CAA News Today
CWA Picks: Winter 2023/2024
posted by CAA — December 08, 2023
Diane O’Leary (Comanche), Watching the Weather, 1973, gouache on artist’s board, Great Plains Art Museum
The exhibitions selected for the CWA Winter Picks address issues of visibilities and invisibilities, particularly concerning artists coming from communities that have historically been marginalized for reasons that include race, ethnicity, region, religion, sexual identity, and gender. Works on view in the exhibitions on this list collectively evince a diverse set of creative practices, making visible the dynamic cultural production of groups that are often overlooked in art histories past and present. Artists represented include makers of previous eras whose works have been elided in accounts of their time periods as well as contemporary practitioners whose works grapple with continuing invisibilities—in the art world and beyond. The set of exhibitions on this Picks list underscore the critical importance of these artists and their works, insisting on their visibility.
Exhibitions have been organized by the regions where the hosting venues are located. These regions are by no means meant to be comprehensive and reflect Picks submissions by CWA members and colleagues. We are always looking to broaden the scope of these seasonal lists–please consider submitting exhibitions, lectures, grants, residencies, and other events and opportunities to future lists!
United States
Impressive: Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella
October 21, 2023–October 20, 2024
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella’s ambitious series of 25 prints, The Entrance of the Emperor Sigismond into Mantua (engraved 1675; published 1787), reproduces an Italian Renaissance stucco frieze designed by Giulio Romano (1499 to 1546) for the Palazzo Te in Mantua. This exhibition examines the context in which Bouzonnet-Stella (1641 to 1676) created these engravings, commissioned by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, advisor to King Louis XIV. Her work at the French court was part of Colbert’s plan as vice-protecteur of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture to promote a “French style,” based in classical art. Exquisitely executed, the engravings by Bouzonnet-Stella demonstrate how the power of classical art was borrowed from antiquity, employed in 16th-century Italy, and sought by the 17th-century French court
October 21, 2023–January 28, 2024
SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA
The first retrospective of Pacita Abad features more than 40 works. Over a 32-year career, the prolific artist made a vast number of artworks that traverse a diversity of subjects—from colorful masks to intricately constructed underwater scenes to abstract compositions—revealing visual, material, and conceptual concerns that still resonate today. Abad’s embrace of quilting and other kinds of needlework confounded critics, who dismissed her works as naïve, childlike, and ethnic. In fact, Abad’s multifaceted practice articulated a powerful material politics, reflecting her vision of a nonhierarchical world. This exhibition celebrates Abad’s bold self-determination, commitment to social justice, and radical artistic experimentation.
Colonial Colonnade by Doris Bittar
November 9, 2023–June 1, 2024
Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI
Pattern, repetition, and text are the foundation for Doris Bittar’s installation and other works in her first solo exhibition at the Arab American National Museum. Living in San Diego, Bittar draws inspiration from the Arab, Indigenous, and Latinx communities there. Colonial Colonnade is a visual, textual, aural, architectural, and cognitively rich space for interdisciplinary explorations of the Arabic language. In this site-specific installation, Bittar explores how colonization has affected language, among other aspects of culture, while creating a space for reflection and free movement.
Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!
November 17, 2023–March 31, 2024
The Jewish Museum, NYC
Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte! Is the first survey exhibition in the United States of Marta Minujín, a defining force of Latin American art whose trajectory intersected with the major artistic developments of the postwar period. Arte! Arte! Arte! includes nearly 100 works organized to reflect Minujín’s bold experimentation over six decades, charting Minujín’s influential career in Buenos Aires, Paris, New York, and Washington, DC. Works include her pioneering, mattress-based soft sculptures; fluorescent large-scale paintings; psychedelic drawings and performances; and vintage film footage. Ephemeral works—happenings, participatory installations, and monumental public art—are presented through rarely seen photographs, video, and other documentation.
January 27–March 16, 2024
The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA
(Re)FOCUS: Then and Now is an exhibition in two parts that aims to celebrate a historically significant 1974 feminist show that was called FOCUS by 1) bringing artworks created by the original 81 participating artists together in one space and 2) presenting new & recent work/s by Philadelphia-based artists who are exploring ideas of gender identity, representation, marginalization, social justice, violence, equality, and empowerment in their contemporary studio practices.
Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale
September 15, 2023–January 7, 2024
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale invites viewers to consider how space, size, scale, and repetition can be interpreted as political gestures in the practices of many women artists. Inspired by a 2021 exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), Taking Space features 10 works from that original show alongside 13 works from the collection of the Montclair Art Museum. Together these works reveal the varied approaches of women artists for whom space is a critical feature of their work.
October 12, 2023–January 14, 2024
New Museum, NYC
Judy Chicago: Herstory spans Judy Chicago’s sixty-year career to encompass the full breadth of the artist’s contributions across painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, textiles, photography, stained glass, needlework, and printmaking. Expanding the boundaries of a traditional museum survey, the exhibition places six decades of Chicago’s work in dialogue with work by other women across centuries in a unique Fourth Floor installation. Entitled The City of Ladies, this exhibition-within-the-exhibition features artworks and archival materials from over eighty artists, writers, and thinkers.
Fruits of Labor– Reframing Motherhood and Artmaking
November 3–December 23, 2023
apexart, NYC
Fruits of Labor– Reframing Motherhood and Artmaking brings together women artists unpacking the vastly personal yet universal experience of mothering. Encompassing painting, sculpture, video, installation, photography and text-based work, the exhibition evokes motherhood thematically, but also explores the countless tangential ways in which this subject appears in artists’ practice, as a mode of work and being. The artists ultimately make a compelling argument: it is not motherhood that is in conflict with artmaking but the prevailing narratives defining both caregiving and artistic expression.
Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800
October 1, 2023–January 7, 2024
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800 aims to correct the broadly held but mistaken belief that women artists in Europe were rare and less talented than their male counterparts. With over 200 works, from royal portraits and devotional sculptures to embroidered objects, tapestries, costumes, wax sculptures, metalwork, ceramics, graphic arts, furniture, and more, Making Her Mark features objects from the 15th to 18th centuries that reflect the multifaceted and often overlooked ways that women contributed to the visual arts of Europe.
May 27, 2023–January 1, 2024
National Museum of the American Indian, Bowling Green, NY
Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch is the first major retrospective of Shelley Niro’s paintings, photographs, mixed-media works, and films. Accessible, humorous, and peppered with references to popular culture, Niro’s art delves into the timeless cultural knowledge and generational histories of her Six Nations Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) community; addresses stereotypes associated with Native people, particularly women; and ultimately provides purpose and healing.
Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers
June 25, 2023–January 7, 2024
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT
Working mainly in portraiture, Caddo Nation painter and sculptor Raven Halfmoon fuses Caddo pottery traditions (a history of making mostly done by women) with populist gestures—often tagging her work (a reference to Caddo tattooing). Her palette is specific and matches both the clay bodies she selects and the glazes she fires with—reds (after the Oklahoma soil and the blood of murdered Indigenous women), blacks (referencing the natural clay native to the Red River), and creams. Her works reference stories of the Caddo Nation, specifically her feminist lineage and the power of its complexities.
No Rest: The Epidemic of Stolen Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2Spirits
January 12, 2023–Extended through 2024
Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, Evanston, IL
The exhibition features 35 original works from 12 collaborating Indigenous artists and draws attention to the crimes perpetrated against Native women and two-spirit individuals in the United States. Rather than present the impacted individuals and communities as statistics, the Mitchell Museum employs an interdisciplinary approach that includes visual stories, interactive content, educational programming, community events, and an awareness campaign to humanize and honor the lives of Indigenous women and two-spirit individuals.
From Paintbrushes to Camera Lenses: Creative Women of the Great Plains, Part II
July 25–December 16, 2023
Great Plains Art Museum, Lincoln, NE
In fall 2018, the Great Plains Art Museum mounted From Paintbrushes to Camera Lenses: Creative Women of the Great Plains, an exhibition that highlighted exceptional work created by female artists from the museum’s permanent collection. To complement other female-focused exhibitions on view during fall 2023 (see below), the museum is organizing part two of this exhibition to showcase many recent acquisitions and other works from the collection by women that were not shown in the first installation.
