CAA News Today
Announcing Notable Speakers for 2020 Annual Conference in Chicago
posted Oct 01, 2019
We’re delighted to announce the following guests will be presenting at the 108th CAA Annual Conference, taking place February 12-15, 2020, at the Hilton Chicago.
Keynote Speaker
Amanda Williams. Photo: David Kasnic Photography
The Keynote Speaker for the 108th CAA Annual Conference will be Amanda Williams. A visual artist who trained as an architect, Williams’s creative practice navigates the space between art and architecture, through works that employ color as a way to highlight the political complexities of race, place and value in cities. Williams has received critical acclaim including being named a USA Ford Fellow and a Joan Mitchell Foundation grantee. Her works have been exhibited widely and are included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She lives and works on the South Side of Chicago.
CAA Convocation featuring Amanda Williams’s keynote will take place Wednesday, February 12, 2020, from 6-7:30 PM at the Hilton Chicago, Grand Ballroom. Free and open to the public.
Distinguished Scholar
The Distinguished Scholar for the 108th CAA Annual Conference will be Dr. Kellie Jones, professor in Art History and Archaeology and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latinx and Latin American Artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory.
Dr. Kellie Jones. Photo: Rod McGaha
Dr. Jones, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has also received awards for her work from the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University and Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation. In 2016 she was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
Dr. Jones’s writings have appeared in a multitude of exhibition catalogues and journals. She is the author of two books published by Duke University Press, EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (2011), and South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (2017), which received the Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award from the American Book Award in 2018 and was named a Best Art Book of 2017 in The New York Times and a Best Book of 2017 in Artforum.
Dr. Jones has also worked as a curator for over three decades and has numerous major national and international exhibitions to her credit. Her exhibition “Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980,” at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, was named one of the best exhibitions of 2011 and 2012 by Artforum, and best thematic show nationally by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). She was co-curator of “Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the 1960s” (Brooklyn Museum), named one the best exhibitions of 2014 by Artforum. Read our interview with Kellie Jones.
The Distinguished Scholar Session will take place Thursday, February 13, 2020, from 4-5:30 PM at the Hilton Chicago, Grand Ballroom.
Distinguished Artist Interviews
The Distinguished Artist Interviews will feature artist Sheila Pepe interviewed by John Corso Esquivel, and artist Arnold J. Kemp interviewed by Huey Copeland.
Sheila Pepe. Photo: Rachel Stern
Sheila Pepe is a cross-disciplinary artist employing conceptualism, surrealism, and craft to address feminist and class issues. Hot Mess Formalism, Pepe’s most recent solo exhibition organized by the Phoenix Art Museum, traveled to the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska; and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts between 2017 and 2019. A catalogue for the exhibition featured essays by by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Elizabeth Dunbar, Lia Gangitano, and curator Gilbert Vicario.
Other texts, all published in 2019, feature Pepe’s work: Vitamin T: Threads, and Textiles in Contemporary Art, the revised Art and Queer Culture by Catherine Lord and Richard Meyer, both published by Phaidon, and Feminist Subjectivities in Fiber Art and Craft: Shadows of Affect by John Corso Esquivel.
Venues for Pepe’s many other solo exhibitions include the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina. Her work has been included in important group exhibitions, most recently Fiber: Sculpture 1960- Present, curated by Janelle Porter, organized by the ICA Boston; Queer Abstraction, curated by Jared Ladesema, organized by the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa and Even Thread Has Speech, curated by Shannon Stratton for the John Michael Kohler Art Center, Wisconsin.
John Corso Esquivel is the Doris and Paul Travis Associate Professor of Art History at Oakland University.
Arnold J. Kemp. Photo: Todd Rosenberg for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Arnold J. Kemp is an interdisciplinary artist living in Chicago. The recurrent theme in his drawings, photographs, sculptures and writing is the permeability of the border between self and the materials of one’s reality. Kemp’s works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Portland Art Museum, The Schneider Museum of Art, and the Tacoma Art Museum. He has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. His work has been exhibited recently in Chicago, Mexico City, New York, San Francisco and Portland. His work was also shown in Tag: Proposals On Queer Play and the Ways Forward at the ICA Philadelphia. Kemp was a founding curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from 1993-2003 and is currently the Dean of Graduate Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Read our interview with Arnold J. Kemp.
Huey Copeland is Arthur Andersen Teaching and Research Professor, Interim Director of the Black Arts Initiative (2019-2020), Associate Professor of Art History, and affiliated faculty in the Critical Theory Cluster, the Department of African American Studies, the Department of Art Theory & Practice, the Department of Performance Studies, and the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Northwestern University.
The Distinguished Artist Interviews will take place Friday, February 14, 2019, from 4-6:30 PM at the Hilton Chicago, Grand Ballroom. Free and open to the public.
