CAA News Today
CAA Appoints New Committee Members and Chairs
posted Jan 22, 2015
CAA’s nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees welcome their newly appointed members, who will serve three-year terms (2015–18). In addition, three new chairs will take over committee leadership. New committee members and chairs will begin their terms at the 2015 Annual Conference in New York. CAA warmly thanks all outgoing committee members for their years of service to the organization.
A call for nominations for these committees appears annually from July to September in CAA News and on the CAA website. CAA’s president, vice president for committees, and executive director review all nominations in November and make appointments that take effect the following February. CAA’s vice president for committees is an ex officio member of all nine groups.
New Committee Members and Chairs
Committee on Diversity Practices: Ann Albritton, Ringling College of Art and Design; Mariola Alvarez, Washington College; Raél Jero Salley, University of Cape Town; and Edith Wolfe, Tulane University. The new chair is Christine Young-Kyung Hahn of Kalamazoo College.
Committee on Intellectual Property: Amy Ogata, University of Southern California.
Committee on Women in the Arts: Jenn Dierdorf, A.I.R. Gallery; Johanna Gosse, independent scholar, Seattle; Heather Belnap Jensen, Brigham Young University; Caitlin Margaret Kelly, Duke University; Miriam Schaer, Columbia College Chicago; and Jean Shin, Pratt Institute. Donna Moran of Pratt Institute is the new committee chair.
Education Committee: Kathleen Holko, Bruce Museum; Richard D. Lubben, South Texas College; and Christopher Ulivo, Santa Barbara City College.
International Committee: Alexandra Chang, Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University; and Fernando Luis Martínez Nespral, University of Buenos Aires.
Museum Committee: Jill Deupi, Lowe Art Museum; and Ivan Gaskell, Bard Graduate Center.
Professional Practices Committee: Susan Altman, Middlesex County College; Eunice Howe, University of Southern California; Walter Meyer, Santa Monica College; and Greg Shelnutt, Clemson University. Bruce Mackh of the University of Michigan has become the committee’s new chair.
Services to Artists Committee: Jan Christian Bernabe, Center for Art and Thought; and Carissa Carman, Indiana University.
Student and Emerging Professionals Committee: Tania Batley, Lefferts Historic House; Rachel Kreiter, Emory University; and Jenny Tang, Yale University.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jan 21, 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.
With New Congress, Resale Royalties Bill Is Dead (Again)
This week, the 114th Congress took its seats, meaning that any bill not passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate and signed by the president is a dead letter. This is the fate of many bills—indeed most. Art Law Report has followed two proposed laws for four years now, each of which have been introduced in some form in successive Congresses, only to lapse when a new Congress stepped in. (Read more from Art Law Report.)
Can the First Amendment Survive the Internet?
The internet presents First Amendment quandaries that seem fundamentally different from those society faced previously. But are they really? Once only people wealthy enough to own a newspaper or a broadcast station could reach a large audience. Now anyone with access to a computer or even a cellphone—in other words, just about everyone—can reach a large number of people almost instantly. It used to be, too, that serious research often required a trip to a distant library or museum. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
US Artists That Use Drones Could Be Grounded
Artists in the United States could have less than a year left to freely use drones in their work. Although current flight restrictions apply only to commercial, not artistic, use of drones, the Federal Aviation Administration is working on new regulations that are due to be submitted to Congress by September. The clampdown comes in the face of the drone’s growing accessibility. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
See What the Artworks See
As museum goers, we’re used to looking at art, but a new project from the filmmaker and artist Masashi Kawamura inverses the traditional relationship of viewer to artwork. For his blog What They See, Kawamura has taken photographs from the perspectives of famous artworks, inviting us into their visual fields. Among the works represented so far are Degas’s The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, who apparently spends her days at the Metropolitan Museum gazing at the arch of a doorway, and Modigliani’s Reclining Nude, who gazes sideways at the paintings on the opposite wall. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
Describing Art: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Effects of Speaking on Gaze Movements during the Beholding of Paintings
Ever since the Renaissance, speaking about paintings has been a fundamental approach for beholders—especially experts. It is unclear, however, whether and how speaking about art modifies the way we look at it; this was not yet empirically tested. The present study investigated in what way speaking modifies the patterns of fixations and gaze movements while looking at paintings. (Read more from PLOS One.)
How to Survive a PhD Viva: Seventeen Top Tips
Handing in your PhD thesis is a massive achievement—but it’s not the end of the journey for doctoral students. Once you’ve submitted, you’ll need to prepare for the next intellectually grueling hurdle: a viva. This oral examination formally ensures that there’s no plagiarism involved, and that the student understands and can explain their thesis. It involves lots of penetrating questions and conceptually complex debates—and is infamously terrifying. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Ask the Art Professor: How Can I Study to Become a Professional Artist on My Own?
I am 23 years old and a beginning visual artist. I really want to get to a professional level but have no idea how to teach myself to get to that level. I can’t afford to go to art school and don’t have much money for local classes and workshops. Is there any way I could do this on my own? (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Writing with a Heavy Teaching Load
Rachel Toor’s essay “The Habits of Highly Productive Writers” contains practical information for academics seeking to boost their written output; it also approaches the topic in a way that, for me, makes the whole endeavor seem a bit less daunting. I can imagine many readers came away from her column thinking, “I can do this.” And yet, I can also imagine that many full-time faculty members at community colleges and other teaching-focused institutions found themselves also thinking, “That would be nice—if only I had the time to write.” (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Service as a Mock Interviewer
posted Jan 20, 2015
For the 2015 Annual Conference in New York, the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee seeks established professionals to volunteer as practice interviewers for the Mock Interview Sessions. Participating as an interviewer is an excellent way to serve the field and to assist with the professional development of the next generation of artists and scholars.
