information as a single PDF to Eugenia Bell, CAA Editorial Director. Please include the subject line caa.reviews Field Editor.
Deadline: April 15, 2026
The Art Bulletin Seeks Editorial Board Members
posted by CAA — January 21, 2026
CAA invites nominations and self-nominations individuals to serve on The Art Bulletin Editorial Board for a four-year term, July 1, 2026–June 30, 2030. We are currently seeking to fill two positions on the board; current members are listed on the CAA website.
The ideal candidate has published substantially in the field and may be an academic, museum-based, or an independent scholar (institutional affiliation is not required). The Art Bulletin features leading scholarship in the English language in all aspects of art history as practiced in the academy, museums, and other institutions.
The Editorial Board plays an active role in advising The Art Bulletin Editors-in-Chief by suggesting authors, articles, and other content for the journal; performs peer review and recommends peer reviewers; advising books for review and potential book reviewers; may propose new initiatives for the journal, including roundtable content; and may support fundraising efforts on the journal’s behalf. Members also assist the Editors-in-Chief to keep abreast of trends and issues in the field by attending and reporting on sessions at the CAA Annual Conference and other academic conferences, symposia, and events in their fields.
The Art Bulletin Editorial Board meets three times per year, with meetings in the spring and fall plus one at the CAA Annual Conference in February. The spring and fall meetings are held remotely over Microsoft Teams. Members pay travel and lodging expenses to attend the conference in February. Members of all Editorial Boards volunteer their services to CAA without compensation.
Candidates must be current CAA members in good standing and should not be serving on the Editorial Board of a competing journal or on a CAA committee. Members may not publish their own work in the journal during the term of service. CAA encourages applications from colleagues who will contribute to the diversity of perspectives on The Art Bulletin Editorial Board and who will engage actively with conversations about the discipline’s engagements with differences of culture, religion, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, and access.
Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are welcome. Interested applicants—both self-nominated or nominated by someone else—should submit a CV and a cover letter as one PDF document to Eugenia Bell, CAA Editorial Director.
Deadline: March 31, 2026
Apply Now for Spring 2026 Publication Grants + Grantees Announced!
posted by CAA — January 12, 2026
CAA is now accepting applications for the Millard Meiss Publication Fund and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant. These grants support book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art, visual studies, and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher on their merits but cannot be published in the most desirable form without a subsidy.
The Millard Meiss Publication Fund supports the publication of books on any period or area of art history and visual studies.
The Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant supports the publication of books on the art of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Application instructions and criteria can be found here.
Deadline: March 31
Millard Meiss Publication Fund Fall 2025 Grantees
Miriam Chusid, Envisioning the Afterlife: Image, Text, and Ritual in Premodern Japan, University of Washington Press
Wyeth Foundation for American Art Fall 2025 Grantees
Elise Armani and Katy Siegel, What Was America? Art and Culture at the Bicentennial, Yale University Press
Congratulations to our grantees!
Art History Travel Fund: Apply Now + Congrats to Fall 2025 Grantees!
posted by CAA — January 12, 2026
Student from 2024 grant recipient Bernida Webb-Binder’s course on Pacific Art at the Hawai’i Triennial in Honolulu.
CAA is now accepting applications for the Art History Fund for Travel to Special Exhibitions. Twice yearly this fund awards up to $10,000 to eligible undergraduate and graduate art history classes to cover travel, accommodations, and admission fees for students and instructors to attend museum exhibitions. Visit our website to learn more about application requirements and apply now for travel to Fall 2026 exhibitions!
Deadline: April 15
Congratulations to the Art History Travel Fund Fall 2025 Grantees!
In Fall 2025, CAA awarded grants via the Art History Fund for Travel to Special Exhibitions to Oklahoma State University, The University of Iowa, The University of Texas at Austin, and Rutgers University!
