CAA News Today

American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Art Works

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded a $219,245 grant for Collections Emergency Response Training to the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Art Works (AIC). AIC will expand and enhance its Collections Emergency Response Team (AIC-CERT) program to better support small museums and historic sites in responding to emergencies. Continuing education will be provided for existing team members to update and maintain skills between deployments. Forty additional museum professionals will be trained in the same body of knowledge and to the same standard as the original AIC-CERT. Participants will be selected based on their ability to respond to emergencies in underserved areas of the country. In collaboration with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, AIC will provide basic emergency preparedness and response training for staff members of over two hundred small museums to prepare their institutions, assist other museums in their region, and work more effectively with AIC-CERT members following a disaster.

American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies

The American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies (ASHAHS) invites nominations for its annual Eleanor Tufts Award for a distinguished book in English on the history of art and architecture in Iberia. ASHAHS established the award in 1992 to honor Professor Tufts’ contributions to the study of Spanish art history. A PDF of the submission guidelines is available on the website. Deadline: December 15, 2010.

ASHAHS also invites its student members to apply for the Photographs Grant for those preparing an MA thesis or a doctoral dissertation on topics in the history of Spanish or Portuguese art and architecture, according to the procedure listed in the Fall 2010 newsletter.

Art Libraries Society of North America

CAA’s Professional Practices Committee recently asked the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association (VRA) to prepare an updated version of their joint document, “Criteria for the Hiring and Retention of Visual Resources Professionals.” The ARLIS and VRA boards authorized a joint task force and named Allan Kohl and Amy Lucker, immediate past presidents of the two organizations, as cochairs. The Criteria Revision Task Force will investigating current practices and trends, taking into account recent research, statistical information, and anecdotal evidence. The 2009 VRA White Paper and the 2007 VRA Professional Status Survey, along with similar documents and related research, will provide useful summaries of conditions and practices. The task force also wants to apply the document to various constituencies, including administrators and faculty, in addition to library and visual-resources professionals. The new version will acknowledge the development of many different administrative models, combinations of duties, and relationships with other reporting areas within our organizations. We welcome your direct input; feel free to contact any of the task force members listed below: Amy Lucker ARLIS/NA cochair, New York University; Allan Kohl, VRA cochair, Minneapolis College of Art and Design; Linda Callahan, Mount Holyoke College; Meghan Musolff, University of Michigan; and Margaret Webster, Cornell University.

Arts Council of the African Studies Association

The board of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) seeks three new members for the 2011–13 term. Self-nomination and outside nomination will be considered. Please contact Jean Borgatti or Karen Milbourne for more information.

The fifteenth ACASA triennial symposium on African art, entitled “Africa and Its Diasporas in the Market Place: Cultural Resources and the Global Economy,” will be held at the University of California, Los Angeles, from March 23 to 26, 2011. The core theme will examine the current state of Africa’s cultural resources and the influence—for good or ill—of market forces both inside and outside the continent. For information on hotels and schedules, please visit the ACASA website.

Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey

The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) is organizing its first conference, titled “Modern Arab Art: Objects, Histories, and Methodologies.” This two-day event will be hosted in collaboration with Mathaf:Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar, and will take place December 14–17, 2010, in conjunction with the museum’s inauguration events. The museum will use its preeminent collection of modern and contemporary Arab art as a catalyst for critical and creative exchanges across diverse audiences, and this conference will bring together both established and emerging scholars working throughout the world in order to interrogate potent issues of concern that define and shape modern Arab art today. The conference will also historicize and contextualize the production of modern Arab art and modernity—and by extension the “contemporary”—through thematic and historiographic inquires into the field.

Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History

The Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH), in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, will present a symposium, “Artistic Manifestations in Architecture,” at the Whistler House Museum of Art on December 11, 2010. Among the speakers are: James O’Gorman, presenting “Portraying an Emerging Profession: The Changing Image of the Nineteenth-Century American Architect”; Hasan-Uddin Khan, discussing “At the Cutting Edge Architecture and Urbanism in Asia”; and John Hendrix, speaking on “Lincoln Cathedral: A Work of Art.” For information, please contact, Liana Cheney, ATSAH president, or visit ATSAH’s new website.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) will hold its next annual conference, “Who’s Muse? Challenges to the Curatorial Profession in Academic Museums,” on May 21, 2011, at the University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum in Texas. Curatorial practices in academic museums and galleries are sometimes highly experimental. Faculty members from a wide variety of fields and with limited curatorial experience periodically recommend and help lead exhibition projects. The organization of exhibitions likewise engages both graduate and undergraduate students, museum-education professionals, librarians, and even area school classes in project leadership roles. Exhibitions thus generated offer unorthodox approaches to curatorial planning and execution. Appropriate to a scholarly mission, they can stretch disciplinary boundaries, cross-fertilize disciplinary methodologies, and generate wholly new paradigms for knowledge. Academic museums and galleries thus become vital centers of original research, interdisciplinary dialogue, and participatory learning. While this democratic and laboratory approach to curatorial practice contributes in significant ways to the groundbreaking research and all-important teaching missions of universities and colleges, it can also challenge conventional standards of the curatorial profession. Through the presentation of outstanding case studies and lively roundtable discussions, the 2011 conference will explore the pros and cons of the broad curatorial approaches found in academic museums and galleries. This year, AAMG will include a late-morning, lunch-period session, called HOT TOPICS, on current issues in academic museums and galleries. Submit your ideas for this session with your conference registration, vote, and select a HOT TOPICS table for lunchtime conversation.

Association of Art Museum Curators

The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) has announced the ten outstanding curators from art museums across the United States who will participate in the 2011 fellowship program of the Center for Curatorial Leadership. Selected by a panel of leading museum directors, the 2011 recipients are:

• Stephanie D’Alessandro, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago
• Andria Derstine, curator of collections and curator of European and American art, Allen Memorial Art Museum
• Dan Finamore, Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History, Peabody Essex Museum
• Toby Jurovics, curator of photography, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Griffith Mann, chief curator, Cleveland Museum of Art
• Roxana Marcoci, curator, Museum of Modern Art
• Olivier Meslay, senior curator of European and American art and Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art, Dallas Museum of Art
• Jeannine O’Grody, chief curator, Birmingham Museum of Art
• Michael Taylor, Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Beth Venn, curator of modern and contemporary art and senior curator of American art, Newark Museum.

The Center for Curatorial Leadership is a nonprofit organization that trains curators for leadership positions.

Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art

The Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) will sponsor a two-part session at the upcoming CAA Annual Conference in New York. James H. Rubin will chair “Music and Other Paradigms for Nineteenth-Century Art,” which takes place on Saturday, February 12, at two locations. The morning session will be held 9:30 AM–NOON in the Nassau Suite, Second Floor, Hilton New York; and the afternoon counterpart will happen 2:30–5:00 PM in the Madison Suite, Second Floor. Read the full program for a list of speakers and the titles of their papers.

AHNCA will also make appearances at three additional conferences. Julie Codell and Allison Morehead will chair a session at the annual conference of the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association. Called “Money/Myths,” the conference will take place March 3–6, 2011, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. AHNCA will sponsor a session at “Speaking Nature” the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies at Pitzer College, taking place March 31–April 3, 2011. At the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Association, Marni Kessler will chair a session on the theme of “Methods and Theory: Art Histories.” chaired by. Read the list of speakers.

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) and the Mid-America College Art Association, another CAA affiliated society, will present a joint conference, called “ON STREAM,” at the Ball Park Hilton in St. Louis, Missouri. Taking place March 30–April 2, 2011, the conference will explore how artists and teachers develop and foster creativity in the second decade of the third millennium. For more details, visit the FATE website or contact Jeff Boshart, conference coordinator.