In these sessions, interviewers pose as a prospective employer, speaking with individuals in a scenario similar to the Interview Hall at the conference. Each session is composed of approximately 10–15 minutes of interview questions and a quick review of the application packet, followed by 5–10 minutes of candid feedback. Whenever possible, the committee matches interviewers and interviewees based on medium or discipline.
Interested candidates must be current CAA members and prepared to give six successive twenty-minute interviews with feedback in a two-hour period on one or both of these days: Thursday, February 12, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM and 3:00–5:00 PM; and Friday, February 13, 9:00–11:00 AM and 1:00–3:00 PM. Conference registration, while encouraged, is not required to be a mock interviewer. Desired for the sessions are art historians, art educators, designers, museum-studies professionals, critics, curators, and studio artists with tenure and/or experience on a search committee. You may volunteer for one, two, three, or all four Mock Interview Sessions.
Please send your name, affiliation, position, contact information, and the days and times that you are available to Megan Koza Young, chair of the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee. Deadline: January 31, 2015.
The Mock Interview Sessions are not intended as a screening process by institutions seeking new hires.
Career Services Guide for the 2015 Annual Conference
posted Jan 15, 2015
CAA has designed the Career Services Guide to inform job seekers and employers about placement activities at the 2015 Annual Conference in New York. The publication, available as a PDF, will help you navigate Career Services events and provides answers to frequently asked questions. Study this guide carefully so that you will know what to expect from conference interviewing and how best to prepare for a successful experience.
Job candidates can review the basics of the conference employment search. Read about the Candidate Center, your home base at the conference, as well as Orientation, an introduction to Career Services where you can ask questions. In addition, learn more about the Online Career Center, where you can search for position listings, post application materials, and arrange interviews. The publication includes tips for improving your CV, portfolio, and supplemental application materials.
Employers will find details in the guide for renting interview booths and tables as well as recommendations for posting jobs and conducting interviews at the conference. You can begin preparations now for Career Services through the Online Career Center or onsite at the Interviewer Center.
Printed copies of the Career Services Guide will be distributed onsite at Orientation and in the Candidate Center. All conference Career Services will take place at the New York Hilton Midtown. For more information about job searching, professional-development workshops, and more, visit the Career Services section of the conference website.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Jan 14, 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.
Artists’ Low Income and Status Are International Issues
In the UK, as the Paying Artists campaign revealed in 2014, the majority of contemporary artists are barely surviving financially, with no or low pay the norm. In real terms, nearly three-quarters of artists are getting just 37 percent of the average UK salary from their practice. But while some argue that it’s the absence of collective bargaining mechanisms that result in such exploitation, even in countries where there are well-developed fees systems, low pay for artists remains the burning issue. (Read more from the Guardian.)
New Focus: The Art of Making a Living
When administrators at University of the Arts were seeking a new way to prepare students for work after graduation, they didn’t have to look far. An answer lay just across Pine Street. They struck a cross-registration deal with Peirce College, a neighboring school that offers classes in finance, ecommerce, marketing, and app development. Kirk Pillow, the university’s provost, said it’s part of a broader effort to create value for students. (Read more from the Philadelphia Inquirer.)
What Can Learned Societies Do about Adjuncts?
What power do learned societies have to effect change? What is actually within their reach? These are not omnipotent organizations, despite the attempts to suggest they are. Their resources are finite as are their spheres of influence. What they should do doesn’t neatly fit with what they can do. This is not to defend the inaction of learned societies on the issue of contingent labor, but rather to contextualize the possibility of action and recourse. (Read more from Vitae.)
Help Desk: Breaking into Arts Journalism
I love writing and I love art. I have been teaching for ten years and am now looking to break into journalism and the arts. Should I head back to university and do a journalism course or attempt every competition possible in order to build a portfolio? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
Thirty Art-Writing Clichés to Ditch in the New Year
It’s a new year, which is a fine excuse as any to ditch old bad habits. Here below, I have assembled a not-at-all exhaustive list of art-writing words that I could do without in 2015. I admit, I’ve been guilty myself of abusing some or all of them—but of course that’s what New Year’s resolutions are for. (Read more from Artnet News.)
The Problem of the Overlooked Female Artist: An Argument for Enlivening a Stale Model of Discussion
Recently I was told that a certain art magazine editor, who had deleted the feminist critique from a review I had written, “can only take so much feminism.” At the time, I was infuriated that someone who is tasked with shaping the way art is discussed would take such an explicit and condescending stance against gender equality. With art-world professionals like him hoping that feminism would just go away, it feels necessary to be supportive of any museum exhibitions, gallery shows, market successes, or media attention given to women artists. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
Measuring Diversity in City Arts Organizations
A mecca for the arts, New York City has also become one of the most multicultural cities in the country, with no single dominant racial or ethnic group and residents who speak more than two hundred languages, according to the Department of City Planning. Whether its cultural institutions reflect those demographics is another issue. (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)
Raising the Profile of Columbia’s Art
Columbia University owns thousands of antiquities, antiques, and paintings, but it has no major display spaces and no comprehensive database. So the works largely go unnoticed even by some staff members. Roberto C. Ferrari, an art historian and librarian who became Columbia’s curator of art properties in 2013, has set out to raise the profile of the ten thousand objects on campus. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Will There Be Life after Death for New Private Museums?
