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CAA News Today

Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.

Register for Arts Advocacy Day

The 2012 election has made a dramatic impact on Congress, with more than eighty new members taking office in early January 2013. The next Congress will renew the focus on reducing the federal deficit and creating jobs, and it is imperative that arts advocates work together to craft a policy agenda that supports the nonprofit arts sector and arts education. (Read more from Americans for the Arts.)

Humanities Advocacy Day Registration

Registration for Humanities Advocacy Day and the annual meeting of the National Humanities Alliance will help you to connect with a growing network of humanities leaders, to communicate the value of the humanities to members of Congress, and to become a year-round advocate for the humanities. (Read more from the National Humanities Alliance.)

How Art History Is Failing at the Internet

The history of art as practiced in museums and the academy is sluggish in its embrace of the new technology. Of course we have technology in our galleries and classrooms and information on the web; of course we are exploiting social media to reach and grow our audiences, by tweeting about our books and articles, including links to our career accomplishments on Facebook, and chatting with our students online. But we aren’t conducting art-historical research differently. We aren’t working collaboratively and experimentally. (Read more at the Daily Dot.)

Grad School Confidential: How to Choose the Right Degree

Graduate school is hard. It’s also really expensive. But if you’re actually going to invest the time and money to do it, make it count for yourself. If you need a good graduate school to be able to do the things you want to do, aim high. You can go online and check the US News and World Report rankings, of course. And there are some damn good schools on that list. But if you choose a graduate school based on the institution’s reputation alone, you may find yourself in a discipline or among peers that simply don’t suit you. (Read more at Burnaway.)

More on Pedagogy in Arts Entrepreneurship

As I’ve been working on a pedagogical approach for emerging arts entrepreneurs, I’ve immersed myself in literature and resources on creative thinking and creative problem solving. What keeps striking me is the stark difference between creativity as applied in the development of complex ideas and the creative process in the making of art. The former lends itself, at least to a great degree, to techniques, processes, and formulae, while the making of art does not. One is rational, the other un-rational. (Read more at State of the Art.)

Shift in Heritage: Richard Serra Sculpture Has Uncertain Future

The closest thing southern Ontario has to Stonehenge is Shift, a sculpture by Richard Serra in a King City farmer’s field. Serra is a superstar artist whose work is worth millions of dollars, but Shift remains relatively obscure. Though many places would envy our big Serra, last month the Ontario Conservation Review Board decided not to support King Township’s request that Serra’s work be protected under the Ontario Heritage Act, so its future remains uncertain. (Read more at the Toronto Star.)

Dating and Job Hunting

Last January, I returned mentally and emotionally exhausted from the American Historical Association meeting. I had been lucky to have had a few interviews, and all I could do was refresh my email every few minutes, hoping for any updates. I toggled over to Facebook and quickly posted the status, “If the academic job market is like dating (and it totally is) I hope to be engaged by Valentine’s Day.” The likes and comments poured in from family and friends. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)

Masterpieces on Loan Leave MFA Walls Lacking

Visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this holiday season can see the celebrity and fashion photographs of Mario Testino. But if they wander off into the permanent collection galleries, they won’t find the museum’s most famous Renoir, Dance at Bougival. Nor will they see any of the museum’s five paintings by Cezanne, five of its six great paintings by Manet, its most distinctive Monet, or its two greatest van Goghs. Some of these works have been lent to serious and scholarly museum shows in the United States, Japan, and Europe. Agreeing to such loans is common practice and builds goodwill for when the museum asks to borrow for its own exhibitions. (Read more at the Boston Globe.)

Filed under: CAA News

Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art and a former senior curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), will deliver the keynote address during Convocation at the 2013 Annual Conference in New York. Convocation, which includes the presentation of the 2013 CAA Awards for Distinction, will take place on Wednesday evening, February 13, from 5:30 to 7:00 PM. Free and open to the public, the event will be held in the East Ballroom, on the second floor of the Hilton New York in midtown Manhattan.

Storr joined the Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA in 1990, where he has organized solo exhibitions on Elizabeth Murray (2005–6), Max Beckmann (2003), Gerhard Richter (2002), Chuck Close (1998), Tony Smith (1998), and Robert Ryman (1993–94). He also coordinated the Projects series at the museum from 1990 to 2000. More recently, Storr served as commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale, which was titled Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense. He was the first American invited to the position.

A painter and a critic, Storr has written on art for Art in America, where he has been a contributing editor since 1981, and for Frieze, where he wrote a regular column from 2004 to 2011. In addition to publishing books on Close and Philip Guston, he has recently completed Intimate Geometries: The Work and Life of Louise Bourgeois (forthcoming).

Storr earned a BA from Swarthmore College in 1972 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978. The recipient of numerous grants, awards, and honors, he has lectured at colleges and universities throughout the northeastern United States. Storr began his official academic career in 2002, leaving MoMA to become the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Storr joined Yale in 2006 as dean and was recently reappointed to that position for a second five-year term. He is also professor of painting and printmaking at his school.

Storr has intersected with CAA at various points throughout his career. He has chaired several Annual Conference sessions and has spoken on even more. He served on the Art Journal Editorial Board from 1985 to 1995 and, with the attorney Barbara Hoffman, guest edited two issues on censorship and the visual arts, in fall and winter 1991. A ever-passionate advocate, Storr took up the issue again in 2011, writing a piece in Frieze on the Hide/Seek controversy.

