CAA News Today
Carl N. Schmalz Jr.: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — March 19, 2013
The following obituary was submitted by the brother of the deceased, Robert F. Schmalz, and edited by CAA.
Carl N. Schmalz Jr.
Carl N. Schmalz Jr., an artist and art historian who taught for many decades at Bowdoin College and Amherst College and a CAA member since 1951, died February 22, 2013. He was 86 years old.
Born in 1926 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Schmalz was the son of the late Carl N. Schmalz and Esther (Fowler) Schmalz of Belmont, Massachusetts. he earned AB, AM, and PhD degrees in fine arts from Harvard University and was later awarded an honorary degree by Amherst College. He studied watercolor painting with Eliot O’Hara in 1943–44 and began a long teaching career while instructing at the O’Hara School at Goose Rocks Beach in 1946–47. As assistant professor at Bowdoin College from 1952 to 1962, he taught both the history and practice of art, while serving simultaneously as curator and ultimately as associate director of the Walker Art Museum (now the Bowdoin College Museum of Art). He moved to Amherst in 1962 and was made full professor seven years later.
In 1969 Schmalz inaugurated the popular summer Watercolor Workshops in Kennebunkport, Maine, which he ran for twenty years. He retired from Amherst at the end of 1994 but enjoyed teaching watercolor painting at Rock Gardens Inn in Sebasco Estates, Maine, since the early 1990s. He also taught at the Heartwood College of Art in Kennebunk until his recent hospitalization.
Schmalz was the author of several books on watercolor painting and of articles in professional journals. He taught classes, juried many exhibitions, and lectured on the subject of watercolor throughout the United States, as well as in Canada and Bermuda. His work won him election as a charter member of the Watercolor USA Honor Society and national and regional prizes. His artwork was handled by galleries in Maine, Florida, Bermuda, and Boston, and his paintings hang in numerous public collections and in hundreds of private homes. He painted landscapes in Britain and Europe—and loved Italy especially. Apart from the Indian subcontinent, he painted on every continent on the globe. In recent years his particular focus was still life.
Schmalz held a wide range of public-service positions in the communities in which he lived: vice president of the board of directors of the Portland Museum of Art; member of the executive board of Interfaith Housing Corporation in Amherst; president of the board of trustees of Amherst Day School; art consultant for the O’Hara Picture Trust; chairman of the board of assessors in Pelham, Massachusetts; member of the Pelham Arts Lottery Council; and consultant on undergraduate science education for the National Academy of Sciences.
Schmalz leaves his wife Dolores T. Schmalz; his son Mathew N. Schmalz and his wife Kristin; and his daughter Julia I. Schmalz and her partner Janice. He is also survived by two grandchildren, Anna Teresa and Katherine Dolores Schmalz; and two brothers, Robert F. Schmalz of State College, Pennsylvania, and David H. Schmalz of Amsterdam, Holland. His first son, Stephen Theodore Schmalz, predeceased him.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — March 13, 2013
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.
NHA Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day
The National Humanities Alliance will hold its 2013 annual meeting on Monday, March 18, and Humanities Advocacy Day on Tuesday, March 19, both in Washington, DC. Premeeting sessions are tentatively scheduled to begin on Sunday afternoon, March 17. Events will take place on the George Washington University campus and Capitol Hill. (Read more from the National Humanities Alliance.)
Average Pay Increases for Professors on Tenure-Track Matched Inflation This Year
The median base salary for tenured and tenure-track faculty members increased this academic year by an average of 2.1 percent, matching the rate of inflation. That year-to-year increase was slightly higher than the growth last year, when the average increase was 1.9 percent, according to an annual report released by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
LACMA Moves to Take Over MOCA
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has made a formal proposal to acquire the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which has been struggling with financial troubles and staff and board defections. LACMA Director Michael Govan and the two cochairs of his board made the offer in a February 24 letter to the MOCA board cochairs, laying out the rationale for an acquisition. (Read more in the Los Angeles Times.)
Art Emerges from DNA Left Behind
They are the faces of real people, portraitlike sculptures etched from an almost powdery substance. The eye colors are distinct, the facial contours sharp, even though the artist, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, has never met or seen her subjects. Instead of using photographs or an art model for her work, she scoops detritus from New York City’s streets—cigarette butts, hair follicles, gum wrappers—and analyzes the genetic material people leave behind. Dewey-Hagborg, a PhD student in electronic arts, makes the faces after studying clues found in DNA. (Read more in the Wall Street Journal.)
