CAA News Today
Apply for a Fall 2016 Meiss Grant
posted Jul 11, 2016
CAA is accepting applications for fall 2016 grants through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund. Thanks to a generous bequest by the late art historian Millard Meiss, the twice-yearly program supports book-length scholarly manuscripts in any period of the history of art, visual studies, and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher on their merits but cannot be published in the most desirable form without a subsidy.
The publisher, rather than the author, must submit the application to CAA. Awards are made at the discretion of the jury and vary according to merit, need, and number of applications. Awardees are announced six to eight weeks after the deadline. For the complete guidelines, application forms, and a grant description, please visit the Meiss section of the CAA website. Deadline: September 15, 2016.
New in caa.reviews
posted Jul 08, 2016
Katherine Smith visits the High Museum of Art’s exhibition Alex Katz, This Is Now. The show focuses on the artist’s landscape paintings, enabling visitors to “discover another, important aspect of Katz’s oeuvre” and “deepen an appreciation of the artist’s achievements in this genre.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Allan Antliff reviews The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College, Eva Díaz’s exploration of Josef Albers, John Cage, and R. Buckminster Fuller at the college from the 1930s to 1950s. She calls it “the first sustained examination of the interdisciplinary tensions arising from its protagonists’ shared interest in freedom through experimentation.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Emma Sachs examines The Cambridge History of Painting in the Classical World, edited by J. J. Pollitt, a survey of mural and panel painting from the Aegean Bronze Age to Late Antiquity in the Mediterranean. The nine authors “have space to express their own opinions,” resulting in a “refreshingly honest discussion” that “distinguishes this volume from a standard survey textbook.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Caa.reviews publishes over 150 reviews each year. Founded in 1998, the site publishes timely scholarly and critical reviews of studies and projects in all areas and periods of art history, visual studies, and the fine arts, providing peer review for the disciplines served by the College Art Association. Publications and projects reviewed include books, articles, exhibitions, conferences, digital scholarship, and other works as appropriate. Read more reviews at caa.reviews.
Professional-Development Fellowships for Graduate Students
posted Jul 06, 2016
About the Program
CAA’s Professional-Development Fellowships program supports promising artists, designers, craftspersons, historians, curators, and critics who are enrolled in MFA, PhD, and other terminal-degree programs nationwide. Fellows are honored with $10,000 grants to help them with various aspects of their work, whether it be for job-search expenses or purchasing materials for the studio. CAA believes a grant of this kind, without contingencies, can best facilitate the transition between graduate studies and professional careers.
One award will be presented to a practitioner—an artist, designer, and/or craftsperson—and one award will be presented to an art, architecture, and/or design historian, curator, or critic. Fellows also receive a free one-year CAA membership and complimentary registration to the Annual Conference. Honorable mentions, given at the discretion of the jury, also earn a free one-year CAA membership and complimentary conference registration.
CAA initiated its fellowship program in 1993 to help student artists and art historians bridge the gap between their graduate studies and professional careers.
Are You Eligible?
CAA seeks applications from students who are current members; are citizens or permanent residents of the United States; will receive their MFA or PhD degree in the calendar year following the year of application (2017 for the next fellowship cycle); and have outstanding capabilities and demonstrate distinction in approach, technique, or perspective in their contribution to art history and the visual arts. A jury of artists, curators, and other professionals will review all applications in fall 2016 and announce the recipients in January 2017.
How to Apply
Please visit collegeartassociation.slideroom.com to submit applications to the 2016 MFA and PhD Professional-Development Fellowship programs. The deadline for applications for the PhD fellowships is Monday, October 3, 2016, and Friday, November 11, 2016, for the MFA fellowships. CAA will send notifications in January 2017.
Contact
For more information about the CAA fellowship program, please contact Roberta Lawson, CAA fellowships coordinator, at 212-392-4404.
