CAA News Today
Noon Forum Programs at the 2017 Conference Open to the Public
posted Dec 15, 2016
Special forums at the 2017 Annual Conference in New York—taking place during the lunch hour on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday—will provide an opportunity for attendees to hear from colleagues, address critical issues, and continue the conversation outside the session grid. With these forums CAA hopes to provide open access to the conference to the public.
The Noon Forum Programs offer two formats. Hot Topics will address critical, time-sensitive issues in the field. The New York conference has slated sessions on “Advocating for Your Department” and “Art Criticism.”
Key Conversations feature scholars, artists, and arts professionals discussing key issues in their fields. Already scheduled for the February meeting are “Navigating Public Opposition to Museum Exhibitions,” “Learning from Experience: Fair Use in Practice,” “Hrag Vartanian with Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon,” and “Memorial Session.”
These programs will begin at 12:15 PM and end at 1:15 PM; they are free and open to the public. Please feel free to bring your lunch!
Books Published by CAA Members
posted Dec 15, 2016
Publishing a book is a major milestone for artists and scholars—browse a list of recent titles below.
Books Published by CAA Members appears every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
December 2016
Susan Best. Reparative Aesthetics: Witnessing in Contemporary Art Photography (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
Louis Kaplan. Photography and Humour (London: Reaktion Books, 2016).
Ceren Özpınar. Turkiye’de Sanat Tarihi Yazimi (1970–2010) [The Art Historiography in Turkey (1970–2010)] (Istanbul: History Foundation Yurt Publications, 2016).
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Dec 14, 2016
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
How Trump Should Support the Arts
Since Donald Trump has given few clues as to how he will approach arts policy, I thought I would lay out what a Trump administration ought to do. First, it must save the federal government money, to appeal to the Republican Congress. Second, it should stand a chance of appealing to Trump, given his stances on other issues. Third, it should offer a reasonable chance of improving the quality of the arts in the US, and fourth, the arts community should not hate every aspect of the changes. (Read more from Bloomberg View.)
What Can Artists Do to Oppose Trump?
When Vice President–elect Mike Pence went to see Hamilton on Broadway, he was doing more than enjoying a night at the theater—he was there to triumph over an enemy. For if any work of art represented the liberal hope of the Obama years, it was surely Hamilton. Here was a patriotic attempt to open the canon of American history to people of color, to tell the stories of the past in the language of the present. (Read more from Slate.)
How Big Data Is Set to Change the Art Market
In late October, Sotheby’s announced it had acquired the Mei Moses Art Indices, a database of repeat auction sales that tracks value over time. Shortly after, Artnet said it had brought Tutela Capital, an analytics firm headed by Fabian Bocart, into its portfolio, which also includes a sizeable database of auction prices. Each company has different aims, but one thing is clear: data will play a key role in how they—and the art market—move forward. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Arts Diversity: The Quota Conversation
Ask anyone in the arts about quotas and, more likely than not, you’ll get some form of commitment to a “conversation.” As in, “We should talk about whether or not to use quotas” rather than “Quotas should or should not be applied.” It’s less “Show me a quota and I’ll show you a failure” and more “These tools are limited, but I can’t bring myself to dismiss them.” (Read more from Art Professional.)
The New PhDs
American universities awarded a record number of doctorates in 2015—although the rate of growth in the number of PhD recipients continued a several-year decline. And the 55,006 recipients were more likely to be men and to be American citizens or permanent residents than they were the year before. Those are among the findings of the newest version of the federally supported Survey of Earned Doctorates, covering the year 2015. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
How to Fix the Art World, Part 4
Last August ARTnews embarked on an epic project: finding out what inhabitants of the art world think is wrong with their world and how they would fix it. In the ensuing months, the magazine spoke with more than fifty individuals—artists and curators, critics and historians, art dealers and an art-fair director—to gather a range of perspectives. (Read more from ARTnews.)
The Museum of the Present
What’s a museum? This is a question I have asked more than once in the New Criterion. It’s one this magazine has been asking since its first issue. And it’s one that I wish museums would ask more frequently of themselves. Because the answers are changing—through assumptions that are often unannounced, unacknowledged, and unexplored. (Read more from the New Criterion.)