On Tuesday, February 12, a day before Convocation, Storr will participate on a panel, titled “Hands On,” at the New York Studio School in Greenwich Village. Joining him will be the art historians Svetlana Alpers, professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, and David Rosand, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History Emeritus at Columbia University, who will discuss the connections between making art and writing about it. David Cohen, an art critic and the editor of Artcritical.com, will moderate. The event, starting at 6:30 PM, is free and open to the public; seating, however, may be limited.

Image: Robert Storr (photograph by Herbert Lotz)

CAA is pleased to announce this year’s recipients of its International Travel Grant Program, generously funded by the Getty Foundation. Twenty art historians, including professors, curators, and artists who teach art history, will attend the upcoming Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 13–16, 2013. This is the second consecutive year that CAA has received a Getty grant to support the program.

Please read the full article to learn more about the twenty recipients, who come from the Caribbean, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

In addition to covering travel expenses, hotel accommodations, and per diems, the CAA International Travel Grant Program includes conference registration and a one-year CAA membership. At the conference, the twenty recipients will be paired with hosts, who will introduce them to CAA and to specific colleagues who share their interests. CAA is grateful to the National Committee for the History of Art (NCHA) for its generous support in underwriting the hosts’ expenses. Members of CAA’s International Committee have agreed to serve as hosts, along with representatives from NCHA and CAA’s Board of Directors. This year, the program will begin with a one-day preconference for grant recipients and their hosts in New York on February 12.

CAA is delighted by the range of interests and accomplishments of this year’s grant recipients and looks forward to welcoming them in New York.

Image: Ding Ning, a professor and vice dean of the School of Arts at Peking University in China, is a 2013 travel-grant recipient.

CAA is pleased to announce this year’s recipients of its International Travel Grant Program, generously funded by the Getty Foundation. Twenty art historians, including professors, curators, and artists who teach art history, will attend the upcoming Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 13–16, 2013. This is the second consecutive year that CAA has received a Getty grant to support the program.

In addition to covering travel expenses, hotel accommodations, and per diems, the CAA International Travel Grant Program includes conference registration and a one-year CAA membership. At the conference, the twenty recipients will be paired with hosts, who will introduce them to CAA and to specific colleagues who share their interests. CAA is grateful to the National Committee for the History of Art (NCHA) for its generous support in underwriting the hosts’ expenses. Members of CAA’s International Committee have agreed to serve as hosts, along with representatives from NCHA and CAA’s Board of Directors. This year, the program will begin with a one-day preconference for grant recipients and their hosts in New York on February 12.

The CAA International Travel Grant Program is intended to familiarize international professionals with the Annual Conference program, including the session participation process. CAA accepted applications from art historians, artists who teach art history, and art historians who are museum curators; those from developing countries or from nations not well represented in CAA’s membership were especially encouraged to apply. In September 2012, a jury of CAA members selected the final twenty recipients, whose names, home institutions, and primary areas of scholarly and professional pursuits follow. CAA is delighted by the range of interests and accomplishments of this year’s grant recipients and looks forward to welcoming them in New York.

CAA hopes that this travel-grant program will not only increase international participation in the organization’s activities, but will also expand international networking and the exchange of ideas both during and after the conference. The Getty-funded International Travel Grant Program supplements CAA’s regular program of Annual Conference Travel Grants for graduate students and international artists and scholars.

Joseph Adandé

Joseph Adandé

Joseph Adandé received a PhD in art history from the Université de Paris I, Sorbonne, where he focused on a comparative study of Ashanti stools and the Dahomey royal stools. Since 1986, he has taught art history at the Université d’Abomey-Calavi and at the Institut Supérieur d’Information, de Communication et des Arts (ISICA), at the University of Lomé, Togo. He defended a doctorat d’État in 2012 on “Humor in Traditional and Contemporary African Arts” at the Université de Lomé.

Adandé has taught and lectured in universities in Italy and Germany and served as a resource person for the School of African Heritage in Porto-Novo. He received a fellowship to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to write a book on appliqué cloth in West Africa. Currently active in launching a school of fine arts at his university, Adandé recently obtained a three-month invitation to the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA) in Paris, France, from September to November 2012.

 

Priscila Arantes

Priscila Arantes

Priscila Arantes is a cultural critic, curator, professor and director. She has been director and curator of Paço das Artes (State Secretariat of Culture/SP/Brazil) since 2007 and professor at Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC/SP) (Pontifical Catholic University) since 2002. She received her PhD in communication and semiotics from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo and conducted postdoctoral research in the Department of Visual Art at the Pennsylvania State University. Between 2007 and 2011 Arantes was associate director of the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo, and in 2010 she was a member of the São Paulo Art Biennial’s editorial council of the magazine Polo de Arte Contemporânea. She has published widely about digital aesthetics and also curated exhibitions at Paço das Artes, notably Assim é, se lhe parece, translated as Right You Are! (If You Think So), in 2011 and Projeto 5X5 in 2012. Her research interests include contemporary art, Brazilian and Latin American art, and postcolonial studies.