Registration Now Open for the 2020 CAA Annual Conference
posted Oct 01, 2019
Frederick Weston speaking at the 2019 CAA Annual Conference. Photo: Ben Fractenberg
2020 CAA ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Hilton Chicago
FEBRUARY 12-15, 2020
Four days for everyone in the arts with over 300 sessions and panels, dozens of receptions and parties, professional development workshops, lightning talks, and exhibitors. #CAA2020
For the first time since 2014, the CAA Annual Conference returns to Chicago in February. We welcome all those in the visual arts to attend over 300 sessions and professional development workshops, as well as dozens of receptions, parties, and special tours at local museums and cultural institutions. The Book and Trade Fair, with over one hundred booths showcasing the latest products, programs, and books, will be on the lower level of the Hilton Chicago. Our partners offering free or discounted admission and special tours this year include Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum, the Design Museum of Chicago, and many others.
The 108th CAA Annual Conference content will address the full breadth of the field of visual arts and design and will examine a range of cultures, histories, and scholarship. We anticipate more than 5,000 professionals in the arts to attend the conference in Chicago. In collaboration with the Committee on Women in the Arts, we offer 50 percent of the conference’s content in celebration of the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage in the United States, while also acknowledging the discriminatory practices that limited voting rights for Indigenous women and women of color, even after the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920.
We are excited to announce that several renowned artists, designers, and scholars will be speaking at the conference. On Wednesday, February 12, Chicago-based visual artist Amanda Williams will be delivering the keynote address at Convocation. On Friday, February 14, our Artist Interviews will feature Sheila Pepe and Arnold J. Kemp, and this year’s Distinguished Scholar Session, held on February 13, will honor Kellie Jones.
Learn More about our Notable Speakers
Once again, CAA will offer travel grants and scholarships to individuals looking to attend the Annual Conference. With the generous support of Blick Art Materials and Routledge, Taylor & Francis, CAA will provide eight student member registrants with $250 each to attend the conference.
We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!
Please contact Member Services at membership@collegeart.org or at 212-691-1051, ext. 1 with any questions.
David Guinn and Joe Boruchow
posted Sep 30, 2019
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
CAA podcasts are on iTunes. Click here to subscribe.
This week, David Guinn and Joe Boruchow discuss how politics and family impact the artist.
David Guinn is an artist based in Philadelphia, working primarily in public space. A graduate of Columbia University in New York City, he was originally trained as an architect.
Joe Boruchow is a Philadelphia-based muralist and paper cutout artist whose site-specific work is designed to fit into architectural niches and public spaces.
New in caa.reviews
posted Sep 27, 2019
Rattanamol Singh Johal considers the book Productive Failure: Writing Queer Transnational South Asian Art Histories by Alpesh Kantilal Patel. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Ian Bourland discusses Stick to the Skin: African American and Black British Art, 1965–2015 by Celeste-Marie Bernier. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Sugata Ray reviews Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India, edited and curated by Stephanie Schrader. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Announcing Research Travel Grants Funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art
posted Sep 26, 2019
We’re pleased to announce our administration of the Terra Foundation for American Art Research Travel Grants.
Now administered and juried by CAA, the Terra Foundation initiated this grant program in 2003 to fund European candidates. It was expanded to reach candidates worldwide in 2012, and opened to US-based researchers in 2017 to travel abroad, developing American art scholar networks around the world with a total of 173 grantees since its inception.
The Research Travel Grants will be awarded annually, providing support to doctoral, postdoctoral, and senior scholars from both the US and outside the US for research topics dedicated to the art and visual culture of the United States prior to 1980.
“We are excited to expand our partnership with the Terra Foundation to provide continued support for scholars of American art,” said David Raizman, interim executive director of CAA. “Research funding for domestic and international scholars is essential to the vitality of the field, and these generous grants from the Terra Foundation will facilitate the advancement of their work. The inclusion of international scholars for these grants is especially gratifying, as it promotes new perspectives and engages the wider scholarly community.”
The grants foster firsthand engagement with American artworks and art-historical resources; build networks for non-US-based scholars studying American art; and expand access to artworks, scholarly materials, and communities for US-based scholars studying American art in an international context.
Awards of up to $9,000 will be granted on a per project basis by a jury formed by CAA. The first awards will be announced in March of 2020.
CAA’s administration of the Terra Foundation for American Art Research Travel Grants continues a long history at CAA of supporting travel and scholarship for professionals and students in the visual arts and design. Other grants offered by CAA include the Professional Development Fellowships for Graduate Students, the Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, the Millard Meiss Publication Fund, the CAA Getty International Program, Travel Grants to the CAA Annual Conference, and introduced last year, the Art History Fund for Travel to Special Exhibitions.
