CAA News Today
Ask Your US Senators to Support the IMLS Office of Museum Services
posted by CAA — March 16, 2012
On Wednesday, March 14, 2012, the American Association of Museums (AAM) sent the following email regarding federal funding for the Office of Museum Services at the Institute of Museum and Library Services. AAM represents the entire scope of museums and their professionals and nonpaid staff: more than 18,000 individual museum professionals and volunteers, almost 3,000 institutions, and 250 corporate members.
Act Now: Ask Your US Senators to Support the IMLS Office of Museum Services
Once again, in conjunction with Museums Advocacy Day, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter urging the Senate Appropriations Committee to provide $50 million in FY13 for the Office of Museum Services (OMS) at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
The deadline for Senators to sign on to this letter is THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012. Ask your Senators to SIGN THE GILLIBRAND APPROPRIATIONS LETTER today!
“Our collective efforts in the U.S. House resulted in a record number of supporters on the House Dear Colleague letter, with many Members of Congress signing on specifically because they were asked by constituents,” said AAM President Ford W. Bell. “Now we must ask Senators to join the Senate letter. Museums are a wise investment for Congress because they pump $20 billion into the economy and support 400,000 jobs, and Senators need to hear from us.”
Current funding for the Office of Museum Services is $30.8 million, the same amount requested in President Obama’s FY13 budget.
Please visit www.speakupformuseums.org to learn more about advocacy for museums.
CAA Salutes Donors in the Annual Acknowledgments
posted by Nia Page — March 15, 2012
Since membership fees cover less than half of CAA’s operating costs, voluntary contributions from members significantly help to facilitate the wide range of programs and services that the organization offers. In the Acknowledgments section of its website, CAA recognizes the distinguished contributors for each of the following in calendar year 2011:
- The Centennial Campaign celebrates CAA’s one hundredth anniversary, a celebratory landmark for any organization but particularly so for CAA given its dynamic influence in shaping the study and practice of the visual arts
- The Donors Circle of Patron, Sponsoring, and Sustaining Members includes individuals who contribute to CAA above and beyond their regular dues
- Life Members are individuals who make one-time payments of $5,000 and remain active CAA members for life
- The Art Bulletin Publication Fund supports the production of CAA’s preeminent scholarly journal covering all areas and periods of art history
- The Art Journal Publication Fund supports the production of CAA’s cutting-edge quarterly of contemporary art and ideas
- The caa.reviews Publication Fund supports the production of CAA’s online journal devoted to critical reviews of books, exhibitions, and projects in all areas and periods of art history and visual studies
- The Annual Conference Travel Grants help cover expenses for graduate students in art history and studio art, and for international artists and scholars, who attend the CAA Annual Conference
CAA offers additional ways to contribute to the organization. Through Planned Giving, you can include CAA in your will. You can also purchase Benefit Prints by the artists Willie Cole and Buzz Spector or a collection of Art Journal Artists’ Projects by Barbara Bloom, Clifton Meador, Mary Lum, and William Pope.L. For general inquiries on CAA’s campaigns and funds, please contact Hannah O’Reilly Malyn, CAA development associate, at 212-392-4435.
Applications for Spring Grants from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund
posted by CAA — March 14, 2012
CAA is accepting applications for spring 2012 grants through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund. Thanks to a generous bequest by the late art historian Millard Meiss, the twice-yearly program supports book-length scholarly manuscripts in any period of the history of art and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher but require further subsidy to be published in the fullest form.
The publisher, rather than the author, must submit the application to CAA. Awards are made at the discretion of the jury and vary according to merit, need, and number of applications. Awardees are announced six to eight weeks after the deadline. For complete guidelines, application forms, and a grant description, please visit the Meiss section of the CAA website or write to nyoffice@collegeart.org. Deadline: April 1, 2012.
Image: Hong Kong University Press received a Meiss grant in fall 2008 to help publish Roslyn Lee Hammers’s book, Pictures of Tilling and Weaving: Art, Labor, and Technology in Song and Yuan China (2011).
March 2012 Issue of The Art Bulletin Introduces Three New Article Series
posted by Christopher Howard — March 13, 2012
Three new series of features are introduced in the March 2012 issue of The Art Bulletin. They will appear in the next two volume years of the journal, along with the long-form essays and reviews that have made it the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship. In her introductory editor’s note, Karen Lang writes that she created the new features “to reflect the vibrancy of art history today and to stimulate dialogue across fields and with neighboring disciplines.”
In the first new series, “Regarding Art and Art History,” a leading scholar offers a short personal reflection on what it means to write art history; the inaugural writer is Anne M. Wagner, whose essay takes the form of a letter. “Notes from the Field” will present short texts on a given topic by ten authors from a variety of disciplines; the first topic is anthropomorphism, with texts by the artist Elizabeth King, the philosopher J. M. Bernstein, and eight other scholars, including Finbarr Barry Flood, Jane Garnett, and James Meyer. Each issue will feature an interview as well; the first is a dialogue between the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and the art historian Philip Ursprung. Julia Gelshorn launches the feature with a critical essay on the techniques, strategies, and study of the artist interview.