Supporting Indigenous Sisters: An International Print Exchange
July 25–December 16, 2023
Great Plains Art Museum, Lincoln, NE
Supporting Indigenous Sisters is a print portfolio exchange involving sixteen artists from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous backgrounds. The portfolio was created to help begin conversations on many levels about missing and murdered Indigenous women. Each artist was asked to reach into their own experiences as a female walking this earth. The images from all of the artists advocate for change and for voicing this dark present history.
Threads & Trails: Contemplations of Our Herstories
July 25–December 16, 2023
Great Plains Art Museum, Lincoln, NE
Threads & Trails: Contemplations of Our Herstories is a collaborative exhibition created by five female-identifying artists who connect their personal histories to the conquest of the American West and Indigenous dispossession.
November 3–December 23, 2023
DOCUMENT, Chicago, IL
Natani Notah is a Diné (Navajo) interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores contemporary Native American existence through the lens of Indigenous Feminism. In Thoughts on Being Thrown, Notah connects maps, bodies, and objects to reflect on the larger social issues that repeatedly intersect the lives of women and men alike.
Form, Growth, and Variation: The Experimental Prints of Helen Phillips
November 16, 2023–February 24, 2024
Wright Museum of Art, Beloit College, Beloit, WI
California-born sculptress Helen Phillips found printmaking in the 1930s at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in Paris. Though she remained primarily a sculptor, this exhibition chronicles her body of intaglio work—and it is the first solo exhibition of Phillips’s work in the US. From her early, transformative years in Paris, through her move to New York in 1940—when she became a mother—and back to Paris in the 1950s where she produced daring work in color, the prints showcase the artist’s constant affinity to three dimensions, growth in printmaking, and experimentation in line and color.
Nancy Baker Cahill: Through Lines
October 28, 2023–May 19, 2024
Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA
This solo exhibition highlights the artist’s interdisciplinary artistic practice and the role of emerging technologies in contemporary art. This mid-career survey exhibition is Baker Cahill’s first solo museum show. Expanding upon her background in traditional media, the artist redefines the possibilities of drawing in contemporary art by using augmented reality to transform her graphite-on-paper drawings into immersive environments.
Public Works: Art by Elizabeth Olds
February 3–July 14, 2024
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
Elizabeth Olds portrayed Depression-era conditions in the United States and was part of a group that promoted the affordability and accessibility of silkscreen printing. This first critically-engaged solo exhibition of her work considers Olds’s lifelong advocacy—from her depictions of labor conditions in the US mining and meatpacking industries, to her satirical social commentary, to her illustrated books for children.
Jen Everett: Could you dim the lights?
February 1–October 5, 2024
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL
Artist and educator Jen Everett remixes images of herself in conversation with materials she collects to talk about Black life, kinship, and collective gathering. Could you dim the lights? at Krannert Art Museum is her first solo museum presentation. Revisiting childhood photographs, Everett deeply engages rupture—upheaval too familiar in Black life—and recognizes the private, intimate aspects of vernacular images, creatively negotiating ways to maintain their insistent, quiet power. The show is comprised of photographs, moving images, and sound. Inspired partly by her 2022 residency on Fire Island, the exhibition surfaces Black lesbians and queer presence in Black vernacular archives.
Sketch: Contemporary Artists in Conversation with Emily Grace Hanks
October 25–December 6, 2023
Doris Ulmann Galleries at Berea College, Berea, KY
In the summer of 2023, Sara Olshansky and Esther Sitver partook in a residency at the Doris Ulmann Galleries during which they studied the work and personal papers of Emily Grace Hanks (American, 1886-1962) housed in the Berea College Art Collection—and then created a series of artworks in response to what they found. Seeking to “activate” Hanks’ historical artworks for a contemporary, largely undergraduate audience, this exhibition explores the connections that can be made between artists across time and raises questions about what it means to leave an artistic “legacy.” What can we find when we look to the past? What can an archive reveal… and what does it leave obscured? And how can we fill in the gaps?
Deborah Butterfield: P.S. These are not horses
October 1, 2023–June 24, 2024
Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at University of California, Davis, CA
For more than 50 years, Deborah Butterfield has explored the horse—both its form and presence. And yet, P.S. These are not horses encourages viewers to understand her sculpture as more than representations of the equine world. Taken from the closing line of a poem by Butterfield’s mentor, William T. Wiley, the title emphasizes the sculptor’s commitment to abstraction and her profound investment in material experimentation. The exhibition surveys Butterfield’s career from her most recent wildfire sculptures to rare early works including ceramics made while studying at UC Davis.
Shiva Ahmadi: Strands of Resilience
January 28–May 6, 2024
Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at University of California, Davis, CA
Shiva Ahmadi uses painting as a form of storytelling, combining luminous colors and mystical beings with violent imagery to draw attention to global issues of migration, war, and brutality against marginalized peoples. Ahmadi’s first solo museum exhibition on the West Coast of new works continues her exploration of alternate worlds where women have agency beyond the binary of the beautiful victim or ugly villain. Through her experimentation with the medium of watercolor, Ahmadi probes what lies hidden beneath the surface of the stories we are told, from ancient myths and childhood memories to the modern news cycle.
Samia Halaby: Centers of Energy
February 10–June 9, 2024
Sidney and Louis Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
Samia Halaby is a pioneer in twentieth-century abstraction and computer-generated art. Born in Jerusalem, Halaby trained as a painter, earning an MFA at Indiana University, where she joined the faculty before becoming the first woman associate professor at the Yale School of Art. This exhibition is her first American survey, featuring more than forty paintings, prints, drawings, and computer-generated works of art from across six decades. The exhibition presents a chronological development of her artistic approach to abstraction, examining formal and thematic relationships across bodies of work.
Yvette Molina: A Promise to the Leaves
October 21, 2023–September 7, 2025
Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
Yvette Molina: A Promise to the Leaves transforms the mezzanine into a museum community space with new art and designs in a site-specific and evolving installation centered around the four elements—earth, air, water, fire—and a fifth constituent, the cosmos. Molina encourages us to consider care as entangled within circles of life—care for one another, whether human or non-human, is care for ourselves and for all. Throughout the exhibition’s two years, Molina is inviting other artists to present their work in the space, regularly re-energizing the installation’s balance between comfort and provocation.
Mary Bauermeister: Fuck the System
November 11, 2023–January 20, 2024
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, NYC
Mary Bauermeister: Fuck the System is a memorial exhibition and the first solo show to open since the artist’s death in March 2023. It surveys the diverse, interdisciplinary oeuvre of Bauermeister’s seven-decade career. A child of totalitarian Germany who rejected the Constructivist mandates of the country’s postwar schools of art and design, Bauermeister’s art and worldview were always explicitly anti-tradition. Taking its title from a significant assemblage piece, Fuck the System features works from each of her major series. The artist’s fascination with paradox and its potential to reveal fissures in the foundations of entrenched conventions is apparent throughout her work, which both embodies and challenges contradictory binaries.
Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence
October 4, 2023–January 11, 2024
Godwin-Ternbach Museum at Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, NY
Godwin-Ternbach Museum is pleased to announce Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence, a spectacular overview of a new form of bead art, the ndwango (“cloth”), developed by by women with a shared vision working together in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The plain black fabric that serves as a foundation for the Ubuhle women’s exquisite beadwork is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts that many of them wore growing up. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists use colored Czech glass beads to transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form of remarkable visual depth. Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul” (in the words of artist Ntombephi Ntobela), the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.
Out of Bounds: Japanese Women Artists in Fluxus
October 13, 2023—January 21, 2024
Japan Society Gallery, New York
This exhibition will be the first to fully explore the essential role of Japanese women in Fluxus, a movement instigated in the 1960s that helped contemporary artists define new modes of artistic expression. Near the 60th anniversary of the movement’s founding, this exhibition highlights the contributions of four pioneering Japanese artists — Shigeko Kubota (1937–2015), Yoko Ono (1933–), Takako Saito (1929–), and Mieko Shiomi (1938–) — and contextualizes their role within Fluxus and the broader artistic movements of the 1960s and beyond.
