CAA News Today
November 2013 Picks from CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts
posted Nov 21, 2013
Each month CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts produces a curated list, called CWA Picks, of recommended exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship in North America and around the world.
The CWA Picks for November 2013 include solo exhibitions of work by Sarah Lucas, Ana Mendieta, and Dayanita Singh in London; Anita Steckel, Dorothea Rockburne, Mary Beth Edelson, and Wangechi Mutu in New York; and Amy Sillman and Sophie Calle in Boston. In addition, the committee selected Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz’s show Patriarchal Poetry in Germany and Dear Art, the first appearance in the United Kingdom for the curatorial collective What, How & for Whom.
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.
Image Caption
Wangechi Mutu, Riding Death in My Sleep, 2002, ink and collage on paper, 60 x 44 in. Collection of Peter Norton, New York (artwork © Wangechi Mutu).
Projectionists and Room Monitors in Chicago
posted Nov 20, 2013
CAA is no longer taking applications for projectionists and room monitors.
Working as a projectionist or room monitor at the 102nd Annual Conference, taking place February 12–15, 2014, in Chicago, is a great way to save on conference expenses. All candidates must be US citizens or permanent US residents. CAA encourages students and emerging professionals—especially those in the Chicago area—to apply for service.
Projectionists
CAA seeks applications for projectionists for conference program sessions. Successful applicants are paid $12 per hour and receive complimentary conference registration. Projectionists are required to work a minimum of four 2½-hour program sessions, from Wednesday, February 12 to Saturday, February 15; they must also attend a training meeting on Wednesday morning at 7:30 AM. Projectionists must be familiar with digital projectors. Please send a brief letter of interest to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs.
Room Monitors
CAA needs room monitors for two Career Services mentoring programs (the Artists’ Portfolio Review and Career Development Mentoring), several offsite sessions, and other conference events, to be held from Wednesday, February 12 to Saturday, February 15; they must also attend a training meeting on Thursday morning at 7:30 AM. Successful candidates are paid $12 per hour and receive complimentary conference registration. Room monitors are required to work a minimum of eight hours, checking in participants and facilitating the work of the mentors. Please send a brief letter of interest to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Nov 20, 2013
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.
Eight Years Later, Google’s Book Scanning Crusade Ruled “Fair Use”
Eight years after a group of authors and publishers sued Google for scanning more than twenty million library books without the permission of rights holders, a federal judge has ruled that the web giant’s sweeping book project stayed within the bounds of US copyright law. Last week Judge Denny Chin dismissed a lawsuit from the Author Guild, ruling that Google’s book scans constituted fair use under the law. (Read more from Wired.)
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Controversial Copyright Case
The US Supreme Court, in an order issued last week, has decided not to hear the controversial copyright case between the photographer Patrick Cariou and the artist Richard Prince, who appropriated Cariou’s images of Rastafarians in thirty paintings in the series titled Canal Zone. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
SMU’s Major New National Arts Report: What Does Arts Leadership Do?
Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) has just previewed its inaugural report, a major effort drawing on the largest arts database in the country. Jerome Weeks reports some of the study’s conclusions are a little unexpected. NCAR’s purpose is to determine what constitutes success for an arts group and how can it be encouraged and duplicated? (Read more from Art and Seek.)
German Government Knew about Massive Art Trove Nearly Two Years Ago
The German government knew for nineteen months that a huge trove of art, possibly including works stolen by the Nazis, had been found in Bavaria, but kept quiet while prosecutors carried out their investigation. Jewish groups and lawyers for heirs who might have a claim to the works have criticized the secrecy surrounding the case, and the fact that the government only sprang into action after it was revealed by Germany media earlier this month. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Sunday Dialogue: Academia’s Two Tracks
A recent study of Northwestern University indicating that non-tenure-track faculty are better teachers than tenure-track faculty has been met with disbelief and derision—by tenure-track faculty and the American Association of University Professors. It calls into question the myth that the two-track system in academe is an equal opportunity merit system. It is not; it is in fact a caste system with the tenured faculty occupying the upper caste and the off-track faculty serving as the “untouchables.” (Read more from the New York Times.)