The March issue also features three essays on diverse topics. In “Henry Fuseli: Greek Tragedy and Cultural Pluralism,” Andrei Pop examines the art of the Anglo-Swiss painter Henry Fuseli in relation to the eighteenth-century revival of Greek tragedy and the formation of the modern liberal version of cultural pluralism. Yukio Lippit’s article, “Of Modes and Manners in Japanese Ink Painting: Sesshū’s Splashed Ink Landscape of 1495,” explores a single work by the Zen monk painter Sesshū Tōyō in the context of the ink painting tradition and artistic transmission in medieval Japan. In her essay, “Agent Provocateur? The African Origin and American Life of a Statue from Côte d’Ivoire,” Monica Blackmun Visonà studies the “biography” of a statue, sculpted near the Lagoon region of Ivory Coast and later donated to Fisk University by Georgia O’Keeffe, as a microcosm of American art history in the twentieth century.
In the Reviews section, Sheila Dillon evaluates Richard Neer’s book, The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture, and Julian Gardner considers The Likeness of the King: A Prehistory of Portraiture in Late Medieval France by Stephen Perkinson. Next, Gerhard Wolf looks at the temporality of Renaissance art as described in Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood’s Anachronistic Renaissance. Finally, Marc Fumaroli reviews Walter S. Melion’s book, The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print (1550–1625).
Please see the full table of contents for March to learn more. CAA sends The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and to those individuals who choose to receive the journal as a benefit of their membership.
The next issue of The Art Bulletin, to be published in June 2012, will feature a “Notes from the Field” section on appropriation and an interview with the art historian Linda Nochlin. The long-form essays will examine artifacts from a tenth-century cave in northwestern China, portraiture and narrative in the 1605 Shahnama (Book of Kings), theater architecture in the 1914 Werkbund exhibition, and Pablo Picasso’s 1912 paper construction Guitar. The Reviews section will include analyses of books on Caravaggio, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Spanish portraiture, the art of early modern China, and the temporality of architecture.
CAA Wraps Its 100th Annual Conference
posted by Nia Page — March 12, 2012
CAA hosted its 100th Annual Conference and Centennial Celebration, February 22–25, 2012, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This year’s program included: four days of presentations and panel discussions on art history and visual culture; Career Services for professionals at all stages of their careers; a Book and Trade Fair; and a host of special events throughout southern California.
Attendance
Five thousand art professionals from throughout the United States and abroad—including artists, art historians, students, educators, curators, critics, collectors, and museum staff—attended the conference.
Sessions
Conference sessions featured presentations by artists, scholars, graduate students, and curators, who addressed a range of topics in art history and the visual arts. In total, the conference offered over 200 sessions, developed by CAA members, affiliated societies, and committees.
Career Services
Career Services included four days of mentoring and portfolio-review sessions, career-development workshops, and job interviews with colleges, universities, and other art institutions. Approximately 200 interviewees and 46 mentors participated in Career Services.
Book and Trade Fair
This year’s Book and Trade Fair presented over 120 exhibitors, including participants from the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Belgium, Mexico, China, Germany, Poland, and Cuba, displaying new publications, artists’ materials, digital resources, and innovative products of interest to artists and scholars. The Book and Trade Fair also featured book signings, lectures, and demonstrations, as well as three exhibitor-sponsored program sessions on art materials and publishing.
ARTspace and ARTexchange
ARTspace, a “conference within the conference” tailored to the needs and interests of practicing artists, presented this year’s Annual Artists’ Interviews with Mary Kelly and Martin Kersels. Over 300 people attended this extraordinary event.
The ARTspace program also featured four days of panel discussions devoted to visual-arts practice, opportunities for professional development, screenings of video work curated and produced by graduate students from six Los Angeles colleges, and a symposium exploring art in the public realm. Programmed by CAA’s Services to Artists Committee, ARTspace was made possible in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
ARTexchange, an open-portfolio event in which CAA artist members displayed drawings, prints, photographs, small paintings, and works on laptop computers, took place on Friday, February 24. Nearly 50 artists participated in ARTexchange this year.
Convocation and Centennial Awards
More than 400 people attended CAA’s Convocation and presentation of the 2012 Centennial Awards. Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, delivered the keynote address.
The recipients of CAA’s Centennial Awards are:
- Deborah Marrow, Leadership and Service to the Field. Presented by James Cuno, President and CEO, J. Paul Getty Trust
- Edythe and Eli Broad, Patronage and Philanthropic Support of the Arts. Presented by Steven D. Lavine, President, California Institute of the Arts
- California Lawyers for the Arts, Advocacy for the Arts. Awarded to Maria Seferian, Copresident of California Lawyers for the Arts and presented by Joseph Lewis III, Dean, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine
Awards for Distinction
More than 300 people attended CAA’s ceremony for the 2012 Awards for Distinction. The recipients of this year’s awards are:
- David Hammons, Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement
- Adrian Piper, Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
- Lucy R. Lippard, Distinguished Feminist Award
- Allan Sekula, Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art
- David Antin, Frank Jewett Mather Award
- Alexander Nagel, Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
- Maryan W. Ainsworth, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
- Roy Flukinger, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions
- Jacki Apple, Distinguished Teaching of Art Award
- Gabriel P. Weisberg, Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award
- Francesca G. Bewer, CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
- Rebecca Molholt, Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
- Triple Canopy and Colby Chamberlain, Art Journal Award
Centennial Book
Edited by Susan Ball, executive director emerita, The Eye, the Hand, the Mind: 100 Years of the College Art Association surveys the impressive history of the organization from 1911 to the present. The 330-page hardcover book was published jointly by CAA and Rutgers University Press.
