CAA News Today
Picks of Exhibitions and Events by CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — May 25, 2010
CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) has inaugurated a new section of the CAA website, called CWA Picks. Each month, the committee will produce a curated list of exhibitions, conferences and symposia, panels, lectures, and other events related to the art and scholarship of women.
Read the just-published listings for June 2010, which include Show of Hands: Northwest Women Artists 1880–2010 at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington, and Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The two exhibitions in the CWA Picks for May are still on view.
US Senators Sign and Submit Letter Supporting the NEH
posted by Christopher Howard — May 24, 2010
The following twenty-one United States senators signed onto the Dear Colleague letter circulated by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) earlier this month. The letter, which supported increased funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), was submitted last week. If your senator(s) signed on, please send a thank-you email using the National Humanities Alliance’s website. A customizable form letter is posted on the Online Advocacy Tools section.
A PDF of the Dear Colleague letter, addressed to Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HA) and Vice Chair Thad Cochran (R-MS), and to Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Ranking Member Lamar Alexander (R-TN), is available for download.
Final List of Signatures
Tom Udall (D-NM), letter sponsor
Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
Mark Begich (D-AK)
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD)
Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
John Kerry (D-MA)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Jack Reed (D-RI)
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Charles Schumer (D-NY)
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)
US Senators Sign and Submit Letter Supporting the NEH
posted by Christopher Howard — May 24, 2010
The following twenty-one United States senators signed onto the Dear Colleague letter circulated by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) earlier this month. The letter, which supported increased funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), was submitted last week. If your senator(s) signed on, please send a thank-you email using the National Humanities Alliance’s website. A customizable form letter is posted on the Online Advocacy Tools section.
A PDF of the Dear Colleague letter, addressed to Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HA) and Vice Chair Thad Cochran (R-MS), and to Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Ranking Member Lamar Alexander (R-TN), is available for download.
Final List of Signatures
Tom Udall (D-NM), letter sponsor
Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
Mark Begich (D-AK)
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD)
Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
John Kerry (D-MA)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Jack Reed (D-RI)
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Charles Schumer (D-NY)
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)
May Obituaries in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — May 19, 2010
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, curators, teachers, architects, collectors, administrators, and other important figures in the visual arts.
- Callie Angel, a specialist on the films of Andy Warhol who worked with the Whitney Museum of American Art and Museum of Modern Art, died on May 5, 2010. She was 62
- Avigdor Arikha, a Paris-based painter of both abstract and figurative art, a graphic designer, and a Holocaust survivor, died on April 29, 2010, at the age of 81
- Jose Bernal, a Cuban artist and teacher who fled Castro’s regime for Chicago, died on April 19, 2010, at the age of 85
- David Bolduc, a Canadian artist and illustrator celebrated for his colorful abstractions, died on April 8, 2010. He was 65
- James “Jack” Boynton, a Texan artist and teacher who helped found the art department at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, died on April 5, 2010. He was 82
- Oliver Cox, an English architect of housing and schools, died on April 24, 2010, at the age of 90
- Bruce Craig, director of research and planning at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies, died on March 9, 2010. He was 53
- Frank Frazetta, a painter and illustrator of fantasy scenes whose work adorned the covers of books and albums as well as movie posters, died on May 10, 2010. He was 82
- Jonathan Gams, publisher of the poetry and art magazine Lingo and a cofounder of Hard Press Editions, died on November 9, 2009, at the age of 57
- Michael Godfrey, a curator at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in North Carolina, died on April 6, 2010. He was 56
- Bobby Gore, an art historian and adviser on pictures to the UK’s National Trust, died on April 23, 2010, at the age of 89
- Craig Kauffman, a sculptor associated with the Los Angeles scene in the 1950s and 1960s, died on May 9, 2010, at the age of 78
- Neil E. Matthew, an artist and a professor emeritus at the Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, died on January 5, 2010. He was 84
- Malcolm McLaren, an artist, fashion designer, cultural provocateur, and manager of the punk band the Sex Pistols, died on April 8, 2010. He was 64
- Robert Natkin, an abstract artist who lived and worked in Chicago, New York, and Redding, Connecticut, died on April 20, 2010. He was 79
- Norman Neasom, a painter and longtime teacher at the Redditch School of Art in Worcestershire, England, died on February 22, 2010, at the age of 94