Can We Please Stop Drawing Trees on Top of Skyscrapers?
Just a couple of years ago, if you wanted to make something look trendier, you put a bird on it. Birds were everywhere. I’m not sure if Twitter was what started all the flutter, but it got so bad that Portlandia performed a skit named, you guessed it, “Put a Bird on It.” It turns out architects have been doing the same thing, just with trees. Want to make a skyscraper look trendy and sustainable? Put a tree on it. Or better yet, dozens. (Read more in Slate.)
Anthony Van Dyck Painting “Found Online”
A previously unknown painting by the seventeenth-century master Anthony Van Dyck has been identified after being spotted online. The portrait was previously thought to have been a copy and was in storage at the Bowes Museum in County Durham. But it was photographed for a project to put all of the United Kingdom’s oil paintings on the BBC Your Paintings website, where it was seen by an art historian. (Read more at BBC News.)
Can Art Forgers Be Artists Too?
Art forgeries are often decried for crime, but could they be considered art? Many young artists learn to copy the old masters before refining their own work, and contemporary artists often play with ideas of authorship. So can an art forger be considered a legitimate artist? Do they want to make a statement? What motivates art forgers to commit forgery? We spoke with Jonathon Keats, author of Forged: Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age. (Read more in the Oxford University Press Blog.)
The End of the Creative Classes in Sight
To put it bluntly, it seems that high-skill occupations can be mechanized and outsourced in much the same way as car manufacturing and personal finance. In recent decades, we have become accustomed to the notion that manual labor has been rendered obsolete, uncompetitive, or poorly paid. But are we now prepared for the same thing to happen to skilled labor, to white-collar workers, to the creative classes? (Read more in the Guardian.)
Twenty International Travel Grant Recipients Attend CAA’s Annual Conference
posted by Ann Albritton and Janet Landay — March 12, 2013
Twenty recipients of CAA International Travel Grants, funded by the Getty Foundation, attended the Annual Conference in New York in February. For the second year, CAA’s International Committee, chaired by Ann Albritton, worked with Janet Landay, organizer of this project for CAA, to host a diverse group of art historians—scholars, teachers, and curators from nineteen countries around the world—in CAA’s endeavor to become more connected in our increasingly global art world.
CAA Executive Director, Linda Downs, explains the project in this way:
We developed the concept for a program that would:
- introduce individuals who have not had the means to participate in the annual conference to provide travel, hotel and stipends to attend;
- attempt to interest individuals who are teaching in relatively small or new art and art history departments to provide access to an international network of people in the visual arts;
- to do a good job of hosting them and connecting them to other members of similar sub disciplines and interests (be they US or international members) in order to provide the beginnings of networks that they can build on;
- to give them instruction on what is sought by the Annual Conference Committee for vetted session proposals so that they might propose sessions in the future in order to present their perspectives, critical concerns and resent research; and
- to start a dialogue with US art historians and artists on their methodology, research, networks and interests.
Each grantee was hosted by a colleague from CAA—members of the International Committee, Board members, or representatives of the National Committee on the History of Art (NCHA)—who introduced them to the conference and scholars in their fields, and also arranged meetings, museum visits and informal gatherings. This year, we were very grateful for a grant from NCHA to support the hosts’ activities.
On February 12, the day before the Annual Conference began, the grant recipients and their hosts met for a half-day preconference about issues in global art history. Beginning with short presentations by the grantees about their research and experiences, the afternoon included a panel discussion on global art history, moderated by Marc Gotlieb, the president of NCHA and professor of art history at Williams College, with representatives from the Getty Foundation (Joan Weinstein), the Getty Research Institute (Gail Feigenbaum), the Clark Research and Academic Program (Michael Ann Holly), and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (Elizabeth Cropper). Exciting exchanges prompted by the panel discussion as well as the research projects of the grant recipients produced energy that enlivened our discussions for the remainder of the conference. Here’s how one grantee summarized it:
The pre-conference was probably the most useful aspect of this visit as it allowed each of us to get to know each other and to immediately identify people with whom we could network and set up reciprocal projects or research exchanges between our institutions. I have made some wonderful contacts and we are already busy with plans for invitations to speak at conferences and plans to arrange student/staff visits to linked institutions.