Special Events
Following the Centennial Convocation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted a Centennial Reception on Wednesday evening, February 22. Hundreds of attendees gathered to celebrate CAA’s 100th anniversary and enjoyed exclusive access to the museum’s galleries.
Save the Date
CAA’s 101st Annual Conference will be held in New York, February 13–16, 2013.
About CAA
The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other events. CAA focuses on a wide range of issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — March 12, 2012
In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, designers, architects, photographers, dealers, filmmakers, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. This month was marked by the loss of three major artists: Mike Kelley, Dorothea Tanning, and Antoni Tàpies.
- Leopold (Lee) Adler II, former president of the Historic Savannah Foundation, died on January 29, 2012. He was 88 years old. Born into a wealthy Savannah family, Adler worked all his life to preserve the city’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century homes, gaining a reputation as a committed preservationist
- Theo Angelopoulos, a celebrated Greek filmmaker whose work placed him in a critical pantheon of auteur directors, among them Michelangelo Antonioni, died on January 24, 2012. He was 76. Angelopoulos’s best-known films include Eternity and a Day (1998), which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. At the time of his death, Angelopoulos was working on The Other Sea, the last film in a trilogy about Greek history
- Carolyn Autry, an artist, printmaker, and educator who taught at the University of Toledo in Ohio for thirty-six years, died on December 12, 2011, at the age of 71. Autry exhibited her work nationally and internationally and was an avid world traveler in her final years
- Lillian Bassman, a fashion and fine-art photographer, died on February 13, 2012, age 94. Bassman first came to prominence in the 1940s as an art director for Junior Bazaar, a youth-orientated version of Harper’s Bazaar. She also showed her pictures in galleries around the world, influencing several generations of fashion photographers
- Emmanuel Cooper, a ceramicist, died on January 21, 2012, at the age of 73. Cooper was primarily known as potter but also established himself as an art critic, educator, and gay-rights activist. His work is in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Philadelphia Museum of Art
- Mary Louise Coulouris, a vibrant painter, printmaker, and muralist, died on December 20, 2011, at the age of 72. Born in New York to Greek parents, Coulouris moved to London to attend school, eventually settling in Scotland. Well known for her public artworks in railway stations and hospitals across the United Kingdom, she also showed in galleries in Paris and London and is included in the collections of the New York Public Library, the Bibliothèque National in Paris, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England
- Peter de Francia, a celebrated artist, intellectual, and professor of painting at the Royal College of Art in London, passed away on January 19, 2012, at the age of 90. De Francia, born in France to an English mother and an Italian father, was multilingual from an early age. He served in World War II and was a lifelong socialist and an active member of the British art scene since the 1950s
- Malcolm Fowler, a fine artist and illustrator who brought artful creativity and humor into the world of advertising, died on January 18, 2012, at age 68. Fowler founded the pioneering illustration and model-making Shirt Sleeve Studio in London with his wife, Nancy Fouts, in the late 1960s. The couple crafted seminal ad campaigns for Tate Gallery, and their work has been collected by the Victoria and Albert Museum
- John Gage, a beloved, freethinking art historian known for his scholarship on J. M. W. Turner, died on February 13, 2012, age 73. Gage taught art history at the University of Cambridge from 1970 to 1996 and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1995
- Robert E. Hecht Jr., a controversial American dealer in ancient antiquities died, on February 8, 2012, at the age of 92. Just three weeks prior to his death, Hecht was on trial in Rome for charges of antiquity tomb looting and black-market dealing. A lifelong passion for collecting and selling ancient art began when he was a student at the American Academy in Rome
- John House, an art historian known for his scholarship on Impressionism, specifically Claude Monet, passed away on February 7, 2012. He was 66. House began teaching at the University of East Anglia and University College of London before going to the Courtauld Institute of Art. He often took a radical approach to his subject, challenging previous scholarship with his books and with the popular exhibitions he organized
- Mike Kelley, a groundbreaking artist who put Los Angeles on the map as a contemporary art mecca, committed suicide at the age of 57 on February 1, 2012. Kelley worked in video, installation, painting, and performance, often combining genres to spectacular and grotesque effect. A traveling retrospective of Kelly’s work, originating at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, will come to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2014
- Ricardo Legorreta, the Mexican-born architect known for his design of vibrant, modernist buildings throughout the southwestern United States and internationally, died on December 30, 2011. He was 80
- Steven Leiber, a San Franciscan art collector and rare-book dealer, died on January 28, 2012. He was 54 years old. Leiber operated a website devoted to his collection and knowledge of art ephemera and helped appraise several important archives, including those of Avalanche magazine, Allan Kaprow, and Claus Oldenberg
- John Madin, an architect and planner who transformed the look of postwar England, passed away on January 8, 2012. He was 87. Madin is known for his monolithic designs for commercial buildings in cities throughout the North of England, the West Midlands, and Leeds
- Isi Metzstein, an esteemed Scotish architect and teacher, died on January 10, 2012, at age 83. Metzstein founded the architectural practice Gillespie Kidd and Coia, which designed churches in Scotland, including the Le Corbusier–influenced St. Peter’s Seminary (now falling into ruin), and created buildings for Robinson College and Cambridge University
- Amy Page, a writer and former editor-in-chief of Art + Auction magazine passed away on January 19, 2012, at age 72. A native New Yorker, Page was as comfortable in the rough and tumble world of art journalism as she was with socializing with collectors, gallery directors, and traveling the world to attend art fairs