The exhibition is organized by Midori Yoshimoto, Guest Curator, and Tiffany Lambert, Curator and Interim Director, Japan Society, with Ayaka Iida, Assistant Curator, Japan Society.
Canada
Being and Belonging: Contemporary Women Artists from the Islamic World and Beyond
July 1, 2023–January 7, 2024
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON
Being and Belonging: Contemporary Women Artists from the Islamic World and Beyond is a bold exhibition exploring the defining issues of our time from the perspective of 25 women artists from or connected to the broader Islamic world spanning across West Africa to Southeast Asia or living in diaspora. Deftly interrogating themes of identity, power, sexuality, and home, this exhibition resists simple stereotypes with outstanding artworks from both emerging and well-established artists.
Swapnaa Tamhane: No Surface is Neutral
September 23–November 26, 2023
Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC
Swapnaa Tamhane’s work challenges the colonial hierarchical separation between art, craft, and design in India. Her artworks include sweeping textile installations where space is transformed by fabric, colour, and light, and works on handmade paper.
Diaspora Dialogues: Archiving the Familiar
October 4, 2023–December 2, 2023
Sur Gallery, Toronto, ON
This exhibition establishes an ongoing dialogue with Latin American diaspora women who are working within the Canadian settler-nation-state, using archives as a strategy of inquiry and resistance. Through dialogic meaning-making processes, these artworks highlight how our social, and political situatedness in the world intersects with memory and power. The artworks in Diaspora Dialogues make visible the living political memory of the diaspora through diverse media art languages, manifesting affective approaches to the archive as a site of interpretation, contestation, and negotiation.
Mexico
Coordenadas móviles: Redes de colaboración entre mujeres en la cultura y el arte (1975-1985)
September 30, 2023–January 14, 2024
Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico
This exhibition responds to the urgency of developing new methodologies to rethink the history of recent art in Mexico and the place of women in it. The focus is on collaborative networks that built a creative field forged in differences, dialogue, conflict, complicity, vulnerability, rumor, secrecy, silences, frustration, and friendship, particularly between the years 1975 and 1985. Coordenadas móviles gathers research based on conversations with artists and the study of archives and personal and institutional collections in the country. It also includes commissioned pieces that perform contemporary readings of some historical materials.
Poéticas feministas: Ana Victoria Jiménez / Alicia D’Amico
November 30, 2023–February 11, 2024
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico
The exhibition puts in dialogue the documentary and artistic work of photographers Victoria Jiménez and Alicia D’Amico, protagonists of the feminist movement in their respective countries—Mexico and Argentina—who, through a look that ranges from the intimate and poetic to the social, incorporated into their photographic work their social commitment with a feminist aesthetic. The exhibition shows the scope and contacts between Latin American women’s movements, while at the same time situating the trajectory of these two artists in the context of Latin American art.
Europe + The UK
September 16, 2023–January 18, 2024
CO Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Since the 1960s, the US documentarian and portraitist Mary Ellen Mark has advocated for people on the fringes of society. This show features five iconic projects created by the photographer in the 1970s and 1980s. Ward 81 collects her documentation of women in a state mental institution in Oregon, Falkland Road is a reportage on sex workers in Mumbai, Mother Teresa’s Missions of Charity is an eponymous exploration both of the woman and her mission, Indian Circus reproduces a series depicting traveling circus families, and Mark’s award-winning Streetwise project and subsequent Tiny: Streetwise Revisited show her ongoing commitment to telling the story of Erin Charles.
Women In Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990
November 8, 2023–April 7, 2024
Tate Britain, London, UK
This exhibition is the first of its kind – a major survey of feminist art by over 100 women artists working in the UK between 1970 and 1990. It explores how networks of women used radical ideas and rebellious methods to make an invaluable contribution to British culture. Through their creative practices, women’s liberation was forged against the backdrop of extreme social, economic and political change.
September 20, 2023–January 22, 2024
Pinault Collection, Paris, France
This exhibition at the Pinault Collection in France features works on rice paper made by noted feminist artist Mira Schor in the second half of the 1970s, along with a recent painting made in 2022. With a fragile, solitary presence, masks and dresses are covered with highly personal, handwritten texts about the artist’s dreams and her interpretations of them, along with reflections on the Holocaust, to which she lost some of her family, and political writings. “In these works on paper, all that remains of the body are traces of its active, thoughtful character: writing,” notes Schor, “which thus complicates women’s legibility.”
MIDDLE EAST
Afra Al Dhaheri – Give Your Weight to the Ground
November 14, 2023–January 5, 2024
Green Art Gallery, Dubai
This solo exhibition of Afra Al Dhaheri’s work focuses on the concept of grounding: slowing down and observing; becoming conscious of our surroundings; and absorbing and processing. The exhibition is the accumulation of material language developed over time through practice and inquiry. It is layered with the artist’s research into the relation between materiality and the body (a tangible construct), as well as with labour, time, inherited ideologies, and the study of inhabited spaces (intangible constructs).
Roshanak Aminelahi: Faces of Resilience
November 14, 2023–January 2, 2024
Ayyam Gallery, Dubai
In this solo show, Iranian artist Roshanak Aminelahi illuminates diverse stories of women who navigated a male-dominated society and persevered through adversity. Using pointillism and color-blocking techniques, Roshanak captures the distinctive features of these remarkable women. Despite the faceless portrayal, the women are still identifiable, and the portraits symbolize feminine energy and stand as a testament to societal advancement forged through years of resilience and fight for equality by women worldwide.
Apply for Student Travel to Special Exhibitions
posted by CAA — November 07, 2023
Christopher Heuer and students from the course Pilgrimage/Exhibition/Biennale discussing their experience at the Venice Biennale during the CAA Annual Conference 2023 in New York, NY.
In fall 2018, we announced CAA had received an anonymous gift of $1 million to fund travel for art history faculty and their students to special exhibitions related to their classwork. The generous gift established the Art History Fund for Travel to Special Exhibitions. We are happy to accept new applications again for this upcoming year.
The fund is designed to award up to $10,000 to qualifying undergraduate and graduate art history classes to cover students’ and instructors’ costs (travel, accommodations, and admissions fees) associated with attending museum special exhibitions throughout the United States and worldwide. The purpose of the grants is to enhance students’ first-hand knowledge of original works of art. Interested members can also see recent awardees share their experiences at the session at the CAA Annual Conference.
Applications are due by January 15, 2024.
caa.reviews Seeks Field Editors in Eleven Areas
posted by CAA — March 21, 2023
CAA is inviting nominations and self-nominations for individuals to join the caa.reviews Council of Field Editors for the three-year term July 1, 2023–June 30, 2026. An online 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.
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- Indigenous Art
- Architectural History, Urban Planning, Historic Preservation, Landscape Architecture
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Islamic Art
- Cinema, Media, and Performance
- Nineteenth-Century Art
- Twentieth-Century Art
- Contemporary Art
- Early Modern European Art (South)
- Exhibitions: Midwest
- Exhibitions: Northeast
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Working with the caa.reviews editor-in-chief, the caa.reviews Editorial Board, and CAA’s staff editor, each field editor selects content to be reviewed, commissions reviewers, and considers manuscripts for publication. Field editors for books are expected to keep abreast of newly published and important books and related media in their fields of expertise, and those for exhibitions should be aware of current and upcoming exhibitions (and other related projects) in their geographic regions.
The Council of Field Editors meets once a year at the CAA Annual Conference. Members of all CAA committees and editorial boards volunteer their services without compensation.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competing journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome.
Interested applicants—both self-nominated or nominated by someone else—should submit a CV and a cover letter, in one PDF document to ebell@collegeart.org.
Deadline: April 30, 2023
caa.reviews Seeks Board Member
posted by CAA — March 21, 2023
**THESE POSITIONS HAVE BEEN FILLED. NOMINATIONS ARE CLOSED**
caa.reviews seeks a new Editorial Board Member to fill the post of Emerging Professional, defined as an active member of CAA who is in graduate school or in the first two (2) years of their career. The Emerging Professional will serve a four-year term, July 1, 2023–June 30, 2027.