—Karen von Veh, South Africa
On Thursday, during a luncheon for the grantees and hosts, James Elkins, E.C. Chadbourne Chair of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, had lunch with the group and shared with them ideas and stories from his international study of the field. This, again, was a highlight for many. In fact, Elkins plans to visit some of them in the near future as he travels around the world.
A whole new range and scope of possibilities have entered my horizon. I think it will open up many opportunities for my students and colleagues as well. But on a personal and human level the conference was a great gathering for creating global understanding.
—Musarrat Hasan, Pakistan
Jean Borgatti, specialist in African Art, commented on her hosting activities for several of the grant recipients from African countries: Joseph Adande from Benin; Peju Layiwola of Lagos, Nigeria; Venny Nakazibwe of Uganda; Ohioma Pogoson of Nigeria, and Karen von Veh of South Africa (and also, at times, Marly Desir of Haiti). A week after the CAA conference, Jean flew to Africa for several months of study and wrote this:
I’m looking forward to actually visiting three of my five grantees in Lagos, Ibadan, and what I refer to as ‘the other’ Benin, since I am currently in Benin City, heart of the old kingdom. During CAA, we had three great outings together: on Monday, Yaelle Biro at the Metropolitan Museum graciously provided a tour of her exhibit on the reception of African art in New York in the 1930s, and then left us with the Met’s archivist who gave us an overview of the various media encompassed by the archive. On Wednesday, we were invited to a private reception for El Anatsui’s exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum and were stunned by the beauty of the objects and thrilled to meet with the artist himself. On Thursday, Susan Vogel, founding director of the Center for African Art, invited the group to her Soho loft for dinner, a nice way to unwind and extend our conversations about ongoing and upcoming projects. A good time was had by all.
In addition to the events Borgatti described, these recipients also attended several CAA sessions, exchanged ideas with other recipients, and met many other CAA members.
The International Committee is delighted with CAA’s travel grant program, not only for bringing international scholars to the Annual Conference, but for the opportunity for us to interact with them: to learn about each other’s research and discuss mutual interests and concerns. We are indeed grateful to the Getty Foundation and NCHA for making this program possible and hope the friends we made this year will come to future conferences to continue our conversations. As one of the grantees put it:
I will be an ambassador for the CAA henceforth and will advise art historians in my country and elsewhere to endeavor to attend their annual meetings.
—Ohioma Pogoson, Nigeria
First image: Parul Mukherji (India) and Ding Ning (China), two of this year’s recipients of CAA’s International Travel Grants.
Second image: Gail Feigenbaum, Elizabeth Cropper, Marc Gotlieb, Michael Ann Holly, and Joan Weinstein participated in a panel discussion on issues in global art history during the February 12 pre-conference for the International Travel Grant program.
Third image: James Elkins, professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, met with the CAA International Travel Grant recipients during the conference. Pictured are Peju Layiwola, Ann Albritton, James Elkins, and Elaine O’Brien.
Fourth image: Jean Borgatti took five recipients of this year’s CAA International Travel Grant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they received a tour from curator Yaelle Biro. Front row: Jean Borgatti, Venny Nakazibwe (Uganda) Back row: Ohioma Pogoson (Nigeria), Karen von Veh (South Africa), Yaelle Biro, Joseph Adande (Benin), Peju Layiwola (Nigeria).
CAA Committee on Intellectual Property 2013 Annual Conference Session: Developing a Fair Use Code for the Visual Arts
posted by CAA — March 11, 2013
The CAA Committee on Intellectual Property sponsored a well-attended session at the 2013 Annual Conference, “Developing a Fair Use Code for the Visual Arts,” in support of CAA’s recently inaugurated fair-use project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with additional funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Chaired by Christine Sundt (also the Committee’s chair), this panel included the two principal investigators engaged by CAA to research, write, and disseminate a code of best practices in the use of third-party copyrighted material by practitioners across the arts. Peter Jaszi, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic at the American University Washington College of Law, and Patricia Aufderheide, university professor in the School of Communication and co-director of its Center for Social Media, American University, were joined on the panel by Jeffrey Cunard, CAA Counsel and Partner, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.
