CAA News Today

American Council for Southern Asian Art

The fifteenth biennial symposium of the American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) will take place at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis from September 22 to 25, 2011. The engaging event will feature speakers presenting a wide range of papers on historical and contemporary art from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan region. Please direct any questions about the symposium to Rick Asher at the University of Minnesota. You may download a PDF of the full program, registration, and related information.

Art Historians of Southern California

Three years ago, Sandra Esslinger, PhD, and Cristina Hernandez, MA, two Mt. San Antonio College professors and members of the Art Historians of Southern California (AHSC), attempted to charter a resolution that would require only an MA to teach art history in California Community Colleges. They were rejected and turned to CAA for support, but there was no mention of community colleges in CAA’s Standards and Guidelines. Esslinger chaired a CAA task force that, among other things, amended the Standards of Retention and Tenure of Art Historians to include language for community colleges. The change justified resubmitting the resolution to the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. Two professors from Napa Valley Community College, Erik Shearer, MFA, and Amanda Badgett, PhD, joined the campaign, and AHSC reinforced the effort with relentless member support. The proposed revision was fortified by over seventy letters and passed unanimously by the academic senators.

Arts Council of the African Studies Association

The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) recently concluded the fifteenth triennial symposium on African art, entitled “Africa and Its Diasporas in the Marketplace: Cultural Resources and the Global Economy,” held March 23–26, 2011, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). With the assistance of a generous grant from the Getty Foundation, ACASA brought fifteen colleagues from Africa to participate as presenters in addition to nineteen graduate students and four additional colleagues from the continent supported by ACASA’s own funds. Corinne Kratz from Emory University gave the keynote speech, entitled “Recurring Wodaabe: Proliferating Images of Pastoralists, Gender, and Performance.” Forty-six panels covered past and modern nodes of art-historical inquiry, photography, modes of exhibiting and funding, and contemporary art establishments in Africa. The number of panels has doubled since the original incarnation of the symposium in 1986, highlighting an evolving interest in the field.

ACASA has named new officers to its board: Steven Nelson of UCLA is president; Jean M. Borgatti of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, is past president; and Lisa Binder from the Museum for African Art in New York is president elect and vice president. Continuing as secretary and treasurer is Carol Magee of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the independent scholar Joyce Youmans will remain the newsletter editor. The board also welcomed several new members: Shannen Hill, University of Maryland, College Park; Kinsey Katchka, independent curator; and John Peffer, Ramapo College.

In 2011, ACASA honored two leaders in the field: Rowland Abiodun, John C. Newton Professor of the History of Art and Black Studies at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Doran Ross, curator emeritus at UCLA’s Fowler Museum. The organization also presented a handful of book awards and honorable mentions. The Arnold Rubin Book Award for a single-authored book was given to Jessica Winegar for Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture In Contemporary Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), with an honorable mention going to Steven Nelson for From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture in and out of Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). The Arnold Rubin Award for books with multiple authors was bestowed on Henry John Drewal’s edited volume, Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and Other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); the honorable mention went to Inscribing Meaning (Milan: 5Continents Press, 2007) by Christine Mullen Kreamer, Polly Nooter Roberts, Elizabeth Harney, and Allyson Purpura. The Roy Sieber Outstanding Dissertation Award was given to Alexander Bortolot for “A Language for Change: Creativity and Power in Mozambican Makonde Masked Performance, circa 1900–2004” (Columbia University, 2007), with an honorable mention for Nichole Bridges’s “Contact, Commentary, and Kongo Memory: Perspectives on Loango Coast Souvenir Ivories, ca. 1840–1910” (University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2009).

Association of Art Historians

The Association of Art Historians (AAH), based in the United Kingdom, has named Alison Yarrington as its new chair, to serve a three-year term. An expert in sculpture, Yarrington is dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Hull in England and governor of the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. She has long been involved with AAH and is committed to its mission of promoting the professional practice and the public understanding of art history.