W. M. P. Sudarshana Bandara

W. M. P. Sudarshana Bandara

W. M. P. Sudarshana Bandara is a lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Trained as a painter, he received an MPhil in art history in 2009. He is currently pursuing a PhD, exploring how Eastern and Western concepts of art are used in the analysis of modern and postmodern works of art. Bandara is particularly interested in the intersection of art, Marxism, semiotics, and the Indian concept of Rasa.

Bandara teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in fine arts, art history, aesthetics, and criticism. In addition to teaching, he assists and supervises the research work of BA and MPhil students. The author of three academic research books and over twenty research papers, Bandara is also an active painter, exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions in Sri Lanka and internationally.

 

 

Marly Joseph Desir

Marly Joseph Desir

Marly Joseph Desir received his PhD in art history from the University of Arts, Haiti. He is a professor at the College La Renaissance, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, specializing in European and American art. As a teacher he uses lectures and multimedia technology to present a rich tapestry of visual information to his students, guiding them through the history of art, connecting historical traditions and practices to techniques through the ages, and linking them to a practical application of these techniques. His most recent publication is “True Art and Pseudo Art: Symbolist Discourse on Autonomy and Value” (2012). Earlier work includes: “Art Ethics: Thomas Kinkade and Contemporary Art” (2011); “National Art from a Local Perspective” (2008); and “Foreign or Native, Perception and Reception of Impressionism in American Art Criticism” (2006). Desir’s research focuses on twentieth-century American history and Byzantine manuscipts from the ninth through fourteenth centuries.

Ding Ning

Ding Ning

Ding Ning graduated with a PhD degree from Beijing Normal University in 1988. He was the British Council’s postdoctoral fellow at the University of Essex from 1993 to 1994. Before moving to Beijing in 2000, he served as professor and chair of the Department of Art History and Theory, China National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. He is currently a professor and vice dean at the School of Arts, Peking University.

Ding’s publications include Dimensions of Reception; Psychology of Visual Art; Dimensions of Duration: Toward a Philosophy of Art History; Depth of Art; Fifteen Lectures on Western Art History; and Spectrum of Images: Toward a Cultural Dimension of Visual Arts. He has also translated extensively, including Norman Bryson’s Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix and Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting; Douglas Kellner’s Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern; and David Carrier’s Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries.

Davor Džalto

Davor Džalto

Davor Džalto is a professor of history and theory of art at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Christianity, Belgrade, and the University of Niš. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade in Serbia and received his PhD from the University of Freiburg in Germany. He also conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Münster, also in Germany.

A visiting professor at various European and American universities, Džalto has published four books and over thirty scholarly articles and essays in the field of art history and theory, cultural studies, philosophy, and Orthodox theology. He is also an artist, working in the media of painting, objects, installations, performances and video art. He has exhibited in numerous one-man and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and North America.

 

Richard Gregor

Richard Gregor

Richard Gregor is an art historian, curator, and visual art critic who studied at Trnava University and Charles University in Prague. Currently the director of Bratislava Old Town Visual Art Centre, he was previously the chief curator of Nitra Gallery and Bratislava City Gallery. He has also served as a professor of art history and theory at the Academy of Art in Banská Bystrica and as a consultant on gallery issues at the Ministry of Culture of Slovak Republic.

Between 2007 and 2008 and again in 2011, Gregor was the head of the Cultural Department at Bratislava–Old Town City Council. Through his initiative, the Cyprián Majerník Gallery, originally established in 1957, reopened in 2008 as part of the Visual Art Centre. Gregor has curated more than thirty exhibitions in Slovakia and abroad, and has written numerous critical articles and studies in catalogues and books, including Slovak Painting since 1918, published on the official governmental website.

AKM Khademul Haque

AKM Khademul Haque

AKM Khademul Haque is an associate professor of Islamic art and architecture in the Department of Islamic History and Culture, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. After completing his undergraduate and MA degrees from the same department, he joined his alma mater as a lecturer in 1999 and became an assistant professor in 2004. Haque is currently pursuing his PhD from the same institution, researching weaponry and war techniques in medieval Bengal. His interests include the development of Islamic art and architecture internationally.

In 2007, Haque received the Hamad bin Khalifa Fellowship to attend the Second Biennial Conference on Islamic Art, organized by the School of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University in Doha, Qatar. In 2010, he received the Indranee Roy Memorial Award for presenting the best paper in the Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference of Paschimvanga Itihasa Samsad (West Bengal History Association), held at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.

 

Musarrat Hasan

Musarrat Hasan

Musarrat Hasan received an MFA from the Punjab University Lahore, Pakistan, in 1961 and a PhD in art history in 1997. She is a professor, painter, and writer, currently also serving as a member of Provincial Assembly, the highest legislative body of Punjab. In 1972, Hasan established a department of fine arts at the Queen Mary College Lahore. To overcome the language barriers of her students, she translated into Urdu an English-language survey of prehistoric and ancient art, a book based on the college’s curriculum in fine arts.

In 1997 Hasan received her doctorate, publishing her dissertation the following year. All of her five publications since then have been an effort to compile and preserve data about contemporary art in Pakistan. She designed a course of South Asian art for PhD studies in two universities in Lahore and is currently teaching that course at the Punjab University Lahore.