No More Digitally Challenged Liberal-Arts Majors
While I don’t think liberal-arts education should be at the service of employers, I do think it is important to enable our BAs to build careers that allow them to continue what they valued about their undergraduate experiences. Too many liberal-arts graduates, especially in the arts and humanities, struggle to find their first positions, and many end up in jobs that have few obvious connections to what they imagined themselves doing. Yearning to follow their academic interests and to be appreciated for what they have to contribute, they end up going to graduate school. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
How to Handle Your Inevitable Rejection: The Vitae Primer
It’s no secret that rejection is a constant and integral part of academic life, especially during job-hunting season. But that doesn’t make repeated knocks to your candidacy (or your psyche) any easier to take or less painful. There’s an abundance of advice on how to get an academic job and manage your career, but little is offered on how to manage your misery when search committees shut the door on your bids. (Read more from Vitae.)
Artist Asks: “What Do You Want to Accomplish Before You Die?”
In the midst of New Orleans still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, Candy Chang channeled her frustration and pain into building a wall. Unlike most walls, this one wasn’t meant to keep people apart, but to bring them closer than ever. Chang, an artist and designer known for thought-provoking, interactive installations, has been preoccupied with the idea of death since her mother passed away when she was fifteen. In 2011, Chang repurposed a wall of a dilapidated house to ask the simple question: What do you want to accomplish before you die? (Read more from Mashable.)
Report from the October 2013 Meeting of the Board of Directors
posted Nov 19, 2013
From October 24-27, the College Art Association Board of Directors, Editorial Boards, and Annual Conference Committee held their fall meetings to discuss current and future programming.
During a retreat held on Saturday, October 26, the Board met to discuss the development of the 2015-2020 strategic plan and the transition from an income-based membership model to one oriented to benefits. At the upcoming February 2014 meeting, CAA’s membership will have a chance to learn more about the proposed strategic plan and to provide feedback as well as to vote to amend the bylaws of the Association to permit the new membership structure. This will also us to maintain lower rates for students and retired members, provide discounted fees for part-time and contingent faculty, and allow all members greater flexibility in determining what benefits they would like to receive. Likewise, the new strategic plan prioritizes cultivating and serving the membership, placing a strong emphasis on the use of new technologies for enhancing communications from social media to publications to expanding the reach of the Annual conference virtually.
During its meeting on Sunday, October 27, the Board of Directors elected a new director: Debra Riley Parr, who replaces Saul Ostrow, whose term she will complete. It approved a balanced budget for the second half of the FY 2014 and adopted several new resolutions. These include the creation of a new Web Editor position for the Art Journal to support the ongoing development of its website as well as the adoption of several new guidelines developed by its Professional Practices Committees. These comprise: Guidelines for CAA Interviews, Guidelines for Part-Time Professional Employment, Guidelines for Presenting Works in a Digital Format, Standards for Professional Placement, and a Statement Concerning the Deaccession of Works of Art. At the request of the Committee on Women in the Arts, it approved a revision to the committee’s charge, which now designates:
“The Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) promotes the scholarly study and recognition of women’s contributions to the visual arts and to critical and art historical studies; advocates for feminist scholarship and activism in art; develops partnerships with organizations with compatible missions; monitors the status of women in the visual arts professions; provides historical and current resources on feminist issues; and supports emerging artists and scholars in their careers.”
The Board heard updates on two signature projects: the ongoing development of its Best Practices Code for Fair Use in the Creation and Curation of Artworks and Scholarly Publishing in the Visual Arts and the digitization of its publications. With respect to CAA’s Fair Use Code, the first phase of the project is close to completion, with an Issues Report distilling the results of interviews with 100 thought leaders in the field, a survey of CAA membership, and a literature review, due to be released in early 2014. CAA’s Committee on Intellectual Property will devote its annual session at the Annual Conference to this topic, at noon on Saturday, February 15th.
The Board also learned that CAA’s negotiations with Taylor and Francis to serve as a copublisher for its journals were close to conclusion. Thanks to this agreement, which is now complete, as recently reported, CAA will be able to digitize its print journals, Art Journal and The Art Bulletin and to offer caa.reviews open access. Both The Art Bulletin and Art Journal will also continue in printed form.
