CAA News Today
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!
Emerging Professional Director Candidate: Lauren Van Nest
posted by CAA — December 22, 2022
Statement
My name is Lauren Van Nest and I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia (UVA) studying the art and architecture of medieval Europe. My dissertation examines the relationships crafted between objects of imperial patronage in the Ottonian Empire, their ritual environments, and the bodies of their patrons. I research the ways in which artistic materials—their form, aesthetics, symbolism—transmit concepts of divinity and power across media and iconographies. My work has been supported by a twelve-month fellowship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) in affiliation with the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in Göttingen, Germany. Additionally, I have been awarded research grants by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), Center for Global Inquiry + Innovation, and UVA Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. I received my undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (B.A.) and a graduate degree from the University of Toronto (M.A.).
I would define my duty as a College Art Association (CAA) board member as a commitment to service towards the community via cultivation and advocacy. I am passionate about developing and promoting programming that creatively adapts to the pressures facing the visual arts today and continues to make the arts more accessible to wider audiences. As the Emerging Professional Director on the Board of Directors, I would bring my own enthusiasm for the visual arts alongside my skills in project management, communicating complex ideas, and collaboration. As an organization drawing together diverse and vibrant professionals, CAA is uniquely positioned to advocate for the value of the arts nationally and internationally. During my term, I will develop robust advocacy strategies that not only promote continued federal and public funding of the arts, but also attend to the needs of CAA members through grants and workshops. I envision CAA as a partner to its individual members, navigating the various obstacles facing aspiring as well as established visual arts professionals.
I have served in international organizations during my graduate career, including the Medieval Academy of America (MAA) and the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA). It is in these roles that I have coordinated mentorship programming, produced podcasts, and organized roundtables on topics related to graduate and early career professionalization. I am also committed to engaging with digital humanities projects that analyze and document the history of academic institutions, namely universities (Land and Legacy) and organizations (ICMA Oral History Project). With CAA, I am able to harness my previous and future interests to contribute to the goals of the organization.
Emerging Professional Director Candidate: Carolyn Jean Martin
posted by CAA — December 22, 2022
Statement
I am honored to be nominated as a candidate for Emerging Professional Director. Having been introduced to CAA at the start of my graduate school education, membership has been a sustaining source of knowledge, professional growth, and collaboration. If selected, I will utilize the platform to assist in strengthening the commitment of the CAA mission for diverse practices and practitioners, as well as maintaining an international presence. Students and emerging professionals, as they continue to move the art world in dynamic directions, are a critical part of those commitments and vital to the growth of CAA. As someone whose educational pursuits include art practice, art history, and the philosophy of aesthetics I seek to continue and expand upon the efforts that make CAA the place where diverse, intersecting practices converge in a sustained global conversation. Additionally, previously serving on the Student and Emerging Professionals committee facilitated an understanding of the spaces where opportunities for growth and development can take place – particularly for undergraduate and graduate student membership.
Now, more than ever, as global politics reflect isolationist worldviews and the creative arts are fighting to stay alive in colleges and universities, an international organization such as CAA is perfectly poised as the platform for arts professionals to come together for ongoing conversations, to strategize, and harness the collective power of the arts as an agent of change. If provided an opportunity to serve on the board as Emerging Professional Director I bring energy and excitement to build upon the work currently being executed at CAA that makes use of the technological innovations gained over the past two years that will ensure a variety of options for engagement throughout the year, and further aid in the democratization of access to scholarship and networking opportunities across practice and borders.
Board of Directors Candidate: Neeta Verma
posted by CAA — December 22, 2022
Bio
Neeta Verma situates herself within the porous discipline of Visual Communication Design. Her areas of research and teaching explore the critical use of design as a tool for social equity and justice. Her work focuses on systemic social issues examined through the lens of power and privilege, and the examination of power structures within social ecologies. She teaches Social Design at the intersection of social innovation and collaborative practices, and Visualization of Data which investigates the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of representation. Her current research projects examine youth violence in urban contexts locally and the design of conducive environments for the visually impaired in India. She received her MFA from Yale University. She currently holds faculty fellowships at the Center for Social Concerns, the Liu Institute for Asia & Asian Studies, Pulte Institute for Global Development at the University of Notre Dame. She is also appointed as an affiliate faculty forThe Initiative on Race and Resilience. Her professional design practice of over twenty-five years has focused exclusively on museums, cultural organizations, not-for-profits, and educational institutions. Selected clients include the American Red Cross, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, Liberty Science Center, The New York Botanical Garden, The New York Public Library, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Wildlife Conservation Society. She is the recipient of the Nehru-Fulbright Fellowship. She is also the recipient of several design awards that include the Core77 Design Awards, Graphis, A’Design Awards, International Design Awards, GDUSA, and the Design Incubation Teaching Award. She has been an invited speaker and has presented her research at both national and international conferences. She currently serves on the SEGD Academic Task Force and is a member of the Pluriversal Working Group of the Future of Design Education.
Board of Directors Candidate: Nozomi Naoi
posted by CAA — December 22, 2022
Bio
Nozomi Naoi is Associate Professor of Humanities at Yale-NUS College with joint appointment at the Department of Japanese Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore. She specializes in modern Japanese art and visual culture and is the author of Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2020; awarded the Honorable Mention for the John Whitney Hall Prize 2022). She is preparing her second book, Modern Design and the Japanese Department Store(under advance contract with MIT Press) which demonstrates how material culture via modern design and visual materials creates the modern Japanese subject through the institution of department stores. She is also co-curating the exhibition, “Made in Japan: 20th-Century Poster Art” at the Poster House Museum in New York, opening in March 2023.