The discussion among panel members focused on the history of fair use and the background and schedule of CAA’s fair use project. The forthcoming code of best practices will assist individual scholars, artists, teachers, museum professionals, and other creators in analyzing what constitutes fair use of copyrighted works that they wish to employ. Answers to questions from the audience further delineated the scope of the project, which will address two types of users: scholars and museum professionals and those who use third party material in the making of art. The completed code will not constitute legal guidelines, but will document practice as it exists and will help the arts community understand the law regarding fair use. The code will provide a definition of a work of art as far-reaching and as including time-based and other multimedia forms.
Panelists for the session are also members of a Task Force on Fair Use, which oversees the project and is co-chaired by Cunard with Gretchen Wagner, former general counsel of ARTstor. Advisors on this project include Virginia Rutledge, art historian, and lawyer, and Maureen Whalen, associate general counsel for the J. Paul Getty Trust. The Committee on Intellectual Property will continue to support the project by hosting a session at the 2014 CAA Annual Conference on Jaszi and Aufderheide’s Issues Report, developed through interviews and focus groups, and a session to discuss the completed code at the 2015 Annual Conference in New York.
Additional work by the Committee on Intellectual Property included a restructuring of the Intellectual Property section of the CAA website, and presentation to and endorsement by the CAA Board of Directors of fair use guidelines written by the Association of Research Libraries and by the Visual Resources Association.
Take the 2013 Annual Conference Survey
posted by Nia Page — March 11, 2013
In an effort to improve our services, we encourage you to complete the following survey about your experiences at the 101st Annual Conference in New York last month. This survey should take only a few minutes to complete. We appreciate your feedback and your support and hope to see you at the 102nd Annual Conference in Chicago, to be held February 12–15, 2014.
Survey link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JXZPKTS
Please complete the survey by Friday, March 22, 2013. Thank you.
Recent Art Journal Features Lygia Pape Cover
posted by Christopher Howard — March 11, 2013
The most recent issue of Art Journal features an unusual wraparound cover. The front-and-back image is an interior spread from The Book of Creation Re-Created, a 1983 artist’s book by the influential Brazilian artist Lygia Pape (1927–2004). The spread, from an essay on Pape by Adele Nelson, is essentially turned inside out for the cover.
The cover encloses a remarkably diverse issue, which also features essays by Chris Balaschak on the photographer Garry Winogrand, by Pamela N. Corey on the the Vietnamese American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, by Bill Anthes on Edgar Heap of Birds, by Melissa Sue Ragain on early ecological art, and by Adward A. Vazquez on the work of Fred Sandback. Reviews of four important books in the arts, including one on Agnes Martin, appear as well. The Art Journal website features free selected content from the issue.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for March 2013
posted by CAA — March 10, 2013
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 2013
Jay DeFeo working on what was then titled Deathrose, 1960 (photograph by Burt Glinn and © Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos)
Jay Defeo: A Retrospective
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10021
February 28–June 2, 2013
Organized by Dana Miller, this exhibition is the first major retrospective of the work of an important yet overlooked figure of American postwar art. Best known for her monumental painting The Rose, on which she labored from 1958 to 1966, Jay DeFeo (1929–1989) experimented wildly with collage, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, and jewelry. Bringing together more than 130 objects, the presentation illuminates the idiosyncratic production of another neglected female artist of American art while shedding further light on her relationship with San Francisco’s beat scene. The exhibition was previously on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2012–13.
Lenore Tawney: Wholly Unlooked For
Maryland Institute College of Art
Decker Gallery, Fox Building, 1303 West Mount Royal Avenue; and Leidy Atrium, Brown Center, 1301 West Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217
January 17, 2013–March 2, 2013
Lenore Tawney: Wholly Unlooked For
University of the Arts
Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, 333 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107
December 7, 2012–March 17, 2013
Wholly Unlooked For is a multivenue survey of the work of Lenore Tawney (1907–2007), illuminating her pioneering exploration of fiber art and her working methods. At the artist’s alma mater, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), an exhibition organized by Piper Shepard and Susie Brandt focuses on line-based objects that exemplify the artist’s loom production through nine weavings. At University of the Arts in Philadelphia, the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery focuses on paper work, curated by Sid Sachs. Together, the two shows contextualize Tawney’s work with studio materials and personal belongings, shown in public for the first time.
