About

Presidents of the Board of Directors

About the Presidency

The CAA president leads the Board of Directors and represents the organization as a whole for a single two-year term. The board selects the president from among the elected officers in the fall of the current leader’s final year of service, providing a period in which the next president can learn the responsibilities of the office and prepare for his or her term.

CAA’s first president, Holmes Smith, was a professor of art at Washington University in St. Louis, where he taught drawing and designed his school’s official sea in 1896. For many decades, though, an art historian led the organization—Henry Radford Hope and Lamar Dodd were notable exceptions. In 1990, visual artists began filling the role more often, with five of the last eleven presidents—including the current one, Barbara Nesin—being practitioners instead of scholars. CAA’s first woman president was Anne Coffin Hansen of Yale University, who took office in 1972.

Current CAA President

2018–20 Jim Hopfensperger, Western Michigan University

Chronology of Past Presidents

2016–18 Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University

2014–16 DeWitt Godfrey, Colgate University

2012–14 Anne Collins Goodyear, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

2010–12 Barbara Nesin, Art Institute of Atlanta

2008–10 Paul B. Jaskot, DePaul University

2006–8 Nicola M. Courtright, Amherst College

2004–6 Ellen K. Levy, Brooklyn College

2002–4 Michael L. Aurbach, Vanderbilt University

2000–2002 Ellen T. Baird, University of Illinois, Chicago

1998–2000 John R. Clarke, University of Texas at Austin

1996–98 Leslie King-Hammond, Maryland Institute College of Art

1994–96 Judith K. Brodsky, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey

1992–94 Larry Silver, Northwestern University

1990–92 Ruth Weisberg, University of Southern California

1988–90 Phyllis Pray Bober, Bryn Mawr College

1986–88 Paul B. Arnold, Oberlin College

1984–86 John Rupert Martin, Princeton University

1981–84 Lucy Freeman Sandler, New York University

1980–81 Joshua C. Taylor, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution

1978–80 Marilyn Stokstad, University of Kansas

1976–78 George Sadek, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

1974–76 Albert E. Elsen, Stanford University

1972–74 Anne Coffin Hanson, Yale University

1970–72 H. W. Janson, New York University

1968–70 Marvin Eisenberg, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

1966–68 George Heard Hamilton, Yale University

1964–66 Richard Brown, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

1962–64 James S. Watrous, University of Wisconsin, Madison

1960–62 David M. Robb, University of Pennsylvania

1958–60 Charles Parkhurst, Oberlin College

1956–58 Joseph C. Sloane, Bryn Mawr College

1954–56 Lamar Dodd, University of Georgia

1952–54 S. Lane Faison Jr., Williams College

1949–52 Henry Radford Hope, Indiana University

1947–49 Frederick B. Deknatel, Harvard University

1945–47 Rensselaer W. Lee, Smith College and the Institute for Advanced Study

1941–45 Sumner McKnight Crosby, Yale University

1939–41 Ulrich Middeldorf, University of Chicago

1939 Walter S. Cook, New York University

1923–38 John Shapley, Brown University, New York University, and the University of Chicago

1919–23 David Moore Robinson, Johns Hopkins University

1916–19 John Pickard, University of Missouri

1912–13 Holmes Smith, Washington University

Published on May 3, 2011.