- Gianfranco Pardi, an Italian artist who created minimalist paintings, died on February 2, 2012, at age 78. Pardi lived and worked in Milan, where he showed at the Gio Marconi Gallery. In 1986 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and his 1970s series Architettura combines hard-edge abstraction, drawing, cable wires and aluminum
- Vita Petersen, an artist, teacher, and legendary fixture at the New York Studio School, passed away on October 22, 2011, age 96. Born in Berlin to an aristocratic, art-loving family, Petersen moved to New York in 1938 and became involved in the heady art scene of the 1940s and 1950s. She showed her colorful abstractions at the Betty Parsons Gallery in the 1960s and was known to paint every day of her life
- Jessie Poesch, an art professor at Tulane University’s Newcomb College in New Orleans, died on April 23, 2011, at the age of 88. Poesch was a specialist in decorative arts, pottery, and Louisiana architecture. She taught at Newcomb College from 1963 to 1992 and wrote books and articles that established her as an expert in her field
- Julie Carter Preston, a Liverpool-born ceramicist whose clients included members of the British Royal Family, died on January 6, 2012. She was 85 years old. Preston is best known for her use of sgraffitto, an ancient scratching technique that creates a rich-looking surface texture. She taught for many years at the Liverpool College of Art, and her work is represented by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool
- Peter Saunders, a British painter whose favorite subject was the city of London and its people, passed away on November 19, 2011, age 70. Saunders attended Camberwell School of Art, where he studied under Euan Uglow. He later taught at schools throughout London and was a member of the Soho crowd of artists who gathered at the Colony Room in the 1960s and 1970s
- Ian Simpson, an artist and art instructor who was a presenter on the BBC program Eyeline (1968–69), died on December 15, 2011, at the age of 78. Simpson taught at Hornsey College of Art in London and at St Martins School of Art from 1972 to 1988. He was a great believer in demystifying the world of art-making, and that technical skills could be taught to anyone with the dedication to learn them
- Norma Merrick Sklarek, the first African American woman to become a licensed architect, died on February 6, 2012, aged 85. Born in Harlem, Sklarek was one of only two women to graduate from Columbia University with a degree in architecture. She moved to Los Angeles to join Gruen Associates in 1960, where she worked as the project director for Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International Airport and later was a founding partner of Siegel-Sklarek-Diamon, an all-woman architectural firm
- Kazimierz Smolen, the former director and cofounder of the State Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau and a survivor of the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Mauthausen, died on January 27, 2012, at the age of 91. In addition to founding the State Museum at Auschwitz, he appeared as a witness in many war criminal trials, including the Nuremberg Trials in 1945–46
- Tobi Lim Sonstroem, a graphic-design alumnus of the Tyler School of Art in Pennsylvania, took his own life on February 2, 2012. He was 25 years old. Sonstroem was remembered by friends and teachers as a passionate young man who was dedicated to his burgeoning art and graphic-design career
- Dorothea Tanning, a painter, sculptor, and muse to the Surrealists, died on January 31, 2012. She was 101 years old. Tanning was married for thirty years to Max Ernst and lived with him in New York, Arizona, and France. In addition to an esteemed career as a painter, she published several books of verse and in 1994 established the $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award at the Academy of American Poets
- Antoni Tàpies, the Catalan painter known for large-scale works that often mix oil painting with sand, chalk, and household objects, died on February 6, 2012. He was 88. The critic Roland Penrose described Tàpies as “a painter who was to create mysteries in matter itself.” The Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona, Spain, was created in 1984 as a museum and research center dedicated to the artist’s work and to other international modern artists
- Eugene Weston III, an architect who revolutionized the look of Los Angeles homes in the 1950s, died on January 31, 2012, at the age of 87. Weston’s designs emphasized space, glass windows, and natural light, bringing an elegant, modern sensibility to middle-class family homes. Later commissions include the Scripps College Research Center and the San Diego Zoo
- Erica Wilson, a craftswoman who popularize embroidery and needlework through numerous television appearances, books, and magazine articles, died on December 13, 2011. She was 83. The British-born Wilson moved to New York in 1954, where she taught at Cooper Union and gave private lessons in her apartment. Wilson later opened boutique shops on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and on Long Island, as well as in Palm Beach, Florida, and in Nantucket, Massachusetts
- Althea Wynne, a British sculptor known for her equestrian statues in bronze and ceramic, died on January 24, 2012, at the age of 75. Inspired by Etruscan art and a childhood love of horseback riding, Wynne created sculptures recognized as powerful and graceful monuments. Her best-known commission is the three bronze horses that stand sentinel at Minister Court in the City of London
Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the April listing.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for March 2012
posted by CAA — March 10, 2012
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
March 2012
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #183, 1988, chromogenic color print, 38 x 22¾ in. (artwork © Cindy Sherman; photograph provided by the artist, Metro Pictures, and the Museum of Modern Art)
Cindy Sherman
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
February 26–June 11, 2012
Featuring over 170 photographs, Cindy Sherman—only the fifth career survey by a woman in the Museum of Modern Art’s history—begins with the artist’s groundbreaking series of Untitled Film Stills (1977–80) and continues to her recent Society Portraits that address the unreality of aging in contemporary culture. Soaking up influences far beyond the art world, Sherman has created a body of work that has in turn inspired fashion, film, performance, and music. A film series, Carte Blanche: Cindy Sherman, runs from April 2 to 10 and features films personally selected by the artist from the museum’s collection.