Oklahoma State University
Instructor: Jennifer Borland
Course: The Medieval Body
Exhibition: Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages
Location: The Met Cloisters, New York City
Rutgers University
Instructor: Alex Seggerman
Course: Egyptian Art: Ancient, Islamic, and Modern
Exhibition: Living Units
Location: Gezira Art Center, Cairo
The University of Texas at Austin
Instructor: Rikki Byrd
Course: Black Curatorial Thought
Exhibition: In Minor Keys: 61st Annual Venice Biennale
Location: Venice, Italy
University of Iowa
Instructor: Erin Hein
Course: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael: The Rise of the Artist in the Italian Renaissance
Exhibition: Raphael: Sublime Poetry
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Global Conversations: Materiality and Mediation
posted by CAA — September 27, 2022
We are excited to introduce the presenters for the virtual symposium, Global Conversations: Materiality and Mediation, on October 4, 2022 from 11 am to 1 pm Eastern time. The event is organized by the College Art Association (CAA) and two of its international affiliated societies, the Design History Society and the International Association of Word and Image Studies. To register for the event, visit this page.
This global collaborative project brings together three intersecting constituencies—art and design, design history, word, and image studies—to examine how materiality and mediation intersect.
Four participating scholars will present on the following topics, followed by Q&A and discussion. The event will be recorded and shared online following the event.
This no-cost event is open to the public. Please consider donating to support no-cost programming and providing access to new and emerging scholarship.
CAA’s membership program connects you to the largest community of individuals and organizations working together and advocating to advance research, practice, and the impact of the visual arts. Visit our website for more information and to join our organization.
Questions? Email info@collegeart.org.
Interested in becoming an affiliate?
Arts organizations interested in joining CAA as an affiliated society can do so by visiting our website.
To join the Design History Society, please visit this page.
To join the International Association of Word and Image Studies, please visit this page.
Global Conversations: Materiality and Mediation
Presentations and Panelists
“Tavolino di gioie”: The Mediation of Material Techniques in Late Cinquecento Hardstone Inlaid Tables – Wenyi Qian, Ph.D. Candidate in Art History, University of Toronto, Toronto
Wenyi Qian is a Ph.D. candidate in early modern Italian art, with a focus on the relationship between artistic practice and knowledge culture of the period. Her dissertation examines the production of hardstone inlaid tables in late Cinquecento and Seicento Italy at the nexus of early modern craft knowledge, natural sciences, and courtly life and consumption. It aims to track technical crossovers between disparate artistic media and scales in the making of this genre of domestic furniture. She holds a BA in History of Art with Material Studies and an MA in History of Art from University College London. Prior to her doctoral research, she interned at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and worked as a convenor of academic programs at OCAT Institute, Beijing. This latter experience led to her interest in the historical formation of the discipline in Europe, as well as transnational intellectual exchange around the ideas of the arts and humanities across Europe, America, and East Asia over the last century. In addition to academic research, her translation of Victor I. Stoichita’s L’Instauration du tableau: métapeinture à l’aube des temps modernes is forthcoming by the end of 2022.
Mediating the Meaning of Textiles through Exhibition Displays in Israel, 1950s-1970s – Noga Bernstein, Marie-Sklodowska Curie Visiting Researcher, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Noga Bernstein is an art and design historian, specializing in modern craft in the United States and Israel, with a particular focus on textiles. She is currently a visiting researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her current research project, funded by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship, investigates the history of textile art and design in Israel between the 1940s-1990s. She also works on a book manuscript on the US-textile design Ruth Reeves. Dr. Bernstein is a recipient of grants from the Smithsonian Institution, the American Council of American Art and the Center for Craft. She completed her PhD in art history at Stony Brook University in 2019.
Made in Japan: Development of the Poster Medium in Japanese Commercial Art and Design – Nozomi Naoi, Associate Professor of Humanities, Yale-NUS College, Singapore
Erin Schoneveld, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Director of Visual Studies, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania
Nozomi Naoi is Associate Professor of Humanities at Yale-NUS College with joint appointment at the Department of Japanese Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore. She specializes in modern Japanese art and the media environment and is the author of Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2020; awarded the Honorable Mention for the John Whitney Hall Prize 2022). Her current project focuses on Japanese poster design and the role of department stores, designers, and global modernism during the early twentieth century and she is currently preparing her second book manuscript titled: Modern Design and the Japanese Department Store: Visualizing the New Lifestyle. She is also co-curating an exhibition on postwar Japanese posters at the Poster House Museum in New York, opening in March 2023.
