CAA News Today
Conference Information and Registration Booklet Mailed
posted by Emmanuel Lemakis — November 01, 2010
The recently published Conference Information and Registration booklet provides important details, deadlines, and directions for attending the 99th Annual Conference and Centennial Kickoff, taking place February 9–12, 2011. The booklet was mailed last week to all current individual and institutional CAA members; nonmembers and those wanting a digital file may download a PDF.
Following sections on registration and CAA membership, Conference Information and Registration explains basic processes for candidates seeking jobs and employers placing classified advertisements and renting interview booths. In addition, it lists topics for seven professional-development workshops and content for the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge. If you want to connect with former and current professors and students, consult the Reunions and Receptions page.
The booklet includes paper forms for CAA membership, conference registration, workshops, special events, and mentoring enrollment. You may also choose to join CAA and register online.
The contents of Conference Information and Registration are published on the conference website, which is being updated continuously between now and the February meeting.
Fall 2010 Art Journal Published
posted by Christopher Howard — October 13, 2010
The Fall 2010 Art Journal, CAA’s quarterly of cutting-edge art and ideas, has just been published. The issue explores the broad theme of “war and other disasters” in six essays, three artists’ projects, and an interview.
Katy Siegel, Art Journal’s editor-in-chief, observes that the contributors “point to ways in which we are still living in a postwar world, working through the rubble of the atomic bomb and under the shadow of its future use.” David McCarthy writes on David Smith’s Spectres sculptures from the mid-1940s, and a pen-and-ink sketch by Smith graces the issue’s cover. Cécile Whiting’s essay explores early-1960s works by Californian artists who were intrigued by World War II, and Jung-Ah Woo frames On Kawara’s Date Paintings as manifestations of tragedy, violence, and death. Through the lenses of politics, reenactment, and memory, Claire Gilman looks at drawings by Andrea Bowers, Sam Durant, and other contemporary artists.
Two artists’ projects join P-Van, the second comic from Kerry James Marshall’s Dailies series to appear on the inside covers of Art Journal. Walid Raad’s Appendix XVIII: Plates 88–107 obliquely captures three decades of war in Lebanon in letters, script, numerals, indices, and more, set against colored backgrounds. Yun-Fei Ji’s Three Gorges Dam Migration is presented along with photographs and an interview that document the making of the monumental scroll. In an accompanying essay, Jonathan Spence discusses elements of Chinese history, culture, and politics in the scroll. Elsewhere in the issue, Joan Kee theorizes the aesthetic approaches of East Asian artists in “The Curious Case of Contemporary Ink Painting.”
In the Reviews section, Margaret Iversen assesses Douglas Eklund’s catalogue for his exhibition The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984, and William McManus examines three recent books on the dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer.
A benefit of CAA membership, Art Journal is mailed to those individual members who elect to receive it and to all institutional members.
Two Jury Members Needed for the Millard Meiss Publication Fund
posted by CAA — September 23, 2010
CAA seeks nominations and self-nominations for two individuals to serve on the jury for the Millard Meiss Publication Fund through June 30, 2014. The jury awards grants that subsidize the publication of book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art and related subjects. It reviews manuscripts and grant applications twice a year and meets in New York in the spring and fall to select awardees. CAA reimburses committee 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. Please send a letter describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and contact information to: Millard Meiss Publication Fund Jury, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001; or by email to Alex Gershuny, CAA editorial associate. Deadline: October 15, 2010.
Task Force on Practical Publications Presents Charge and Survey Results
posted by Patricia McDonnell — September 21, 2010
Eager to serve CAA members and curious about the possibility of a new source for earned revenue, CAA recently formed a Task Force on Practical Publications. A committed group of educators, administrators, and staff members has begun studying a potential program devoted to practical publications.
For several years, CAA has considered publishing slim books of an instructional nature devoted to the practical issues so many members face. Questions these publications might address include: What options do scholars have for online publishing? How does someone lead a dual studio-art and art-history department as chair? If I am faced with teaching Baroque or Abstract Expressionism for the first time and it is not my expertise, how do I best tackle this unfamiliar terrain? CAA members confront these and similar problems so often. And we regularly invent ways to resolve them. A program of pragmatic publications that share good solutions or best practices at a modest cost might be a great boon to the field, or so CAA leaders and staff have imagined for some time.
Such programs are already in place at many learned societies, and revenue from sales creates a vital source of organizational income. As CAA maneuvers through a still-unsteady economic climate, it must continue developing new sources of support—earned and contributed—to thrive as an organization. In this context, the Task Force on Practical Publications developed.