Rosemarie Trockel: Flagrant Delight
WIELS
Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Brussels, Belgium
February 18–May 27, 2012
Rosemarie Trockel: Flagrant Delight is the first large-scale survey in Belgium of work by this German artist. Trockel often deals with the aesthetic legacies of Surrealism and Dada, and the WIELS show highlights her connection to the Belgian artists René Magritte and Marcel Broodthaers. Flagrant Delight features work produced since the early 1980s and debuts pieces created specifically for the exhibition. The cornerstone of the show is a new series of forty mixed-media collages that trace Trockel’s distinct sensibility through the juxtaposition of recognizable images and abstract motifs.
Kimsooja
Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne Métropole
Rue Fernand Léger, 42270 Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, France
February 25–March 28, 2012
Known for large-scale, filmed performances and multichannel videos, the Korean artist Kimsooja makes work that questions global culture and the role of the artist in the world. As the main actor in her videos, often filmed from behind, she engages in repetitive tasks that evoke ritual practice and Zen Buddhist philosophy. In A Needle Woman (1999–2001), comprising eight simultaneously projected videos, Kimsooja stands motionless in the middle of busy city streets—in Madrid, Tokyo, Beijing, Mumbai, Jerusalem, and more—as people walk around, ignore, or interact with her.
R(ad)ical Love: Sister Mary Corita
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005
March 9–July 15, 2012
R(ad)ical Love: Sister Mary Corita surveys the work of the nun, artist, social activist, and influential teacher, Sister Mary Corita (later known as Corita Kent). The exhibition features sixty-five prints created between 1963 and 1967, when Corita taught art at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles; the works combine the eye-catching graphics of pop with the sincere messages of protest signs and buttons that were synonymous with youth culture in the sixties. Highlighting her role as a political activist, R(ad)ical Love foregrounds the agitprop quality of the work and distances it from the commercial art that it may superficially resemble.
Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
January 27–August 12, 2012
Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin pairs the porcelain sculptures of the British artist Rachel Kneebone with fifteen sculptures by the nineteenth-century master Auguste Rodin, chosen by Kneebone from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection. A highlight of the exhibition, Kneebone’s first major museum show in the United States, features The Descent (2008), her work inspired by Dante’s Inferno, presiding over nine large-scale pieces by Rodin. Juxtaposing the emphatic figures of Kneebone and Rodin highlights a shared interest in the “representation of mourning, ecstasy, death, and vitality in figurative sculpture,” while contrasting the differences of their processes and materials.
Postcard for Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond.
Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond
Glass Curtain Gallery
Columbia College Chicago, 1104 South Wabash Avenue, First Floor, Chicago, IL 60605
March 1–April 21, 2012
Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond
Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery
Columbia College Chicago, 619 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605
March 1–April 21, 2012
This two-part exhibition, devoted to the art world’s resident feminist activists, contextualizes the unruly group’s activism and art. The Glass Curtain Gallery features material related to the Guerrilla Girls’ work in museums and galleries, while the A+D Gallery stressess their political activities outside the art world and features a selection of films. Both presentations combine never-before-seen documentation and samples of fan and hate mail, as well as the opportunity for visitors to contribute their own voice through several interactive installations.
Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Parallel Worlds
Moderna Museet
Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden
February 11–May 6, 2012
This exhibition brings together recent work by the Helsinki-based artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila such as Horizontal (2011), The Annunciation (2010), and Where is Where (2008), with an iconic video from the early 1990s, Me/We, Okay, Gray. Bridging film, video, and installation, the artist’s work is lushly cinematic and strangely subversive, touching on themes of biopolitics and posthumanism. The selection highlights Ahtila’s exploration of human perception, tragedy, and the play between inner and outer worlds.
SHORT BIG DRAMA: Angela Bulloch
Witte de With
Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR Rotterdam, Netherlands
January 21–April 9, 2012
This solo exhibition of the Canadian-born, Berlin-based artist Angela Bulloch collects three separate bodies of work: large-scale wall paintings, pixel installations, and interactive drawing machines. Bulloch’s interdisciplinary and theatrical approach invites viewer participation, and some works can even be “programmed” anew each time they are shown. Bold graphics, vibrant color, and references to the strategies of twentieth-century avant-garde movements—Constructivism, Minimalism, and the Situationists’ use of détournement—call into question the “informational status” of a given artwork.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Witte de With will host a book launch on April 3 for Source Book 10: Angela Bulloch, a monographic collection of critical essays and collaborations with other artists.
Affiliated Society News for March 2012
posted by CAA — March 09, 2012
American Institute for Conservation
Registration is open for the next annual meeting of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC), taking place from May 8 to 11, 2012, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Help AIC celebrate its fortieth anniversary and be a part of the lively discussions surrounding the theme of “Connecting to Conservation: Outreach and Advocacy,” an exploration of how conservation connects with allied professionals, the press, clients, and the general public.
Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence
Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence (ALMSD) will present its second conference, “The Symbolist Movement: Its Origins and Its Consequences,” from April 25 to 28, 2012, at Allerton Park in Monticello, Illinois. For the keynote address, Liana De Girolami Cheney will deliver a paper titled “Edward Burne-Jones’s The Sirens: Magical Whispers.” You can register, reserve a room, and learn more about the historic Allerton Park and Retreat Center online.