Erin Schoneveld is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures; and Associate Professor and Director of Visual Studies at Haverford College. Schoneveld’s scholarship and teaching engages with modern and contemporary Japanese art, cinema, and visual culture. Her book Shirakaba and Japanese Modernism: Art Magazines, Artistic Collectives, and the Early Avant-garde (Brill 2019) provides a critical framework for understanding the tensions between the local and the universal that accompanied the global development of modernism. Schoneveld’s current book project Naomi Kawase and the Future of Japanese Cinema examines the role of Japanese women directors within national and world cinema cultures by evaluating Kawase’s auteur status at the intersection of film history, reception theory, gender, and identity. Schoneveld is also co-curating an exhibition on twentieth century Japanese poster art and design at the Poster House Museum in New York, opening in March 2023.
Mine Craft: Design Histories of Mining – Ellen Huang, Associate Professor of Art and Design History, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, California
Arden Stern, Assistant Professor of Humanities and Sciences, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA
Ellen Huang, Ph.D. is a historian of material culture, art, and technology at ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA, USA). In addition to teaching and research, Huang is also a curator, having organized exhibitions through universities such as the Ackland Museum of Art (UNC Chapel Hill), University of San Francisco and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, as well as for civic museums. Huang is finishing a manuscript about Jingdezhen porcelain as material design in late-imperial Chinese and global history. Huang has contributed to publications for museums, journalistic forums, and academic journals, including Archives of Asian Art, Journal of World History, Art&Object, Jewels in Buddhist Imaginaries (University of Hawai’i Press), the National Museum of Korea Research Series, and Oxford Bibliographies.
Arden Stern, Ph.D. is a design historian whose scholarship focuses on the intersecting histories of US labor, graphic design, and visual culture. They are currently an Assistant Professor of Humanities & Sciences at ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA, USA), also teaching in the Media Design Practices program, and have served as Visiting Faculty in the Department of Anthropology at Wayne State University. They have contributed to various scholarly and journalistic publications, including the Design & Culture journal, Design Issues, and Print magazine, and are currently working on a manuscript that analyzes labor and class histories of graphic design in the United States from the late nineteenth century through the present.
Members’ Corner: Former CAA President Judith Brodsky Co-Curates Retrieving the Life and Art of James Wilson Edwards And A Circle of Black Artists
posted by CAA — July 25, 2022
African Sky, an oil painting by James Wilson Edwards, will be included in the Arts Council of Princeton’s Retrieving the Life and Art of James Wilson Edwards and a Circle of Black Artists, an exhibition featuring the work of a diverse and vibrant regional arts community not acknowledged in contemporary American art history on view at the Arts Council of Princeton this October.
The Arts Council of Princeton will present a revolutionary exhibition in October 2022. Retrieving the Life and Art of James Wilson Edwards and a Circle of Black Artists reveals how Black artist/teachers were integral and influential members in a predominantly white regional community in the last quarter of the 20th century. While there have been blockbuster exhibitions of a few contemporary Black artists during recent years of efforts by museums and galleries to become more diverse, this is one of the first exhibitions to explore the historical context from which these artists emerged.
Co-curators Judith K. Brodsky and Rhinold Ponder say “this has been a magnificent voyage of discovery about the lives and roles in art history of Black artists who have largely been forgotten or ignored as well as a reminder of the significance of Black collectors in preserving and promoting the history of Black artists and ensuring that they are eventually remembered for their contributions. We trust that our efforts here encourage others to restore Black artists and arts communities to their rightful places in American national and regional histories.” Brodsky is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Department of Visual Arts at Rutgers and previously served as a president of CAA. Ponder is an artist, activist, writer, lawyer, and founder of Art Against Racism.