Photograph: Derrick Woods-Morrow
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jul 06, 2016
Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
The Secret History of US Women Painters
Maurine St. Gaudens is an art conservator and the author of Emerging from the Shadows: A Survey of Women Artists Working in California, 1860–1960, a massive full-color, four-volume labor of love and scholarship. She and Joseph Morsman have compiled narratives of 320 female artists working in California in a century underscored with turmoil and change, from the Gilded Age to the world wars to the Great Depression. (Read more from the Philadelphia Inquirer.)
Eleven Artists Who Helped Pave the Way to Marriage Equality
Last year the US Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right—a victory representing long-sought political recognition and validation of identities that have been largely marginalized and stigmatized. To mark this political milestone, Artsy has highlighted eleven artists whose work demonstrates the power visual culture has to explore, share, and make relatable queer narratives. (Read more from Artsy.)
Does “African” Architecture Exist? This Rwandan Architect Thinks So
There aren’t that many African architects out there—Christian Benimana is one of the few. He completed his bachelor degree in 2008 at Tongji University in Shanghai before returning home to Rwanda to forge his career. Awut Atak spoke to Benimana about where Africa’s cities are heading—and what “African” architecture actually is. (Read more from True Africa.)
It’s an Art Gallery. No, a Living Room. OK, Both.
Since the 2008 economic downturn, temporary do-it-yourself art galleries have proliferated in apartments, storefronts, and other spaces all over the country. Call it a response to an art world in which dealer representation is increasingly hard to come by; exhibitions are costly; and formerly affordable areas have priced out artists, forcing them to seek out scrappier locations in which to show their work. (Read more from the New York Times.)
The Digital in the Humanities: An Interview with David Golumbia
The term “digital humanities” has captured the imagination and ire of scholars across America. Supporters of the field, which melds computer science with hermeneutics, champion it as the much-needed means to shake up and expand methods of traditional literary interpretation; for critics, it is a new fad that symbolizes the neoliberal bean counting that is destroying higher education. (Read more from the Los Angeles Review of Books.)
The Improbable History of NYC’s Revolutionary Art School, the Art Students League
If the humble five-story building of the Art Students League on Fifty-Seventh Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue was always easy to overlook, now the massive construction site makes it almost impossible to find. Yet behind the scaffolding, the doors of this 140-year-old art school are still open, with a legacy of the most famous artists in America, such as Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, and Ai Weiwei. (Read more from the Gothamist.)
Art Demystified: What Determines an Artwork’s Value?
What determines an artwork’s value? And why are some works so expensive? To art-world outsiders, the distinctions in price can be confusing. What makes one artwork sell for $10,000 and another for $10 million—or even $100 million? (Read more from Artnet News.)
On Academic Envy
Recently I logged into Facebook and there, right at the top of my news feed, was a link to a colleague’s third published piece in the New Yorker. The same afternoon, two other colleagues were approached by a literary agent about writing a popular nonfiction book. (Read more from Vitae.)
New Essays in Art Journal Open
posted Jul 05, 2016
Art Journal Open is pleased to announce the publication of “Knight’s Heritage: Karl Haendel and the Legacy of Appropriation: Episode Three, 2013,” by Natilee Harren, and a response to the essay by Nate Harrison. Harren’s three-part essay examines appropriation as an artistic strategy that pressures both the legal and conceptual definitions of authorship through a case study of three specific episodes in the artist Karl Haendel’s practice of recirculating images. Harrison responds to each of Harren’s essays, offering a critical reminder of the historical specificity of postmodernism and appropriation.
2017 Call for Participation Now Open
posted Jul 05, 2016
The 2017 Call for Participation for the 105th Annual Conference, taking place February 15–18, 2017, in New York, NY, is now open.
The 2017 Call for Participation describes approved sessions for next year’s conference which are seeking contributions. CAA and the session chairs invite your participation: please follow the instructions in the link to submit a proposal for a paper or presentation directly to the appropriate session chair(s). A call for Poster Session Proposals is also included in this CFP.
The 2017 Call for Participation is only available as a PDF download; CAA will not mail hard copies of this document.
The deadline for proposals of papers and presentations is August 30, 2016. The deadline for Poster Session Proposals is September 15, 2016.