It also turned its attention toward the future. To this end, the Board heard from Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communications at the Modern Language Association about the MLA’s new Humanities Commons. CAA will consider whether it might make sense to partner with MLA as this new virtual space of scholarly discussion and exchange continues to grow.
The Board also entertained discussion about the status of the Ph.D. in art practice and its relationship to the terminal Master of Fine Arts. CAA’s Professional Practices Committee is currently engaged in researching and developing a statement regarding these degrees and the expertise they represent.
Finally, the Board selected its new President-Elect, DeWitt Godfrey, Associate Professor at Colgate University. A talented sculptor and CAA Board Member since 2009, Professor Godfrey will assume office in May 2014, and current President, Anne Collins Goodyear, will serve as past-President until May 2015.
The Board looks forward to meeting with CAA’s membership at the Annual Business meeting on Friday, February 14th at 5:30 pm.
New Developments among ACLS Associations
posted Nov 19, 2013
Each fall the ACLS convenes a meeting for the chief administrative officers (CAOs) of learned societies to exchange information on new developments in our organizations and to explore possible conference sites. This year’s conference was held in Louisville, KY. My takeaways from Louisville were the unforgettable gleaming white nine-ton Carrara marble statue of Louis XVI (the city’s namesake) by Achille-Joseph-Étienne Valois (1829) commissioned in 1829 by the king’s surviving daughter Marie-Thérèse which stands in front of the Louisville City Hall; and the contemporary art museum-cum-hotel called 21C with an installation of Pierre Gonnord’s striking photos of people in rural Spain and a great menu at the restaurant called Proof (as in bourbon).
Among the new developments within the 50 associations that attended were:
- A new census that will gather vital information on all the associations in ACLS to better gauge the trends in the humanities field;
- The success of the ACLS Public Fellows program where fellows are placed in government and non-profit sector positions http://www.acls.org/research/publicfellows.aspx?id=7006;
- The positive reaction to the copublishing agreement between CAA and Taylor & Francis and the transition to online publishing (in addition to print) for The Art Bulletin and Art Journal and open access for caa.reviews in the spring https://www.collegeart.org/news/2013/11/05/caa-journals-to-be-published-by-taylor-francis/ and http://www.collegeart.org/publications/copublicationFAQs;
- The new public resource from the Society for Architectural History’s image encyclopedia of 1,200 American architectural images called ARCHIPEDIA http://sah-archipedia.org/;
- The Modern Language Association’s new social media site for members, MLA Commons http://commons.mla.org/ and plans to expand it for use by other academic associations;
- The National Humanities Alliance’s new advocacy initiative Video Resources http://www.nhalliance.org/ which presents the value of the humanities to the public;
- New digital extensions to annual conferences such as CAA’s conference app (available prior to the February 2014 conference in Chicago) that allow registrants to organize their own schedule of sessions and events; streaming conference sessions, YouTube and podcasts of sessions; and a parallel digital conference offered by the Association of College and Research Libraries http://www.ala.org/acrl/conferences;
- The Renaissance Society’s free access to Early English Books Online (EEOB) for their members www.rsa.org/news/146393/The-RSA-Announces-Early-English-Books-Online-EEBO-Database-Access-as-a-New-Member-Benefit.htm;
- The advocacy work of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies related to fair use and film clips, teach-ins in conference city high schools, an oral history program of members and forming an undergraduate research conference http://www.cmstudies.org/;
- Online courses on professional development organized by the College Forum of the National Council of the Teachers of English http://www.ncte.org/online-learning/courses;
- The need to advocate for the restoration of Title VI and IX funds for foreign language education through the State Department
The CAOs also heard presentations from the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature on how these societies dealt with the threat of union strikes at their conference hotels.