ALMSD is accepting news from scholars whose work focuses on the Symbolist movement for its annual newsletter. Please submit the your items to Rosina Neginsky.
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) welcomes two new board members. James Rosengren, deputy director of the University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum in Texas, begins his first term as a board member at large; and Susan Longhenry, director of the University of New Mexico’s Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, begins her first term as the Mountain–Plains regional representative. Both new board members bring extensive academic leadership experience, along with expertise in business and education, to AAMG.
Registration is still open for the AAMG annual conference, “Tools of Engagement: Securing Commitment on Campus,” to be held on April 28, 2012, at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, a day before the start of the American Association of Museums’ annual meeting. Through the presentation of outstanding case studies, thoughtful papers, and lively roundtable discussions, the AAMG conference will explore various creative strategies for negotiating with, and advocating value to, parent institutions. You may preview the conference schedule and register online. The deadline for registration is April 7, 2012.
Association of Historians of American Art
The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) has announced its new chair and members. Jenny Carson, Maryland Institute of Art, chair, 2012–13; Sarah E. Kelly, Art Institute of Chicago, cochair, 2012–13; and Katherine Smith, Agnes Scott College, sessions coordinator, 2012–15.
Save the date for the second AHAA symposium, “American Art: The Academy, Museums, and the Market,” to be held October 11–13, 2012, and hosted by the Boston Athenaeum and Boston University in Massachusetts. For more information, please contact the symposium cochairs, David Dearinger and Melissa Renn.
AHAA wishes to sponsor a two-and-a-half-hour scholarly session at the 2014 CAA Annual Conference in Chicago. Please review the submission guidelines before sending your proposal. The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2012.
Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art
The Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) began 2012 with especially good tidings. In the final days of December, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the organization a grant of $49,800 in support of its scholarly electronic journal, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Specifically, the funds will enhance the journal’s already innovative use of digital technology. Over the next three years, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide will have the means to support new approaches to digital research for contributing authors and to publish articles with enriched media content, such as computer graphics, architectural modeling, and streaming video. The Mellon award recognizes the journal not only as a leading venue for research on nineteenth-century art, but also for its standard-setting determination to make online scholarship free and available to anyone with internet access. The managing editor, Petra ten-Doesschate Chu of Seton Hall University, anticipates sponsoring at least six articles that involve enhanced digital research or digital presentation through the grant. A key contributor to the initiative is Emily Pugh, the journal’s web designer and developer. Scholars of nineteenth-century art who believe their work engages digital scholarship in an innovative way and who might be interested in participating in this pilot project should contact Chu.
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) will hold its national biennial conference at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia from April 3 to 6, 2013. Titled “postHaus,” the conference has a theme of “Instructing, Constructing, and Connecting with Students in the Twenty-First Century.” Each FATE biennial conference attracts a fantastic group of first-year studio professors and instructors from two- and four-year colleges across the United States and internationally. For “postHaus,” FATE seeks to expand its reach. Topics for session proposals can include but are not limited to: innovations in studio courses; curriculum development; approaches to art history; liberal-arts instruction; the importance of research librarians; and the vital role of lab technicians. The deadline for proposals is March 16, 2012.
Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture
The Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture (HGCEA) has a new redesigned website. With a banner of six images on the homepage, the site now features many links to resources, including research and grant opportunities, databases, calls for papers, and websites of other institutions and journals. It also includes a membership directory, archives of its CAA Annual Conference sessions since 2005, and a list of member publications.
Historians of British Art
The Historians of British Art (HBA) has announced its 2011 awards for the three best books on British art and architecture. All three titles were published by Yale University Press. Chaired by Elizabeth Honig, associate professor of art history at the University of California, Berkeley, the HBA committee has selected Celina Fox’s The Arts of Industry in the Age of Enlightenment (2010) as the best in the category of single-author book on a pre-1800 subject, and Morna O’Neill’s Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875–1890 (2010) in the category of single-author book on a post-1800 subject. In the category of edited/multiauthor book on a subject of any period, the award goes to Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance (2010), edited by Cassandra Albinson, Peter Funnell, and Lucy Peltz. “We congratulate all of the winners,” says HBA president Peter Trippi, “and we warmly encourage our members and colleagues to acquire these superb titles for their own libraries.”
Historians of Netherlandish Art
The Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) has elected three new board members: Lloyd DeWitt, curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; Paul Crenshaw, associate professor of art history at Providence College in Rhode Island; and Martha Hollander, associate professor of art history at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.
The organization has awarded its 2012 HNA Fellowships for Scholarly Research, Publication, and Travel to aid the publication of the following four books: Natasha T. Seaman, The Religious Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen: Reinventing Christian Painting after the Reformation in Utrecht (Ashgate); Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, In the Footsteps of Christ: Hans Memling’s Passion Narratives and the Devotional Imagination in the Early Modern Netherlands (Brepols); Anna C. Knaap, Rubens and the Antwerp Jesuit Church: Art, Rhetoric, and Devotion (Brepols); and Elizabeth A. Sutton, Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa (Ashgate).
Historians of Islamic Art Association
The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) have established the Oleg Grabar Memorial Fund in support of the annual award of Grabar Grants and Fellowships.
