CAA News Today
CAA signs on to Statement Against Discrimination of Africans Fleeing Ukraine
posted Mar 07, 2022
CAA has signed on to the African Studies Association’s statement against Discriminatory Treatment meted out to
Africans, including Scholars and Students, fleeing the war in Ukraine. The Association has received reports that Africans in Ukraine have been turned away from borders and prevented from traveling. They join the African Union and several African leaders in calling for the equal treatment of refugees. To read the statement in full, please visit their page.
Women’s History Month and caa.reviews
posted Mar 04, 2022
Each week this Women’s History Month, we highlight the rich scholarship and programs produced at CAA that celebrate women in the fields of visual arts and the humanities. This week, we are sharing a bibliography of publications and exhibitions reviewed this past year on our open-access journal caa.reviews that feature women artists and practitioners.
caa.reviews also houses rosters of dissertation titles in progress and completed since 2002, many of which have been written by women and focus on topics related to women and feminism in the arts.
This Women’s History Month is also especially significant this year, which is the 50th anniversary of feminism at CAA. To learn more about this history, visit this page. CAA is also collecting archival materials to better understand and document the history of its Committee of Women in the Arts, including the committee’s many collaborations with other affiliate committees and groups, such as the Women’s Caucus for Art, The Feminist Art Project, the Queer Caucus, and many more. Visit this page for more information.
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Acevedo-Yates, Carla, editor. Carolina Caycedo: From the Bottom of the River. Chicago and New York: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and DelMonico Books/D.A.P., 2020.
Carolina Caycedo: From the Bottom of the River, installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2020–21 (photograph by Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago) |
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Blanchflower, Melissa, Natalia Grabowska, and Melissa Larner, editors. Faith Ringgold. Serpentine Gallery, London, United Kingdom. Cologne: Walther König, 2019.
Faith Ringgold, Slave Rape, 1972, installation view, Faith Ringgold, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2019 (artwork © 2019 Faith Ringgold; photograph provided by readsreads.info) |
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Brandow-Faller, Megan. The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women’s Academy. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2020. |
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Fiell, Charlotte and Clementine Fiell. Women in Design: From Aino Aalto to Eva Ziesel. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2019. |
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Harris, Shawnya L. editor. Emma Amos: Color Odyssey. Athens: Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, 2021.
Emma Amos, All I Know of Wonder, 2008, oil on linen, African fabric, 70 1/2 x 55 1/2 in. (179.1 x 141 cm), installation view, Emma Amos: Color Odyssey, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, 2021 (photograph by the author) |
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Huebner, Karla. Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. |
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Kim, Christine Y. and Rujeko Hockley. Julie Mehretu. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with Prestel, 2019.
Julie Mehretu, Hineni (E. 3:4), 2018, ink and acrylic on canvas, 96 × 120 in. (243.8 x 304.8 cm). Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle, gift of George Economou, 2019 (artwork © Julie Mehretu; photograph by Tom Powel Imaging) |
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Meijling, Jesper and Tigran Haas, editors. Essays on Jane Jacobs. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2020. |
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Mühling, Matthias and Stephanie Weber, editors. Senga Nengudi: Topologies. Munich: Hirmer, 2021.
Senga Nengudi, Warp Trance, 2007, multi-channel audio/video installation in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, with a sound composition by Butch Morris, installation view, Senga Nengudi: Topologies, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2021 (photograph © Aaron Igler, provided by the artist and The Fabric Workshop and Museum) |
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Nakajima, Izumi. Anti-Action: Post-War Japanese Art and Women Artists (アンチ・アクション: 日本戦後絵画と女性画家). Tokyo: Brücke, 2019. |
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Nelson, Andrea editor. The New Woman behind the Camera. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2020. |
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Rose, Pauline. Working against the Grain: Women Sculptors in Britain c.1885–1950. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2020. |
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VanDiver, Rebecca. Designing a New Tradition: Loïs Mailou Jones and the Aesthetics of Blackness. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2020. |
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Walker, Anna and Laura Mott, editors. Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock. Arnoldsche Art Publishers in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2020.
Olga de Amaral, Brumas, 2013, acrylic, gesso, and cotton on wood, installation view, Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock, Cranbrook Art Museum, October 30, 2021–March 20, 2022 (artwork © Olga de Amaral; photograph by P. D. Rearick, image provided by Cranbrook Art Museum) |
IN MEMORIAM: CHARLES DEMPSEY
posted Mar 03, 2022
Longtime CAA member and renowned art historian, Charles Dempsey, passed away on February 22, 2022. Professor emeritus in the Department of the History of Art in Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Dempsey’s specialized in Renaissance and Baroque art. In his long career, Dempsey mentored hundreds of students and shaped his field, publishing widely, including in CAA’s The Art Bulletin. He also received CAA’s A. Kingsley Porter Prize. To read more about his life and career, please visit this page.