From the opening of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in October to the construction of the Broad in Los Angeles, now set to open this autumn, the model of the single-donor museum is thriving. You’d have to dial back the clock more than a century to the American “robber barons” like Frick, Morgan, and Huntington to find another moment in art history when so many great institutions were founded by powerful individuals instead of broader coalitions or private-public alliances. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Sign Up for a Mock Interview
posted Jan 13, 2015
Students and emerging professionals have the opportunity to sign up for a twenty-minute practice interview at the 2015 Annual Conference in New York. Organized by the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee, Mock Interview Sessions give participants the chance to practice their interview skills one on one with a seasoned professional, improve their effectiveness during interviews, and hone their elevator speech. Interviewers also provide candid feedback on application packets.
Mock Interview Sessions are offered free of charge; you must be a CAA member to participate. Sessions are filled by appointment only and scheduled for Thursday, February 12, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM and 3:00–5:00 PM; and Friday, February 13, 9:00–11:00 AM and 1:00–3:00 PM. Conference registration, while encouraged, is not necessary to participate.
To apply, download, complete, and send the 2015 Mock Interview Sessions Enrollment Form to Megan Koza Young, chair of the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee, by email to sepccaa@gmail.com or by mail to: 706 Webster Street, New Orleans, LA 70118. You may enroll in one twenty-minute session. Deadline: February 5, 2015.
You will be notified of your appointment day and time by email. Please bring your application packet, including cover letter, CV, and other materials related to jobs in your field. The Student and Emerging Professionals Committee will make every effort to accommodate all applicants; however, space is limited.
Onsite enrollment will be limited and first-come, first-served. Sign up in the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge starting on Wednesday, February 11, at 4:00 PM.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for January 2015
posted Jan 10, 2015
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
January 2015
Nicole Miller at Artists’ Film International
Ballroom Marfa
108 East San Antonio Street, Marfa, TX 79843
November 22, 2014–February 22, 2015
Ballroom Marfa is presenting two recent videos by Nicole Miller, as a highlighted artist participating at the Artists’ Film International. This project means a collection of artists’ film, video and animation from around the world that has been coorganized with Whitechapel Gallery in London.
Miller (b. 1982; Tucson, Arizona) lives and works in Los Angeles. Her films and installations explore the transformative capabilities of the moving image to reconstruct interpretations of self and culture. Through storytelling, self-representation and self-presentation become a narrative in search for the reconstitution of physical and psychic manifestations of loss. Her videos often focus on the interplay between preconception and reality in terms of African American identity, as in the case of The Conductor (2009), presented earlier this year at the High Line Art Program.
In this occasion, Ballroom Marfa is presenting two recent projects by Miller. In David (2012) we can observe the fragmented image of the profile of a man that the artist encountered by chance on the street. Here, he narrates the events that lead to the amputation of his left arm whilst his right limb is reflected in a mirror—a rehabilitation technique that helps patients deal with the painful symptoms of a phantom limb. Death of a School (2014) is a predominantly silent four-channel video that meditates on the events of a soon to be shutdown school in Tucson, which is Miller’s hometown. Presented together, Miller’s films become powerful narratives that carry the possibility of reconstitution of lost histories and identities.
Johanna Calle: Indicios
Casas Reigner
Calle 70A # 7-41, Bogotá, Colombia
October 2, 2014–January 30, 2015
Casas Riegner presents Indicios (Signs), an exhibition that gathers Johanna Calle’s most representative works produced between 1990 and 2014. Seeking to examine closely the visual language that has characterized her work for more than two decades, the exhibition includes a selection of projects in which different processes developed by the artist are juxtaposed. In each series of work, Calle exposes her approach to the creative process, where she also unveils a sense of unsettledness and curiosity.
Featuring her conceptual research and creative use of unconventional materials, the display includes Calle’s assemblages, signs, and phonetic representations of indigenous languages, photographic drawings made on vintage analogue photographs, and the intervention of archives and documents that are part of different research projects. For the documentation-based installation Hermanas Figueiredo (2013–14), Calle reconstructed a story as a gesture of redemption to the Brazilian sisters that devoted their life to a scientific research around the life of butterflies in the first half of the twentieth century. However, they have lost the legal battle with a recognized Brazilian professor who was hired to catalogue their collection and had deliberately chosen to wrongly assign its authorship and ownership. The case was dismissed and labeled as exhaustive and rigorous maniac women’s work.
Calle holds a BFA from Universidad de Los Andes en Bogotá and an MFA from Chelsea College of Arts in London, England. Her projects Perímetros I and Perímetros II were included at the thirty-first Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil in 2014.
Donna Sharrett: Love Songs
Pavel Zoubok Gallery
531 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
January 8–February 7, 2015
Pavel Zoubok Gallery presents Love Songs, a solo exhibition of new work by Donna Sharrett, including two of her largest—yet humanly scaled—works to date, framed by Sampling, a related group show curated by Dara Meyers-Kingsley.