The Leidy Atrium of MICA’s Brown Center showcases Tawney’s monumental Scripture in Stone, a fourteen-foot-square piece made of black canvas and white linen threads, and the Cloud Sculpture series of hanging works, each comprising of thousands of individually knotted threads. Distinguished for its circle-in-the-square design—a favorite motif of the artist—Scripture in Stone is exhibited for the first time in over two decades.
Joan Semmel: A Lucid Eye
Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York 10456
January 24–June 9, 2013
The camera has been an integral part of Joan Semmel’s artistic process since the 1970s. For the oil paintings in this exhibition, she turns the device on herself. Several large canvases show the artist nude, photographing herself through a mirror, the bold yet intimate works depicting not just her own image, but also how the image for the painting is constructed. In a series of smaller self-portraits, she focuses on her face. Beautifully rendered and hauntingly real, these paintings reveal Semmel’s strong character as well as the passage of time. The works in this exhibition—all made after 2001—are being shown publicly for the first time.
Affiliated Society News for March 2013
posted by CAA — March 09, 2013
American Council for Southern Asian Art
The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) invites proposals for papers for its sixteenth biennial meeting, to be held November 7–10, 2013, at the University of California, Los Angeles. In keeping with the organizing committee’s new format, proposals that correspond to the themes outlined by three panel chairs, as well as proposals for individual papers, are welcome.
Relevant paper proposals should be submitted directly to the panel chairs for the following sessions: “Beyond Painting: Other Histories of the Book in South Asia,” chaired by Yael Rice of Amherst College; “South and Southeast Asian Artists in the Western Scene: A Critical Look at Reception,” chaired by Sunanda K. Sanyaya from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University); and “The Built Environment of Death and Cremation in South and Southeast Asia,” chaired by Cathleen Cummings of the University of Alabama, Birmingham.
Individual paper proposals and other queries should be sent electronically to: Alka Patel in the Department of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Proposals for papers must be sent to the appropriate panel chairs or to Patel by March 31, 2013. For additional information about these panels and the symposium, please visit ACSAA’s website.
Art Libraries Society of North America
The Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS) is hold its forty-first annual conference in Pasadena, California, from April 25 to 29, 2013. The conference theme is “Crafting Our Future” and inspired by Pasadena’s renowned arts and crafts heritage. The event will emphasize the importance of building on organization’s past as it actively shapes the future of art librarianship. The program cochairs are Cathy Billings of the Brand Library and Art Center and Sarah Sherman of the Getty Research Institute.
Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey
The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) announces three new members of its executive board: Salwa Mikdadi, Alexandra Dika Seggerman, and Patrick Kane, who will respectively succeed Sarah Rogers, Dina Ramadan, and Anneka Lenssen in the roles of president-elect, secretary, and treasurer. AMCA officially welcomed these new officers and acknowledged the invaluable service of the outgoing board members at its annual business meeting at the Middle Eastern Studies Association conference in November 2012.
At the CAA conference, AMCA presented a session, called “A Revolution in Art? The Arab Uprisings and Artistic Production.” The four participants—Saleem Al-Bahloly, Dina Ramadan, Christiane Gruber, and Jennifer Pruitt—presented new perspectives on the role of art in the recent uprisings of the Arab Spring.
Historians of Netherlandish Art
The Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) announces several new appointments for 2013. Amy Golahny of Lycoming College has been elected president, and Paul Crenshaw of Providence College has been appointed vice president. Dawn Odell of Lewis and Clark College will be the new treasurer, and Yao-Fen You from the Detroit Institute of Arts will join the board of directors. Mark Trowbridge of Marymount University succeeds Molly Faries as associate editor of the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, the semiannual, open-access, refereed ejournal published by HNA. The journal welcomes submission of texts to its editor, Alison M. Kettering, at any time.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) has announced the speaker of the fourth annual Italian Art Society–Kress Foundation Lecture Series in Italy. Sarah Blake McHam of Rutgers University will speak on “Laocoön, or Pliny Vindicated” at the Fondazione Marco Besso in Rome in late May or early June. Felicia Else, an associate professor at Gettysburg College, has been awarded the first annual IAS Research and Publication Grant to help fund a trip to Florence this summer to complete research for her book, The Politics of Water in the Art and Festivals of Medici Florence: From Neptune Fountain to Naumachia.