Trevor Parry-Giles of the National Communication Association presented a history of the development of impact factors and the pros and cons, inflation and gaming of current systems such as Thomson Reuters http://thomsonreuters.com/journal-citation-reports/, SCImago http://www.scimagojr.com/, Google Scholar Metrics http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues; and the latest metric under development, Microsoft Academic http://academic.research.microsoft.com/?SearchDomain=3&entitytype=2 . Digital factors have yet to be fully addressed such as counting downloads versus citations and tracing social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
In 1964 the ACLS supported a Commission on the Humanities whose report eventually led to the establishment of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of the recommendations from the Commission were to fund the humanities at the level of the sciences, give more national emphasis on higher education humanities, attract a more diverse faculty, and a demand for faculty to work together. Three learned societies compared then and now. It was noted that there was enormous expansion in humanities departments in the 1960s and so many teaching positions that PhD candidates left school before finishing their degrees to take teaching positions. While the humanities have not attracted a more diverse faculty and faculty positions and departments have been compressed, one very positive result is that faculty has embraced collaboration in both formal (humanities and digital humanities centers) and informal ways, and advocacy of higher education in the public sphere has assisted greater understanding of the value of a humanities education.
ARTexchange in Chicago
posted Nov 18, 2013
CAA’s Services to Artists Committee invites artist members to participate in ARTexchange, an open forum for sharing work at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago. Free and open to the public, ARTexchange will be held on Friday, February 14, 5:30–7:30 PM, in a central location at the Hilton Chicago. A cash bar will be available.
ARTexchange is an annual event showcasing the art of CAA members, who can exhibit their paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, and digital works using the space on, above, and beneath a six-foot folding table. Artists may also construct temporary mini-installations and conduct performance, sound, and spoken-word pieces in their space. In the past, many ARTexchange participants found the event to be their favorite part of the conference, with the table parameter sparking creative displays.
To be considered for ARTexchange in Chicago, please send your full name, your CAA member number, a brief description of the work you want to exhibit (no more than 150 words), and a link to your website to Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs. Artists presenting performance or sound art, spoken word, or technology-based work, including laptop presentations, must add a few sentences about their plans. Such performance pieces must significantly limit volume and action so as not to disrupt the other ARTexchange participants. Accepted participants will receive an email confirmation. Because ARTexchange is a popular venue with limited space, early applicants will be given preference. Deadline: December 13, 2013.
Participants are responsible for their work; CAA is not liable for losses or damages. Sale of work is not permitted. Participants may not hang artworks on walls or run power cords from laptops or other electronic devices to outlets—bring fully charged batteries.
Image Caption
The artists Jeff Schmuki and Wendy DesChene, founders of PlantBot Genetics, demonstrate their products during ARTexchange at the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles (photograph by Bradley Marks).
Finalists for the 2014 Morey and Barr Awards
posted Nov 18, 2013
CAA is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2014 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award. The winners of both prizes, along with the recipients of ten other Awards for Distinction, will be announced in January and presented during Convocation in Chicago, in conjunction with the 102nd Annual Conference.
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in any language between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2013. The four finalists are:
- Jacqueline E. Jung, The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200–1400 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
- Joan Kee, Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
- Yukio Lippit, Painting of the Realm: The Kano House Painters in 17th-Century Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012)
- Cynthia Robinson, Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile: The Virgin, Christ, Devotions, and Images in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013).
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
The Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for museum scholarship is presented to the author(s) of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2013, under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. The two finalists for this year are:
- Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2013)
- Jeff L. Rosenheim, Photography and the American Civil War (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013)
Second Barr Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, or Collections
The Barr jury has shortlisted a second Barr Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, or Collections. The two finalists are:
- Colin G. Calloway, ed., Ledger Narratives: The Plains Indian Drawings of the Lansburgh Collection at Dartmouth College (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, in cooperation with the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2012)
- Peter C. Sturman and Susan S. Tai, eds., The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century China (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art; New York: Delmonico/Prestel, 2012)
The presentation of the Awards for Distinction will take place on Wednesday evening, February 12, 2014, 5:30–7:00 PM, at the Hilton Chicago. The event is free and open to the public. For more information about CAA’s Awards for Distinction, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs and archivist.
Artists Resale Rights in the US: Overdue or Shouldn’t Do?
posted Nov 18, 2013
The International Foundation for Art Research will host its next IFAR Evenings event, “Artists Resale Rights in the US: Overdue or Shouldn’t Do?” in New York on Monday, November 25, 2013, from 6:00 to 8:30 PM. A Q&A session and a reception will follow the presentations.