Advice on Being Advised
It’s difficult to offer general advice on the adviser-advisee relationship because it varies so much—by discipline, professor, student, or institution. How friendly, how hierarchical, or how useful the relationship differs from one pair to the next. Still, there are some near-universal implicit rules that govern this relationship. More often than not, a student learns them the hard way. (Read more from Vitae.)
2017 CAA Annual Conference in the News
posted Dec 12, 2016
Coco Fusco in costume as Dr. Zira from the Planet of the Apes. Photo Gene Pittman, courtesy Walker Art Center.
Word has spread about some of the sessions and our keynote speaker at the 2017 CAA Annual Conference and Artnet News and Artnews have taken notice.
Diversity has long been a part of CAA’s history and this year’s conference is no different. Artnet News notes how race and politics are “at the forefront” of our programming this year. Our effort to find more ways to involve artists and makers in the conference has not gone overlooked either. Brian Boucher, author of the Artnet piece, cites the CAA collaboration with NYFA to offer professional development programming.
At Artnews, writer
Annual Conference Committee Seeks Members
posted Dec 12, 2016
CAA invites nominations and self-nominations for at-large members of the Annual Conference Committee to serve a three-year term, beginning February 2017, immediately following the 105th Annual Conference. We welcome all members to participation in the nomination process. Working with the Programs Department staff, this committee selects the sessions and shapes the program of the Annual Conference. The committee ensures that the program will reflect the goals of the association and of the Annual Conference, namely, to make the conference an effective place for intellectual, aesthetic, and professional learning and exchange, and to provide opportunities for participation that are fair, equal, and balanced.
The Annual Conference Committee meets at least two times a year via conference call and once during the Annual Conference at the call of the vice president for Annual Conference and the committee’s chair. Members must be available throughout May and June to review a significant amount of material and select 2018 conference content from the submitted proposals.
Please send a 150-word letter of interest and a CV to Katie Apsey, CAA manager of programs. Deadline: January 31, 2017.
Notice of 105th Annual Business Meeting
posted Dec 12, 2016
College Art Association
Notice of 105th Annual Business Meeting
Annual Conference Convocation
February 15, 2017
The 105th Annual Business Meeting of the members of the College Art Association will be called to order at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 15th, at the Convocation of the 2017 Annual Conference, in West/East Ballroom, 3rd Floor, New York Hilton Midtown Hotel, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, NY, NY 10019.
CAA President, Suzanne Preston Blier, will preside. The Annual Business Meeting will be held in two parts.
AGENDA
The Agenda for the first part of the Annual Business Meeting is as follows:
- Call to Order and President’s Report – Suzanne Preston Blier
- Report by Annual Conference Chair and VP for Annual Conference – Judith Rodenbeck and N. Elizabeth Schlatter
- Report by Executive Director – Hunter O’Hanian
- Presentation of Annual Awards for Distinction – Suzanne Preston Blier
- Keynote Address – Mary Miller
After the Keynote Address, the Meeting will be recessed and will reconvene on Friday, February 17, 2017 from 12:15 – 1:15 p.m. in the East Ballroom, 3rd Floor at the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, NY, NY 10019. The Agenda for the second part of the Annual Business Meeting is as follows:
- Approval of Minutes of 104th Annual Business Meeting, February 3, 2016 [ACTION ITEM] – see http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/2016-annual-business-meeting-minutes.pdf
- Financial Report: Teresa Lopez, Chief Financial Officer
- Old Business
- New Business
- Results of Election of New Directors: Suzanne Preston Blier
- MY CAA – Open discussion with members, board and staff regarding future growth of the Association.
Proxies
If you are unable to attend the Annual Business Meeting, please complete a proxy online to appoint the individuals named thereon to (i) vote, as directed by you, for directors, and, at their discretion, on such other matters as may properly come before the Annual Business Meeting; and (ii) to vote in any and all adjournments thereof. CAA Members will be notified when the proxy for casting votes becomes available online in early January 2017. A proxy, with your vote for directors, must be received no later than 6:00 p.m. EST Thursday, February 16, 2017.
Next Meeting
The 106th Annual Business Meeting of the College Art Association will take place on February 21, 2018, in Los Angeles.
