CAA News Today
New CAA Standards and Guidelines
posted by CAA — December 05, 2016
At the most recent meeting of CAA’s Board of Directors, which took place on October 23, 2016, the following statements and guidelines were revised and approved:
- Statement concerning the Acquisition of Cultural Properties Originating from Abroad, from Indigenous Cultures, and from Private Collections during the Nazi Era
- Guidelines for Museums or Other Not-For-Profit Visual-Arts Institutions Working with Artists on Exhibitions and Commissioned Works
- Guidelines regarding the Hiring of Guest Curators by Museums
- Guidelines regarding the Hiring of Catalogue Essayists
At the Forefront: Intersections of Race and Art at the CAA Conference
posted by Christopher Howard — December 05, 2016
Photo Credit Maxwell Leung, Ph.D., CCAThe 2017 Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 15–18, boasts a number of presentations addressing the intersections of race and contemporary art, colonialism in art history, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Here are a few highlights:
Deborah Willis of New York University and Cheryl Finley from Cornell University will provide a historical overview through a session titled “Picturing Social Movements from Emancipation to Black Lives Matter.” Kellie Jones, an art historian at Columbia University and winner of a 2016 MacArthur fellowship, is among the speakers. Public Art Dialogue, one of CAA’s many affiliated societies, will host a discussion on “Public Art in the Era of Black Lives Matter.” The first presenter will be Evie Terrono from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, who has researched “Symbolic Interventions, New Narratives: Challenging the Authority of the Confederate Flag.”
The session “Race and Labor in the Art World” will be chaired by Hayes Peter Mauro of Queensborough Community College, City University of New York. The scheduled speakers—Sarah Cervenak, John Ott, and LaTanya Autry—teach in North Carolina, Virginia, and Connecticut, respectively. Elsewhere, four panelists will offer case studies of race and representation in nineteenth-century art, and another collection of scholars will examine “Blackness, Violence, Representation.” The Arts Council of the African Studies Association, also a CAA affiliated society, has given the tantalizing title of “Flesh” to its session, while another panel will give form to “Post-Black and Liquid Blackness” in contemporary African American art.
Richard Hylton from University for the Creative Arts in England will lead a panel that sheds light on British perspectives regarding “Contemporary Art, Ethnography, and the Western Museum,” while scholars from Italy and South Africa will lead a session called “Writing Art History in the Margins: Rethinking Centers and Peripheries in ‘Non-Western’ Art Historiography.” Finally, the Association for Critical Race Art History, another CAA affiliate, will present “Riff: Black Artists and the European Canon.” Among the artists to be examined are Robert Colescott, Carrie Mae Weems, and Moe Brooker.
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — December 02, 2016
Sarah-Neel Smith reviews Walid Raad, an exhibition and catalogue produced by the Museum of Modern Art. The museum “should be applauded for its impeccable staging of this rich exhibition,” while the volume “will undoubtedly serve as the go-to resource on the artist for years to come,” despite being “colored by a set of historiographic problems that Raad himself works over in his artistic production.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Mark Alan Hewitt reads Lost Mansions: Essays on the Destruction of the Country House, a book of essays edited by James Raven. The publication “takes up the subject of how England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have dealt with the destruction of county houses during the past several decades,” noting that today’s keepers “must squarely face the reality of multiculturalism, diminishing resources, and indifferent politicians.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Theresa Leininger-Miller discusses the catalogue Common Wealth: Art by African Americans in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, edited by Lowery Stokes Sims. Featuring one hundred works by African American artists, all of which were acquired by the museum over the past forty years, the “large, handsome” book “is part of a trend of museums publishing and showcasing their growing collections of African American art.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
caa.reviews publishes over 150 reviews each year. Founded in 1998, the site publishes timely scholarly and critical reviews of studies and projects in all areas and periods of art history, visual studies, and the fine arts, providing peer review for the disciplines served by the College Art Association. Publications and projects reviewed include books, articles, exhibitions, conferences, digital scholarship, and other works as appropriate. Read more reviews at caa.reviews.
Your Support Is Vital to the Arts
posted by CAA — December 02, 2016
Imagine our world without culture.
In today’s economy-driven society, it is easy to imagine a world where our past and present cultural history is ignored—or even worse, destroyed. We see educational systems focused more on science and technology and less on the arts and humanities, with art department budgets slashed and employment opportunities shrinking while student debt is rising to an all-time high and our collective historic cultural past is destroyed in the Middle East and other parts of the world.