With a variety of needlework techniques, Sharrett creates painstakingly wrought concentric assemblages sewn together from a potent and personal material lexicon consisting of donated or inherited jewelry, clothing, and buttons; hair, bone beads, dirt, and guitar strings. Passed down from a congenial and ancestral sorority of craftswomen and fiber artists, Sharrett’s techniques instill in each piece cross-cultural references to life, death, and rebirth. Addressing the shared human ability and desire to remember, her works transcend the confines of economic, religious and cultural boundaries.They instead evoke “life as it is lived and remembered—a notion of lineage that is not always linear and narrative but sometimes acts more like a spiral—a growing flower that rises from the earth and whose seeds scatter to become the next crop.”
Sharrett (b. Philadelphia, 1958) is the recipient of two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts as well as notable residencies and grants from Smack Mellon, the Bronx Museum and the Millay Colony for the Arts Residency. Her work has been widely exhibited, including a solo exhibition at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, and group exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York; the Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, Washington; the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York; and Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Arts and Design in New York; the United States Embassy in Valletta, Malta; the Hebrew Home for the Aged in New York; and J. P. Morgan Chase in New York. A full-color catalogue will accompany the exhibition.
Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman
MOCA Pacific Design Center
8687 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, CA 90069
October 11, 2014–January 18, 2015
Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman is the first survey of Cameron’s work since 1989 and explores the artist’s role as a seminal figure within Los Angeles’s midcentury counterculture, her unique melding of surrealism and mysticism, and her unwavering commitment to live her life as art. “Navigating between disciplines and traditions of poetry, cinema, visual arts, and spirituality; Cameron has opened many doors that continue to intrigue and inspire generations of artists,” while “her hallucinated vision … embodies an aspect of modernity that deeply doubts and defies cartesian logic at a moment in history when these values have shown their own limitations,” as stated by MOCA’s director, Philippe Vergne.
Born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, Cameron (Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel) (1922–1995) emerged as an artist, performer, poet, and occult practitioner in Los Angeles, uniquely bridging the city’s flourishing spiritual and art worlds at midcentury. She arrived in Los Angeles by way of the Second World War, where she drew maps and labored in a photographic unit for the United States Navy. A visionary painter and unparalleled draftsman best known today for her paintings and drawings of human and fantastical figures, she spend her last days in West Hollywood largely unrecognized. Cameron’s frenetic, delicate renderings of mythological figures reveal a singular attention to line and the idea of spiritual metamorphosis, evoking the surrealism and symbolism of the French poets. She is closely associated with Beat artists such as Wallace Berman, George Herms, and Dennis Hopper, the filmmakers Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington, and the occultist Aleister Crowley, while she was mentor to younger artists and poets such as David Meltzer and Aya (Tarlow). Cameron’s artwork appeared in the first issue of Berman’s celebrated journal Semina (1955–64) and has also been included in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Martin-Gropius Bau in Berlin, the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in 1989.
Comprised of nearly one hundred artworks and ephemeral artifacts, the exhibition includes pieces formerly thought to be lost, ranging from early paintings to drawings, sketchbooks, and poetry from her late years, as well as ephemera and correspondence with individuals such as her husband Jack Parsons (1914–1952), a rocket pioneer and a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell. The exhibition brings to life the recently published book titled Songs for the Witch Woman that features a series of poems written by Parsons alongside illustrations drawn by Cameron that echo the intimate themes of their turbulent love story.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Cameron Parsons Foundation is producing an eighty-eight-page catalogue with approximately seventy-five full-color illustrations.
Sylvie Blocher: S’inventeur autrement
Mudam Luxemburg
Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean 3, Park Dräi Eechelen L-1499 Luxembourg-Kirchberg
August 11, 2014–May 25, 2015
Since the early 1990s, the French artist Sylvie Blocher has built up a body of video work that takes the human as its material, in all its fragility, unpredictability, and yet full presence. She engages with a poetics of relation, emancipation, the questioning of identities, the writing of history, the permeability of the masculine/feminine border, and codes of representation in a world under control. Created in different geographic regions, her works are based on exchange: they often involve the participation of lay people, who are invited to present themselves in a completely new fashion before the camera, as the artist “shares her authority with her models” to create what she calls Living Pictures.
This solo exhibition at Mudam Luxembourg revolves around an ambitious project titled Dreams Have a Language, which combines a participative work, a video installation, and the production of a movie. As envisioned by the artist, the show was meant to be “the story of an event at a museum in Luxembourg in which the visitors will not be content to look politely at the works, but decide impulsively to experience leaving the world for a few minutes, in a journey filmed and broadcast, a story of fragmented, floating bodies. Then a movie, the start of another story.”
During the first weeks of the exhibition, the museum’s Grand Hall became a fully active film studio that centered on the operation of a flying machine twelve meters tall. Through the placement of an ad in various media, Blocher invited the public to visit the museum, to leave the ground for a few minutes, and to “rethink the world.” “Shooting conditions: allow one hour and present yourself at Mudam with an idea to change the world. It might be poetic, political, aesthetic, emotional, revolutionary, scientific, architectural, educational, financial, culinary, sonic, etc.” Forming the content for a video installation at the center of the exhibition, the pictures of the suspended bodies will be the starting point for a movie created with the Luxembourg director Donato Rotunno, to be released in spring 2015. By combining a documentary approach with fictional writing, the movie will offer “an assemblage of words, gestures and moments that will open up an imaginary universe, an expectancy, a suspense.”