CAA encourages applications from candidates with a strong record of scholarship 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 caa.reviews Editorial Board meets three times a year, twice in the spring and fall and once at the CAA Annual Conference in February. Members also attend the annual 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 by teleconference. 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 competitive 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 to Eugenia Bell, Editorial Director, ebell@collegeart.org. Please include the subject line caa.reviews Emerging Professional.
Deadline: April 30, 2023; finalists will be interviewed in early May.
CAA Staff Spotlight: Mira Friedlaender
posted by CAA — March 10, 2023
On Guard, performance centering on the installation of long-stored objects from the Bilge Civelekoglu Friedlaender Estate, FiveMyles, Brooklyn, 2014.
Mira Friedlaender is CAA’s Senior Manager of Annual Conference and Programs. Since joining CAA in 2018, Mira has worked with a significant portion of members (new and returning!) and continues to do so each year to support their participation in conference sessions and events. She produces the event with CAA staff, committees, and partners, attending to myriad details while also working to refine and reshape the conference each year in support of CAA’s long-term strategic goals. Mira was previously an exhibition manager for nonprofits such as No Longer Empty and HappyLuckyNo1. She also worked in television production and co-owned a restaurant in Brooklyn, New York.
As an artist and independent scholar of art stewardship, Mira has exhibited locally and internationally, and her work has been featured in the New York Times and Bomb. She has held residencies at the American Center in Bangladesh and Recess in New York. She is the Director of the Bilge Friedlaender Estate, was a fellow in the Art & Law Program, and cocurated Bilge Friedlaender: Words, Numbers, Lines in Istanbul.
“Since her death, I’ve been stewarding the art my mother Bilge Friedlaender (née Civelekoglu) made, beginning more actively in 2014 with my project at Recess, which was still in Soho at that time. I’ve contributed to the scholarship on artist estates through this work and through knowledge sharing; as an artist and artist’s heir I am most interested in performing an emotional institutional critique of the challenges artist-stewards face, particularly those without infinite resources,” explains Mira.
Curated by Işın Önol, Bilge Friedlaender’s never-before-seen works from the 1970s are on view now at Sapar Contemporary in New York City through April 10. Bilge’s work occupies a unique place in the Turkish and Middle Eastern modernist tradition as well as in the history of twentieth-century American art, especially the soulful minimalism of 1970s—not unlike the work of Zarina Hashmi, Etel Adnan, and Huguette Caland. Bilgé’s minimalism is infused with Sufi mysticism, sacred numerology, and reverence for nature and the divine feminine. Her spiritual feminism evolved into an overt ecofeminism as she grew older.
“My mother left Turkey in 1958 to come to the US and be an artist, and she exhibited until her death. Since 2015 there has been a museum show of her work in Istanbul and there have been subsequent opportunities for Bilge’s work, but this is the first time her work has been shown in New York City since 1981. This is a big step for the estate. Next, we are looking to travel this incredible selection of the works on paper and artist books with the goal of expanding the scholarship around Bilge’s artworks and extensive writings.”
Join Mira and curator Işın Önol in conversation with guests on April 4, 6 p.m. ET, at Sapar Contemporary.
Bilge Friedlaender, Weightless Pink, 1975
Bilgé: Lifespan of a Horizontal Line, Sapar Contemporary, 2023, and, right column, Half of What’s There, Recess Art, 2014
Bilge Friedlaender, Tides Time II, 1975
CWA Picks: Spring 2023
posted by CAA — March 06, 2023
The CAA Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) Spring Picks focus on exhibitions and literature that explore an interrelatedness of art and science. From the science of future technology to the science of biology, these artists utilize traditional and technological materials in their heterogeneous work.
Hayv Kahraman, Eye megaphones, 2023, Oil and torshi on linen, 177.8 x 177.8 x 6.4 cm
Hayv Kahramen, February 6 – March 25
Third Line Gallery, Dubai
Occupying both gallery spaces, Hayv Kahraman presents a series of new paintings and drawings that continue her ongoing scientific research and exploration into the effects of trauma on the body, and the role of the gut in our healing process.
Kahraman’s practice is heavily guided by her refugee experience, where notions of gender and trauma are consistent themes throughout her work. Recently, the artist has directed her research towards neuroscience, human immunology and “neurosculpting” – the ability to restructure the neural pathways in our brain through the gut microbiome – and how they specifically relate to trauma, and our ultimate goal to heal and repair.
Often referred to as the body’s “second brain”, the gut is responsible for our somatic state whereby the bacteria inside our gut regulates the hormones that control our feelings. Kahraman became increasingly fascinated with this theory, and how neurosculpting offers the potential to heal through the process of unlearning and relearning. In this body of work, Kahraman applies this theory alongside her own lived experiences to highlight the puissant connection between the mind and the body. Exposed and tangled digestive organs act as a visual metaphor of unraveling the restorative process.
Delving further into the gut microbiome as a site for recognition and renewal, Kahraman addresses the notion of “otherness” through the medium in which she paints. We have learnt to consider the bacteria and foreign microbes found inside our gut as undesirable, but in fact they are fundamental to our human psyche. By incorporating into her paintings the lilac dye from torshi – fermented beetroot served in Middle Eastern cuisine which is believed to improve mental wellbeing via the gut, and jars of which are on view in the exhibition – Kahraman affirms that the microbial world is verification of our acceptance of difference. Physically painting with torshi – i.e. bacteria – serves as an allegory to how we sentient beings live in symbiosis with the “other”.
Sarah Sze, March 31 – September 10
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY
Organized by Kyung An, Associate Curator, Asian Art, and was conceived and contributed to by Nancy Spector, former Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present a solo exhibition of Sarah Sze (b. 1969, Boston) featuring a series of site-specific installations by the acclaimed New York–based artist. Sarah Sze: Timelapse will unravel a trail of discovery through multiple spaces of the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building, from the exterior of the museum to the sixth level of the rotunda and the adjacent tower level gallery. The exhibition will explore Sze’s ongoing reflection on how our experience of time and place is continuously reshaped in relationship to the constant stream of objects, images, and information in today’s digitally and materially saturated world.
Sze creates across multiple mediums employing painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, video, and installation. She is well known for her intricate constructions using a myriad of both fabricated and found objects and images. Whether an intimately scaled sculpture or a large, permanent public commission, her works possess a generative quality—as though in a cycle of growth and decay—and dynamically engage with the spaces they occupy.
In Sze’s reimagination, the Guggenheim’s iconic, UNESCO World Heritage architecture becomes a public timekeeper in a reminder that timelines are built through shared experience and memory. In the words of the artist, “Like the collective efforts used by humans over centuries to communally mark time, to measure and mark it in physical form—ranging from Jantar Mantar, to the Prime Meridian line, to ubiquitous minarets, clock towers, and animated or astronomical clocks around the world—the museum building will become a site to explore the idea of a public clock, and an experiment in collective timekeeping that all in the city can experience.”
Inside the museum, quiet gestures, such as a single pendulum hovering above the fountain on the rotunda floor and a small sculptural installation tucked into an interstitial space in front of the freight elevator, demonstrate Sze’s distinct engagement with unexpected spaces. Visitors will enter an immersive environment: a panoramic sequence of eight bays occupied by a new series of works comprising painting, sculpture, video, drawing, and sound. These will be connected by a river of videos—seen earlier on the building’s street-level facade—which slowly travels up the spiral expanse of the building’s interior, creating a horizon line of moving images. As it travels across, above, and behind the works on view, visitors will be absorbed into a generative experience, continually re-orienting themselves temporally and spatially.
Kopotu Ipikosi (And They Overcame)
Pamela Enyonu, February 28 – March 28
AKKA Projects, Dubai
What is Fear?
Why do we Fear equality?
How does this Fear of achieving equality express itself in and around me?
This artistic essay is an exploration of the phenomenon of fear, and the positions it is experienced from; the instigation of fear and the effects it has on individual bodies and entire communities. What are the elements that create fear, how do the instigators of fear experience it and weaponise fear to curtail autonomy, and how is this activity systemised because it grows in scope and effectiveness; mass hysteria.
