CAA News Today
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Feb 18, 2015
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 Tall Task of Unifying Part-Time Professors
Robert Yoshioka, a representative of the California Part-Time Faculty Association, is one of many who are agitating for better wages and greater job security for adjunct, part-time, and contingent faculty, who often don’t know whether they’ll be hired back until a few weeks before the semester starts. But as he and his fellow activists prepare for a National Adjunct Walkout Day on February 25—the first nationwide protest of its kind—he is running into a problem: it’s hard to organize a loose collection workers who are hired and fired at will. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
Excuses, Excuses
What’s the most common reason people who want to attend the arts don’t follow through? Time. Or, more accurately, the lack of it. Not surprised? According to the American Time Use Survey, 95 percent of Americans over the age of fifteen participate in leisure activities for an average of five hours a day. Nonetheless, the perception that they lack time keeps them from participating in a host of available activities, and the arts are no exception. (Read more from the National Arts Marketing Project.)
The Art of Twitter Art
Welcome to the world of Twitter art, a whimsical, boundless space dominated by image-generator bots and ASCII character codes and hand-drawn cartoons. Twitter art appears unexpectedly in streams. Twitter art is experimental. Twitter art even interacts with other Twitter art. But Twitter art’s creators face a tricky challenge: they work on a site designed primarily for posting limited text, so users rarely stop and stare at tweets the way they might pause to appreciate other visual-art forms. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Art Magazine
In 1973 Derek Guthrie was fired as an art critic from the Chicago Tribune. There was “under-the-table censorship” occurring, as he called it in his introduction to the recent New Art Examiner Anthology. Chicago, by many accounts, was a cultural backwater. Why not just move to New York and fall in with like-minded individuals in a thriving art scene? Why did he stay in Chicago and found the New Art Examiner? (Read more from F Magazine.)
92 Percent of College Students Prefer Reading Print Books to Ereaders
Despite the embrace of ebooks in certain contexts, ereaders remain controversial. Many people just don’t like them: ereaders run out of battery, they hurt your eyes, and they don’t work in the bath. After years of growth, sales are stagnating. In 2014, 65 percent of six- to seventeen-year-old children said they would always want to read books in print—up from 60 percent two years earlier. (Read more from the New Republic.)
What’s Wrong with the Public Intellectual?
For years, the undigitized gem of American journals had been Partisan Review. Last year its guardians finally brought it online. Some of its mystery has been preserved, insofar as its format remains hard to use, awkward, and hopeless for searches. Even in its new digital form it retains a slightly superior pose. (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)
Is a New Artistic Activism Emerging via Social Media and Forms of Public Protest?
Recent world crises have elicited an unprecedented response on social media and brought on new forms of artistic protest. Think of the brave Mexican artists who have been standing naked in public to protest student killings, shared everywhere online, or take a look at the pictures below for a visual recap of other artistic protest projects over the past few months. They got me thinking: is a new artistic activism emerging via social media and forms of public protest? (Read more from Artnet News.)
Museum Rules: Talk Softly, and Carry No Selfie Stick
In a famous lab trial, a chimp named Sultan put two interlocking sticks together and pulled down an elusive prize, a bunch of bananas hanging just out of arm’s reach. Nearly a century later, eager tourists have conducted their own version of the experiment. Equipped with the camera extender known as a selfie stick, occasionally referred to as “the wand of narcissism,” they can now reach for flattering CinemaScope selfies wherever they go. (Read more from the New York Times.)
People in the News
posted Feb 17, 2015
People in the News lists new hires, positions, and promotions in three sections: Academe, Museums and Galleries, and Organizations and Publications.
The section is published 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.
February 2015
Academe
Hala AujiHala Auji has been appointed assistant professor of Islamic art in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.
Museums and Galleries
Denise Allen has left the Frick Collection in New York for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, also in New York, where she is curator of European sculpture and decorative arts.
Elissa Auther, associate professor of contemporary art and director of the art-history and museum-studies program at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, has joined the Museum of Arts and Design in New York as the inaugural Wingate Research Curator. She will hold a joint appointment at the Bard Graduate Center, in collaboration with the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design.
Robert C. Hobbs, Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and visiting professor at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has been inducted as a trustee of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut.