 

Hlynur Helgason

Hlynur Helgason

Hlynur Helgason is a practicing artist and philosopher residing in Reykjavík, Iceland. He received a doctorate in media philosophy from the European Graduate School in Switzerland and currently holds the post of assistant professor in art theory at the University of Iceland, Reykjavík.

Helgason’s main topic of research is the temporality of contemporary art, drawing inspiration from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard and Michel de Certeau, among others. His current topics of study include the art of Vito Acconci, Andy Warhol, and Christian Marker, as well as the Icelandic contemporary artists Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson, Níels Hafstein, and Ósk Vilhjálmsdóttir.

 

 

 

Bogdan Teodor Iacob

Bogdan Teodor Iacob

Bogdan Teodor Iacob is the director of the Department for Theoretical Disciplines at the University of Art and Design in Cluj–Napoca, where he teaches art history and contemporary art. Between 2008 and 2011, he served as chancellor of the university. Iacob holds a BA in art history from Babes–Bolyai University in Cluj–Napoca, Romania, and an MA in socioanthropology from the same institution.

In 2011, Iacob obtained a PhD in visual arts with the thesis “From Pathos to Cynicism: The Image of History in Modern and Contemporary Art.” Primarily concerned with contemporary artistic practices, he has lectured and published widely, including the book Offline (2010). His current focus is Romanian art criticism during the Communist era.

 

 

 

 

Peju Layiwola

Peju Layiwola

Peju Layiwola is a visual artist and art historian working in a variety of media including installation, sculpture, printmaking, and jewellery. She began her studies in the arts at the University of Benin, Nigeria, and obtained a doctorate in art history from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Layiwola has had several group and solo exhibitions both locally and internationally. In addition to these shows, she has held lectures and workshops in the United States, South Africa, and Austria. Her most recent traveling exhibition and edited book, Benin1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question, present an artist’s impression of the cultural rape of Benin.

Layiwola has also published widely on various aspects of the visual culture of Nigeria. She runs an active studio in Ibadan, Nigeria, as well as a Women and Youth Art empowerment initiative for community development. She is currently an associate professor and teaches art and art history at the University of Lagos, Nigeria.

 

 

Parul Dave-Mukherji

Parul Dave-Mukherji

Parul Dave-Mukherji is currently the dean at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She holds a PhD in Indology from Oxford University. She is the coconvener of the Forum on Contemporary Theory and coeditor of the Journal of Contemporary Thought.

Dave-Mukherji’s publications include Towards A New Art History: Studies in Indian Art (coedited, 2003) and a special issue on Visual Culture of the Journal of Contemporary Thought, 17 (guest editor, Summer 2003). She also published Rethinking Modernity (coedited, 2005) and “Putting the World in a Book: How Global Can Art History Be Today” in J. Anderson, ed., Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration, and Convergence (2009). Her current research focuses on comparative aesthetics, contemporary art in India and Asia, and the impact of globalization on art theory and the discipline of art history.

 

Venny Nakazibwe

Venny Nakazibwe

Venny Nakazibwe is a textile designer and art historian, currently a senior lecturer and dean of the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Makerere University, Uganda. She holds an MA in textile design and a PhD in art history. She has conducted extensive research on the history of African textiles, focusing on indigenous fabric design and decorative techniques, as well as the contemporary use of these materials in art and design practice.

Nakazibwe is the winner of the 2007 Roy Sieber Award for her outstanding PhD dissertation on bark-cloth of the Baganda of southern Uganda. She has conducted lectures, workshops, and consulting work locally and internationally on the historical and contemporary use of bark-cloth in art and design practice and on design education for creative enterprises.

 

 

Sunyoung Park

Sunyoung Park

Sunyoung Park received an MA in art theory from Seoul National University, with a thesis about Gutai art, and received an MA in art history from University College London. She is a doctorate candidate in art criticism at Hongik University in Seoul, Korea. She is currently a lecturer in art history at several universities and plays an active role as an art critic. Her scholarly interests focus on the human body expressed in different contexts and figurative or abstract representation of embodied subjectivity in the field of vision.

 

 

 

 

 

Trinidad Pérez

Trinidad Pérez

Trinidad Pérez is an art historian who is currently professor and researcher at FLACSO-Ecuador (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales), a graduate university system for which she has designed a master of fine arts program to open next year. She has previously taught and directed the art-history program at Universidad San Francisco de Quito and designed art-history master’s programs at other local universities to help develop the field in her country.

Pérez received a BA from the University of Maryland and an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, both in art history. She holds a PhD in cultural studies from Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito. Her research and publications focus on the emergence of modern art as an institution in Ecuador: the local and international conditions that made it possible, the roll of education, theory, and institutions, and the way this art deals with national identity.

 

Isabel Plante

Isabel Plante

Isabel Plante is a researcher of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) at the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales of the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (IDAES-UNSAM) in Argentina. She also teaches at the Universidad Nacional General Sarmiento (UNGS) and the Universidad Nacional de La Matanza (UNLaM). She received her PhD in art history from the School of Philosophy and Letters, Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Plante’s doctoral thesis is about to be published as Argentinos de París. Arte y viajes culturales en los años sesenta (Argentines of Paris: Art and Cultural Travel during the Sixties). Both her dissertation and current postdoctoral research focus on international art exchanges, cultural identification, and geographical migrations of artists and works of art during the 1960s between Paris and South American cities such as Buenos Aires. It is in this context that she studies this period in terms of artistic legitimization and the institutional critique of Argentine and other South American artists in France.