The artistic intervention aims to assess whether the effects of fear can be countered or even anticipated and to study the damage fear has on the quality of human expression. Pamela Enyonu was born in 1985 in Kampala, Uganda where she currently lives and works. Pamela studied Art and Design at the Kyambogo University Banda of Kampala, Uganda. Her artistic career started in 2017 with a 3 months residency at 32 degrees East, in Kampala, where she navigated the politics of identity, trauma, and healing. After her residency, she was invited to host a solo exhibition in June 2017. Another artist’s residency in Paris, France, followed in 2020, on the occasion of Africa 2020. In 2022, Enyonu has concluded her residency at AKKA Project in Venice, Italy, also being hosted by ProHelvetia, Zurich, Switzerland, in the same year.
Pamela’s style is inspired by stories, materials, and the process it takes to transform them into works of art. Her works present a tactile and 3-dimensional quality that richly layered textures exploring narratives on gender, identity, empowerment, and self-awareness. Pamela is particularly interested in the “untokenized” experiences occupying the intersection of empowerment, mental health, and identity. She continuously engages with the different communities through collaborations, workshops and seminars. Recently, some of Pamela’s latest works have been acquired by Africa First, and have become part of its private collection of contemporary African art.
Jennifer Chen , February 10 – April 30
Sci Arc, Los Angeles
No Evil imagines a long distant future when, after planetary scaled geoengineering systems have saved earth’s population from climate extinction, planet surviving events have become new creation stories: “machines that once filled the air, sown the seeds, fertilized the ocean, and dimmed the sun have long since been decommissioned.”
Exploring a world that was once on the brink of collapse, “saved only by the forgotten creatures of the past,” Chen is interested in using radical geoengineering processes as a lens through which we can investigate practical responses to climate restoration.
Using 2D and 3D data corrupting techniques to simulate the fading of memories across time and a mixture of analogue techniques including weaving, sewing, welding, and casting, as well as digital fabrication techniques including 3D printing and CNC milling, the exhibition combines decayed digital data and new cultural curiosities to imagine a world where new mythologies are created, giving rise to a new form of craft. Audiences will wander through an abstract forest landscape drawn from this future and encounter fragments of worship, shrines, tapestries, and stories told through film and objects. No Evil invites viewers to consider the forgotten tales, myths, and artifacts that once celebrated and revered these speculative relics of climate resistance as a reminder of what future could await us all if today, we turn a blind eye and cover our ears.
Chen is faculty at SCI-Arc and an architect and designer who works at the intersection of science and fiction, exploring themes of geoengineering, remote sensing, and climate change futures in projects that take the form of buildings, installation, film, and performance. Her new exhibition imagines a long distant future when, after planetary scaled geoengineering systems have saved earth’s population from climate extinction, planet surviving events have become new creation stories.
Tia Keobounpheng , July 22 – October 9
US Bank Gallery, The Minnesota Arts Exhibition Program
A Finnish and Sámi descendent, Keobounpheng uses her artistic practice to recognize her familial connections to both the colonizers and the colonized. “Revealing Threads” will feature her abstract tapestries, influenced by traditional Nordic handwork techniques but infused with contemporary interpretations and symbolism. The results speak to marginalized histories, heritage, and the complexity of personal identity. The works will be informed by a research trip to Sápmi, the traditional land of the Sami people, in fall 2022.
Keobounpheng is a designer/maker and artist living and working in North Minneapolis. She is a recipient of the 2017 and 2020 MN State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant, 2018 McKnight Foundation’s Next Step Fund, and 2022 MN State Arts Board Creative Support for Individuals Grant. Her work has been shown at the American Swedish Institute, in Minneapolis; the Finlandia University Gallery, in Hancock, Michigan; the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul; and the Anderson Center, in Red Wing, Minnesota. Her laser-cut jewelry has been sold by design retailers across the country for over a decade.
Fran Siegel , January 14 – March 4
Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles
Curated by Jill Moniz
Chronicle features 216 small drawings on paper that Siegel started at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fran visualized the discourse around the virus as extensions of her focus on pinwheel and maps, as a shorthand of place, and the aesthetics approaching abstraction. Moniz pairs these ephemeral works with Siegel’s painted tapestries that incorporate porcelain as armatures, structural hardware that deciphers colonial appropriation and cultural production.
The exhibition offers multiple entry points into dialogues that magnify how making transforms moments, from staged and beautiful, to essential and abject. Siegel’s works are intimate in scale, reflecting how the pandemic dictated her process and inspired introspective collaging of dreams, news and opportunities, unpacking and reassembling iconography that influences how we interpret and shape our worlds.
In her consideration of patterns and pinwheels, Siegel draws out form, emphasizing how we record our relationship to each other and the landscape, and how intricately and intimately connected we are. Siegel’s pinwheels represent for Moniz a fulcrum of visual language that expands and focuses our attention on both specificity and plurality of experiences that benefit from collective empathy. Chronicle explores Moniz and Siegel’s shared commitment to the depth and complexity of cultural associations foundational to place, and meaning making through art practice.
The Art of Gilah Yelin Hirsch
Literature/publication
curated and edited by Donna Stein
A retrospective survey of the Canadian American artist’s career.
Characterized by a search for meaning, Hirsch’s oeuvre connects psychological, scientific, and philosophical implications of form, bringing together ideas in art, science, ecology, and human consciousness.
The artworks in multiple and mixed media provide an evolving history of Hirsch’s ideas and craft as they illustrate the progression of her original research on the origin of all alphabets. Her elegant theory about five fundamental shapes in nature that reflect forms of neurons and neural processes of perception and cognition as the source of all letterforms in alphabets ancient to modern has gained acceptance in scientific circles. Her evidence shows that while cultures and languages bring unique beauty and richness to the world, we, as humankind, are more alike than different.
Since the 1980s, Hirsch has also been a pioneer in the field of mind/body healing, developing a type of visualization practice that serves as an instrument toward wellness. By organizing seemingly disparate information into a far-reaching scientific theory, Hirsch is recognized internationally for these techniques and has advanced healing practices through the arts.
Archaeology of Metaphor connects the artist’s visual themes to her philosophy and ideas, simultaneously encouraging greater awareness of pattern recognition, social dynamics, and interconnectedness.
Jessi Reaves: All possessive lusts dispelled
The Arts Club of Chicago
Chicago, IL
February 16-May 20
Jessi Reaves combines iconic modernist design with an irreverent aesthetic in sculpture that toys with functionality. Reaves often begins with found furniture, which she dismantles, converts, remakes, enhances, pads, and embellishes in ways that still allow the suggestion of physical contact or use. By breaking things open, she proposes that they be examined visually and in terms of their purpose in life. The exhibition at The Arts Club of Chicago centers on the work Personal Heat, 2021, a deconstructed étagère with accompanying video that explores themes of renovation and rebellion. The sculptural aspect features a pop punk aesthetic of hot pink animal stripes, as if Reaves had been locked in a room in her great aunt’s house with a can of paint, a saw, and some wood glue. The funk and humor of this work and other of Reaves’s sculptures and wall reliefs belie a mastery of complex composition, color, and the ability to integrate disparate materials. Reaves brings to her seemingly off-handed works a range of manual skills that she uses to both humorous and unsettling effect. Jessi Reaves: all possessive lusts dispelled offers a sensuous installation of works that allow the abject to infiltrate the ontology of the object.
The Taxonomy of Peggy Macnamara
March 9–April 28, 2023
Glass Curtain Gallery—Columbia College Chicago
1104 S Wabash Ave, 1st Floor, Chicago, IL 60605
The Taxonomy of Peggy Macnamara features an immense array of artwork that has been created during Macnamara’s tenure as the only artist in residence at the Field Museum. This exhibition focuses on her relationship to observing and working among the collections over decades where practice as an artist, teacher, and collaborator has developed a process of long looking that has created a taxonomy of its own.
Macnamara has traveled across the world, geared with her pencils and watercolors, investigating the fascinating intricacies of nature alongside scientists and peers from the Field Museum. Although her work uses the academic approach of illustrating, her savvy is evident in her loose handling of her art materials to document plants, animals, and related conservation work. Macnamara’s work artfully captures living things (or in some cases—once living), educates us, and sparks interest in the complexities of the natural world.