A survey of the artist’s work is also presented in two of the museum’s galleries, where video installations and drawings sample key themes of Blocher’s work: the sharing of responsibility, the question of politics, identity, dreams, and utopia. By using music to give new life to important speeches and manifestos made in contemporary history (by Angela Davis, Édouard Glissant, and Barack Obama, among others), the five videos that form the series Speeches (2009–12), which are part of the Mudam Collection, engage with the political dimension of the imagination, individual and collective. Other works, such as the diptych Change the Scenario (Conversation with Bruce Nauman) (2013) and the three videos recently created by Blocher in Texas, tackle historic and racial aspects in the construction of the individual. Placed at the entrance to each gallery, a series of drawings that the artist has made every day for a year, based on the front page of the newspaper Libération, emphasizes the passages between the personal and the political initiated by her practice.
December 2014 Issue of The Art Bulletin
posted Jan 09, 2015
The opening essay of the December 2014 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, is Cheng-hua Wang’s examination of Sino-European artistic interaction, the latest in the quarterly journal’s “Whither Art History?” series.
In other essays in the issue: John K. Papadopoulos identifies the Motya Youth, unearthed in 1979, as a kalathiskos dancer and explores the political implications of this new interpretation. In her article “Old Plates, New Impressions,” Alexandra Onuf analyzes editorial interventions in a sixteenth-century print series reissued in seventeenth-century Antwerp as responses to the upheavals of the Eighty Years’ War. In “The Emptiness behind the Mask,” Nóra Veszprémi considers how the Rococo revival in mid-nineteenth-century Austria, suffused with contradictory meanings, prompted musings on time, history, and national identity. For the issue’s final essay, Annika Marie reads Ad Reinhardt’s black square paintings as object lessons in Marxist dialectics that ultimately serve to demystify art.
In the Reviews section, Khristaan D. Villela surveys four recent multiauthor books on Maya art, including Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks and Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom. Rebecca Zorach reviews two books addressing chromatic subjects: The Materiality of Color: The Production, Circulation, and Application of Dyes and Pigments, 1400–1800, edited by Andrea Feeser, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Beth Fowkes Tobin, and Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory beyond Green, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Closing the December issue is Brian Kane’s review of Whitney Davis’s book, A General Theory of Visual Culture.
CAA sends The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and to those individuals who choose to receive the journal as a benefit of their membership. The digital version at Taylor & Francis Online is currently available to all CAA individual members.
In the next issue of the quarterly journal, March 2015, essays will consider the five members of the Società del 1496 workshop, portraitlike representations of slaves in Pietro Tacca’s Quattro Mori, Joshua Reynolds’s use of unstable and unconventional materials, and Marie-Denise Viller’s A Study of a Woman after Nature.
Affiliated Society News for January 2015
posted Jan 09, 2015
American Society of Appraisers
The American Society of Appraisers (ASA) will host the upcoming 2015 Personal Property Conference, titled “Issues in Determining the Authenticity in Visual Art and Objects, the Catalogue Raisonné, Art Scholarship, and Value in the Marketplace.” The conference will be held at the prestigious Yale Club in New York from March 25 to 27, 2015. World renown and highly regarded experts in art law, art, and antiques will gather together for discussion on relevant and timely issues facing art-industry professionals, collectors, museum curators, dealers, auctioneers, insurance underwriters, estate attorneys, and appraisers. Individuals practicing in any of these areas of fine art and decorative arts will not want to miss this important gathering of respected scholars and authorities. Topics of discussion include connoisseurship, authentication, conservation, research, provenance, and value in the markets. In addition, a representative from the Internal Revenue Service will cover issues of compliance regarding appraisals for estates and charitable contributions, and an FBI agent will discuss fraud and art crime as they affect the global marketplace. For registration and more information, please visit www.appraisers.org or call 800-272-8258.
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) has appointed Christopher Bedford, director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, to be the keynote speaker for the organization’s next annual conference, taking place April 24–26, 2015, in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2009, the Rose became infamous for Brandeis’ attempt to sell significant objects from its collection. Bedford was hired in 2012 to turn this situation around and has been building staff and acquiring new works. He also recently commissioned a work by Chris Burden that highlights the university’s renewed commitment to the museum and its collection.
For a limited time, AAMG is offering free student memberships. Student membership is an important way to explore the field while preparing informed professionals. In addition, student membership provides access to scholarship funds to help attend educational programs such as the AAMG’s annual conference, which offers a résumé workshop and the opportunity to connect first-hand with over two hundred attendees.
Whether you are a student, new to the field, or a seasoned professional, AAMG’s listserv connects more than four thousand museum professionals and those in related fields, from across the country and the world, who can provide assistance and mentoring on a wide range of issues facing museums today.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
The Historian of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) held its fourth biennial symposium at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Ontario, from October 16 to 18, 2014. The HIAA conference is the biennial forum for the presentation and discussion of papers on various aspects of Islamic art history, and is open to all, regardless of nationality or academic affiliation. The overarching theme of the symposium was “Forms of Knowledge and Cultures of Learning in Islamic Art.”
International Association of Art Critics
The International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) welcomed the return of Judith Stein to its board in fall 2014. The organization will hold its session at the CAA Annual Conference in New York on Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 12:30–2:00 PM in the Beekman Parlor, 2nd Floor, New York Hilton Midtown, 1335 Avenue of the Americas. The title of the session is “How Dare We Criticize: Contemporary Art Critics on the State of Their Art.”