Ohioma Ifounu Pogoson

Ohioma Ifounu Pogoson

Ohioma Ifounu Pogoson is a senior research fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, the same university from which he received a PhD in visual arts in 1990. He has studied the social history of Benin arts in Germany and worked with American universities on African-studies-based curricula. In 2006 he won a MacArthur Foundation grant to make a comparative study of Anglophone and Francophone museums across West Africa and Great Britain. This year he is participating in the University of Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Program on Art and Museums in Africa.

Pogoson curates exhibitions and writes extensively about the visual arts of southern Nigeria, particularly Yoruba and Edo arts. His more recent publications include three edited books about Dotun Okubanjo, Moyo Ogundipe, and Lamidi Fakeye. He is the consulting curator of Africa’s largest private art collection, Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Art Foundation (OYASAF) in Lagos, Nigeria, and honorary curator of the Museum of the Institute of African Studies.

Marina Vicelja-Matijasic

Marina Vicelja-Matijasic

Marina Vicelja-Matijasic is a professor of art history in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the director of the Center of Iconographic Studies at the University of Rijeka in Croatia. With an undergraduate degree in art history and English language and literature from the University of Zagreb, she completed her PhD in art history in 1999 at the same university with a dissertation entitled “Byzantium and the stone sculpture in Istria – origins and influences.” Vicelja-Matijasic’s research interests include late antique and early medieval art, Christian iconography, iconology, and urban studies.

 

 

 

Karen von Veh

Karen von Veh

Karen von Veh is associate professor in art history and theory in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Johannesburg. She is also the current president of SAVAH (the South African Visual Arts Historians association) and a member of ACASA and CIHA. She studied at WITS University, obtaining BA honors and master’s degrees, and received a PhD from Rhodes University. The title of her PhD thesis is “Transgressive Christian Iconography in Post-apartheid South African Art.”

Von Veh has written several articles and book chapters and delivered national and international conference papers on this and related subjects with reference to works by Diane Victor, Wim Botha, Conrad Botes, Christine Dixie, Majak Bredell, Tracey Rose, and Lawrence Lemaoana, among others. Her research interests include contemporary South African art, religious iconography, gender studies, and postcolonial studies in identity and culture.

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CAA is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2013 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award. The winners of both prizes, along with the recipients of ten other Awards for Distinction, will be announced in January and presented during Convocation in New York, in conjunction with the 101st Annual Conference.

The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in any language between September 1, 2011, and August 31, 2012. The four finalists are:

  • Esra Akcan, Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the Modern House (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012)
  • Mary K. Coffey, How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture: Murals, Museums, and the Mexican State (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012)
  • Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012)
  • J. P. Park, Art by the Book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012)

The Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for museum scholarship is presented to the author(s) of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published between September 1, 2011, and August 31, 2012, under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. The two finalists are:

  • Philipp Kaiser and Miwon Kwon, eds., Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012)
  • Luke Syson with Larry Keith, Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan (London: National Gallery, 2011)

The Barr jury has shortlisted a second Barr Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, or Collections. The two finalists are:

  • Joanne Pillsbury, Miriam Doutriaux, Reiko Ishihara-Brito, and Alexandre Tokovinine, eds., Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2012)
  • Anne T. Woollett, Yvonne Szafran, and Alan Phenix, Drama and Devotion: Heemskerck’s “Ecce Homo” Altarpiece from Warsaw (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2012)

The presentation of the 2013 Awards for Distinction will take place on Wednesday evening, February 13, 5:30–7:00 PM, at the Hilton New York. The event is free and open to the public. For more information about CAA’s Awards for Distinction, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs and archivist.

Anne Collins Goodyear, associate curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, became president of the CAA Board of Directors in May 2012. CAA News caught up with her this month to discuss what’s happening in the organization.

Anne Collins Goodyear

CAA just finished its Centennial year at the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. What’s next?

Marching into its next century, CAA has a number of important initiatives on the docket. Many of these involve taking advantage of new technologies to ease access to CAA’s resources and to enhance the ability of members to connect with one another and to share information. The Board of Directors has just committed to exploring a copublication agreement with an outside publisher that would involve the digitization of Art Journal and The Art Bulletin, albeit retaining print versions of these publications for the foreseeable future. It has also committed to providing open access to caa.reviews within the coming year.

We hope to provide a digital version of our print publications—together with hard copy—by 2014. In addition, a task force formed last year is now reviewing the use of technology at the Annual Conference. At the upcoming 2013 event, we will offer free Wi-Fi for conference goers for the first time. This should make it easier for speakers to bring online resources into the session room and even use Skype or similar services to incorporate talks by artists and scholars who are unable to attend. On the Monday and Tuesday before the conference, we will experiment with the Humanities and Technology Camp—better known as THAT Camp—in order to allow one hundred members to convene for a self-organized discussion on how art, the humanities, and technology intersect.