The society would also like to congratulate the 2013 recipients of the IAS Travel Grants: Joanne Anderson, visiting lecturer at the University of Warwick, for her paper “Coloring the Magdalene in the Early Renaissance”; and Valentina Pugliano, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, for her paper “‘Subjects which painting may serve’: How Botany Met Renaissance Art.” These talks will be presented at the Renaissance Society of America’sannual conference in San Diego in April 2013). IAS will sponsor four sessions at the RSA conference; see http://italianartsociety.org/?page_id=191 for details.
National Art Education Association
Spend four art-filled days in Washington, DC, with the National Art Education Association, exploring permanent collections, current exhibitions, and the museum itself as a work of art! Summer Vision DC, now in its fourth year, is a professional learning community for art and nonart educators, offered by NAEA in partnership with area art museums. The aim is to showcase best practices in critical response to art while enhancing creativity through visual journaling. Choose from two sessions: July 9–12, 2013, or July 23–26, 2013. Develop new leadership, pedagogical, and artistic skills for the classroom and beyond through this outstanding professional development opportunity. Go behind the scenes, explore sculpture gardens, examine artworks, and participate in studio and other hands-on learning as you connect with educators at these museums: the National Gallery of Art and Sculpture Garden; the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; the National Museum of African Art; the National Museum of the American Indian; the National Museum of Women in the Arts; the Phillips Collection; the National Building Museum; the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and the National Portrait Gallery. Registration is limited to twenty-five participants per session. Register and find details at www.arteducators.org/summervision.
New publications from NAEA include: The Heart of Art Education: Holistic Approaches to Creativity, Integration, and Transformation, edited by Laurel H. Campbell and Seymour Simmons III ($39 for members and $48 for nonmembers); and Conversations in Art: The Dialectics of Teaching and Learning, edited by Judith M. Burton and Mary Hafeli ($32 for members and $39 for nonmembers).
Public Art Dialogue
The eponymous journal of Public Art Dialogue (PAD) is now accepting submissions for its upcoming special issue on murals, guest edited by Sally Webster and Sarah Schrank. With this issue, Public Art Dialogue seeks to advance a twenty-first century understanding of wall art by soliciting papers on its history and status as it relates to the built environment, as an expression of community, or its function within the critical discourse of public art. Also welcome are studies on the documentation, conservation, and inventorying of mural painting, explorations of other kinds of wall art such as projections, and proposals for artist’s projects addressing related themes. Please see the journal website for guidelines and send inquiries to Public Art Dialogue’s editorial assistant at SamanthaEdenCataldo@gmail.com. The submission deadline is September 15, 2013.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) is accepting proposals for its 2014 conference, “Collaborative Exchanges: Photography in Dialogue,” through June 1, 2013. Topics are not required to be theme-based and may include, but are not limited to, image-making, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. Membership in SPE is required to submit, and proposals are peer reviewed. There are five presentation formats: Graduate Student (short presentation of your own artistic work and a brief introduction to your graduate program); Imagemaker (presentation on your own artistic work, such as photography, film, video, performance and installation, multidisciplinary approaches); Lecture (presentation on a historical topic, theory or another artist’s work); Panel (a group led by a moderator to discuss a chosen topic); Teach (presentations, workshops, and demos that address educational issues, including teaching resources and strategies, curricula to serve diverse artists and changing student populations, seeking promotion and tenure, avoiding burnout, and professional exchange). Visit the SPE website for information on how to join and for full proposal guidelines.
Society of North American Goldsmiths
The Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) will hold its forty-second annual conference May 15–18, 2013, in Toronto, Ontario, at the downtown historic Fairmont Royal York Hotel. Titled “Meta-Mosaic,” the event will celebrate the multiple industries within jewelry and metalsmithing in the twenty-first century. Toronto is a mosaic of peoples and cultures as well as the center of Canada’s jewelry industry. This conference will examine a fluid identity within art, craft, and design and inspire attendees to embrace our collective mosaic. Join SNAG for presentations and panels featuring industry luminaries from across the globe, rapid-fire presentations by international designers and artists, over twenty exhibitions, the Third Annual Member Trunk Show Sale, social events, and so much more! Registration opened on January 16. Receive low early-bird rates by registering before March 13 and make your hotel reservations by February 15 for a special rate on top of our already reduced room block rates. Visit the SNAG website for all the details.