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The 2011 annual majlis (meeting) of the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) will take place on February 12, 2011, 1:00–5:30 PM, at Hunter College, City University of New York. To access the event, taking place in the Lang Auditorium, on the fourth floor of the North Building, you will need your current HIAA membership. The program, organized by Ülkü Bates of Hunter’s Art Department, comprises five papers to be delivered in two sessions. The first session, chaired by Priscilla Soucek of the Institute of Fine Arts (IFA) at New York University, contains the following papers:

• Denise-Marie Teece, IFA and Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Ruzbihan al-Muzahhib and Artist Families of the Qara Quyunlu, Aq Quyunlu, and Early Safavid Period”
• Sharon Laor-Sirak, Austin Peay University, “Anatolia as the Meeting-place between the Christian and Muslim Traditions as Reflected in Stone-vaulting and Decorative Motifs of the Local Architecture”
• Angela Andersen, Ohio State University, “The Kırlangıç Tavan in Anatolia: Hidden Religious Space and Structure as Symbol”

The second session, chaired by F. Barry Flood, Institute of Fine Arts NYU, consist of the following papers:

• Phoebe Hirsch, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, “First Mosques in the Early Cape of Good Hope”
• Göksun Akyürek, Gebze Institute of Technology, “Reconstructing Knowledge: Building of the First Ottoman University in Istanbul”

A discussion and question-and-answer period will follow the sessions. The program will terminate with the HIAA business meeting, reports of the executive board, and a general discussion, followed by a reception in the Faculty Dining Room. Members and interested colleagues are encouraged to attend the annual meeting. For more information, please contact: Ülkü Ü. Bates, Department of Art, Hunter College, City University of New York, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) invites proposals for the 2011 Italian Art Society/Kress Foundation Lecture in Italy. Sponsored by IAS with the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the lecture series seeks to promote intellectual exchanges between art historians of North America and the international community of scholars living or working in Italy. The lecture will be held in Florence in late May or early June 2011. The proposed lecture may address any period in Italian art but must relate to the city of Florence or the region of Tuscany; it also may not have been previously published or presented at another conference or venue. Application details are published online. Deadline: January 1, 2011.

Japan Art History Forum

The Japan Art History Forum is sponsoring a graduate-student panel at the CAA Annual Conference in New York. In addition, it will sponsor two panels at the Association for Asian Studies conference in March 2011: “Elite Patronage and Viewership of Japanese Art in the Age of the Toyotomi-Tokugawa Transition” and “The Dark Valley: Japanese Art and the Second World War.”

Society for Photographic Education

The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) forty-eighth national conference, called “Science, Poetry, and the Photographic Image,” will examine the confluence of the ideologies of scientists and poets in the context of photography. To be held March 10–13, 2011, at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel in Georgia, the conference will feature presentations from artists, educators, historians, and curators, as well as one-on-one portfolio critiques and informal portfolio sharing, a print raffle and silent auction, and film screenings, exhibitions, tours, and receptions. Speakers include Abelardo Morell, Catherine Wagner, Carolyn Guertin, and Justine Cooper. Student volunteers receive discounted admission.

Society of Architectural Historians

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) will hold its sixty-fourth annual meeting in New Orleans, April 13–17, 2011. The meeting will focus on new research in the history of architecture, landscapes, and urbanism in 150 papers delivered by historians, preservationists, and architects from around the world. Additional offerings at the meeting include evening receptions, networking opportunities, and a vast array of architecture and landscape tours of the city and region. This year, SAH will offer attendees the opportunity to perform community service at the Priestly School, a charter high school devoted to architecture and the arts. For more information, visit the SAH website. Registration will open after January 2, 2011.

Society of North American Goldsmiths

The Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) has partnered with curators Lauren Kalman (United States) and Carinne Terreblanche (South Africa) to produce the exhibition, Dichotomies in Objects: Contemporary South African Studio Jewelry from the Stellenbosch Area, on view January 23–April 1, 2011, at the Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. All selected artists are affiliated with Stellenbosch University, the only university in South Africa teaching conceptual approaches to jewelry making.

Work featured in the 2010 “Exhibition in Print” issue of Metalsmith, the magazine produced by SNAG, is now on view in Realizing the Neo-Palatial at the Metal Museum. The exhibition, curated by Garth Clark, is on view November 5, 2010–January 9, 2011.

Registration opens in mid-January for the SNAG conference, “FLUX,” which will take place May 26–29, 2011, in Seattle, Washington. Hosted by the Seattle Metals Guild and sponsored by Rio Grande. Visit the SNAG website for all you need to know information about the conference and many programs. Student and educator registration grants and discounts are available. For more information, write to SNAG.