- Max Palevsky, a philanthropist who made his fortune in computers in the 1960s and a collector of art and furniture, died on May 5, 2010, at the age of 85
- Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, an Italian businessman and a major collector of postwar American art who donated works to the emerging Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, died on April 23, 2010. He was 87
- Victor Pesce, a former plumber and a painter of still lifes who lived and worked in New York, died on March 28, 2010, at age 71
- Deborah Remington, an abstract painter who showed at Bykert Gallery in the 1960s and 1970s, died on April 21, 2010, at the age of 79
- Werner Schroeter, a German film director who was a contemporary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Werner Herzog, died on April 12, 2010, at the age of 65
- Dustin Shuler, a sculptor based in California whose best-known work, Spindle, impales eight cars on a large stake, died on May 4, 2010, at the age of 61
- Yvonne Skargon, an English artist and teacher who specialized in wood engravings, died on March 16, 2010. She was 78
- Jan van der Marck, a Dutch curator who worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Detroit Institute of Arts, died on April 28, 2010, at the age of 80
- John Carl Warnecke, the official architect of the Kennedy administration who designed that president’s grave site, died on April 17, 2010, at the age of 91
- Purvis Young, a self-taught artist who lived and worked in south Florida, died on April 20, 2010. He was 67
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
May Issue of CAA News Published and Online
posted by Christopher Howard — May 14, 2010
The May issue of CAA News—which requests your participation in the two upcoming Centennial Conferences in New York (2011) and Los Angeles (2012)—has just been published. You may download a PDF of it immediately.
Although the deadline for papers for the New York conference has passed, ARTspace seeks participation from members for two events. First, CAA invites artists to submit video documentation of performance work for the ARTspace Media Lounge, on continuous view during the conference. Second, the organizers of a panel on health and safety in the artist’s studio seek presenters from diverse points of view. (See pp. 17–18 for information on both.) For Los Angeles, CAA will begin accepting your session proposals through an online process starting June 28; see pages 9–11 for full details.
Introduced by Barbara Nesin, the new president of the CAA Board of Directors, the May newsletter brings you up to date on all CAA programs and services, including a profile of Karen Lang, the incoming editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, and an announcement that CAA is reinstating its fellowships for MFA students and restoring the Millard Meiss Publication Fund.
The CAA News managing editor welcomes your submissions to the Endnotes section of the July issue. Please send listings for recent solo exhibitions, books published, and exhibitions curated, as well as news about your new position or your grant or fellowship, to Christopher Howard. Deadline extended: June 7, 2010.
Interested in advertising in CAA News? Please contact Bradford Nordeen, CAA marketing and membership assistant, at 212-691-1051, ext. 252.
American Association of Museums Revises Its “Statement of Support from Parent Organizations”
posted by Christopher Howard — May 13, 2010
The Accreditation Commission of the American Association of Museums (AAM) approved revisions to its 2005 policy “Statements of Support from Parent Organizations” at its March 2010 meeting.
Why Did It Change?
The impetus was a request from a task force formed in 2009, which included Linda Downs, CAA executive director, to focus on the issue of protecting academic collections. The Task Force on University and College Museums, of which AAM is a member, was organized in response to the disturbing trend of selling collections from academic museums as a short-sighted response to the current economic downturn (e.g., the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, the Maier Museum at Randolph College, and the Fisk University Galleries). Of course, the threat of a parent organization treating collections as disposable assets, or the undervaluing of the museum and its collections as essential intellectual and educational resources, is not limited to college and university museums.
The purpose of the policy since it debuted in 2005 is to give the Accreditation Commission some assurance of the sustainability and longevity of an institution that is not autonomous. Museums, in turn, have found that the commission’s policy—and the conversations that surround the need to secure the appropriate documentation—helps strengthen their presence and articulate their essential role within their parent organization. The policy also serves as an opportunity to educate the parent organization’s leadership about museum standards and ethics. The expanded language in the document will support museums in this regard as well as offer to them greater protection from threats to their tangible and intangible assets held in the public trust.
What Changed?
To whom the policy applies (see below) and the basic requirement of evidence of support did not change. The Accreditation Commission added new language to the policy emphasizing:
- the role, value, and use of collections
- ethics and standards regarding collections
- specific language that stresses that a museum’s collections should not be considered as disposable assets by a parent organization
When you access the policy online, you will see the new language indicated in red.
Is My Museum Affected?
The policy may not apply to your museum, but it is important for you to know about the nature of the changes.