March 2013 Picks from CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — March 07, 2013
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts produces a curated list, called CWA Picks, of recommended exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship in North America and around the world.
The CWA Picks for March 2013 are composed of three important exhibitions on the East Coast of the United States. Organized by Dena Muller, Jay Defeo: A Retrospective will be on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York through June 2, after its celebrated first presentation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California in 2012–13. Also in New York, the Bronx Museum of the Arts is presenting paintings created since 2001 by Joan Semmel. Finally, Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and University of the Arts in Philadelphia are hosting Lenore Tawney: Wholly Unlooked For, a multivenue exhibition of work by this pioneering fiber artist.
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.
Image: Jay DeFeo working on what was then titled Deathrose, 1960 (photograph by Burt Glinn and © Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — March 06, 2013
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.
Help Desk: Gallery Contract
I was invited to be in a group show outside my home state. I don’t know the owner (who found my work online), and I’d never heard of the gallery before, but it has a nice website and seems okay. I replied that I was interested and asked the owner for a copy of the contract, and he wrote me back and said he never uses one. I’d like to be in this show because my résumé is a little thin, but I am wary of just sending my work out. What should I do? Do most galleries work like this? (Read more in Daily Serving.)
Twelve Bloopers to Avoid in Job Interviews
In the course of my academic career, I’ve been interviewed for junior and senior faculty positions as well as for administrative posts like the provostship I now hold. I have also been on more search committees than I care to count. Over time, I’ve observed (at least) a dozen bloopers to avoid at all costs in job interviews. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Finding the Right Context
Papers and books exist in the context of academic disciplines. As we work on projects, we are in conversation with those who have done similar research in the past. An important part of any writing is acknowledging work that came before it and placing the research in a relevant scholarly context. This serves several purposes, such as letting the reader know in what particular literature one is situating one’s work, clarifying what is motivating one’s specific questions, and also giving credit to others who have done work in the domain. (Read more in Inside Higher Ed.)
Does Increased Exposure to a Piece of Art Make Us Like It More?
The research challenges the idea that what people value in art is largely what they are used to, or that people will come to like any image if they see it enough times. Instead, the study’s findings suggest that increased exposure to artworks does not necessarily make people like them more and that the quality of an artwork remains at the heart of its evaluation. (Read more at Phys.Org.)
Lawyers Go to Cambodia over Statue
Two lawyers from the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan recently traveled into the Cambodian jungle to inspect an ancient, crumbling temple as part of their office’s effort to seize a tenth-century Khmer statue that Sotheby’s hopes to sell at auction. The unusual four-day trip is the latest development in a court case involving the auction house and US officials, who are trying to help Cambodia gain possession of the statue, which it contends was looted from the temple during the chaos of that country’s civil war. (Read more in the New York Times.)
Data Indicates Rapid Growth in Mobile Learning
Based on two interesting data sets shared by Apple and Cisco, it’s clear that learning on mobile devices—meaning smartphones and tablets—is gaining traction at a rapid pace. While the data shared by Apple is pretty straightforward and does not leave much room for interpretation, the data from Cisco is more general yet pretty astonishing. (Read more in Edcetera.)
Keeping an Eye on Online Test-Takers
Millions of students worldwide have signed up in the last year for MOOCs, short for massive open online courses—those free, web-based classes available to one and all and taught by professors at Harvard, Duke, MIT, and other universities. But when those students take the final exam in calculus or genetics, how will their professors know that the test-takers on their distant laptops are doing their own work, and not asking Mr. Google for help? (Read more in the New York Times.)
Digital Textbooks: Publishers and the Unrealized Promise
Is it any wonder that digital textbooks haven’t been widely embraced yet? Most digital textbooks are just overpriced, static versions of their printed counterparts. That hasn’t stopped the hype about digital textbooks. On one hand, it’s the promise of a new learning experience, with spinning molecules and interactive modules. On the other, it’s the long-awaited solution to the industry’s painful pricing practices. Maybe even both, if we dare to dream it. (Read more in Publishing Perspectives.)