Contact
For questions about the CAA Annual Conference’s 2017 Call for Participation, please contact Katie Apsey, CAA manager of programs, at kapsey@collegeart.org or Tiffany Dugan, CAA director of programs at tdugan@collegeart.org.
Art In America is CAA’s Featured Member Partner for July
posted Jul 04, 2016
As one of the most venerable American art publications for collectors, artists, art dealers, and art professionals, Art in America is CAA’s featured membership partner for July.
Since 1913, Art in America has been instrumental in defining the many art movements that coalesced over the course of a dynamic century. The magazine works with the finest critics, scholars and reporters, identifying trends and creating a record of key developments in the world of art. Having earned a reputation for the highest journalistic and critical standards, Art in America has helped shape the sensibilities and standards of generations of curators, artists, collectors and dealers.
Each month Art in America, the world’s premiere art magazine, provides in-depth coverage of the global, and often controversial, art scene. Every issue contains articles on both respected and rising talents, and reviews of current exhibitions around the world. Each subscription to Art in America includes the “Guide to Museums, Galleries & Artists,” published in August.
CAA members can receive a special discount (CAA members $24.95; regular $45) on a one-year subscription to Art in America. Simply log into your CAA member page to unlock the special discount code and apply it to checkout on the Art in America subscription page.
New in caa.reviews
posted Jul 01, 2016
Susan Kart reviews Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300, Suzanne Preston Blier’s research on the “copious yet contested discourse on the history of Ife” and its thirteenth- and fourteenth-century art objects, and commends the book’s unique dovetailing of place and artistic production. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Mallory Sharp Baskett examines Christa Clarke’s catalogue of artworks of African origin collected by Albert C. Barnes, African Art in the Barnes Foundation: The Triumph of L’Art nègre and the Harlem Renaissance. A substantial essay, along with images and analyses of all 123 objects, elucidates Barnes’s influential collecting practice and the collection’s role in African American scholarship and arts education from the early twentieth century to the present. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Nancy Um explores Going Global in Mughal India, Sumathi Ramaswamy’s digital album, which brings together works of calligraphy, paintings, and prints from India, Ottoman Turkey, and Europe. The virtual muraqqa’, or album in the Persianate arts, successfully asserts “the important place of the globe as an integrated element in a dynamic and inclusive royal Mughal iconography.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Suzanne Singletary visits the exhibition Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which presents the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art dealer as “a shrewd strategist undaunted by risky ventures and largely uncharted practices” who shaped the careers of Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and other Impressionist artists. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Caa.reviews publishes over 150 reviews each year. Founded in 1998, the site publishes timely scholarly and critical reviews of studies and projects in all areas and periods of art history, visual studies, and the fine arts, providing peer review for the disciplines served by the College Art Association. Publications and projects reviewed include books, articles, exhibitions, conferences, digital scholarship, and other works as appropriate. Read more reviews at caa.reviews.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jun 29, 2016
Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
How Much Control Do Artists Have over a Work after It’s Sold?
Is authorship something that can be revoked at will? Under what authority can an artist disavow one of his or her works? How do artists exert control over their work long after it ceases to be their property? (Read more from Artsy.)
How Does Crowdfunding Change the Picture for Artists?
Crowdfunding is the piece of a platform-economy puzzle that represents something more genuinely new to the arts community than the gig economy. Part of the platform economy is the use of “the crowd” to provide value—whether work, information, or funding. Will Kickstarter and Indiegogo fundamentally tilt or redefine the arts funding landscape? And if so, how? (Read more from Creativ.)
Social Media Have Become a Vital Tool for Artists—but Are They Good for Art?
As in all other corners of public and private life, the advent of social media has transformed the ways in which artists interact with each other, their public, and the institutions that govern their careers. But the relationship between art and social media is a tricky one. The former is about pushing boundaries; the latter, enforcing them. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
What Does Student Engagement Look Like?