That’s why the College Art Association is important. For more than a century, CAA has been the preeminent international leadership organization in the field of visual arts. We strive to create an environment where visual artists, art historians, designers, museum professionals, critics, and scholars successfully and freely create and prosper in their professional fields. We do this because we know if these professionals prosper, our culture will not only be preserved, it will thrive.
We ask that you join us in celebrating CAA’s rich history and prosperous future by making a tax-deductible gift to the organization. Your support goes directly to the programs we offer.
Register now for the 2017 Annual Conference, February 15-18 in New York. The Early Registration deadline is December 19.
Together, we can ensure that our culture is preserved.
Sincerely,
Hunter O’Hanian
Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer
2017–2018 Nominating Committee Seeks Members
posted by CAA — November 30, 2016
CAA invites you to help shape the future of the organization by serving on the 2017-2018 Nominating Committee. Each year, this committee nominates and interviews potential candidates for the CAA Board of Directors and selects the final slate for the membership’s vote. The candidates for the 2017 Board of Directors’ election were announced on November 29, 2016.
The Board of Directors and the Nominating Committee strive to find the best candidates that represent the broad subdisciplines and practitioners represented in the membership. The 2016-2017 Nominating Committee will select the members of the 2017-2018 committee at its business meeting during CAA’s Annual Conference in New York City in February 2017. Once selected as new members of the Nominating Committee, all members propose, in the spring, five to ten nominations of people to run for the board. Service on the committee involves conducting telephone interviews with candidates during the summer of 2017, and meeting in the fall to select the final slate of Board candidates. Finally, all Nominating Committee members attend their next business meeting, at the 2018 Annual Conference in Los Angeles to select the succeeding committee members.
Nominations and self-nominations should include a brief statement of interest and a 3–4 page condensed CV. Please email a statement and your CV as Word attachments, with the subject line “2017-2018 Nominating Committee,” to the attention of Jim Hopfensperger, CAA vice president for committees, care of Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison. Deadline extended: Friday, January 6, 2017.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — November 30, 2016
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
When Art Offends (and Isn’t Understood)
Salem State University in Massachusetts invited artists to create works inspired by the US presidential election. Several paintings, created by critics of Donald Trump, were intended to draw attention to oppression. But minority students were offended—and the university shuttered the exhibition. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The New Go-To Platform for Finding Artist Residencies
Anyone who has ever tried to find an artist residency knows it’s a difficult task. There are dozens of online aggregators of residency programs, but none claims to be comprehensive, most if not all websites are updated manually, and artists are hard-pressed to narrow down the multitude of opportunities to reflect their personal needs and preferences. (Read more from Artsy.)
How to Fix the Art World, Part 2
Last August ARTnews embarked on an epic project: finding out what inhabitants of the art world think is wrong with their world and how they would fix it. In the ensuing months the magazine spoke with more than fifty individuals—artists and curators, critics and historians, art dealers and an art-fair director—to gather a range of perspectives. (Read more from ARTnews.)
Help Desk: Solo No-No
I’m updating my CV and visited a friend’s website to clarify the details of a collaborative piece we worked on a few years ago. While looking for that project, I came across a different listing that we also shared: a two-person exhibition that he has billed as a solo exhibition. How do I deal with this? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
The Factory of Fakes
A digitally recorded copy, Adam Lowe argues, can be both a lode of “forensically accurate information” and a vehicle for provoking a “deep emotional response.” Because an artwork can be scanned without physical contact, the facsimile process makes traditional conservation efforts—from repainting to varnishing—seem like an exalted form of graffiti. (Read more from the New Yorker.)
It Is Pretty Easy to Get Art Experts to Fall for Fakes
The world of modern art is often viewed as irrational and perplexing by outsiders and insiders alike. Last fall, for example, an Italian art museum displayed an unusual installation, consisting of strewn-about champagne bottles, cigarette butts, and confetti, but cleaners at the gallery threw it all away, mistaking it for the leftover detritus of a party held at the museum the night before. (Read more from New York Magazine.)
MFAs Are Expensive—Here Are Eight Art-School Alternatives
Higher education is in a state of crisis. Student debt is skyrocketing, and those looking for master’s degrees pay ever-higher sums to institutions that frequently underpay the adjunct faculty they employ as teachers. For those in the arts, whether or not an MFA is worth the investment of time and money is perpetually vexing. (Read more from Artsy.)