Organizations and Publications
Dena Muller has been appointed executive director of the Cue Art Foundation in New York. Previously she had served the New York Foundation for the Arts as director of new initiatives.
Institutional News
posted Feb 17, 2015
Read about the latest news from institutional members.
Institutional News is published 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.
February 2015
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has won the 2014 Apollo Award for Museum Opening of the Year. The award is given annually by the art magazine Apollo.
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minnesota has accepted an $8 million gift from the Duncan and Nivin MacMillan Foundation to endow the director and president’s position.
The Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey, has won the 2014 Frances Smyth-Ravenal Prize for Excellence in Publication Design from the American Alliance of Museums for its catalogue of the exhibition New Jersey as Non-Site.
Yale University Press in New Haven, Connecticut, has received an $840,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to establish a new electronic portal on which curated and customizable art and architectural-history content will be made available to consumers and institutions.
Join Us for a Webinar about the J. M. K. Innovation Prize
posted Feb 17, 2015
The J. M. K. Innovation Prize is an exciting new initiative of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, a New York–based family foundation. In 2015 up to ten prizes will be awarded to US–based individuals or teams addressing our country’s most pressing needs through social-sector innovation.
Join us on Tuesday, February 24 at 12:00 PM EST for an informational webinar about the J. M. K. Innovation Prize. Topics of discussion will include the purpose of the prize, eligibility requirements, the application and selection timeline, and much more. You may register here:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2057012897150264066
If you’ve already registered for this webinar, it is not necessary to register again.
For more information about the J. M .K. Innovation Prize, please visit the J. M. Kaplan Fund’s website: www.JMKFund.org.
Thank you for your continued interest and support!
AAMD Supports the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts
posted Feb 17, 2015
In a letter sent to Linda Downs and DeWitt Godfrey on February 9, 2015, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) expressed its support of CAA’s newly published Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts.
Christine Anagnos, AAMD executive director, and Susan Taylor, AAMD president and Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art in Louisinan, write: “AAMD believes the code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts is an excellent contribution to the field and a great point of departure for best practices in the fair use of copyrighted materials. We are thankful to those who helped to develop the guide over the past two years and recognize the hard work of Peter Jaszi and Patricia Aufderheide.”
Grants, Awards, and Honors
posted Feb 15, 2015
CAA recognizes its members for their professional achievements, be it a grant, fellowship, residency, book prize, honorary degree, or related award.
Grants, Awards, and Honors is published 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.
February 2015
Kate Palmer Albers, assistant professor in the Art History Division of the School of Art at the University of Arizona in Tempe, has received a 2014 award from the Arts Writers Grants program, funded by Creative Capital and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The grant will fund a new blog, Project K: Photography and Art in the Age of Social Media.
Luke Armitstead, an artist based in Madison, Wisconsin, has received a Clowes Fund Fellowship to support a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson.
Hala AujiHala Auji, assistant professor at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, received a 2014 Honorable Mention Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Humanities from the Middle East Studies Association for her dissertation, “Between Script and Print: Exploring Publications of the American Syria Mission and the Nascent Press in the Arab World, 1834–1860,” which completed under the direction of Nancy Um at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
Elissa Auther, Wingate Research Curator for the Museum of Arts and Design and the Bard Graduate Center in New York, has received a 2014 award from the Arts Writers Grants program, funded by Creative Capital and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The grant will support her article, “Senga Nengudi: The Performing Body.”
Rachelle Beaudoin, a video and performance artist based in Peterborough, New Hampshire, has earned a Clowes Fund Fellowship for a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson.
Maurice Berger, research professor and chief curator for the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County, has received a 2014 award in short-form writing from the Arts Writers Grants program, funded by Creative Capital and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Kaira M. CabañasKaira M. Cabañas, an art historian based in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, has won a 2014 award from the Arts Writers Grants program, funded by Creative Capital and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Her book project is called Expressive Restraint: Modern Art and Madness in Brazil and Beyond.
Abigail DeVille, an artist based in the Bronx, New York, has been awarded a 2015 grant in the visual-arts category from Creative Capital. DeVille will work on The Bronx: History of Now, a series of one hundred site-specific sculptural installations constructed from found objects, fragments of histories, and community narratives.