CAA’s Anti-Colonialism Solidarity Statement
posted Mar 02, 2022
On February 24, 2022, we witnessed the onset of military action and invasion of Ukraine. The College Art Association (CAA) strongly condemns colonialist aggression and oppression. We stand with our global colleagues, constituents, and friends who are affected by violence and threats to their safety as they struggle for peace and human rights. We recognize and hold firmly the inherent foundations for freedom, justice, and peace in the world. With peace as a central goal, we strongly condemn the deliberate destruction of heritage sites, destruction of art, and attempted hegemonic erasure of culture and history through the actions of oppressors. We encourage our international community of artists, historians, and designers to respond with care, with the aim to de-escalate the violence; and to use actions and words that will reaffirm peace, universal respect, and observance of the spirit of shared humanity. We invite members of our international community and learned societies to support colleagues, to protect scholarship and, with us, to condemn the atrocities to cultural heritage. Destruction of art and history in any one region is an action of erasure of all shared human histories.
CAA holds deep concern for the safety of working people, academic personnel, students, and the culture of the Ukraine, as well as the Global South, Middle East, and Far East and all our international constituencies affected by violence and uncertainty. We additionally support all BIPOC students and peoples and their equal treatment. CAA, its board, and its staff will continue to be in contact with affected members and offer support and advocacy. We stand in solidarity with our international arts community to create, analyze, teach, and promote art as an essential part of our institutions and our lives. We hold your safety, peace, and wellbeing at the forefront of our hearts.
CAA is a signatory of the American Historical Association’s letter condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They write, “We vigorously support the Ukrainian nation and its people in their resistance to Russian military aggression and the twisted mythology that President Putin has invented to justify his violation of international norms.” To read this statement in full, please visit their website.
To read more about CAA’s advocacy, visit this page.
Resources for Displaced Scholars and Students
United States
New University in Exile Consortium
- The New University in Exile is an expanding group of universities and colleges publicly committed to the belief that the academic community has both the responsibility and capacity to assist persecuted and endangered scholars everywhere and to protect the intellectual capital that is jeopardized when universities and scholars are under assault.
- The primary mission of the Consortium is to nurture academics who have been persecuted and uprooted by creating a sense of intellectual community among exiled scholars.
- If you are affiliated with a college or university and would like your institution to take the next step toward becoming a member of the Consortium, email them at uieconsortium@newschool.edu. There are a few simple criteria for membership, primarily a commitment by your institution to host an endangered scholar. There are no membership dues.
- The Scholar Rescue Fund launched a Ukraine-specific round of the IIE Emergency Student Fund on Monday, February 28, to provide financial support to Ukrainian students studying at US colleges and universities.
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships
- The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans is a scholarship program offered to immigrants and refugees in the United States. In order to qualify for the scholarship program, applicants must be planning to attend a graduate-level degree program at an accredited American university on a full-time basis. The scholarships can be awarded to US citizens whose parents were born abroad or who are not US citizens as well as to individuals who were born abroad but are naturalized citizens, adopted by US citizens, green card holders or refugee status. Those who were born abroad but graduated from an American high school may also be eligible.
The Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)
Global
- Scholars at Risk works to protect threatened scholars and promote academic freedom around the world.
- Go to this page to identify ways to help.
The UN Refugee Agency Scholarships
- A campaign to fund talented refugee scholars.
Germany
For colleagues linked to German Universities, the website of DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service, provides further information concerning Ukraine. The International Office at your university may be eligible for funding to support scholars from Ukraine by linking them to your university.
Albert Einstein German Academic Refugee Initiative (DAFI)
- Services and opportunities
- Scholarships
- The UNHCR of the United Nations administers the Albert Einstein German Academic Refugee Initiative (DAFI) to help refugees afford the cost of post-secondary education. Through the program, recognized refugees can receive free tuition as well as money for books, transportation, housing, and food. The program is open to applicants who hold a secondary school diploma, have demonstrated financial need, enroll in a program where the likelihood of employment is high, and are under 28 years of age. Only one DAFI award is given out per family. Applicants must be from one of the countries specified by the UNHCR. A full list is available on their website.
Austria
Central European University, Vienna
- Visit this link for ways to donate to Ukranian communities, such as housing and hardship support, as well as a new scholarship fund.
UK
University of Bristol Scholarship
- A scholarship that gives refugees and asylum seekers life-changing access to university education has been expanded, the University of Bristol has announced.
Student Action for Refugees (STAR)
- STAR campaigns for and supports the creation of scholarships to improve access to university for people who have claimed asylum in the UK. At this link, you can find a list of scholarship opportunities in the UK, together with advice for your application and information about other funding opportunities.