Of course, one pressing matter that new digital technologies raise—one that “predates” the internet—is obtaining and using reproductions of artwork. This complex issue has important implications for everyone in the visual arts—scholars, curators, and artists. To this end, CAA has undertaken a study that it hopes will lead to a Code of Best Practices for Fair Use of Copyrighted Images in the Creation and Curation of Artworks and Scholarly Publishing in the Visual Arts. Over the course of fall 2012, thanks to funding recently received from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, CAA will be facilitating a review of the literature in the field and conducting interviews with leaders in the visual arts on the subject of copyright and creativity. We will also develop a survey for CAA members to make their views on the subject known. We are working with Patricia Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media at American University, and Peter Jaszi, professor of law and faculty director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic at American University’s Washington College of Law, who have successfully developed fair-use codes for other creative disciplines, including for independent filmmakers. Aufderheide and Jaszi are the authors of Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), which describes their work on and approach to the fair use of copyrighted materials. Their efforts will be overseen by a task force of CAA members cochaired by Jeffrey P. Cunard, longstanding CAA counsel and a managing partner in the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, and Gretchen Wagner, general counsel of ARTstor and a member of CAA’s Committee on Intellectual Property. The committee’s upcoming session at the Annual Conference will provide an update on the task force’s progress to members.

What’s the importance of being a CAA member in 2012, for emerging, midcareer, and established artists and scholars?

To my mind, CAA offers many benefits for artists and scholars at all stages of their careers—though we’re always eager to hear how we can provide more support. CAA delivers top-notch scholarship through its publications and sessions at the Annual Conference and also provides excellent opportunities for artists to discuss and showcase their work at the conference. The Services to Artists Committee, chaired by Sharon Louden, is extraordinarily active in developing terrific programming in ARTspace for 2013.

In addition to these resources, CAA provides valuable guidelines for tenure and promotion, information about navigating copyright, and other best practices. Last year, in response to concern expressed by members engaged with authentication, CAA worked with its insurance broker, which now extends authentication insurance to interested members. CAA also provides great networking opportunities through its committees and its conference. Ultimately, members shape CAA’s identity, from their time as graduate students throughout the duration of their careers. CAA has an incredibly dedicated staff and board, all of whom are committed to serving the membership and addressing matters of professional concern. Members shouldn’t hesitate to reach out to us.

If CAA wishes to be more inclusive of artists and designers, as it has indicated in the 2010–2015 Strategic Plan, how might it do so?

CAA currently has a task force investigating opportunities for designers. As previously mentioned, the Services to Artists Committee produces a lot of conference content. CAA also provides a great forum to present and discuss work outside a commercial framework. Artists have an important hand in the Task Force on Annual Conference Technologies. CAA’s guidelines for artists with respect to academic tenure and promotion, conventions for résumés and CVs, and studio health and safety are highly prized. CAA hopes artists will find much value in the Code of Best Practices for Fair Use of Copyrighted Images. Artist members, like others, should feel encouraged to let the staff and board know if there are other ways in which we can advocate on their behalf or provide services that would be helpful. CAA is also now embarking on the development of its new 2015–2020 Strategic Plan, which will enable the organization to solicit and build upon input from the membership about its evolving needs and priorities and the ways in which CAA can adapt to serve those most effectively.

Digital publications and social networking are among important internet-related issues for artists and scholars. What are your ideas regarding these two areas?

CAA is developing a plan to digitize its print publications, as discussed above, and hopes to offer caa.reviews as an open-access journal in a year. Nia Page, CAA’s director of membership, development, and marketing, recently circulated a study to CAA’s membership to ask how CAA members might benefit from new platforms for social networking related to their professional interests.

How do you envision the relationship between the CAA membership and the president and board?

My hope is for a fluid relationship. The board, which is elected by the membership, is extremely active in the organization. CAA members should feel welcome and encouraged to reach out to anyone who serves on the board, including the president and the executive director. Members should also give serious consideration to becoming personally involved in the governance of the organization. This includes considering running for the board and serving on it, as well as simply taking time to get to know candidates for the board and casting votes in the annual election. The business meeting at the Annual Conference is a great way to get information about recent activities, financial reports, or other matters of interest. Joining one of the Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees is another way for members to have a voice and to shape the organization. Other opportunities for them to contribute to or benefit from CAA’s activities are to serve on an editorial board, the Annual Conference Committee, awards juries, or the Nominating Committee, which is charged with interviewing those who have expressed an interest in serving on the board and developing the final slate of candidates.

What is CAA’s role in relation not only to government, politics, and the freedom of expression, but also to workforce issues and intellectual property?

CAA has the clout and organizational capacity to play an important role advocating issues of significance on behalf of its members and makes every effort to do so. Members should feel free to alert the organization to topics of concern. CAA regularly participates in the national Humanities Advocacy Day and Arts Advocacy Day. It is part of the American Council of Learned Societies and well integrated with other professional organizations. CAA is involved in supporting the interests of adjunct faculty as well as other professionals. CAA is a founding member of the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, which has just published results about part-time professors from its 2010 survey. As noted at the outset of this interview, CAA is currently undertaking a serious study of the fair use of copyrighted materials—including images—by scholars and artists. We hope to clarify how and when nonlicensed reproduction of third-party works can be considered “fair.” A generous grant from the Kress Foundation is supporting preliminary work in this area.