This exhibition focuses on five late 20th-century master artists who lived and worked within 25 miles of each other in the geographic region from Princeton, New Jersey to New Hope, Pennsylvania: James Wilson Edwards, Rex Goreleigh, Hughie Lee-Smith, Selma Hortense Burke, and Wendell T. Brooks. These Black artists represent a diverse and vibrant regional arts community largely unknown in contemporary American art history. Nearly all the works in this exhibition come from private collections, highlighting the importance of collectors of color in restoring Black and brown artists to American art history and how their collecting sheds light on the systemic racism of the American art world. Recent attention to diversity in museum collections has revealed that only 1.2% of the holdings are by African American artists.
Retrieving the Life and Art of James Wilson Edwards and a Circle of Black Artists will be on view in the Arts Council of Princeton’s Taplin Gallery from October 14 through December 3, 2022 and will include an opening reception, panel discussion, and more. Additional information can be found on the Art Council of Princeton’s website.
Jonathan Fineberg and Art Since 1940
posted by CAA — June 22, 2022
A prolific art historian and critic in the fields of 20th and 21st century art and the psychology of art, Jonathan Fineberg has shaped generations of students with his many publications and textbooks. As a long-time member of CAA, Fineberg describes his experience with the organization:
“Seymour Slive, one of my favorite art history professors in college told me I should join the College Art Association if I wanted to be an art historian. CAA was (is), he pointed out, my professional association! I signed up right away (in 1966) and have remained an active member ever since. I’ve served on the board, I started the “artist interviews” many years ago, I’ve chaired and participated in many sessions and committees over more than fifty years, and until COVID hit I think I only missed one annual conference – my personal protest against the racism and anti LGBTQ+ stance of the state of Louisiana (that was the year we went to New Orleans). I love CAA for the many things it does for artists and art historians.
In order to give back this year I decided that I have made my fair share of royalties on my survey book Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being, so I took back the rights from the publisher and have given a high-resolution copy of the last edition to CAA for free download by any students and teachers who want it. You will find it here. I hope it inspires students to love contemporary art as I do and to bring them to join their fellow travelers in the CAA.”
CAA is immensely grateful for Fineberg’s generous donation to CAA, a digital version of his seminal work, Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being, 3rd Edition. Fineberg is offering this publication at no-cost access to both members and non-members for three years. A valuable pedagogical resource at many universities, this text is out of print, which presents a problem for many art history professors and students who cannot obtain copies. We are grateful for Fineberg’s donation, and for his fifty-plus-year membership in CAA.
Museum Committee Research Survey: Developing New Directions with College Art Association Member Input
posted by CAA — August 26, 2021
Visitors in the Musée du Louvre in 2020 © Antoine Mongodin
In the spring of 2021, the CAA Museum Committee initiated a survey of our members for the purposes of revising current directions and charting new ones that respond to updated knowledge of their concerns.
The results indicate that the Museum Committee‘s previous and planned Conference sessions and professional development workshops in 2021–2022 are appropriate, that they should publicize their presence more, and should use these projects and others to strengthen connections with professional museum groups; encourage diversity, decolonization, and the use of museums to educate; in addition to fight for salary equity. In this endeavor, they ask any interested CAA members to join and help in this mission.
Key Takeaways of the Report
In general, respondents likely appreciate the recent focuses and activities of the Committee, yet wish they would also move forward in new directions.
Both the CAA panels and professional development workshops should be continued and can be used to achieve the following desired goals culled from survey responses:
- Help publicize the Museum Committee more broadly.
- Give museum and curatorial studies students, young professionals, and museum professionals, particularly those from underrepresented groups, necessary resources as they start their careers, and mentor persons who want to become museum professionals or teach museum/curatorial studies, including in concert with art history coursework.
- Support the function of museums as pedagogical sites, especially during the processes of decolonizing and defining decolonization.
- Develop and disperse a list of curatorial/museum studies programs in American universities, including those offered on conjunction with art history training, and perhaps have a dedicated space on CAA’s website or another location with a link on the CAA website homepage to publicly disperse this list.
- Renew efforts to craft and chart the implementation of policy statements and best-practice guidelines particularly concerning salary equity and unpaid internships, among similar issues relevant to the field, and to do so in concert with professional museum organizations, such as the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC), American Alliance of Museums (AAM), and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG). One way to do this is to have present and future Museum Committee members actively reach out to persons within professional museum groups to create joint projects.