Council of At-Risk Academics (CARA) at Risk UK Universities Network
- The Network aims to facilitate cooperation and collaboration between UK higher education institutions in support of persecuted and at-risk academics, and in the defence and promotion of academic and university freedoms worldwide. 125 UK universities are currently working with us to support these aims.
Other Resources
CAA Affiliated societies:
United Nations Security Council Resolution 2347 (2017)
UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage
1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict
CAA Signs on to American Historical Association’s Statement on Bomb Threats against HBCUs
posted Feb 28, 2022
CAA has signed on to a statement condemning the many bomb threads received by at least 17 Historically Black Colleges and Universities early this year. As historically contextualized by the AHA, “These crimes are part of a long history of attacks on institutions that serve the Black community—churches, schools, and civil rights organizations—as well as on the individual men, women, and children associated with these institutions. Violent intimidation directed toward Black Americans has a long and bloody history, and recent events suggest that these acts have spawned not only a hateful legacy, but also a current, ongoing threat to the physical safety and emotional well-being of all Black Americans.” To read more visit their website.
Call for Student Videographer
posted Feb 23, 2022
CAA is seeking student videographer(s) interested in creating short video profiles on select recipients of our 2022 Distinguished Awards, to be completed this spring. Videos will be limited to three minutes in duration and will tell the story of the award recipient. For this pilot project, two awardees have been selected:
- Fred Hagstrom – Distinguished Teaching of Art Award, and
- Zahira Véliz- CAA/American Institute for Conservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
The selected video profiles will be featured on CAA’s YouTube Channel and on the CAA website. The selected student will receive a complementary one-year membership to CAA and access to CAA’s 2023 Annual Conference.
Timeline
March 22, 2022 – Application for videographer deadline
April 5, 2022- Notification of selected videographer(s)
June 8, 2022- Completed videos due
Application instructions:
Please fill out this form and send a resume as a PDF to info@collegeart.org with “Distinguished Awards Videographer” in the subject line.
Meet the 2021 Professional Development Fellows
posted Feb 18, 2022
CAA is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2021 Professional Development Fellowships. The recipient of the $10,000 fellowship in visual arts is Christine Lee, California Institute of the Arts and the recipient of the $10,000 fellowship in art history is Jenny Tang, Yale University. An honorable mention in visual arts goes to Malene Barnett, Temple University and an honorable mention in art history goes to Maia Nichols, University of California, San Diego. All fellows and honorable mentions receive a complimentary one-year CAA membership and registration for the 2022 Annual Conference.
2021 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIP IN VISUAL ARTS
Christine Lee, California Institute of the Arts
Christine Yerie Lee is a visual artist primarily working in video, installation and sculpture. Raised in the American South by immigrant parents from South Korea, her practice explores performativity and identity-formation, often using the body to articulate ideas concerning resistance to hegemonic power structures in hopes to create a future yet to be imagined or narrativized. By engaging with folklore, history, and pop culture, her work addresses personal and collective memory, hybridity, and authenticity. Her material explorations reflect the poetics informed by these notions and are often activated in her digital works. Through intersectional inquiry and worldbuilding, she aims to illuminate the distinct and parallel threads of the human experience to provide pathways for connection. Lee received a BFA in Apparel Design from Rhode Island School of Design in 2010 and worked as a fashion designer for a decade prior to graduate school. She currently resides in Los Angeles and will complete her MFA in Art at California Institute of the Arts in May 2021.
HONORABLE MENTION IN VISUAL ARTS
Malene Barnett, Temple University
Malene Barnett is a multi-disciplinary artist, entrepreneur, and authority on the cultural traditions and practices of art in the African diaspora and how it translates into her vision of the modern black experience. From her sculptural ceramic tiles and vessels to mixed media paintings to handwoven rugs, Barnett continues to evolve her craft and share her African heritage with a global audience. Using archival materials like glass, fiber and clay, she uncovers a deeper language of her legacy and an authentic understanding of her cultural identity. A passionate connector and expert ambassador, her mission is to use art as a tool to create community impact and open doors for the next generation of black artists and expand the conversation around marginalization in the arts and create greater opportunities for inclusion.
As the founder of the Black Artists + Designers Guild, a global platform and curated collective of independent black makers, she constantly seeks new ways to define the Black narrative and experience for a new generation while bringing awareness to inequality. Her work has been praised in Interior Design Magazine, New York Magazine, Traditional Home, Elle Decor, HGTV Magazine, Luxe + Design Magazine, and House Beautiful. She was also on the cover of Brownstoner Magazine and Wendy Goodman’s Designer Lives video series with New York Magazine’s The Cut. Her entrepreneurial spirit was captured in the NY Times bestselling book “In the Company of Women ” and Home by Hygge & West. She has appeared as a guest speaker on Morning Joe, MSNBC Your Business, and TEDx. Malene’s works have been exhibited at Museum of Science and Industry, Dallas African American Museum, Jane Hartsook Gallery, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Baltimore Clayworks, DAAP Galleries, and The Clay Studio.