This exhibition hones in on a tapestry of works that inspire curiosity and deep looking at plants, animals, and the dynamic relationships between them. Macanamara’s attention to detail, and skilled hand at analytically dissecting plants and animals is revealed through the works that leave the stages of the development of a piece visible. We engage with her work for the love of looking, but inevitably discussions about nature, extinction, conservation, and collections permeate its surface. Come take a peek behind the scenes of the Field Museum’s collections through Macnamara’s work, and through special tours accompanying this exhibition.
February 11-June 5th
Art Institute of Chicago
This exhibition brings together nearly 100 rarely seen woodblock prints by Pape, some of which have not been shown publicly since the artist exhibited them in the 1950s and 1960s. Composed of overlapping geometric and linear elements, they at times suggest the clash of atomic particles, rudimentary city plans, or slides of microscopic specimens.
Elia Alba and Postcommodity to Participate in Annual Artists’ Interviews at CAA’s 111th Annual Conference
posted by CAA — January 19, 2023
CAA is pleased to announce that this year’s Annual Artists’ Interviews will feature Elia Alba and Postcommodity!
Photo: Michael Palma Mir
Elia Alba was born in Brooklyn to parents who immigrated from the Dominican Republic in the 1950s. She is a multidisciplinary artist whose artistic practice is concerned with the social and political complexity of race, identity, and the collective community. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College in 1994 and completed the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2001. She has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, including at the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Science Museum, London, Smithsonian Museum of Art, National Museum of Art, and Reina Sofía, Madrid. Awards include the Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in-Residence Program in 1999; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2002; Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 2002 and 2008; Anonymous Was a Woman Award in 2019; and Latinx Artist Fellowship in 2021. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, and Lowe Art Museum. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, ArtNews, and Forbes, among others. Her book, Elia Alba, The Supper Club (2019) brings together artists, scholars, and performers of diasporic cultures through photography, food, and dialogue to examine race and culture in the United States. She was part of the curatorial team for El Museo del Barrio’s critically acclaimed exhibition, Estamos Bien: La Trienal 20/21. She lives and works in the Bronx.
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary art collective comprised of Cristóbal Martínez (Mestizo), and Kade L. Twist (Cherokee). Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial, and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the twenty-first century through ever-increasing velocities and complex forms of violence. Postcommodity works to forge new metaphors capable of rationalizing our shared experiences within this increasingly challenging contemporary environment; promote a constructive discourse that challenges the social, political, and economic processes that are destabilizing communities and geographies; and connect Indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with the broader public sphere.
Postcommodity are the recipients of grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2010), Creative Capital (2012), Art Matters (2013), Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (2014), Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (2017), Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship (2017–18), Harker Fund of the San Francisco Foundation (2018–19), Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Shift Award (2021), and Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions (2022). The collective has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Contour: 5th Biennial of the Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium; Nuit Blanche, Toronto; Adelaide International 2012, Adelaide, Australia; 18th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; 2017 Whitney Biennial; Art in General, New York; documenta 14; 57th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh; Desert X, Coachella Valley, CA; Art Institute of Chicago; LAXART, Los Angeles; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Remai Modern Museum, Saskatoon, Canada. Their historic Land Art installation Repellent Fence occurred at the US/Mexico border near Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. The collective was awarded the Fine Prize for From Smoke and Tangled Waters, They Carried Fire Home, commissioned for the 57th Carnegie International.
Postcommodity acknowledges the important contributions of its previous collaborators: Steven Yazzie (2007–2010), Nathan Young (2007–2015), Raven Chacon (2009–2018), Adam Ingram-Goble (Game Remains), Andrew McCord (If History Moves at the Speed of Its Weapons, Then the Shape of the Arrow is Changing, and Promoting a More Just, Verdant and Harmonious Resolution), Annabel Wong (Dead River) and Existence AD (Dead River).
CAA’s Annual Artist Interviews will be held on Friday, February 17, 4:30–7 p.m. ET, in Grand Ballroom East.
The 111th CAA Annual Conference will be held February 15–18, 2023 at the New York Hilton Midtown. Register now!
CAA 110th Annual Business Meeting Minutes
posted by CAA — December 16, 2022
CAA Annual Business Meeting Minutes
Friday, February 18, 2022
- Welcome + Call to Order – N. Elizabeth Schlatter, CAA President
- N. Elizabeth Schlatter called the meeting to order at 1:05 p.m. CT.
- Land acknowledgements.
- Thanks paid to staff for their hard work bringing the 2022 Annual Conference to fruition.
- Executive Director’s Report – Meme Omogbai, CAA Executive Director + CEO
- Meme Omogbai welcomed everyone to the 110th Annual Business Meeting and expressed regrets that this could not be an in-person convening as the pandemic necessitated a pivot to virtual meeting.
- CAA staff remains focused on meeting commitments to members, based on quantitative and qualitative analysis, surveys and other feedbacks consistent with the fundamentals of our strategic repositioning plan.
- CAA’s aim for the 2022 Annual Conference was to create a smaller, more digestible program of 200 vetted and guaranteed sessions in two components, in-person in February and virtual in March, based upon membership feedback.
- Throughout the pandemic, the health and safety of members has been CAA’s primary concern. Based on the information and the feedback received from members, specifically concerns about an in-person convening, and close monitoring of the COVID pandemic and omicron strain as well as CDC guidelines, it was decided that the CAA 2022 Annual Conference would pivot to an entirely virtual format while also maintaining the scheduled dates: February 16-19 and March 3-5, with all recordings available through April 14.
- It is important to note that during the decision-making process, while the Hilton Chicago remained open, CAA 2022 registration statistics were drastically below what was needed to fulfill the negotiated room block contractual obligations and registration goals.
- The pivot to virtual has provided increased access to virtual content, allowing conference attendance to expand and embrace a global audience. In this flexible and accessible format, individuals can hear session content on their own schedule between teaching, family care, and other obligations, including acknowledgement of the climate crisis.
- Pricing was also adjusted for virtual access. Everyone registered for all access/in-person was automatically converted to virtual from a rate of $249 to $199 and directed back to portal for self-service options: 1) credit $50 to the next membership renewal; 2) $50 tax deductible donation to CAA; or 3) refund of $50.
- This year’s pivot exemplifies our model of constant learning and improvement where we adjust our plans based on feedback and data received. This is just the beginning; as we continue with our repositioning, we will be able to improve our responsiveness and agility in the process of supporting CAA members.
- Approval of Minutes of 109th Annual Business Meeting [ACTION ITEM]
- Jennifer Rissler, CAA VP for External Relations, moved to approve the 109th Annual Business Meeting minutes. Niku Kashef, CAA VP for Diversity & Inclusion, seconded the motion.
- 81% of attendees (25 people) voted to approve; 19% of attendees (6 people) abstained. The minutes were approved.
- Financial Report – Georgia Harrell, CAA Treasurer + Robert Tofolo, CAA Head of Operations
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- As of June 30, 2021, the association posted a breakeven operating budget with revenue including investment spinoff matching expenses and meeting our forecasts and budget expectations. The association continues to manage expenses within revenue means. Operating revenue totaled $3,001,778 verses prior year $3,321,000.
- Excerpts of the audited financial statements for fiscal year 2021 will be posted on the Association’s website. Complete audited financial statements have been provided and made available via guidestar.org and charitiesnys.com.
- In March of 2021, the association received a second payroll protection loan of $352,195 as part of the national CARES Act. This loan was fully forgiven in February 2022.
- As of June 30, 2021, there were 6,095 individual members down 9% from 6,699 prior year; this is reflective of continued systemic and pandemic impacts. There were also 367 institutional members versus prior year numbers of 443.
- The market value of the association’s investment portfolio as of June 30 was $11,946,566 versus a prior year balance of 9,825,458 million. The portfolio continues to be managed by investment managers at Boston Trust, now named Boston Trust Walden Company, under the supervision of the finance committee of the CAA Board of Directors.Georgia Harrell presented the financial report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021.
- Robert Tofolo presented an update on conference attendance and CAA’s strategic plan.
- As of today, February 18, 2022, 2038 attendees have registered for the 2022 conference. We will provide a final tally for attendance after March 5, 2022.