ABOUT THE TERRA FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART
The Terra Foundation for American Art is dedicated to fostering exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States for national and international audiences. Recognizing the importance of experiencing original works of art, the foundation provides opportunities for interaction and study, beginning with the presentation and growth of its own art collection in Chicago. To further cross-cultural dialogue on American art, the foundation supports and collaborates on innovative exhibitions, research, and educational programs. Implicit in such activities is the belief that art has the potential to both distinguish cultures and unite them.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Sep 25, 2019
Installation view of Women Take the Floor at the MFA Boston, an effort to dedicate more space to women’s artworks. Only 4 percent of the art acquired by the museum between 2008 to 2018 was by women—3,788 of 90,215 works. Image: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, via New York Times
Female Artists Made Little Progress in Museums Since 2008, Survey Finds
New data shows that in the last ten years, only 11% of all work acquired by top US museums was by women. (New York Times)
The Getty Trust Will Spend $100 Million to Protect Archaeological Sites Around the World From Climate Change and Sectarian Violence
The organization’s ambitious new initiative includes conservation efforts, scholarship programs, publications, and exhibitions. (artnet News)
‘It’s About Time!’ Betye Saar’s Long Climb to the Summit
The artist’s solo exhibition at MoMA will debut with the reopening of the newly expanded museum on October 21. (New York Times)
How Much Does an Adjunct Actually Make?
“What if everyone just told their students how much they got paid?” According to a 2015 study, one in five part-time faculty members live below the federal poverty line. (Hyperallergic)
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Rita McDonald and Christina Teneglia
posted Sep 23, 2019
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
CAA podcasts are on iTunes. Click here to subscribe.
This week, Rita McDonald and Christina Teneglia discuss “Teaching Failure.”
Rita MacDonald is a New York-based artist who makes very large temporary wall drawings and very small pencil drawings on paper. She holds a BFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from School of Visual Arts.
Christina Tenaglia holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, teaching sculpture, drawing and printmaking. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley.
New in caa.reviews
posted Sep 20, 2019
Rebecca Giordano reviews Study in Black and White: Photography, Race, Humor by Tanya Sheehan. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Yelena McLane discusses Tom Cubbin’s Soviet Critical Design: Senezh Studio and the Communist Surround. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Mirela Tanta writes about the exhibition Maria Lassnig: Woman Power at the Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Jessy Bell considers the exhibition and catalog Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948–1980, edited by Martino Stierli and Vladimir Kulić. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Sep 18, 2019
Wangechi Mutu’s The Seated III (2019) in its niche at the Met. Photo: Zachary Small via Hyperallergic
Wangechi Mutu Adorns the Met Museum’s Façade With Images of African Queendom
For the first time in 117 years, the empty niches on the museum’s exterior are occupied. (Hyperallergic)
Minneapolis Team Is Changing Museums from the Inside Out
A project at Minneapolis Institute of Art has spread nationwide—and beyond—as museums confront their colonial past. (Star Tribune)
Congress Promised Student Borrowers A Break. Education Department Rejected 99% Of Them
A new report shows revised efforts to forgive public servants’ student loan debt are still remarkably unforgiving. (NPR)
We’re Getting These Murals All Wrong
Robin D.G. Kelley takes an in-depth look at the Victor Arnautoff mural controversy in San Francisco. Let us know what you think in our online survey. (The Nation)
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RAAMP Coffee Gathering: Curatorial Work as Academic Labor
posted Sep 17, 2019
RAAMP (Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals) Coffee Gatherings are monthly virtual chats aimed at giving participants an opportunity to informally discuss a topic that relates to their work as academic art museum professionals.
Coffee Gathering: Curatorial Work as Academic Labor
On Tuesday, September 24 at 3:00 PM (EST) RAAMP will be speaking with Meredith Lynn and Claire L. Kovacs.
To RSVP to this coffee gathering, please email Cali Buckley at cbuckley@collegeart.org
Meredith Lynn is an artist, curator, and educator based in Tallahassee, Florida. In her art practice she frequently explores the historical, political, and social issues surrounding land management and ownership. Her curatorial specialty is contemporary art, with a particular focus in interactive and new media art. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, the Minnesota State Arts Board, Northern Lights, and the Florida Department of Cultural Affairs and most recently shown at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Arcata, California and the Wiregrass Museum in Dothan, Alabama. She is curator of the Museum of Fine Arts at Florida State University where she also teaches in the Department of Art.
Claire L. Kovacs is the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at Binghamton University. She obtained her PhD from the University of Iowa and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Case Western Reserve University – all in art history. She has curated exhibitions at the Figge Art Museum, Coe College, Krasl Art Center, DePaul University, and at Augustana College, where she was (until recently) the Director of the Augustana Teaching Museum of Art. Her strategies for curatorial work and programming emphasize the ways that academic museums explore contemporary issues, foster interdisciplinary inquiry, create space for a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, and function as a site of dynamic community engagement. She underscores intersectional equity, diversity, accessibility and inclusion in her curatorial work. Her research practice grapples with ways that art historical research can support ‘The Common Good’ (to borrow a phrase from the NEH), using curatorial practice and writing as a mechanism by which to amplify under-told stories.
Submit to RAAMP
RAAMP (Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals) aims to strengthen the educational mission of academic art museums by providing a publicly accessible repository of resources, online forums, and relevant news and information. Visit RAAMP to discover the newest resources and contribute.
RAAMP is a project of CAA with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.