Craig Drennen, detail of HELLO CRAIG, 2014, oil and alkyd on canvas, 52 x 40 in. (artwork © Craig Drennen)Craig Drennen, assistant professor of drawing and painting at Georgia State University in Atlanta, has received a 2014 grant from the foundation Art Matters.
Angela Ellsworth, an artist based in Phoenix, Arizona, who works in drawing, sculpture, installation, video, and performance, has won a 2014 Art Matters grant.
Ryan Gallant, a sculptor based in Grass Valley, California, has received fellowship for a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont.
Ksenya GurshteinKsenya Gurshtein, an art historian based in Washington, DC, has accepted a 2014 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for her project, “Conceptual Art in Eastern Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.”
Jeffrey Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has accepted a 2014 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for his project, “Berthold of Nuremberg’s 13th-Century Reconfiguration of Hrabanus Maurus’s 9th-Century Treatise on the Cross.”
Michelle Handelman, an artist based in Brooklyn, New York, who works in video, performance, and photography, has accepted a 2014 grant from the foundation Art Matters.
Andrew E. Hershberger, associate professor of contemporary art history and chair of the Division of Art History at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, has won a 2015 Insight Award from the Society for Photographic Education for his book Photographic Theory: An Historical Anthology.
Suzanne Hudson, assistant professor of art history at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has received a 2014 award from the Arts Writers Grants program, funded by Creative Capital and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Her book project is titled Better for the Making: Art, Therapy, Process.
Sharon IrishSharon Irish, an art and architectural historian at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, has won a 2014 award from the Arts Writers Grants program, funded by Creative Capital and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The grant will support her book project, Stephen Willats in the Yew Kay.
Janet Koplos, an art critic and historian based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, has received a 2014 award from the Arts Writers Grants program, funded by Creative Capital and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The grant will help sustain her book project, The Loyal Opposition: The Life and Times of Chicago’s Controversial New Art Examiner.
Beauvais LyonsBeauvais Lyons, Chancellor’s Professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, has been selected for a 2014 Individual Artist Award by the Santo Foundation, based in Saint Louis, Missouri. The award comes with a $5,000 prize.
Leah Montalto, an artist based in New York, has received a grant from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs via the 2015 Queens Arts Fund, part of the Greater New York Arts Development Fund for Individual Artists. Montalto will work on a new series of paintings, titled The Arc of Triumph.
Lorraine O’Grady, a New York–based artist and writer, has been awarded a 2015 grant in the visual-arts category from Creative Capital. The funds will support MBN – 30 Years Later, in which the artist’s performance persona Mlle Bourgeoise Noire transforms into a new avatar who protests a money-driven art world to restore the cultural purpose it has lost.
John Pollini, professor of art history and history the University of Southern California in Los Angeles has accepted a 2014 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for his project, “Destruction, Mutiliation, and Repurposing of Classical Images in Late Antiquity.”
View of Elizabeth Riggle’s studioElizabeth Riggle, an artist based in Brooklyn, New York, has earned a residency at the Yaddo Foundation in Saratoga Springs, New York, for winter/spring 2015.
David Shannon-Lier, a photographer based in Phoenix, Arizona, has won a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship for a residency at the center in Johnson, Vermont.
Andrew Wasserman, assistant professor of art and architecture history at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, has received a 2014 award from the Arts Writers Grants program, funded by Creative Capital and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The prize will support his book project, Bang! We’re All Dead! The Places of Nuclear Fear in 1980s America.
Yatta Zoker, an artist based in Houston, Texas, has accepted a $4,000 Catalyst Grant from the Idea Fund for The LDR Project, a series of three collaborative art-making workshops and a sponsorship for one expatriate or immigrant student at the University of Houston to reunite with their loved ones during summer break.
Exhibitions Curated by CAA Members
posted Feb 15, 2015
Exhibitions Curated by CAA Members
Check out details on recent shows organized by CAA members who are also curators.
Exhibitions Curated by CAA Members is published 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.
February 2015
Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Marche de nuit (Night March), ca. 1917, etching with drypoint, 6 x 15 3/16 in. Collection Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers, Gift of Norma B. Bartman (artwork in the public domain; photograph by Peter Jacobs)Christine Giviskos. Picturing War: Selections from the Zimmerli Art Museum Collection. Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, February 7–July 5, 2015.