The policy applies to your museum if it operates within a larger parent organization, such as: college or university; tribal, municipal, state, or federal government; state historical society supervising multiple sites; corporate foundation, etc. A museum that has a parent organization relies on that parent for some or all of its human, physical, and/or financial resources. Approximately 37 percent of all accredited museums operate within a parent organization. Over 40 percent of this subgroup is part of a college or university.
Questions
If you have any questions or comments about the new policy and how it affects your museum, please contact the Accreditation Program staff.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Styles
Director, Illinois State Museum and Accreditation Commission Chair
William Eiland
Director, Georgia Museum of Art, Accreditation Commissioner, and Member of the Task Force on University and College Museums
Julie Hart
Senior Director of Museum Standards and Excellence, American Association of Museums
May 17 Update: Lee Rosenbaum reported on the “Statements of Support from Parent Organizations” in her ArtsJournal blog, Culturegrrl.
CAA Board of Directors Restores Suspended Programs
posted by Christopher Howard — May 12, 2010
At its meeting on May 2, 2010, the CAA Board of Directors voted to restore several important programs for the next fiscal year, beginning July 1. After a year of conservative budgeting in response to the economic downturn, the board eased financial constraints on the following programs that benefit CAA members.
Professional Development Fellowships
Later this fall, CAA will award five Professional Development Fellowships in the Visual Arts of $5,000 each to outstanding students who will receive MFA degrees in calendar year 2011. Eligibility requirements and application guidelines will be available on the CAA website by June 1, 2010; the deadline for applications will be October 1, 2010.
The number of artists applying for support has always been consistently high. Given this significant interest by artists—as well as the emphasis in CAA’s 2010–2015 Strategic Plan on strengthening programs and support for artist members—the board agreed that renewing artists’ fellowship is an important first step toward full restoration of the fellowship program.
Although the operating budget is lean, CAA hopes that Professional Development Fellowships in Art History can again be awarded to doctoral candidates in 2011.
The Art Bulletin and Art Journal
CAA’s two scholarly print publications, The Art Bulletin and Art Journal, will return to regular quarterly publication in 2011, with four issues appearing next year. In 2010, each journal is producing just three issues in response to the financial constraints of the previous fiscal year. The Art Bulletin combined its March and June 2010 issues, and Art Journal produced a joint Spring–Summer 2010 issue.
Millard Meiss Publication Fund
The CAA Publications Department will once again make grants to publishers from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund beginning this fall. The Meiss fund, founded in 1975, awards grants to support book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art and related subjects that have been accepted by publishers on their merits, but cannot be published in the most desirable form without subsidy.
The grant program had been suspended for two cycles, in fall 2009 and spring 2010. Awards will also be made in spring 2011, pending later approval.
Artists’ Projects Launch New Editor’s First Issue of Art Journal
posted by Christopher Howard — May 11, 2010
The Spring–Summer 2010 issue of Art Journal marks the first issue produced by the art historian and critic Katy Siegel, who began work as editor-in-chief in July 2009. Special artists’ projects by Sharon Lockhart and Kerry James Marshall are highlights of this issue, and the magazine also features never-before-published photographs of a project by the cult artist Jack Smith and his collaborator, the renowned avant-garde actress Kate Manheim. Completing the mix are feature essays by Hannah Higgins, Cary Levine, and Martin Patrick, and an interview with the London-based artist Goshka Macuga by Achim Borchardt-Hume.
Katy Siegel, a professor of art history at Hunter College in New York, a contributing editor to Artforum, and author of the forthcoming “Since ’45”: America and the Making of Contemporary Art (Reaktion, 2010), will serve as editor-in-chief of Art Journal for three years. She says of this first issue, “While preserving its integrity as an academic journal, I want to make sure that every issue of Art Journal also represents the vitality and vicissitudes of the real life of art and artists.”
Readers immediately encounter four pages of Kerry James Marshall’s comic Dailies: On the Stroll, placed in the inside front and back covers. Marshall’s bold black-and-white graphics weave together racial politics in the larger society with those of the art world in the first episode of a frankly polemical serial.
Sharon Lockhart’s Lunch Break Times previews a publication the artist will launch later this year. Working with blue-collar workers throughout the state of Maine, Lockhart conveys the visual aspects of the industrial workplace by means of intriguing objects she has found there: antique postcards and photos, a coffee-cart sign emblazoned on a state map, a labor activist’s painting hanging in the union hall, and more.