This summer, the task force offered an online survey that queried the membership about the perceived viability of this prospective program, as well as a host of related questions. About six percent of CAA members participated, a number within the range of reasonable expectation. A healthy 85 percent of respondents believed that CAA members would purchase this kind of publication, if available, and 65 percent said that they would buy such publications for their own use. Both statistics are impressive, given that people made a positive judgment sight unseen. The responses are also constructive in giving CAA a clearer picture of what needs to be done.
You will learn more about the discoveries and recommendations of the Task Force on Practical Publications on the CAA website in the months to come. Please stay tuned!
Patricia McDonnell is director of the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University in Kansas and chair of the Task Force on Practical Publications.
Apply for a CAA Publication Grant
posted by CAA — September 15, 2010
CAA is offering two publishing grant opportunities this fall—the Millard Meiss Publication Fund and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant—that support new books in art history. Both grant programs have a fast-approaching deadline of October 1, 2010.
The publisher must submit the application to either or both grant, though only one award can be given per title. Awards are made at the discretion of the jury for each fund and vary according to merit, need, and number of applications. The Wyeth grant will be awarded in late November; the Meiss award will be announced shortly thereafter.
Millard Meiss Publication Fund
CAA awards grants through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund to support book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art 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. For complete guidelines, application forms, a grant description, and past winners, visit www.collegeart.org/meiss or write to nyoffice@collegeart.org. Deadline: October 1, 2010.
Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant
Thanks to a second generous three-year grant from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, CAA awards a publication grant to support book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art and related subjects prior to 1970. Books eligible for the Wyeth grant have been accepted by a publisher on merit, but require a subsidy to be published in the most desirable form. For complete guidelines, application forms, a grant description, and past winners, visit www.collegeart.org/wyeth or write to nyoffice@collegeart.org. Deadline: October 1, 2010.
CAA News Becomes a Weekly Email
posted by Christopher Howard — September 02, 2010
This month, CAA News transforms from a bimonthly PDF download into a weekly email. The new format is an excellent way of getting compelling CAA information more quickly; it also offers news essential to your life and career as an artist or scholar. If CAA has your email address, you will automatically receive CAA News every Wednesday, beginning September 8.
Each email newsletter begins with short timely notices about CAA programs and publications, grant and fellowship opportunities, conference updates, advocacy work, and more. Links to the CAA website allow you to read the full articles, and social-networking buttons let you easily share these links with friends and colleagues.
Keeping you up to date with the larger art and academic worlds, CAA News features selected headlines from national and international newspapers and magazines on topics that matter to you: publishing and teaching, contemporary art and its practice, new art-historical research, and copyright and intellectual property, to name a few.
In addition, CAA News brings you something different each week: fresh listings from Opportunities, links to recently published reviews in caa.reviews, news from our many affiliated societies, and monthly listings of Member News, which present a record of your solo exhibitions, books published, fellowships received, and more (starting September 8). As we get closer to the 2011 Annual Conference and Centennial Kickoff, immediate updates on special events and member-discount rates will arrive in your inbox.
To keep CAA News out of your spam folder, you may need to set your email preferences to allow messages from caanews@collegeart.org. If you wish to change your email for the newsletter, or to unsubscribe from it, you can do so at http://multibriefs.com/briefs/caa/index.php. To give your email address to CAA, log into your CAA account and update your Contact Info.
Comments, questions, or suggestions? Write to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor.
September 2010 Issue of The Art Bulletin Published
posted by Christopher Howard — August 30, 2010
The September 2010 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, has just been published. It will be mailed to all individual CAA members who elect to receive the journal, and to all institutional members.
The issue interweaves three essays that focus on art and visual culture in Europe with three texts exploring works from the Americas. On the Continent, Molly Swetnam-Burland looks at issues of reuse, display, and cross-cultural appropriation through the history of the obelisk in the Piazza Montecitorio in Rome. For his essay “Material Futures,” Richard Taws views Philibert-Louis Debucourt’s print Almanach national (1790) as articulating relations between the materiality expressed in the image and changing conceptions of time in the French Revolution. In his contribution, Darius A. Spieth investigates the “politics of nostalgia” in modern Italian culture through the reception history of Giandomenico Tiepolo’s fresco Il Mondo Nuovo (1791).
Across the Atlantic, “Circles of Creation” is Amara L. Solari’s exploration of how the Maya in early colonial Yucatán invented their own cartographic tradition that allowed for the preservation of community identity during the chaos of colonization. In “Rioting Refigured,” Ross Barrett examines the way in which George Henry Hall’s painting A Dead Rabbit (1858) reframes a mid-nineteenth-century rioter in New York City as an ideal nude, both tempering and exacerbating connotations of violence. Moving into the twentieth century, Ken Allen argues that Ed Ruscha’s experimentations with size and scale in his images of 1960s Los Angeles gave viewers a new experiential understanding of the city.