- In 2020, CAA implemented a five-year strategic plan to create a sustainable business model that can support operations and allow for endowment growth through responsible and streamlined operations. Although we are now operating within our means, we know that membership dues no longer support the operations of the association: combined revenues of dues, Annual Conference, and publications in fiscal 2021 only covered 63% of our operating expenses.
- In response to this, we are working to redesign our membership tiers in order to provide an accessible entry point to CAA.
- In November 2021 we introduced a new user portal which will function as a central nervous system for the member experience, enabling a unique “myCAA” experience tailored to each individual’s member journey.
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- Old/New Business
- No old/new business was raised.
- Board Member Election Results – N. Elizabeth Schlatter, CAA President
- Gregory Gilbert, Nazar Kozak, Karen Leader, and Adity Saxena were elected to serve a four-year term on the Board of Directors, beginning in May 2022.
- Victoria McCraven was elected as an Emerging Professional Board member and will serve a two-year term.
- Adjourn
Respectfully submitted by Maeghan Donohue, CAA Manager of Strategic Planning, Diversity, and Governance.
CAA 50th Anniversary of Feminism + Art
posted by CAA — September 19, 2022
CAA has engaged in a yearlong 50th anniversary celebration of feminism and art, culminating in a program and reception at Boston University’s Joan and Edgar Booth Theatre at 4 p.m. ET on Friday, September 23, 2022. This program will reflect on the incredible history of feminist pioneers at the organization while looking toward a more inclusive, equitable future. Along with the Women’s Caucus for Art and The Feminist Art Project, CAA is committed to ensuring our crucial work continues during this moment of precarity for women’s rights.
To expand national and global reach, CAA is partnering with ArtTable, along with Women & Their Work (Austin, TX) and Pen + Brush (NYC) who will serve as satellite locations for the 90-minute Boston program. We hope to introduce a new generation to the intersection of art and feminism at CAA and beyond.
To RSVP for the Boston program and reception, please contact development@collegeart.org.
To RSVP for the livestream of the Boston program, please visit caafeminism50.eventbrite.co.uk.
If you are unable to attend but would like to contribute to the 50th Anniversary of Feminism Honorary Fund to ensure this vital work continues at CAA, please visit collegeart.org/donate.
HOSTS
Meme Omogbai, CAA Executive Director & CEO
Jennifer Rissler, CAA President
CAA Board of Directors
HONORARY COMMITTEE
Lynne D. Allen
Laura Anderson Barbata
Charlene Villaseñor Black
Judith K. Brodsky
Scherezade García-Vázquez
Joanna Gardner-Hugget
Laura Hall
Ann Sutherland Harris
Margo Hobbs
Donna Jackson
Denali Kemper
Leslie King-Hammond
Laura Morrison
Denise Mullen
Ferris Olin
N. Elizabeth Schlatter
Lowery Stokes Sims
Anne Swartz
Connie Tell
Freida High Wasikhongo Tesfagiorgis
Susan Unterberg
PARTNERS
ArtTable
The Feminist Art Project
Pen + Brush
Women & Their Work
Women’s Caucus for Art
Women’s History Month and Art Journal Open
posted by CAA — March 21, 2022
Each week this Women’s History Month, we highlight the rich scholarship and programs produced at CAA that celebrate women in the fields of visual arts and the humanities. This week, we are sharing a bibliography of articles from our open-access journal Art Journal Open that feature women artists.
This Women’s History Month is also especially significant this year, which is the 50th anniversary of feminism at CAA. To learn more about this history, visit this page. CAA is also collecting archival materials to better understand and document the history of its Committee of Women in the Arts, including the committee’s many collaborations with other affiliate committees and groups, such as the Women’s Caucus for Art, The Feminist Art Project, the Queer Caucus, and many more. Visit this page for more information.
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Andrew, Nell. “DadaDance: Sophie Taueber’s Visceral Abstraction.” Art Journal Open (July 3, 2014).
Sophie Taueber-Arp, Free Vertical-Horizontal Rhythms (Rythmes verticaux-horizontaux libres), 1919, gouache, 11 15⁄16 x 8 9⁄16 in. (30.3 x 21.8 cm). Stiftung Hans Arp und Sophie Taeuber Arp e.V., inv. 003.205 (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Stiftung Hans Arp und Sophie Taeuber Arp) |
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Barakeh, Zeina. “Projections for the Third Half [Cloud Storm].” Art Journal Open (August 6, 2020).
Zeina Barakeh, Projections From The Third Half [Cloud Storm], 2020, animation, 3 min. (artwork © Zeina Barakeh) |
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Barber, Tiffany E. “Narcissister, a Truly Kinky Artist.” Art Journal Open (March 11, 2020).
Narcissister, Red Riding Hood, 2014, mixed media (photograph provided by the artist) |
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Berrigan, Caitlin and Sasha Engelmann. “Fault Lines and Fractures: A Conversation about Imaginary Explosions.” Art Journal Open (December 17, 2020).
Caitlin Berrigan, excerpt from Imaginary Explosions, 2018 |
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Bryan-Wilson, Julia and Mary Beth Heffernan. “Facing Social Practice: Mary Beth Heffernan in conversation with Julia Bryan-Wilson.” Art Journal Open (June 30, 2020).
Stanford Express Care nurse Anna Chico, who was among the first providers to use PPE Portraits for COVID-19 care, March 2020 (photograph by Cati Brown-Johnson) |
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Burns, A.K. and Melissa Ragain. “Scripting A Smeary Spot.” Art Journal Open (December 8, 2017).
The late Jack Doroshow performs as Mother Flawless, a clairvoyant psyche. In this scene she recites an excerpt from Joanna Russ’ sci-fi novel We Who Are About To. . . , A.K. Burns, video still from A Smeary Spot, 2015, four-channel video installation, HD color, six-channel sound, TRT 53:13 (artwork © A.K. Burns; image provided by the artist, Callicoon Fine Arts, NY, and Michel Rein Gallery, Paris/Brussels) |
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Cancelmo, Amy. “Roots and Ramble Kija Lucas and Amy Cancelmo in Conversation.” Art Journal Open (August 30, 2016).
Kija Lucas, Bristol 30, 2013, archival pigment print, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 60.9 cm), from In Search of Home, (artwork © Kija Lucas) |
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Carland, Tammy Rae and Ann Cvetkovich. “Sharing an Archive of Feelings: A Conversation.” Art Journal Open (October 24, 2013).
Tammy Rae Carland, Galz Living Room, MWMF, from Outpost, 2004, color photograph, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61cm) (artwork © Tammy Rae Carland) |
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Costello, Kate. “P&P .” Art Journal Open (November 3, 2016).
Still from Kate Costello, P&P, 2016, video, 1 min., 26 sec. (artwork © Kate Costello) |
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Craycroft, Anna. “To Listen.” Art Journal Open (October 25, 2017).
Sophomore Seminar with Meg Cranston and Marlena Donohue, April 5, 2017: Meg Cranston and Marlena Donohue’s class met with Anna Craycroft to discuss Tuning the Room in relation to Umberto Eco’s essay “The Open Work.” (artwork © Anna Craycroft) |
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Craycroft, Anna. “To Record, to Interpret, to Comment.” Art Journal Open (March 1, 2017).
Anna Craycroft, The Earth Is a Magnet, 2016, installation view, part of The Artist’s Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, November 16, 2016–March 26, 2017 (artwork © Anna Craycroft; photograph by Charles Mayer) |
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DaPonte, Amy A. “Candida Höfer’s Turken in Deutschland as ‘Counter-publicity’.” Art Journal Open (January 6, 2017).
Candida Höfer, Untitled from Türken in Deutschland 1979, 1979, color slide projection, 80 slides, approx. 7 min., dimensions variable (artwork © Candida Höfer, Köln/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016) |
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Fuenmayor, Jesús. “Barricades of Silence: Nikita Gale in Conversation with Jesús Fuenmayor.” Art Journal Open (August 20, 2020).
Nikita Gale, INTERCEPTOR, 2019, installation view, Fall Apart: Nikita Gale & Pat O’Neill, Martos Gallery, New York, January 11–February 24, 2019 (artwork © Nikita Gale; photograph by Charles Benton/Martos Gallery, provided by the artist) |
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Goodeve, Thyrza Nichols. “The Cat is My Medium: Notes on Writing and Art of Carloee Schneemann.” Art Journal Open (July 29, 2015).