Association of Historians of American Art

The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) will sponsor two sessions at CAA’s 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. Wendy Katz from the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln will chair the shorter, professional session, “Ideology, Industry, and Instinct: The Art of Labor,” and Erica Schneider of Framingham State University in Framingham, Massachusetts, will lead the longer, scholarly session, “American Symbolism.”

The next AHAA symposium, chaired by David Dearinger and Melissa Renn, will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 12–13, 2012. Please visit the AHAA website later this summer for more details on the event.

Historians of British Art

The Historians of British Art (HBA) have welcomed new board members: Dianne Sachko Macleod, University of California, Davis; Morna O’Neill, Wake Forest University; and Emily Talbot, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The organization has also chosen its new officers: Peter Trippi, editor of Fine Art Connoisseur, is president; Colette Crossman of the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, is first vice president; Craig Hanson of Calvin College is second vice president; and Jongwoo Kim from the University of Louisville, a new board member, is treasurer and membership chair.

International Association of Art Critics

Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for the New Yorker, will deliver the International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) fifth annual Distinguished Critic Lecture in the Tishman Auditorium at the New School in New York on Thursday, November 17, 2011, 6:30–8:00 PM. The topic of his talk is “The Critic as Artist, in 2011: Is updating Oscar Wilde possible? It seems worth a try.” An American art critic, a celebrated poet, and an educator, Schjeldahl has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1998. Before that he wrote on art for Village Voice from 1980 to 1998, as well as for the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. The author of four books, including The Hydrogen Jukebox: Selected Writings of Peter Schjeldahl, 1978–1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), he received CAA’s Frank Jewett Mather Award in 1980 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1995.

Presented by AICA with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the Distinguished Critic Lecture at the New School addresses current issues in the world of art criticism. General admission for the Schjeldahl talk is $8; free for all students, AICA members, and New School faculty, staff, and alumni with a valid ID.

Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology

The San Francisco–based Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) has appointed Jeffrey N. Babcock as interim executive director. A current member and former chairman of Leonardo/ISAST’s governing board, Babcock has more than thirty years of experience as a senior nonprofit arts and academic executive, consultant, event and media producer, and entrepreneur. He has been actively involved in creative technologies throughout his career, collaborating with arts technology engineers and artists to produce and present complex projects.

Paul Thomas, associate professor in the College of Fine Art at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, will moderate a Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF) education workshop in collaboration with the Australian Forum at ISEA2011 Istanbu. Called “Transdisciplinary Visual Arts, Science, and Technology Renewal Post–New Media Assimilation” and sponsored by the National Institute for Experimental Arts, the workshop will address issues encountered while developing transdisciplinary art–science research, teaching, and meshing curricula from diverse fields.

Submissions are now being accepted for ISEA2012 Albuquerque: Machine Wilderness. This symposium will consist of a conference, to be held September 19–24, 2012, with events exploring the discourse of global proportions on the subject of art, technology, and nature. Deadline: October 1, 2011.

Mid America College Art Association

Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, will host the next conference of the Mid-America College Art Association (MACAA) from October 3 to 6, 2011. The call for papers will be posted soon to the organization’s website.

National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts

The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) will hold its next symposium, titled “Shared Journeys II,” at West Virginia University in Morgantown from October 14 to 16, 2011. The event will explore achievements in Chinese ceramics and its influence in the West by examining legacies and tensions of craftsmanship, pedagogy, philosophy, and social currents. Representatives from the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute and contemporary artists versed in overglaze and underglaze painting, slab construction, hand building, and wheel throwing will join American presenters for demonstrations and lectures. Visit the NCECA website for information on programming, travel, and lodging—and also to register.

New Media Caucus

The New Media Caucus (NMC) has produced the first print-on-demand version of its scholarly journal, Media-N, available via Lulu. The theme of the issue, from Fall 2010, is “Dynamic Coupling.” NMC applauds the persistence and determination of those who made this significant moment possible, among them the designer Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, the associate editor Juliet Davis, and the editor-in-chief Pat Badani. In addition, the organization gives a sincere thanks to Jessica Westbrook and Adam Trowbridge, editors of the original online version of the issue, and also three contributors and reviewers: Rachel Clarke, Jim Jeffers, and James Khazar. A portion of the funds from each Media-N purchase will contribute to the organization’s exploration of digital media for conceptual and artistic purposes. MNC plans to continue its dual publication model—online and print-on-demand—in the future.