Engagement—it’s another one of those words that’s regularly bandied about in higher education. We talk about it like we know what it means and we do, sort of. It’s just that when a word or idea is so widely used, thinking about it often stops, and that’s what I think has happened with engagement. (Read more from Faculty Focus.)
Racial Literacy as a Professor’s Responsibility
What should faculty members know about talking about race in the classroom? Everything from “everything” and “When you do not interrupt racism in the classroom, you perpetuate it” to “Do better!” and “They’ve already got many of resources they need to do it well.” That’s what Shaun Harper, professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, said during his keynote address at the American Association of University Professors annual meeting. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
I Survived My First Year on the Tenure Track, but I’m Ready to Bail!
Now that I’ve survived my first year in a tenure-track position at a small liberal-arts college, all I want to do is curl up in a ball. A nonacademic position is opening up in my hometown. If I got the job, I’d still have adjunct faculty status and be able to supervise grad students. I’d also probably get a 30- to 50-percent salary increase. (Read more from Vitae.)
How Your Journal Editor Works
Your scholarly editor is a real person living in real time. Editors know we have power—a combination of gatekeeper, talent scout, and helpmate. Each of us wields those things with different emphases. I generally did my editorial work from my muddled campus office, especially during office hours when no one showed up. Or I turned to it late at night, as I plowed through my email after the kids went to bed. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Brexit Casts Uncertainty on Art Market
As the world’s leading auction houses prepared for their big-ticket contemporary sales in London, the question was on everybody’s mind: What will the shock and confusion following Britain’s vote to leave the European Union mean for the art market? With many in its commercial art world supporting the remain position, a pall has unmistakably been cast over the proceedings. (Read more from the New York Times.)
The Getty Foundation to Fund a Reunion for the College Art Association-Getty International Program
posted Jun 28, 2016
The Getty Foundation has awarded the College Art Association (CAA) a major grant to fund the CAA-Getty International Program for the sixth consecutive year. Having completed five successful years of programming, CAA will use the grant to underwrite the cost of bringing twenty alumni to the 2017 Annual Conference for a reunion program. The Foundation’s support will enable CAA to bring these international visual arts professionals to the conference, taking place February 15-18, 2017, in New York City. Funds will support all travel expenses, hotel accommodations, per diems, conference registrations, and one-year CAA memberships.
The reunion will focus on common themes and interests in global art history, its greatest challenges, and what can be done to overcome them. Relying on the geographic and scholarly diversity of the twenty alumni, the reunion program will explore multiple points of view related to the state of the field, including interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to art history, the nature of cross-cultural collaborations, and future directions of the discipline. The 2017 attendees, together with leading art historians from the United States, will participate in several sessions devoted to these topics throughout the conference.
Since the CAA-Getty International Program began in 2012, ninety scholars have participated in CAA’s Annual Conference. Historically, the majority of international registrants at the Annual Conference have come from North America, the United Kingdom, and Western European countries. The CAA-Getty International Program has diversified the Annual Conference, adding scholars from Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, Caribbean countries, and South America. The majority of the alumni teach art history (or visual studies, art theory, or architectural history) at the university level; others are museum curators or researchers. Prior to participating in this program, none of the alumni had attended a CAA Annual Conference.
A remarkable number of international collaborations have ensued, including an ongoing study of similarities and differences in the history of art among Eastern European countries and South Africa, attendance at other international conferences, publications in international journals, and participation in panels and sessions at subsequent CAA Annual Conferences. Former grant recipients have become ambassadors of CAA in their countries, sharing knowledge gained at the Annual Conference with their colleagues at home.
Building on the evident success of the program, alumni at the 2017 reunion will provide input on how to further strengthen the program. How can CAA better serve international members? How can it cultivate future collaborations among CAA-Getty participants and CAA members? Are there ways to broaden the reach of the program to include artists, designers, and other types of arts professionals? The views and suggestions gathered at this convening will provide valuable insights as CAA works to enlarge its international activities.
For more information on the CAA-Getty International Program and other CAA travel opportunities, visit CAA Travel Grants.