HIAA has announced full program details for its third biennial symposium, to be hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from October 18 to 20, 2012. The symposium’s theme is “Looking Widely, Looking Closely.”
International Association of Word and Image Studies
The International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS/AIERTI) seeks proposals for “From the Wall, to the Press, to the Streets,” its session for CAA’s 101st Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 13–16, 2013. IAWIS/AIERTI invites reflections on contemporary art practices that occur outside the traditional framework of the gallery or museum space. Topics to consider include: public art rhetoric (how language challenges elitist/populist divides); working around the frame (spatial transgression as institutional critique); art’s new open-access sites (the internet and social networks); and institutional responses (marketing and copyright laws). Please submit proposals and CV to Eve Kalyva and Ignaz Cassar by June 1, 2012. IAWIS/AIERTI membership is not required.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) has named Debra Pincus as the speaker of the third annual Italian Art Society–Kress Foundation Lecture Series in Italy, being held in Venice on June 6, 2012. Pincus will speak on “The Lure of the Letter: Renaissance Venice and the Recovery of Antique Writing” at the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, seat of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti.
IAS would like to congratulate the 2012 recipients of the IAS/Kress Foundation Travel Grants for American or foreign scholars traveling from abroad to present papers in IAS-sponsored sessions: Michele Luigi Vescovi, for “Defining Territories and Borders in Italian Romanesque Architecture: Regions, Sub-regions, Meta-regions” at the CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles; Daniele Rivoletti, for “Pinturicchio’s Coronation of Pius III: The Interests of a Family in a Republican Context” at the Renaissance Society of America; and Christine Ungruh for “Kairo: On the Efficacy of a Classical Motif in Italian Medieval Art” at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo.
IAS is sponsoring one individual and three linked sessions at the Renaissance Society of America’s 2012 annual meeting, taking place in Washington, DC, from March 22 to 24, 2012.
Mid-America College Art Association
Save the date for the Mid-America College Art Association (MACAA) biannual conference: October 3–6, 2012, in Detroit, Michigan. The James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University will host the event. Programming will include three featured speakers; panel presentations in art, design, art history, and visual resources; studio workshops; MACAA member exhibitions; and museum visits. The conference will have two content areas, “Meaning and Making” and “Community and Collaboration.” Read more about on MACAA membership, conference registration and accommodations, and submission guidelines for papers. The deadline for submission proposals is April 10, 2012. For further information, please email the conference coordinator.
Midwest Art History Society
Attend the thirty-ninth annual conference of the Midwest Art History Society (MAHS) in Wichita, Kansas, from March 29 to 31, 2012. Papers on topics ranging from art history to modern film to collecting Asian art will be presented on the Wichita State University campus and at the Wichita Art Museum. The keynote address will be delivered by Marilyn Stokstad, Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor Emerita of Art History at the University of Kansas and the acclaimed author of Art History (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010), a widely used textbook in American colleges. Her topic will be “Art Patronage in a Civil Society.” Please visit the MAHS website to register for the conference and to review the schedule of events.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) will hold its annual conference, “Granting Permission,” at Ohio State University in Columbus on November 7–10, 2012. Sergio Soave, art chair at Ohio State, is creating an ambitious and lively schedule of events that will include an administrator’s workshop, tours of the Wexner Center for the Arts, cultural walks in Columbus, and much more. The NCAA board seeks proposals for presentations, sessions, and/or panels for the annual Arts Administrators Workshops, taking place on November 7. Topics might include but are not limited to: leadership and management; promotion and tenure; interpersonal communication; budget management, personnel evaluation, and growth; career paths; and case studies related to arts administration. Proposals and inquiries should be sent to Jim Hopfensperger, NCAA president. Initial proposals of no more than 350 words are due by May 21, 2012. Selected entries will be notified by June 20.
NCAA sends many thanks to all who participated in the organization’s activities at the CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. The annual reception was extremely well attended, and the “More Hot Problems/Cool Solutions in Arts Leadership” session drew enthusiastic responses for its innovative and unusual solutions to challenges in arts leadership.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) will hold its forty-ninth national conference, “Intimacy and Voyeurism: The Public/Private Divide in Photography” from March 22 to 25, 2012, in San Francisco, California. The keynote speaker is the acclaimed photographer Sally Mann; other featured speakers include Trevor Paglen, Sharon Olds, and Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. You need not be an SPE member to register for the conference, but membership offers a reduced ticket price. In addition, a discounted conference rate is available for student volunteers.
The fiftieth SPE national conference will be held March 7–10, 2013, in Chicago, Illinois.
Society of Architectural Historians
The sixty-fifth annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) will be held in Detroit, Michigan, from April 18 to 22, 2012. Topics under discussion include rebuilding Detroit, midcentury modern design, historic preservation, and the legacy of the automobile industry. Information on conference registration, hotel accommodation, and travel has been published online.
SAH invited CAA members to participate in an upcoming SAH study tour of Saxony, Germany, from July 12 to 25, 2012. As an exclusive offer for CAA members, the SAH membership requirement to participate in this tour will be waived. Led by the renowned scholar of German architecture, Juergen Paul, the tour will survey sites ranging from late Romanesque to modern and include religious and secular buildings, the Bauhaus, landscapes, and gardens. The tour will begin in Berlin and visit the following cities: Dessau, Gorlitz, Leipzig, Grimmer, Cowlitz, Wechselburg, Kriebstein, Lichtenwalde, Agustusburg, Annaberg, Marienberg, Freiberg, Dresden, Bautzen, Lobau, Gorlitz, Wermsdorf, Torgau, and Wittenberg. The deadline for tour registration is May 4, 2012. Please review the website for the tour itinerary and pricing; Study Tour Fellowships are also available to current full-time MA and PhD students and to emerging professionals who have received their degree between 2007 and 2011.