Roberto Tejada, Secretary
College Art Association
December 12, 2016
New in caa.reviews
posted Dec 09, 2016
John Hawley visits Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture at the Frick Collection. The “more than one hundred paintings, drawings, and prints” by Anthony van Dyke and his contemporaries look “exclusively at portraiture, with special attention given to the way drawings (which account for nearly half the exhibited works) highlight Van Dyke’s inimitable process as a portraitist.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Stephen J. Lucey reads The Apse Mosaic in Early Medieval Rome: Time, Network, and Repetition by Erik Thunø. Presenting “an alternative ‘non-diachronic’ art-historical interpretation of the Roman apse decorations from the sixth through ninth centuries,” the author “promotes the continuity of imagery as a ‘synchronic’ manifestation, which reflects a timeless ecclesiological essence.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Jennifer Nelson reviews Visual Acuity and the Arts of Communication in Early Modern Germany, edited by Jeffrey Chipps Smith. The essays “consider German visual culture from the late fifteenth to early eighteenth centuries by means of healthy reliance on present-day creativity and hermeneutic skill” and put “productive pressure on its period’s blind spots.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Amy F. Ogata discusses Marta Gutman’s A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950. The author “explores the long tradition of benevolent concern for the poorest children in the rapidly urbanizing context of Oakland, California,” and argues that the structures “reveal a complex history of adaptive reuse against the drama of class and racial politics.” 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.
CAA Member Tour of Greece and Italy
posted Dec 07, 2016
CAA is excited to announce an exclusive offer to its members to spend two weeks exploring the art and art history of Greece and Italy, from June 2 to June 11, 2017. The trip includes stops in Athens, Rome, and Florence. Hosted by CAA Executive Director and CEO, Hunter O’Hanian, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to explore these majestic cities with fellow CAA members and lovers of art.
Local tour guides in each city will lead the group through numerous cultural and historic sites, museums, and galleries. The tour begins in Athens, where highlights include the National Archaeological Museum, the Benaki Museum, Zappio Gardens, the Acropolis and museum, and the Museum of Cycladic Art. In Rome, the tour will visit the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Capitoline Museums, and the Borghese Gallery, among others. Ending in Florence, the tour will stop at the Duomo and Baptistery, Church of Santa Croce, Galleria dell’Accademia, Medici Chapels, Church of San Lorenzo, and the Uffizi Gallery.
Following Florence, you may choose to extend your trip to Venice where the 57th Venice Biennale will be taking place, May 13 through November 26, 2017.
For more information, including rates and a day-by-day tour itinerary, please download and review the Greece & Italy Art and Art History Tour brochure.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Dec 07, 2016
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Art Must Admit the Lesson of Donald Trump’s Election or Face Irrelevance
By now, the shock of Donald Trump’s election is fading, leaving only the horror. But we need to reckon with the shock if we are to combat the horror effectively. Since election night, the cultural sphere has valiantly rallied its opinion-leaders, declaring that art must join the fight against whatever terrors a Trump presidency has in store for us. (Read more from Artnet News.)
Professor Watchlist Is Seen as Threat to Academic Freedom
A new website that accuses nearly two hundred college professors of advancing “leftist propaganda in the classroom” and discriminating against conservative students has been criticized as a threat to academic freedom. The site, Professor Watchlist, says it names those instructors who “advance a radical agenda in lecture halls.” (Read more from the New York Times.)
Activism and Professionalism in the Workplace
Activism to me was, by necessity, subtle. Once, one of my clients said something that made me think he was gay. To prove myself an ally, I wore a rainbow watch the next time I saw him. He saw it. Blushed. Looked away. I tell myself I helped him. Change comes slowly. One person can make a difference. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Urgency of Empathy and Social Impact in Museums
How we can start an empathy revolution in museums? How can we more fiercely recognize the meaningful work that museum professionals are doing to enact change around the relevant issues in our communities? How do we radically expand the work of museums in bringing people together and contributing to strong, resilient communities? (Read more from MuseumNext.)
Dealing with Difficult Art in Post-Election America
Over Thanksgiving weekend, an art exhibition at Salem State University was temporarily closed after a group of students complained that they found several of the works hurtful and offensive. After a closed-door meeting with fifty students, the university reopened the exhibition on November 30, but not before making “several modifications.” (Read more from the National Coalition against Censorship.)