International Association of Word and Image Studies
Over 150 scholars met this summer for the tenth international conference of the International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS/AIERTI), held August 11–15, 2014, in in Dundee, New Zealand. Focusing on the theme of “Riddles of Form: Exploration and Discovery in Word and Image,” the conference was hosted by the Scottish Word and Image Group at the University of Dundee. Over fifty panels were presented around thirty-two themed sessions, ranging from “Exploring Neuroscience” and “Science in the Twentieth-Century Avant Gardes” to “Charting Interior Spaces” and “Spirals in Nature and Art.” Anchoring the themes in locality, influential ideas from two of Dundee’s renowned visual thinkers and polymaths, D’Arcy Thompson and Patrick Geddes, served as springboards into global debates. Keynotes addressed the themes from complementary perspectives: in “Real Unicorns and Other Strange Tales,” Martin Kemp (emeritus professor, University of Oxford) explored the topic of truth claims in evolving forms of mediated knowledge; while in “Burnsiana,” professor of photography Calum Colvin Duncan (of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee) raised fundamental questions about processes of perceiving and discovering though his own multimedia artworks about Scotland’s national bard. A highlight was the excursion to Little Sparta, retreat of the “avant-gardener” and word/image artist Ian Hamilton Finlay.
International Center of Medieval Art
The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) is pleased to announce that it was recently awarded a renewal of its grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation—$10,000 a year for the next three years—to support travel costs for members participating in conference sessions sponsored by ICMA. ICMA regularly sponsors sessions at such major conferences as the CAA Annual Conference and the ICMA at Western Michigan University, as well as at a number of smaller conferences here and abroad. For the next three years, ICMA members who deliver papers in these sponsored sessions will be eligible for funding that can be used to defer the costs of travel and lodging at these conferences. To learn more about ICMA funding opportunities for scholars working in the field of medieval art or to become a member, please visit www.medievalart.org. For information about proposing an ICMA-sponsored session, please contact Janis Elliott.
International Sculpture Center
Each year the International Sculpture Center (ISC) presents an award competition to its member colleges and universities as a means of supporting, encouraging, and recognizing the work of young sculptors and their supporting schools’ faculty and art program. The Student Award winners participate in an exhibition at Grounds for Sculpture, as well as in a traveling exhibition hosted by arts organizations across the country. Winners’ work is also featured in Sculpture magazine. Each winner receives a one-year ISC membership; all winners are eligible to apply for a fully sponsored residency to study in Switzerland. To nominate a student for this competition, a nominee’s university must first be an ISC university-level member. University membership costs $200 for universities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico or $220 for international universities; this level includes a number of benefits. Interested students should talk to their professors about getting involved. To find out more about the program, please visit http://www.sculpture.org/StudentAwards/2015 or email studentawards@sculpture.org. Deadlines: Nominations open: January 1, 2015; university membership registration: March 16, 2015; online student nomination form: March 23, 2015; online student submission form: April 13, 2015.
ISC seeks proposals for panels for the twenty-fifth “International Sculpture Conference: New Frontiers in Sculpture in Central Arizona.” Taking place in fall 2015, the conference will feature keynote speakers, panels, and breakout sessions. The conference will explore: Creative Placemaking; Multi-Disciplinary Artist Led Investigations; Desert as Site: New Earthworks; and other topics in contemporary sculpture. The panel proposal submission deadline is March 1, 2015. All accepted submissions will be notified in May 2015. To learn more about topics, guidelines, and deadlines and to submit a proposal, please visit www.sculpture.org/az2015.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) will sponsor a session, entitled “Di politica: Intersections of Italian Art and Politics since WWII” and organized by Christopher Bennett and Elizabeth Mangini, at the upcoming CAA Annual Conference in New York on Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 12:30–2:00 PM. Current and prospective members are invited to attend the IAS business breakfast meeting on Thursday, February 11, at 7:30–9:00 AM, Madison Suite, 2nd Floor, New York Hilton Midtown. IAS will cosponsor two related study days entitled “Untying the Knot: The State of Postwar Italian Art History Today” at the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York, February 9–10, 2015. Additionally, the IAS will sponsor five sessions at the meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Berlin, Germany, in March 2015.
IAS seeks member applicants for its annual research and publication grant (deadline: January 10, 2015) and for the sixth annual 2015 IAS/Kress Lecture by an established scholar on a Neapolitan topic in Naples, Italy, on May 20, 2015 (deadline: January 4, 2015). IAS welcomes all interested in Italian art to join the society.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) convened its forty-second annual meeting on September 24–26, 2014, in Nashville, Tennessee. The organization owes a debt of gratitude to Mel Ziegler of Vanderbilt University for organizing a provocative and compelling conference. Speakers included: Pablo Helguera, an artist and the director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Education Department; Steven Tepper, a sociologist and dean of the Herberger Institute at Arizona State University; and Ruby Lerner, executive director of Creative Capital.
Three new board members were elected: Lynne Allen, Boston University; Elissa Armstrong, Virginia Commonwealth University; and Cathy Pagani, University of Alabama. They join these returning directors: Leslie Belavance, Alfred University (secretary); Tom Berding, Michigan State University; Steve Bliss, Savannah College of Art and Design; Cora Lynn Deibler, University of Connecticut, Storrs; Andrea Eis, Oakland University (treasurer); Nan Goggin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Amy Hauft, University of Texas at Austin (president); Jim Hopfensperger, Western Michigan University (past president); Lydia Thompson, Texas Tech University; and Mel Ziegler, Vanderbilt University.