Kate Manheim is best known for several decades of performances as the lead actor in Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Jack Smith (1932–1989) blazed through the underground art and film scenes in lower Manhattan in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, creating films and performances with his coterie of Flaming Creatures. Smith and Manheim collaborated on a project exploring marriage, melodrama, and the Hollywood star Maria Montez. A selection of their atmospheric and amusing photographs is published for the first time ever in the pages of Art Journal, introduced by a beautiful personal essay by the film historian P. Adams Sitney.
The art historian Hannah Higgins has contributed a clear-eyed and moving account of the intertwined careers of her parents, the Fluxus artists Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins, and her relationship to them as both daughter and historian. Martin Patrick considers the present-day implications of the work of another important Fluxus artist, Robert Filliou. Cary Levine reflects on a somewhat sinister body of work by the West Coast artist Mike Kelley, which draws on the themes and techniques of do-it-yourself crafts. And the curator of London’s Whitechapel Gallery, Achim Borchardt-Hume, interviews Goshka Macuga about her yearlong installation at Whitechapel that was based on Picasso’s tapestry version of Guernica, presented here with documentation of the artist’s project. This is the first installation of a new feature, “Before and After,” which will expand Art Journal’s engagement with the making of art as well as its social afterlife.
The quarterly Art Journal, published since 1929, is available by subscription to CAA members. Single copies may be purchased by calling 212-691-1051, ext. 204, or by writing to nyoffice@collegeart.org. Art Journal is made possible by a generous grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, CAA membership support, and contributions from individuals and institutions. To make a contribution, please contact Sara Hines at 212-691-1051, ext. 216; or visit www.collegeart.org/support.
Society for Architectural Historians Invites CAA Members to Take a Study Tour of Mexico
posted by Christopher Howard — May 10, 2010
The Society for Architectural Historians (SAH) invites CAA members to take a study tour of Mexico City. The tour’s focus will be modern and contemporary architecture, but because some knowledge of older styles, contemporary issues across the arts, and the growth of the city itself are critical to understanding Mexican modern architecture, the tour will include pre-twentieth-century buildings and works of art and urban planning that inform the development of Mexican architectural modernism in essential ways.
The study program is designed to include famous, “must-see” sites in Mexico City as well as buildings that participants may not know and that they might find difficult to visit. Download a detailed brochure and register online to reserve a space on the tour. CAA members need not be members of SAH but will pay a $25 administration fee to attend, in addition to the tour-package cost. Space is limited, so please make your reservations today!
Image: The Basilica of Guadalupe on top of Tepeyac hill, north of Mexico City, was built between 1974 and 1976 by the Mexican architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez (photograph provided by Kathryn O’Rourke and the Society of Architectural Historians)
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for May 2010
posted by CAA — May 10, 2010
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts singles out the best in feminist art and scholarship from North America and around the world. CWA Picks may include exhibitions, conferences, symposia, panels, lectures, and other events. The following selections should not be missed.
May 2010
Carolee Schneemann: Within and Beyond the Premises
Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art
State University of New York at New Paltz, 1 Hawk Drive, New Paltz, NY 12561
February 26–July 25, 2010
Over forty works spanning the career of pioneering painter, filmmaker, writer, performance, and installation artist Carolee Schneemann are featured in this edition of the Dorsky Museum’s Hudson Valley Masters exhibition series. Schneemann has lived in New Paltz, New York, for nearly fifty years while sustaining an international career. This selective but extensive overview of her entire career, organized to highlight connections between the artist’s life and art, includes paintings, drawings, photography, installation work, video projections, and writings.
Nicole Ianuzelli, Envelope 2, 2007, latex and oil on canvas, 32 x 36 in. (artwork © Nicole Ianuzelli)
Illusive Balance: Transcendental Pattern and Layered Surface
Mabel Smith Douglass Library Galleries
Rutgers University, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
March 17–June 7, 2010
This Mary H. Dana Women Artist Series exhibition showcases abstract paintings and drawings by four New York– and New Jersey–based artists—Marsha Goldberg, Nicole Ianuzelli, Lisa Pressman, and Debra Ramsay—who were selected by a jury of visual-arts professionals. Goldberg and Ianuzelli work in oil and acylic, while Pressman and Ramsay primarily use encaustic. For more details, download the press release and catalogue (posted later this month).
“Making Ourselves Visible”
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
May 22, 2010, 11:00 AM–5:00 PM
This interactive program, organized by the feminist artist Liz Linden and the writer Jen Kennedy, explores the question “What does feminism look like today?” and encourages visitors to take part by voicing their ideas and questions.