The reviews section presents four books on diverse topics. Timon Screech evaluates Melissa McCormick’s study of an early member of the Tosa School in Tosa Mitsunobu and the Small Scroll in Medieval Japan, and Charles Dempsey examines Stuart Lingo’s book on Federico Barocci: Allure and Devotion in Late Renaissance Painting. Erika Naginski’s Sculpture and Enlightenment, which looks at how historical forces and philosophical debated affected public funerary monuments in eighteenth-century France, is reviewed by Satish Padiyar. Finally, Karen Beckman considers Flesh of My Flesh, the latest book by the film theorist and art historian Kaja Silverman.
Please read the full table of contents for more details. The final Art Bulletin for 2010 will be published in December.
New Online Editions of Graduate-Program Directories Coming in Fall 2011
posted by CAA — August 17, 2010
The next editions of CAA’s two directories of graduate programs in the arts will be published in an online format in fall 2011. First printed in December 2008 and January 2009 and still available for purchase, the CAA directories are the most comprehensive source books for graduate education for artists and art scholars, with program information for hundreds of schools, departments, and programs in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and elsewhere worldwide. Colleges, universities, and independent art schools are all included.
The pricing structure for the 2011 online editions has not yet been determined. Each current volume costs $49.95—$39.95 for CAA members—plus shipping and handling. You may order them online.
Graduate Programs in Art History includes programs in art history and visual studies, museum studies, curatorial studies, arts administration, library science, and related areas. Graduate Programs in the Visual Arts describes programs in studio art, graphic design, digital media, art education, conservation, historic preservation, film production, and more.
For more information, please send an email to directories@collegeart.org.
New Faces for CAA Journals
posted by Christopher Howard — August 03, 2010
New appointments have been made to the editorial boards of two of CAA’s three scholarly journals.
Sheryl Reiss, lecturer in art history at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has been appointed the next editor-in-chief of caa.reviews, succeeding Lucy Oakley of the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. Reiss will begin her three-year term on July 1, 2011, with the preceding year as editor designate. Reiss had previously served on the caa.reviews Editorial Board from 2001 to 2005, and was also a field editor for books on early modern art in southern Europe.
Joining the caa.reviews Editorial Board for the next four years is Conrad Rudolph of the University of California, Riverside. In addition, five new field editors for books and related media have been chosen this year: Christopher Heuer of Princeton University in New Jersey will assign reviews in northern European art, and Tomoko Sakomura of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania will do likewise for Japanese art. Marika Sardar of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is field editor for books on Islamic art, Yekaterina Barbash of the Brooklyn Museum in New York will commission reviews on Egyptian and ancient Near Eastern art, and Christina Kiaer is in charge of books on twentieth-century art. Field editors work with caa.reviews for three years.
At Art Journal, Jenni Sorkin has joined the editorial board for a four-year term. Formerly a faculty member at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, she recently received her PhD from Yale University. In 2010–11 Sorkin will be a postdoctoral residential fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. The editorial board also has a new chair, appointed from within its ranks: Karin Higa, director of the Curatorial and Exhibitions Department and senior curator of art at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, will serve for two years.
All editors and editorial-board members are chosen from an open call for nominations and self-nominations, published in at least two issues of CAA News (usually January and March) and on the CAA website.
July 2010 Issue of CAA News Published
posted by Christopher Howard — July 21, 2010
The July 2010 issue of CAA News just been published. You may download a PDF of it immediately.
Introduced by Andrea Kirsh, CAA’s vice president of external affairs, the July newsletter brings you up to date on all CAA programs and services. It also includes an interview with James Sloss Ackerman, a celebrated professor of Renaissance architecture, and updates on the future of the Bibliography of the History of Art.
In addition, the July issue solicits your participation in the two upcoming Centennial Conferences in New York (2011) and Los Angeles (2012). For Los Angeles, CAA continues to accept your session proposals through an online process, and an article provides full details on the process. For New York, CAA invites artists to submit video documentation of performance work for the ARTspace Media Lounge, and the organizers of several panels—on Damien Hirst, the future of art history, and health and safety in the artist’s studio—want to hear from you.
The CAA News managing editor welcomes your submissions to the Endnotes section of the next issue. Please send listings for recent solo exhibitions, books published, and exhibitions curated, as well as news about your new position or your grant or fellowship, to Christopher Howard. Deadline: August 13, 2010.