Public Art Dialogue

The eponymous journal of Public Art Dialogue, published twice a year by Taylor and Francis, debuted in the spring of 2011 with a themed issue on “Reinterpreting the Canon.” Public Art Dialogue is one of multiple benefits included with a paid membership in the organization. Other member benefits include the opportunity to participate in the annual Public Art Portfolio Review, coordinated by Renee Piechocki, in which experienced public-art administrators, artists, consultants, and curators offer feedback on the work of graduate students, emerging artists, and established artists. Read about the inaugural portfolio review, which took place in February 2011 at the CAA Annual Conference.

Society for Photographic Education

The website of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) now features galleries in which members can upload up to six distinct portfolios with up to thirty images each. Anyone can view public portfolios, and SPE members can interactively browse and comment on work from the entire SPE community.

Society for the Study of Early Modern Women

The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW) formally announced the 2010 winners of its annual awards, along with the honorable mentions, at its October 2010 meeting. The names of the seven categories, the recipients, and their books and projects follow.

The winner of the Book Award is Suzanne G. Cusick’s Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court: Music and the Circulation of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), and the honorable mention goes to Dena Goodman for Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009). Daniella Kostroun and Lisa Vollendorf took the Collaborative Project Award for Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World (1600–1800) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). Julie Campbell and Anne R. Larsen received an honorable mention for Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009).

The Josephine A. Roberts Scholarly Edition Award was bestowed upon Sarah E. Owens, the editor and translator of Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns (Toronto: Iter and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009). Lynne Tatlock’s similar work as editor and translator, published as Meditations on the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), written in the seventeenth century by Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, received an honorable mention. Elizabeth I and Her Age: Authoritative Texts, Commentary, and Criticism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), edited by Donald Stump and Susan M. Felch, won the Translation or Teaching Edition Award.

The Essay or Article Award went to Dana Wessell Lightfoot for “The Projects of Marriage: Spousal Choice, Dowries, and Domestic Service in Early Fifteenth-Century Valencia,” published in Viator in 2009. Crystal B. Lake received an honorable mention for “Redecorating the Ruin: Women and Antiquarianism in Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall,” published in English Literary History (or ELH) in 2009.

The Graduate Student Conference Paper Award was shared by Michelle DiMeo and Brian Oberlander. DiMeo presented “Lady Katherine Ranelagh or Lady Margaret Orrery? Reattributing Authorship for ‘The Boyle Family Receipt Book’” at the Modern Language Association’s 2009 annual conference, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Oberlander spoke on “Susanne as Symbol in the Sixteenth-Century French Chanson” at a meeting of the American Musicological Society’s Midwest chapter in Berea, Ohio, in the same year.

An audio CD from Candace Smith and her ensemble Cappella Artemisia called Soror Mea, Sponsa Mea, Arte e Musica nei Conventi Femminili in Italia tra Cinque e Seicento (Poligrafo, 2009), which accompanied the publication of proceedings from a 2005 conference, received the Arts and Media Award.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) presented the winners of the organization’s highest honors at a Convocation ceremony on March 25, 2011, at the VRA and Art Libraries Society of North America’s second joint conference, held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Eileen Fry received the Distinguished Service Award for her contributions to visual resources and image management. Comments from Fry’s nominators and a discussion of her engagement with research, service, and innovation over her thirty-five year career can be found online. In addition, VRA presented the Nancy DeLaurier Award for distinguished achievement to Renate Wiedenhoeft. Spearheading Saskia and Scholars Resource, Wiedenhoeft has provided high-quality images for teaching art history for over forty-five years. Her acceptance remarks can also be found online. Relatedly, VRA has published images from and information about the awards presentation as well as conference presentations.