How CAA uses its organization capacity to serve its membership is ultimately the most important concern for the organization. Clearly, that can take many different forms. We welcome the ongoing input of our membership to ensure we are doing that as effectively and meaningfully as possible.

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The CAA Board of Directors convened in New York on Saturday and Sunday, October 27–28, 2012, for its fall meetings. The following report from Anne Collins Goodyear, CAA board president, and Linda Downs, CAA executive director and chief executive officer, summarizes the discussion and the results of the meetings.

As the hurricane of the century approached the northeastern coast during the weekend of October 27, CAA hosted its annual fall meetings for the Board of Directors, the editorial boards of all three journals, and the Publications Committee, all held in New York. The board also gathered for its biannual retreat. All agendas were covered despite the pending storm. One board member found herself stranded in New York, where she rode out Sandy, but all others were able to get home before its arrival. The staff and offices did not fare as well. Many CAA employees were without power for several days, and ten days passed before electricity, heat, telephones, and internet were restored at the office located in Lower Manhattan. Those staff members who did have power donated their time, equipment, chothing, and funds to help the hundreds of thousands in the area who needed assistance. CAA is up and running again with the hope that we will not see another storm like the one that devastated the region. Fortunately, CAA’s website, which relies on servers outside the New York region, was not affected.

The board retreat provided an opportunity for the Directors to focus on critical issues in the visual arts field and the association. This year the focus was on three important areas—the development of a copublications arrangement for CAA’s journals, which will enable the transition from print to online journals; open access for caa.reviews; and the development of a fair use code of best practices in the visual arts for creative work and scholarly publishing.

CAA’s consultant on the transition to online journals, Raym Crow of the Chain Bridge Group, presented his analyses of The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, and caa.reviews and his recommendations. The analyses are based on a survey distributed to members in April 2012 to determine the value of the journals and interest in an online format. The analyses included an extensive financial projection of resources needed over the next five years for print and online journals. Crow also provided business models to support caa.reviews on an open access basis. The discussion at the retreat as well as at the editorial board meetings reviewed the analyses and the resolution, adopted by the Board of Directors, to distribute a request for proposal (RFP) to potential publishing partners and to pursue the distribution of caa.reviews on an open access basis next year.

As announced earlier in CAA News, CAA is now pursuing research into the fair use of copyrighted materials by artists, scholars, and curators, thanks to funding from the Kress Foundation (see http://bit.ly/QGktD9). To this end, the board heard from Peter Jaszi, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, American University, and Patricia Aufderheide, Professor, School of Communications and Director of the Center for Social Media, American University, who are lead investigators on CAA’s project to develop a code of fair use for creative work and scholarly publications made possible through a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Jaszi and Aufderheide described their research methodology, which focuses on consensus-building within a field to develop codes of fair use. Their method has resulted in fair use codes for many other academic fields such as documentary filmmaking, dance, and research libraries. (See: www.centerforsocialmedia.org.)

Jaszi and Aufderheide divided the Board and staff into two groups to gather information about situations where copyright issues occur in the creation of artwork and in scholarly research and publication. Over the next two months they will interview CAA members—art historians, artists, museum curators, visual resources personnel, publishers, image rights holders, CAA Affiliated Society members, and many others—to establish an issues report for the visual arts field. The objective is to reach consensus on best practices of fair use for creative work and scholarly publishing in the visual arts.

Jaszi and Aufderheide will report on a regular basis to the CAA Task Force on Fair Use, which is cochaired by Jeffrey Cunard, CAA Counsel and Managing Partner at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP; and Gretchen Wagner, a member of the CAA Committee on Intellectual Property and General Counsel for ARTstor. Members of the Task Force include: Anne Collins Goodyear (CAA President and Associate Curator, Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution); Linda Downs (CAA Executive Director and CEO); Suzanne Preston Blier (CAA Board Member and Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University); DeWitt Godfrey (CAA Vice President for Committees and Director, Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts, Colgate University); Randall C. Griffin (ex-officio as CAA Vice President for Publications, Professor, Division of Art History, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University); Paul Jaskot (CAA Past President and Professor of History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University); Patricia McDonnell (CAA Vice President for External Affairs and Director, Wichita Art Museum); Charles Wright (CAA Board Member and Chair, Department of Art, Western Illinois University).

The Board’s Audit Committee reviewed the annual audit and it was accepted by the Board. The 2012 CAA Audit will be presented at the Annual Members’ Business Meeting at the Annual Conference on Friday, February 15, 2013.

The Finance and Budget Committee heard a presentation by CAA’s investment manager, Domenic Colasacco of Boston Trust. The investments have followed the association’s investment policies and are continuing to recover from the economic recession of 2008.

The Board approved a resolution presented by President Goodyear to establish a Task Force for CAA’s 2015–2020 Strategic Plan. The current plan will conclude June 30, 2014. We anticipate that the next strategic plan will begin immediately after that, at the beginning of CAA’s 2015 Fiscal Year.

Deputy Director, Michael Fahlund, and Karol Ann Lawson, Chair, CAA Museum Committee, presented a resolution to support the Museum Best Practices for Managing Controversy. This statement was initiated by the National Coalition Against Censorship and representatives from the Association of Art Museum Directors, Association of Art Museum Curators, and American Alliance of Museums. Fahlund discussed the need for the guidelines given the increase in art museum controversies. Lawson indicated the support of these guidelines by the CAA Museum Committee. The resolution was adopted by the board.