Unlike many countries, the United States does not provide for resale royalties for visual artists (also known as droit de suite) by statute. A California royalty right, enacted in 1976, was recently ruled unconstitutional, a decision currently on appeal. In December 2011, Congressman Jerrold Nadler sponsored H.R. 3688, the Equity for Visual Artists Act, recommending a federal resale royalty. While the Judiciary Committee failed to act on the bill in the 112th Congress, a new version of the bill is expected to be reintroduced in this Congress. On Nadler’s request, the US Copyright Office has been reviewing the implications of enacting a federal resale royalty law. Its report is expected soon.
Please join the following distinguished speakers as they discuss this important and often divisive issue:
- Karyn Temple Claggett, Associate Register of Copyrights and Director of Policy and International Affairs, US Copyright Office
- Sandra L. Cobden, General Counsel, Dispute Resolution and Legal Public Affairs, Christie’s
- Theodore H. Feder, Founder and President, Artists Rights Society
- Philippa S. Loengard, Assistant Director and Lecturer in Law, Kernochan Center, Columbia Law School
- Jerrold L. Nadler, Congressman, Tenth Congressional District, New York
Space is limited; advance reservations with payment are essential. The program is free to IFAR members and supporters, with a reduced rate for IFAR Journal subscribers and full-time students with ID. Tickets are $25 each for the general public.
About IFAR
Established in 1969, the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) is a nonprofit educational and research organization dedicated to integrity in the visual arts. It works at the intersection of art scholarship, art law, and the public interest. IFAR has hosted IFAR Evenings since 1981. These are informal lectures and panels on topics related to IFAR’s core areas, including art attribution and authenticity, ownership, theft, looting, and other legal, ethical and scholarly issues concerning art objects. Several IFAR Evenings are usually scheduled each year. IFAR also organizes conferences and symposia; publishes the award-winning IFAR Journal, offers an Art Authentication Research Service and provenance research services; serves as an information resource; and has recently launched an expanded website with several new research tools, including the Art Law & Cultural Property Database and the Catalogue Raisonné Database.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Nov 13, 2013
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.
Two Founders of Dia Sue to Stop Art Auction
Two founders of the Dia Art Foundation have taken the unusual step of going to court to try to stop the art organization from auctioning off as much as $20 million in works from its world-class holdings at Sotheby’s. The foundation has come under fire from many parts of the art world over its decision to sell the works and has defended itself by saying that it needed the money to continue to grow and to buy new artworks. (Read more from the New York Times.)
New Council to Develop Standards, Best Practices for Online Learning
Carnegie Mellon University is convening a high-powered consortium of educators, researchers, and technology-company executives that will spearhead efforts to develop standards and promote best practices in online education. The Global Learning Council—to be led by Carnegie Mellon’s president Subra Suresh—will also look for ways to leverage education-technology resources and disseminate data in an education landscape that some think is being turned on its head. (Read more from Wired Campus.)
The Twenty Most Powerless People in the Art World: 2013 Edition
Art Review recently published its art-world power list that starts with a Qatari royal and includes an artist who “doesn’t make a thing.” Hyperallergic has highlighted people, places, and things that it think deserves more attention than the rich, powerful, and well connected for its annual Powerless 20 list. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
Families and Museums Demand List of Nazi-Looted Art
Jewish heirs are fighting to find out if an uncovered Nazi treasure trove contains art stolen from their families during the Holocaust. Families and museums are now demanding that German authorities publish a complete list of the $1.35 billion worth of art found hidden in a Munich storage closet so they can find out if their heirlooms have been recovered. But despite international pressure, German prosecutors are refusing to publish a full inventory of the works. (Read more from USA Today.)
Who Were the Mystery Men behind Germany’s Nazi-Looted Art Haul?
It was the art discovery that stunned the world: more than 1,400 works of art, many of them masterpieces, hidden away for over seventy years, unearthed not in a high-security vault or long-forgotten museum basement, but an anonymous apartment in an upscale German neighborhood. A vast stash of paintings by the likes of Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall, some previously unknown, others that had been presumed lost forever. (Read more from CNN.)
