CAA News Today

CAA invites you to apply for service on one of its nine innovative, productive Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees, which address crucial issues in the visual arts and propose solutions that advance CAA’s goals and the profession as a whole. Working on a committee is also an excellent way to network with other members.

Committee activity is busiest at the Annual Conference, where each group usually presents one or two sessions. Other committees do more: the Services to Artists Committee conceives and implements ARTspace, ARTexchange, and the Media Lounge, and the Students and Emerging Professionals Committee puts together lunchtime programming on professional-development topics for the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge.

Throughout the year, committee activities are more diverse, and you will have the opportunity to bring up topics important to you and your colleagues for discussion and action. If developments in pedagogy interest you, apply for the Education Committee. Worried about artists’ copyright or the high cost of image reproduction? The Committee on Intellectual Property monitors and advises on these pressing issues.

This year, two committees conducted surveys directed at their particular CAA constituencies. The Museum Committee sought input from museum and gallery professionals, and the International Committee queried members based outside the United States and foreign-born artists and scholars working in America. The Professional Practices Committee tackles urgent professional matters such as the increase of adjuncts in higher education; it also writes and revises Standards and Guidelines that, once approved by the CAA Board of Directors, become authoritative and comprehensive documents for art-related disciplines. The Committee on Diversity Practices has added a hitherto underserved area, older and senior professionals, to its list of concerns, and the Committee on Women in the Arts publishes the monthly CWA Picks of exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship, among other projects.

Committee members serve three-year terms (2012–15), with at least one new member rotating onto a committee each year. Candidates must possess expertise appropriate to the committee’s work and be current CAA members. Members of all committees volunteer their services without compensation. The following vacancies are open for terms beginning in February 2012:

• Committee on Diversity Practices: three members
• Committee on Intellectual Property: one member
• Committee on Women in the Arts: two members
• Education Committee: two members
• International Committee: two members
• Museum Committee: three members
• Professional Practices Committee: two members
• Services to Artists Committee: four members
• Student and Emerging Professionals Committee: three members

CAA’s president and vice president for committees will review all candidates in late November 2011 and make appointments in early December, prior to the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles, where CAA will conclude its yearlong Centennial Celebration. All new members are introduced to their committees during their respective business meetings at the conference.

Nominations and self-nominations should include a brief statement (no more than 150 words) describing your qualifications and experience and an abbreviated CV (no more than two pages). Please send all materials to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive assistant. Deadline: October 14, 2011.

Image: The Student and Emerging Professionals Committee hosted a breakfast at the American Folk Art Museum during the 2011 Annual Conference (photograph by Bradley Marks)