How to Fix the Art World, Part 3
Last August ARTnews embarked on an epic project: finding out what inhabitants of the art world think is wrong with their world and how they would fix it. In the ensuing months, the magazine spoke with more than fifty individuals—artists and curators, critics and historians, art dealers and an art-fair director—to gather a range of perspectives. (Read more from ARTnews.)
Is the Destruction of Cultural Property a War Crime?
It is a settled principle in international law that the deliberate targeting or plundering of religious, historic, and cultural sites is prohibited during war. Prosecutors have discretion in the cases that they bring, but the law of war is clear about accountability in cases of cultural destruction. (Read more from Apollo.)
The Art Schools Fidel Castro Built—and Then Neglected
Designed by three architects, the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte were constructed in flamboyant, sinuous forms deliberately reflecting the local landscape. Built in brick and terracotta as a pragmatic response to the US embargo of imported steel and using the Catalan vault throughout, these were a confident repudiation of Western-style international modernism. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
CAA Seeks Part-Time Program Assistant
posted Dec 06, 2016
| Job Title: | Program Assistant | Date: | February 25, 2016 |
| Department: | Programs | ||
| Supervisor: | Manager of Programs |
Part-time position with approximately 20 hours per week, schedule may vary with flexible hours.
COLLEGE ART ASSOCATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE:
The College Art Association Annual Conference is the largest international gathering of professionals in the visual arts. The conference brings together 4,000 of its members to participate in over 250 presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and special events on a wide range of topics on art scholarship and practice; to engage in in-depth discussions on new scholarship, innovative art, and issues in the arts today; and to connect with colleagues from across the country and around the world. The 105th annual conference will be held in New York, February 15- 18, 2017.
FUNCTION:
Reporting to the director of programs, the program assistant provides assistance to both the assistant director for annual conference and manager of programs with all daily operations of the department.
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Assists with data entry support (e.g. NetFORUM membership database), detailed record keeping, database document production, and producing reports.
- Assists with the coordination of the scheduling of the CAA conference sessions and events. This includes, but is not limited to, data entry, preparing spreadsheets, proof reading, and creating reports. Communicates with CAA departments on conference details as requested.
- Corresponds with conference participants, service providers, book and trade fair exhibitors, and general membership on conference-related matters.
- Provides internet research to source prospects for the CAA conference book and trade fair.
- Prepare mailings sent to conference participants, exhibitors, advertisers, jurors, committee members, and volunteers. Document production and photo-copying.
- Assist with the development of all conference publications.
- Assists with the coordination of temporary conference staff including, scheduling, correspondence, and training.
- Provides on-site conference support, including but not limited to assisting with all aspects of conference logistics, checking set-up arrangements, posting signs, and providing hospitality as needed.
- Staffs Speaker Ready Room during the conference providing assistance to conference presenters and chairs as needed.
- Provides post-conference support including compiling and summarizing event statistics.
- Assists with financial recording keeping, including but not limited to, processing purchase orders and transactions, creating invoices, tracking expenses, and preparing ledgers and reconciliation reports.
- Provides research and creates reports as requested.
- Performs various administrative and clerical duties for the director of programs. Other duties as assigned.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor’s degree required, Master’s degree in art history or MFA preferred.
- Ability to work independently, organize multiple concurrent tasks, work efficiently, and follow through on details.
- Experience with spreadsheets, systems and database management, and generally accepted programs and office equipment required.
- Excellent customer services skills, and writing and editing skills, and oral communication.
- Should possess tact, discretion, and the ability to work confidentially.
- The capacity to remain poised under pressure.
- The ability and willingness to work on-site at annual conference as well as hours outside typical business day, as needed.
Send resume and cover letter to tdugan@collegeart.org
This job description is intended as a summary of the primary responsibilities of and qualifications for this position. The job description is not intended as inclusive of all duties an individual in this position might be asked to perform or of all qualifications that may be required either now or in the future.
The College Art Association is an equal opportunity employer and considers all candidates for employment regardless of race, color, sex, age, national origin, creed, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender expression or political affiliation.