Carolee Schneemann, Kitch’s Last Meal, 1973–76, Super 8mm film, double projection, vertical, sound on cassette, ca. 5 hrs., two installation views (artwork © Carolee Schneemann; photographs provided by the artist) |
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Goulish, Matthew. “A Clear Day and No Memories: Neurology, Philosophy, and Analogy in Kerry Tribe’s HM.” Art Journal Open (February 5, 2014).
Eadward Muybridge, Pi-Wi-Ack, Valley of the Yosemite (Shower of Stars), “Vernal Fall,” 400 Feet Fall, No. 29, 1872, wet-plate collodion photograph (photograph in the public domain) |
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Graham, Amanda Jane. “Space Travels: Trisha Brown’s Locus.” Art Journal Open (July 22, 2016).
Trisha Brown, Locus Solo, 2011, performed by Diane Madden in “Performance 11: OnLine/Trisha Brown Dance Company” in conjunction with the exhibition On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century, Museum of Modern Art, New York, January 2011 (photographs © Yi-Chun Wu; photographs provided by Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY) |
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Jenkinson, Monique. “Diva Maw.” Art Journal Open (October 29, 2020).
Monique Jenkinson (Fauxnique), Diva Maw, 2020, digital video, 5:35 min.; soundtrack by Marc Kate, Untitled (“Diva Maw” Soundtrack), 2020, audio file (video © Monique Jenkinson; soundtrack © Marc Kate) |
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Kauffman, Vanessa. “Outside of Time: Patricia Fernández Carcedo in Conversation with Vanessa Kauffman.” Art Journal Open (August 12, 2016).
Visitors in Patricia Fernández Carcedo’s studio during Headlands’ Fall 2015 Open House (artwork © Patricia Fernández Carcedo; photograph by Rebecca Puretz, provided by Headlands Center for the Arts) |
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Laser, Liz Magic and Christopher Y. Lew. “InterAct: a reenacted interview.” Art Journal Open (May 4, 2011)
Liz Magic Laser, Flight, 2010, performance, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, April 10, 2010 (artwork © Liz Magic Laser; photograph by Mia Tramz, provided by Derek Eller Gallery). The performance was developed in collaboration with actors Lindsey Andersen, Nic Grelli, Elizabeth Hodur, Michael Wiener, Max Woertendyke, and Lia Woertendyke |
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Lee, Young Jean. “Women in Downtown Theater.” Art Journal Open (August 26, 2012). |
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Leeson, Lynn Hershman. “Excerpts from the Graphic Novel !Women Art Revolution—A Secret History.” Art Journal Open (May 29, 2011) |
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Mann, Elana. “One day I will make a mace, but for now I have a mouth.” Art Journal Open (September 30, 2021).
Elana Mann, Unidentified Bright Object #61, 2021, clay, wood, and glass, 14 ½ x 3 ½ x 3 ¾ in. (36.8 x 8.9 x 9.5 cm) (artwork © Elana Mann; photographs by Brica Wilcox) |
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Masley-Charlet, Caitlin. “Caitlin Masley-Charlet in Conversation with Elisabeth Smolarz.” Art Journal Open (June 5, 2018).
Elisabeth Smolarz, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THINGS, ongoing 2014–2017. Archival inkjet prints, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. |
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Masley-Charlet, Caitlin. “Caitlin Masley-Charlet and Diana Shpungin in Conversation.” Art Journal Open (July 8, 2016).
Diana Shpungin, detail of A Break in One and Several Places, 2015, graphite pencil, horsehair broom, glazed porcelain and stoneware, 24 x 43 x 14 in. (60.9 x 109.2 x 35.5 cm) (artwork © Diana Shpungin) |
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McKee, C.C. “‘a salting of sorts’: Salt, Sea, and Affective Form in the work of Deborah Jack.” Art Journal Open (July 30, 2019).
Deborah Jack, SHORE, 2004, nylon screens, video projection, rock salt, reflecting pool, dimensions variable, installation view, Big Orbit Gallery, Buffalo, New York (artwork © Deborah Jack; photograph provided by the artist) |
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McClure, Michael Jay. “If it Need Be Termed Surrender: Trisha Donnelly’s Subjunctive Case.” Art Journal Open (July 29, 2013).
Trisha Donnelly, Untitled, 2008, plaster, horsehair, paint, pillow, belts, lamp, two parts, ea. 36 x 60 x 22¾ in. (91.4 x 152.4 x 57.8 cm), installation view, The Quick and the Dead, Walker Art Center, 2009 (artwork © Trisha Donnelly; photograph provided by Casey Kaplan, New York) |
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Ohsawa, Asuka. “Squares, Triangles, and Cats.” Art Journal Open (December 31, 2020). |
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Porges, Maria. “Shortest Stories.” Art Journal Open (December 20, 2018). |
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Rosa, María Laura. “Questions of Identity: Photographic Series by Alicia D’Amico, 1983–86.” Art Journal Open (July 2, 2019).
Alicia D’Amico photograph of Liliana, a performance by Liliana Mizrahi, 1983, scanned copy of original negative, reproduction from original 35mm negative contact (photograph © Archivo Alicia D’Amico, Buenos Aires) |
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Santos, Dorothy R. “ Domain Errors.” Art Journal Open (July 24, 2020). |
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Schiff, Karen L. “Imprinting Agnes Martin.” Art Journal Open (December 19, 2014).
Karen L. Schiff, Agnes Martin, El País, 21 December 2004, II, 2005, graphite and stylus on vellum, 17 x 12 inches (artwork © Karen L. Schiff) |
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Sifuentes, Aram Han. “Official Unofficial Voting Station: Voting for All Who Legally Can’t.” Art Journal Open (October 1, 2020).
Protest Banner Lending Library, Let Us Vote! and Official Unofficial Voting Station, 2020, textile banners (photograph by Thaib A. Wahab) |
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Szymanek, Angelique. “Haptic Encounters: Margarita Cabera’s Space in Between.” Art Journal Open (October 15, 2020).
Margarita Cabrera, Sewing Machine (Blue-Green), 2016, vinyl, thread, copper wire, and appliance parts (artwork © 2020 Margarita Cabrera/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society [ARS], NY; photograph provided by the artist) |
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Vlassopoulou, Penelope. “No water, Athens, Greece, 2015: Twenty-four hours with nothing to eat or drink, only smelling the jasmine.” Art Journal Open (October 26, 2016).
Excerpt from Pandelis Prevelakis, I Kefali tis Medousas [The Head of Medusa] (Athens: Friends’ Editions, 1963), trans. the artist and Markus Nystrom |
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Watt, Marie. “In Conversation with Marie Watt: A New Coyote Tale.” Art Journal Open (October 19, 2017).
Marie Watt, Blanket Stories: Transportation Object, Generous Ones, Trek, 2014, cast bronze, 18 x 4 x 6 ft. (5.49 x 1.22 x 1.83 m). Permanent installation, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington (artwork © Marie Watt; photograph by Benjamin Benschneider/OTTO) |
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Wilson, Siona. “Portraits (and) Matter.” Art Journal Open (January 13, 2022). |
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Yoshitake, Mika. “Humans have been Human for so long: Shana Lutker and Mika Yoshitake in Conversation.” Art Journal Open (August 2, 2016).
Shana Lutker, A handsome confused puppet, 2015, mirrored glass box, fluorescent lights, wood, marble, casters, 49 x 30 x 19 in. (124.4 x 76.2 x 48.2 cm) (artwork © Shana Lutker; photograph by Cathy Carver) |
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Yurshansky, Jenny. “Hide and Seek.” Art Journal Open (March 25, 2021).
Jenny Yurshansky, Hide and Seek (folded view), 2021, interactive sculpture, inkjet print, 3 3/4 x 3 3/4 x 3 in. (9.5 x 9.5 x 7.6 cm) (photograph provided by the artist) Folk tradition meets revisionist storytelling in Jenny Yurshansky’s printable sculpture |