Two associations were welcomed to CAA’s Affiliated Societies bringing the total number of affiliates to seventy-eight: the American Society of Appraisers: Personal Property Committee and the European Postwar and Contemporary Art Forum. See: www.collegeart.org/affiliated.

The Vice President for Committees, DeWitt Godfrey, and the CAA Chair of the Professional Practices Committee, Jim Hopfensberger, presented resolutions to adopt the following guidelines: Artist Résumé: Recommended Conventions (written in 1999); Visual Artist Curriculum Vitae: Recommended Conventions (written in 1999); and Revised Standards for Professional Placement (formerly revised in 1992). All three resolutions were approved and are available at: www.collegeart.org/guidelines.

The Vice President for Publications, Randall Griffin, presented the Resolution to Provide Online Journals Through a Copublisher. This resolution affirms that a Request for Proposals will be developed by the CAA consultant, Raym Crow, in cooperation with an Advisory Group, the staff, and CAA Counsel and be reviewed by the Publications Committee and approved by the board. It also states that caa.reviews will be provided on an open access basis beginning in the fall of 2013 supported by ads and/or click through purchases of books. The resolution was approved.

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Students and emerging professionals have the opportunity to sign up for a twenty-minute practice interview at the 2013 Annual Conference in New York. Organized by the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee, Mock Interview Sessions give participants the chance to practice their interview skills one on one with a seasoned professional, improve their effectiveness during interviews, and hone their elevator speech. Interviewers also provide candid feedback on application packets.

Mock Interview Sessions are offered free of charge; you must be a CAA member to participate. Sessions are filled by appointment only and scheduled for Thursday, February 14, 10:00 AM–NOON and 4:00–6:00 PM; and Friday, February 15, 10:00 AM–NOON and 4:00–6:00 PM. Conference registration, while encouraged, is not necessary to participate.

To apply, download, complete, and send the Mock Interview Sessions form to Jennifer Stoneking-Stewart, chair of the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee. You may enroll in one twenty-minute session. Deadline extended: February 13, 2013.

You will be notified of your appointment day and time by email. Please bring your application packet, including cover letter, CV, and other materials related to jobs in your field. The Student and Emerging Professionals Committee will make every effort to accommodate all applicants; however, space is limited.

Onsite enrollment will be limited and first-come, first-served. Sign up in the Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge starting on Thursday, February 14, at 8:00 AM.

For the 2013 Annual Conference in New York, the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee seeks established professionals to volunteer as practice interviewers for the Mock Interview Sessions. Participating as an interviewer is an excellent way to serve the field and to assist with the professional development of the next generation of artists and scholars.

In these sessions, interviewers pose as a prospective employer, speaking with individuals in a scenario similar to the Interview Hall at the conference. Each session is composed of approximately 10–15 minutes of interview questions and a quick review of the application packet, followed by 5–10 minutes of candid feedback. Whenever possible, the committee matches interviewers and interviewees based on medium or discipline.

Interested candidates must be current CAA members and prepared to give six successive twenty-minute interviews with feedback in a two-hour period on one or both of these days: Thursday, February 14, 10:00 AM–NOON and 4:00–6:00 PM; and Friday, February 15, 10:00 AM–NOON and 4:00–6:00 PM. Conference registration, while encouraged, is not required to be a mock interviewer. Desired for the sessions are art historians, art educators, designers, museum-studies professionals, critics, curators, and studio artists with tenure and/or experience on a search committee. You may volunteer for one, two, three, or all four Mock Interview Sessions.

Please send your name, affiliation, position, contact information, and the days and times that you are available to Jennifer Stoneking-Stewart, chair of the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee. Deadline extended: February 1, 2013.

The Mock Interview Sessions are not intended as a screening process by institutions seeking new hires.

Survey of Faculty Who Teach Online

posted by November 14, 2012

The Coalition on Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL X) and the United Association for Labor Education (UALE) seek participation in the On Line Teaching Working Conditions Survey from all faculty members who teach online for the purpose of gaining information on wages and working conditions. The organizers hope that the results will lead to organizing for improvements. CAA encourages you to take the survey and to forward its link to any relevant lists or individuals.

The survey is for anyone teaching online in colleges or universities. The project committee aims to collect a range of working conditions: how much people get paid, how many hours they work, whether they have union representation, how many students they have in a class, and so on. When the committee collects enough responses to get a sense of what’s out there, it will categorize the examples as “good,” “bad,” and “ugly” in an attempt to establish some kind of standard of what decent working conditions for online teachers—who are suspected to be largely contingent—might look like.

If you do not want to give your name when completing the survey, simply type in random letters in the box for the first question. No names of individuals will appear in the final (or draft) report, and no raw data will be circulated outside the committee that is working on the project. However, the group does need the name of your institution, the one through which you are teaching the class with the working conditions that you are describing.

Please complete this survey even if you filled out the previous draft survey. The current one has been updated to reflect comments that the organizers received from those who took the previous survey.

For more information on the survey or the project, please contact Helena Worthen for COCAL X and UALE’s On-Line Teaching Working Group.

Filed under: Advocacy, Research, Surveys, Workforce