Donald Lokuta, Casting Miles Forst for “The Red Scaffold,” 1990, silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in. (artwork © Donald Lokuta; photograph provided by the artist and hpgrp Gallery, New York)Donna Gustafson. George Segal in Black and White: Photographs by Donald Lokuta. Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, February 14–July 31, 2015.
Monica Bengoa, Exercices de Style / Exercises in Style. Notations / Notation, 2014–15, natural wool felt and 493 hand-cut felt letters, 72 x 47 in. (artwork © Monica Bengoa)Julia P. Herzberg. Monica Bengoa: Exercices de Style / Exercises in Style. Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, February 14–April 26, 2015.
Clifford Owens, Anthology (Kara Walker), 2010, archival pigment prints and video (artwork © Clifford Owens; photograph provided by Martha Wilson, New York and Matthew McNutty)Katie Grace McGowan and Jaime Marie Davis. Menagerie, or Artwork Not about Love. Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, October 24–December 12, 2014.
Books Published by CAA Members
posted Feb 15, 2015
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.
February 2015
Donna Gustafson. George Segal in Black and White: Photographs by Donald Lokuta (New Brunswick, NJ: Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 2015).
Andrew D. Hottle. Shirley Gorelick (1924–2000): Painter of Humanist Realism (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014).
Carol E. Mayer. A Discerning Eye: The Walter C. Koerner Collection of European Ceramics (Vancouver: Figure 1, 2015).
Tanya Sheehan and Andrés Mario Zervigón, eds. Photography and Its Origins (New York: Routledge, 2015).
Theodore E. Stebbins Jr. and Melissa Renn. American Paintings at Harvard, Volume 1: Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels by Artists Born before 1826 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2014).
Julia Tulovsky. Oleg Vassiliev: Space and Light (New Brunswick, NJ: Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 2014).
Nino Zchomelidse. Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014).
Results of the 2015–19 Board of Directors Election
posted Feb 13, 2015
The CAA Board of Directors welcomes four newly elected members, who will serve from 2015 to 2019:
- Jawshing Arthur Liou, Indiana University
- Chika Okeke-Agulu, Princeton University
- Rachel Weiss, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Andrés Zervigón, Rutgers University
DeWitt Godfrey, CAA board president, announced the election results during the Annual Members’ Business Meeting, held on Friday, February 13, 2015, at the 103rd Annual Conference in New York.
The Board of Directors is charged with CAA’s long-term financial stability and strategic direction; it is also the association’s governing body. The board sets policy regarding all aspects of CAA’s activities, including publishing, the Annual Conference, awards and fellowships, advocacy, and committee procedures.
For the annual board election, CAA members vote for no more than four candidates; they also cast votes for write-in candidates (who must be CAA members). The four candidates receiving the most votes are elected to the board.
Visit the CAA Book at the Annual Conference in New York
posted Feb 12, 2015
Find discounts and special offers at CAA’s booth in the Book and Trade Fair at the 2015 Annual Conference in New York.
Don’t miss these opportunities:
- Speak with a representative of Cuba Educational Travel about the CAA trip to visit the Havana Bienal in May 2015. This tour is nearly full!
- Pick up a print copy of the newly published Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts
- Purchase discounted copies of Graduate Programs in the Visual Arts and Graduate Programs in Art History, CAA’s comprehensive resources for prospective graduate students and arts professionals alike
- Buy signed artists’ projects by William Pope.L, one of this year’s Annual Distinguished Artists and Barbara Bloom ($35 members/$50 nonmembers)
- Meet representatives of the ACLS Humanities E-Book and discuss their online collection of 4,300 books in the humanities, accessible through institutional and individual subscriptions
Ticket Prices
Exhibit Hall tickets are available onsite in the Registration area on the Second Floor Promenade.
- Conference registrant: FREE Admission with your conference registration badge
- Member: $15, with credit card, check, or cash
- Nonmember: $25, with credit card, check, or cash
The Book and Trade Fair is open on Thursday and Friday, February 12 and 13, 9:00 AM–6:00 PM, and on Saturday, February 14, 9:00 AM–2:30 PM, in the Americas Exhibit Hall, Levels I and II, New York Hilton Midtown.