Southeastern College Art Conference
The sixty-eighth annual meeting of the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), hosted by Meredith College, will be held in historic Durham, North Carolina, from October 17 to 20, 2012. SECAC membership is required to attend and to participate in the conference; registration will open on August 1, 2012. Please visit the website for registration fees, travel and accommodation details, and local information on Durham. The deadline for submitting proposals for papers is April 20, 2012. Current SECAC members are eligible to apply for the SECAC Artist’s Fellowship, a grant of $5,000 to be made to an individual or a group of artists working on a specific project. The postmark deadline is August 1, 2012, and the winner will be announced at the conference in October. Questions? Please contact Beth Mulvaney, conference chair for SECAC 2012.
Professional Liability Insurance for Art Authenticators
posted by Michael Fahlund — March 08, 2012
Professional liability insurance is essential for art authenticators, appraisers, scholars, artists, curators, and other practitioners in the field of visual art and art history. In today’s increasingly litigious environment, professionals are often subject to lawsuits brought by unhappy clients or other parties who feel they have been harmed by the actions—or inactions—of individuals who worked for them. The financial consequences of such suits, including the costs to defend them, can be devastating. As a result, it is critical that professionals recognize their exposures to financial losses and adopt effective means to deal with them.
Herbert L. Jamison & Co. LLC, a provider of professional liability programs, and Philadelphia Insurance Companies are now offering a comprehensive, affordable professional liability insurance solution to art authenticators to help defend against a damaging financial loss that could occur from alleged mistakes or negligence in conducting professional, fee-based services. Though premiums vary depending on circumstances, the annual premium of one policy—which insures an individual engaged in authenticating works up to $500,000 in value—is $1,000 with a $2,500 deductible.
Several key benefits of this program are:
- Automatic independent-contractor coverage for professional services while acting on the insured’s behalf
- Defense costs in addition to the limit of liability for eligible risks
- Policy coverage for a lawful spouse or domestic partner of the insured, but only for actual or alleged wrongful acts of such individual insured for which said spouse or domestic partner may be liable as the spouse or domestic partner of such insured
- Tailored policy to meet the specific need(s) of clients
- Free sixty-day discovery clause
- Worldwide coverage
Sometimes insurance protection is not enough. The art professional must establish and maintain a loss-prevention program that will help minimize the chance of a professional liability claim being brought in the first place. Examples of effective loss-prevention techniques that can be adopted include:
- Establishing the fees and/or billing practices at the beginning of a client relationship
- Using engagement letters, contracts, and other means to precisely identify the scope of the services to be performed
- Keeping written documentation of all activity, including telephone calls, billing calculations, and the like
- Participating in peer reviews, when feasible
- Avoiding situations that present conflicts of interest
- Obtaining appropriate credentials and certifications and taking continuing-education courses to remain current regarding developments in the profession
- Screening new clients carefully and keeping existing clients informed at all times
- Avoiding giving specific warranties and similar performance guarantees
A well-designed combination of insurance and loss prevention will go a long way in managing the potential liabilities that art professionals must face as they deliver their services to their clients.
CAA recommends that interested individuals contact Kevin J. Hill, vice president at Herbert L. Jamison & Co. LLC, at 973-669-2388 or 800-5264766, ext. 2388.
Humanities Action Alert: Support the NEH and International Educational Programs
posted by CAA — March 08, 2012
Duane Webster, interim executive director of the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), sent the following Humanities Action Alert by email on Wednesday, March 7, 2012. Founded in 1981, NHA is a nonprofit organization that works to advance national humanities policy in the areas of research, education, preservation, and public programs.
Dear Colleague Letters Circulating in the House
Dear Colleague,
Please help support the humanities by taking a few minutes to contact your Members of Congress and ask them to sign two important Dear Colleague letters currently circulating in the House of Representatives.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Representative David Price (D-NC) is circulating a Dear Colleague letter in support of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The letter, addressed to the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment & Related Agencies, requests $154.3 million for NEH in FY 2013. This is the same level requested by the President. A copy of the letter is available here. Please ask your Representative to sign this letter. Click here to send an email today. The Alliance has set up a template message for you to customize. You can also contact your Representative by calling the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. The deadline to sign the letter is March 16.
Title VI/Fulbright-Hays International Education and Foreign Language Programs
Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) is circulating a Dear Colleague letter in support of Title VI/Fulbright-Hays International Education and Foreign Language programs. The letter, addressed to the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services, and Education, requests no less than $75.729 million for these programs. This is the same level requested by the President. A copy of the letter is available here. Please ask your Representative to sign this letter. Click here to send an email today. The Alliance has set up a template message for you to customize. You can also contact your Representative by calling the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. The deadline to sign the letter is March 14.
Thank you for your assistance with these important issues. The signatures on these letters will provide an important record of support for federal humanities funding in the House of Representatives.
Sincerely,
Duane Webster
Interim Executive Director
National Humanities Alliance