Activities at the 2015 CAA Annual Conference in New York include the annual NCAA reception (Thursday, February 12, 5:00–8:00 PM) and an NCAA–CAA affiliate session, “Yes Is a World: Creativity in an Expanding Field,” which will be a fast-paced series of five-minute presentations (Thursday, February 12, 12:30–2:00 PM). NCAA enthusiastically welcomes new members, current members, and all interested parties.
Pacific Arts Association
The Pacific Arts Association (PAA) will hold a session at the 2015 CAA Annual Conference in New York called “Early Missionary Activity on Erromango and Its Impact on Local Material Culture.” Four panelists will examine the interplay between imposed change and local innovation in objects past and present.
An event titled “Trading Traditions: The Role of Art in the Pacific’s Traditional Trading Networks” will be organized by PAA (Pacific) in Tonga on September 28, 2015. For further information, please contact Karen Stevenson, vice president of PAA (Pacific).
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) made a strong showing at the annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies from November 20 to 23, 2014, in San Antonio, Texas. Members participated in numerous panels ranging from eighteenth-century prints to twentieth-century art and architecture, as well as film and contemporary art, in Eastern Europe and Russia.
At CAA’s Annual Conference in February, SHERA will sponsor two sessions: “Infiltrating the Pedagogical Canon,” chaired by Marie Gasper-Hulvat; and a double session led by Galina Mardilovich and Maria Taroutina, titled “Reconsidering Art and Politics: Toward New Narratives of Russian and Eastern European Art.”
In January 2015, Natasha Kurchanova became president of SHERA, as Margaret Samu’s term ended. Elections are planned for early January for the next vice president/president elect.
SHERA is delighted to welcome ARTINRUSSIA as a new institutional member. A division of the School of Russian and Asian Studies, ARTINRUSSIA creates study abroad programs, organizes faculty-led tours, and offers travel-assistance services. The organization’s website serves as a platform for publishing student writing about art in Russia and Eurasia.
Society for Photographic Education
Registration is open for the fifty-second national conference of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), titled “Atmospheres: Climate, Equity, and Community in Photography” and taking place March 12–15, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Connect with 1,600 artists, educators, and photographers from around the world for programming that will fuel your creativity—four days of presentations, industry seminars, and critiques to engage you! Explore an exhibits fair featuring the latest equipment, processes, publications, and photography/media schools. Participate in one-on-one portfolio critiques and informal portfolio sharing and take advantage of student volunteer opportunities to receive a full rebate on admission. Other highlights include a print raffle, a silent auction, mentoring sessions, film screenings, exhibitions, receptions, a dance party, and more. The guest speakers are Rebecca Solnit, Chris Jordan, and Hank Willis Thomas. Preview the conference schedule and register at www.spenational.org/conference. Preregistration ends on February 20, 2015.
Southeastern College Art Conference
The seventieth annual meeting of the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) was held October 8–11, 2014, in Sarasota, Florida, and hosted by the Ringling College of Art and Design. Jeff Schwartz served as conference director. Five hundred thirty people attended 122 sessions and workshops. Brandon Oldenburg, a Ringling alumnus, an Academy Award winner, and the founder of Moonbot Studios, delivered the keynote lecture.
Notable awards presented:
- $5000 Artist’s Fellowship: Derek Larson, Georgia Southern University
- $5000 William R. Levin Award for Research in the History of Art: Michelle Moseley-Christian, Virginia Tech
- Achievement in Graphic Design: Doug Barrett, University of Alabama, Birmingham
- Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of Contemporary Materials: Ron Meyers: A Potter’s Menagerie (Stephen Driver)
- Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Folk Art vol. 23 (Carol Crown, University of Memphis)
- Excellence in Teaching: Jeff Schwartz, Ringling College of Art and Design
- Certificates of Merit: Jane Hetherington Brown, University of Arkansas, Little Rock; Carol Mattusch, George Mason University; and Cheryl Goldsleger, University of Georgia
- Awards of Distinction: Peter Scott Brown, University of North Florida; and Jenny Hager, University of North Florida
- Annual Juried Exhibition: juror’s choice: Rob Tarbell, New College; honorable mention: Hye Young Kim, Winston-Salem State University; Margy Rich, State College of Florida; and Jennifer Brickey, Pellissippi State Community College
Visual Resources Association
The Visual Resources Association is pleased to present its thirty-third annual conference, to be held March 11–14, 2015, in Denver, Colorado. Attendees will converge in Colorado to exchange information about the latest developments in image and media management within the educational, cultural heritage, and commercial environments. The top-notch conference program includes representation from a broad range of perspectives, with sessions and workshops addressing digital humanities, visual literacy, mapping and geospatial projects, image rights and reproductions, usability testing, new technologies, digital asset management, crowdsourcing, cataloging, embedded metadata, sharing collections, professional advancement, archives, research data management, and visualization. The plenary speakers will frame the conference with inspiring talks on image and media management in two unique contexts. The opening speaker, Aaron Straup Cope, head of engineering at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum and also an artist, will discuss how the New Cooper Hewitt Experience engages visitors with interactive and immersive creative technologies. The closing speaker, Emily Gore, director for content for the Digital Public Library of America, will discuss the strategic vision for DPLA content and oversight of the DPLA Hubs program. Online registration is available through February 20, 2015 (with discounted registration offered until February 6). Onsite registration will be available in Denver.