2021 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIP IN ART HISTORY
Jenny Tang is a doctoral candidate in History of Art and Film & Media Studies at Yale University, where she specializes in modern and contemporary art, media, and visual culture of the Atlantic world. Tang’s dissertation combines original archival research and a feminist postcolonial perspective to show how layered twentieth-century regimes of race and citizenship in the United States shaped modernist imaginations of the body across the Atlantic. From photomontage and abstraction to security and confinement, this work recasts the history of modernism through the lens of Asian American and African American racial formation. In addition to her scholarly practice, Tang writes criticism on the cultural politics of art, film, and music. She has also contributed to exhibitions and programs at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Museum of Modern Art, where she was a 2020-21 Mellon-Marron Research Fellow in the Department of Painting and Sculpture. At Yale, she co-organized the group exhibition New Genealogies with photographer John Edmonds at the Yale School of Art. Tang currently teaches foundational topics in art history in the Department of Art History and the Rose Hill Honors Program at Fordham University.
HONORABLE MENTION IN ART HISTORY
Maia Nichols, University of California, San Diego
Maia Nichols is a Lebanese American-Canadian doctoral candidate in art history, criticism and theory at University of California San Diego specializing in 20th century French and North African visual and material culture, postcolonial theory, and the history of social psychiatry. She holds degrees in psychology and visual art from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a masters in aesthetics and politics from the California Institute of the Arts. She additionally engages in art practice and has taught studio art drawing at UC San Diego. Her work has been exhibited internationally. Her art criticism has been published in venues such as Flash Art International, Hyperallergic, and Diagram. Her dissertation, researched in France with support from a four-year Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship, engages art historical visual and material culture methods and theories to consider the institutional history of French colonial North Africa’s progression to independence during the social psychiatry movement, drawing on a range of archival evidence of material culture and experience.
ABOUT THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIP
CAA’s Professional Development Fellowship program supports promising artists and art historians who are enrolled in MFA and PhD programs nationwide. Awards are intended to help them with various aspects of their work, whether for job-search expenses or purchasing materials for the studio. CAA believes a grant of this kind, without contingencies, can best facilitate the transition between graduate studies and professional careers. The program is open to all eligible graduate students in the visual arts and art history. Applications for the 2022 fellowship cycle will be due December 15, 2022. Learn more.
Affiliated Society News: February
posted Feb 15, 2022
Many of CAA’s affiliated societies will be presenting virtual sessions at our 110th Annual Conference from February 17-19 and from March 3-5. Check out a list of their sessions to preview!
To attend these sessions and more, make sure to register for the conference and learn more at its registration page.
AHNCA (Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art)
Events
AHNCA’s Emerging Scholars Working Group Presents: See/Sip/Share: AHAA Crossover
Wednesday, February 23 at 6 p.m. EST
The Emerging Scholars Working Group of the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art will join with the Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) to host a See/Sip/Share, a bring-your-own beverage casual discussion of two images. Register here.
IN MEMORIAM: CARMEN HERRERA
posted Feb 15, 2022
Image source: The New York Times by Todd Heisler
CAA mourns the loss of artist Carmen Herrera who died February 12, 2022 at the age of 106. Recognized by CAA in 2016 as the Distinguished Artist for Lifetime Achievement, Herrera’s career received attention in the last few decades of her life. Born in Cuba in 1915, she originally studied architecture but switched her focus to painting when she moved to New York City in the 1930s. At the age of 89 in 2004, she had her first major show and review at Manhattan’s Latin Collector Gallery. Now her minimalist and hard-edged paintings, with a focus on line, form, and color, are widely celebrated in the collections of major museums around the world. In a 2009 interview she said, “It’s a compulsion that also gives me pleasure. I never in my life had any idea of money and I thought fame was a very vulgar thing. . . . And at the end of my life, I’m getting a lot of recognition, to my amazement and my pleasure.”
CAA Signs on to American Historical Association’s Statement Against Violations of Presidential Records Act
posted Feb 14, 2022
CAA has signed on to a statement by the American Historical Association condemning the recent violations of the Presidential Records Act. The statement condemns “in the strongest terms former President Donald J. Trump’s reported extensive and repeated violations of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.” “Historians, journalists, and other researchers depend on these records to educate the public and inform future administrations,” the AHA wrote. “These acts of destruction and noncompliance with the Presidential Records Act demonstrate blatant contempt for both the rule of law and the principles of transparency and accountability that constitute the bedrock of our nation’s democracy.”