DIY Syllabus: How to Move Beyond the Transactional
We all know that a syllabus must convey information and set an open and inviting tone. But no matter how skillfully and engagingly it does those things, a syllabus must move beyond the basics and embody the actual substance of the course to be truly effective. (Read more from Vitae.)
Candidates for CAA’s 2017 Board of Directors Election
posted by CAA — November 29, 2016
The 2016-17 Nominating Committee has announced a slate of five candidates for the annual election of four new CAA members to serve on the Board of Directors for a four-year term (2017–2021). Voting will begin in early January 2017. The web pages for the election, which will include the candidates’ statements and biographies, will be published in late December 2016.
The five candidates are:
- Colin Blakely, Director, School of Art, University of Arizona
- Peter M. Lukehart, Associate Dean, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts
- Melissa Hilliard Potter, Associate Professor, Columbia College Chicago
- Julia Sienkewicz, Assistant Professor, Duquesne University
- Greg Watts, Dean & Professor, College of Visual Arts & Design, University of North Texas
If you have questions about the Nominating Committee, the candidates, or the voting process, please contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison.
2016 Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant Winners
posted by Christopher Howard — November 29, 2016
CAA is pleased to announce eight recipients of the annual Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant for 2016. Thanks to a generous grant from the Wyeth Foundation, these awards are given annually to publishers to support the publication of one or more book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, visual studies, and related subjects. For this grant program, “American art” is defined as art created in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
The eight grantees for 2016 are:
- Ella Diaz, Flying under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History, University of Texas Press
- Jason Hill, Artist as Reporter: Weegee, Ad Reinhardt, and the PM News Picture, University of California Press
- Wadsworth Jarrell, AfriCOBRA: Experimental Art toward a School of Thought, Duke University Press
- Kellie Jones, South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s, Duke University Press
- Jennifer Josten, Mathias Goeritz: Modernist Art and Architecture in Cold War Mexico, Yale University Press
- Lauren Kroiz, Cultivating Citizens: The Regional Work of Art in the New Deal Era, University of California Press
- Tirza Latimer, Eccentric Modernism: Making Differences in the History of American Art, University of California Press
- Jennifer Van Horn, The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America, University of North Carolina Press
Eligible for the grant are book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American 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. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information.
Fall 2016 Recipients of the Millard Meiss Publication Fund
posted by Christopher Howard — November 28, 2016
This fall, CAA awarded grants to the publishers of seven books in art history and visual culture through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund. Thanks to the generous bequest of the late Prof. Millard Meiss, CAA gives these grants to support the publication of scholarly books in art history and related fields.
The seven Meiss grantees for fall 2016 are:
- Rebecca Brown, Displaying Time: The Many Temporalities of the Festival of India, University of Washington Press
- Richard Emmerson, Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts, Pennsylvania State University Press
- Michele Greet, Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars, Yale University Press
- Sharon Hecker, A Moment’s Monument: Medardo Rosso and the International Origins of Modern Sculpture, University of California Press
- Katie Hornstein, Picturing War in France, 1792–1856, Yale University Press
- Amy Neff, A Soul’s Journey into God: Art, Theology, and Devotion in a Franciscan Manuscript of the Late Duecento, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
- Hsueh-man Shen, Authentic Replicas: Buddhist Art in Medieval China, University of Hawai‘i Press
Books eligible for Meiss grants must already be under contract with a publisher and on a subject in the visual arts or art history. Authors and presses must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information.
Film Screening: Eva Hesse
posted by CAA — November 28, 2016
Zeitgeist Films offers a free screening of the acclaimed documentary Eva Hesse (2016) to attendees of CAA’s 2017 Annual Conference. Directed by Marcie Begleiter and produced by Karen Shapiro, the film is the first feature-length appreciation of this important artist’s life and work.
Eva Hesse makes superb use of the artist’s voluminous journals, her correspondence with her close friend and mentor Sol LeWitt, and archival and contemporary interviews with fellow artists—among them Richard Serra, Robert Mangold, and Dan Graham—who recall her passionate, ambitious, and tenacious personality.
The screening will talk place on Wednesday, February 15, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM in the Time Warner Screening Room, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Center, Museum of Modern Art, 4 West 54th Street, New York, NY 10019. The museum is half a block from the New York Hilton Midtown, the headquarters hotel.
The audience is limited to fifty people. Please send your RSVP (required) to emily@zeitgeistfilms.com.