You Need a Website
When you first hear about a fellow academic or receive an email from a person you do not know, what do you do? How do you try to find out basic information about such a person? There is a good chance that you do an online search. Then, you likely click on one of the top results returned by the search engine. You look for information that will give you details about the person’s background, interests, education, papers, and conference presentations, or at minimum their affiliation and the focus of their work. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
The Wedge Driving Academe’s Two Families Apart
More than one scientist friend at the University of California, Berkeley, has complained to me recently that the stuff coming out of English departments seems pretty wacky. My friends in the English department accuse those in the STEM fields of doing anything corporations want so long as it keeps their labs going. (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)
The Art of Emoji
Digital communication, once confined to letters, numbers, and punctuation, has become a cartoonish full-color landscape littered with pictographs designed to help express emotions and ideas. But as emoji design has developed to include a growing number of icons, the pictographs have become more than as a visual aid for verbal communication, evolving into a vehicle for expression in their own right. (Read more from Slate.)
Art Journal Explores “Queer Affect and Queer Archives”
posted Nov 12, 2013
In its new issue, the quarterly Art Journal features an eighty-page forum, “Conversations on Queer Affect and Queer Archives.” The forum, which includes works of art, conversations, and explorations by artists, art historians, curators, and other scholars, promises to be a milestone in the art and art history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. It will serve as a critical resource for artists, activists, and scholars alike.
“Conversations on Queer Affect and Queer Archives” is organized by Art Journal’s editor-in-chief, Lane Relyea, in collaboration with Tirza True Latimer, chair of the graduate program in Visual and Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. “Artists, scholars, and activists have been rethinking the politics of what archives preserve, demonstrating that the piecing together of cultural memory is not a neutral pursuit,” Latimer writes in her introduction. “These questions resonate with particular poignancy in outlaw cultures and communities…. Queer archival practices are not only propelled by strong feelings, they may also reanimate suppressed histories of sentiment.”
The forum documents the preservation of the material effects of LGBT people in archives as diverse as the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles, the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, New York University’s Fales Library and Special Collections, and the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, among many other archives. The issue includes a list of thirty-seven archives worldwide, with detailed contract information. It also explores the innovative ways in which artists, curators, and scholars are drawing on and showcasing these legacy materials.
Astonishing stories emerge from these archives:
- The artist Tina Takemoto becomes obsessed with the archival legacy of a gay male Japanese immigrant who arrived in San Francisco in the 1920s and spent WWII in an internment camp in Utah. Takemoto then creates artworks based on the man and the eighty-year span of his life in the United States
- Barbara McBane discovers the papers of a father of two who transitions to become Veronica Marie Friedman. McBane, a professional film editor and scholar, pieces together Friedman’s frame of mind during the metamorphosis, through casual writings such as journal entries, datebook pages, a timeline, and poems written on napkins
- E. G. Crichton, artist-in-residence at San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society, plays matchmaker with artists such as Takemoto and McBane on the one hand, and the archival materials of specific individuals on the other. From the artworks that result, Crichton organizes exhibitions that travel the world. In her text, she details the amazingly widespread network of international archives she has discovered
- Ann Cvetkovich, the author of the book An Archive of Feelings, converses with the artist Tammy Rae Carland, who has photographed ephemeral aspects of lesbian life and dozens of hand-decorated mix tapes given her over the years, as well as behind-the-scenes events at the legendary Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival
- Zackary Drucker contributes “Bring Your Own Body,” the script and images from a 2012 performance work that recounts the transformation of Lynn Edward Harris from Miss Costa Mesa 1968 to a bearded guest on a 1983 television talk show.
- The artist Henrik Olesen uses an intuitive system of classification close to the one elaborated by the art historian Aby Warburg in his unfinished “Mnemosyne Atlas” to organize archival images and artworks into a homoaffirmative historical counternarrative called Some Faggy Gestures (2007)
This issue of Art Journal also includes an essay by Alexandra Kokoli on the British artist Susan Hiller and an exploration by Kirsten Olds of the visual culture of 1970s glam rock in Los Angeles, as exemplified in the work of Les Petites Bonbons.
About Art Journal
Art Journal is published four times a year by CAA for its membership of fourteen thousand. A peer-reviewed journal devoted to twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, it is one of the most vital, intellectually compelling, and visually engaging periodicals in the field. Art Journal features scholarly articles, conversations, portfolios, and other contributions by leading art historians, artists, curators, and critics.
Nonmembers may purchase single copies by writing to rlawson@collegeart.org or by calling 212-392-4404.