Women’s Caucus for Art
The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has announced three recipients of the 2015 WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards: Sue Coe, Kiki Smith, and Martha Wilson. The recipient for the 2015 President’s Art and Activism Award is Petra Kuppers. The WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards were first presented in 1979 in President Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe. The awards were the first awards recognizing the contribution of women to the arts and their profound effect on society.
Join WCA for the awards celebration on Thursday, February 12, 2015, in New York. The event will be held at the New York Institute of Technology Auditorium at 1871 Broadway. The evening will kickoff with a ticketed cocktail reception from 5:30 to 7:00 PM. The reception will include food, open bar, and the opportunity to congratulate the awardees. The awards ceremony (free and open to the public) will take place from 7:30 to 9:00 PM; coffee and desserts will follow from 9:00 to 10:00 PM. The celebration is held during the annual WCA and CAA conferences. For more information on the event or to purchase tickets (which includes a special rate for CAA members) please visit www.nationalwca.org.
Committee on Diversity Practices highlights for January/February 2014
posted Jan 09, 2015
The CAA Committee on Diversity Practices highlights exhibitions, events, and activities that support the development of global perspectives on art and visual culture and deepen our appreciation of political and cultural heterogeneity as educational and professional values. Current highlights are listed below; browse past highlights through links at the bottom of this page.
January/February 2015
Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time
Brooklyn Museum, New York
December 12, 2014–July 12, 2015
“Exploring ideas of femininity, empowerment, and multiplicity, Brooklyn-based artist Chitra Ganesh draws inspiration from the Museum’s encyclopedic collection, including representations of the goddess Kali, to create a site-specific multimedia installation for the Herstory Gallery. Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time centers on a monumental mural that takes Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction and rebirth, and other figures from Judy’s Chicago’s The Dinner Party as starting points for portraying female power and plurality. The artist expands on this theme by showcasing works from our Egyptian, Indian, and Contemporary collections. For more than a decade, Ganesh has used the iconography of mythology, literature, and popular culture to bring to light feminist and queer narratives. One of her first major works, Tales of Amnesia (2002)—a zine inspired by Indian comic books that the Museum acquired out of our 2004 exhibition Open House: Working in Brooklyn—is also on view. Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time is organized by Saisha Grayson, Assistant Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum. This exhibition is made possible by the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation.” (http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/chitra_ganesh/)
More information:
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/home.php
Judith Scott–Bound and Unbound
Brooklyn Museum, New York
October 24, 2014–March 29, 2015
“Judith Scott’s work is celebrated for its astonishing visual complexity. In a career spanning just seventeen years, Scott developed a unique and idiosyncratic method to produce a body of work of remarkable originality. Often working for weeks or months on individual pieces, she used yarn, thread, fabric, and other fibers to envelop found objects into fastidiously woven, wrapped, and bundled structures. Born in Columbus, Ohio, with Down syndrome, Scott (1943–2005) was also largely deaf and did not speak. After thirty-five years living within an institutional setting for people with disabilities, she was introduced in 1987 to Creative Growth Art Center—a visionary studio art program founded more than forty years ago in Oakland, California, to foster and serve a community of artists with developmental and physical disabilities. As the first comprehensive U.S. survey of Scott’s work, this retrospective exhibition includes an overview of three-dimensional objects spanning the artist’s career as well as a selection of works on paper Judith Scott—Bound and Unbound is organized by Catherine J. Morris, Sackler Family Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Matthew Higgs, artist and Director/Chief Curator of White Columns, New York. The accompanying catalogue is published by the Brooklyn Museum and Prestel. This exhibition is made possible by the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. Additional generous support has been provided by the Helene Zucker Seeman Memorial Exhibition Fund and Deedie Rose.” (http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/judith_scott/)
More information:
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/home.php
LOUD silence
gallery@Calit2
University of California San Diego
January 22–March 13, 2015
“LOUD silence is an exhibition that offers the opportunity for viewers to consider definitions of sound, voice, and notions of silence at the intersection of both deaf and hearing cultures. The exhibition displays prints, drawings, sculptures, videos, and a film installation, and features work by four artists who have different relationships to deafness and hearing, including Shary Boyle, Christine Sun Kim, Darrin Martin and Alison O’Daniel. These four artists explore how the binary of loudness and silence might be transformed in politicized ways through their own specificities, similarities and differences in relationship to communication and language. The stereotypical view of the deaf experience is that they live a life of total silence, where they retain little to no concept of sound. But on the contrary, deaf people actually know a lot about sound, and sound informs and inhabits their world just as much as the next person. Through these artworks, the artists aim to loudly explode the myth of a silent deaf world, and they seek to trouble just how “inaudible” sound really is through their own visceral experiences of it. The distinction between the deaf person and the hearing person in their relationship to sound is the extent to which deaf people use senses other than the auditory to understand what they are hearing. Sound is felt and sound is seen. Indeed, some of the artists’ “deaf hearing” in this exhibition often involves sensory input from a variety of sources, and is not simply confined to the ears. Ultimately, the work in LOUD silence offers an avenue for eradicating deaf oppression, where new ways of listening and thinking about sound and silence might be developed. A full-color catalogue will accompany this exhibition produced in partnership with the Grand Central Art Center at California State University Fullerton, with essays written by the exhibition curator, Amanda Cachia, alongside Dr. Zeynep Bulut, Lecturer in Music, Kings College, London, and Michael Davidson, Professor of American Literature in the Literature Department, UCSD.” (http://www.calit2.net/events/popup.php?id=2444)