CAA News Today

American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works

The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (JAIC) is being celebrated by Maney Publications as its Journal of the Month. All access restrictions on three years’ worth of journal content are being lifted until February 15, 2014. Go to http://www.maneyonline.com/page/jotm/jac to learn more. You will find:

• Commentaries on the conservation of textiles, archaeological artifacts, and electronic media, as well as a commentary on sustainability and a review of the archive
• Video interviews with Michele Derrick (editor-in-chief) and Pamela Hatchfield (AIC board president)
• “Best of the Archive”: ten articles handpicked by the editor that are free to download
• 20 percent discount on institutional subscriptions

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education

The Herron School of Art and Design, part of Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), will host “Tectonic Shifts,” the thirty-fifth biennial national conference of Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) in Indianapolis, Indiana, March 25–28, 2015. As the title of the conference, “Tectonic Shifts” suggests, participants will be examining how the forces of change are shaping the foundations landscape. FATE is interested in hearing from foundations faculty and programs that are breaking new ground with their teaching practices. The Herron School of Art and Design looks forward to being the conference host and introducing attendees to its great city.

Glass Art Society

The forty-third annual conference of the Glass Art Society (GAS), titled “Strengthening Community, Collaboration, Forging New Bonds,” will be held March 19–22, 2014, in Chicago, Illinois. The Windy City is second to none when it comes to a thriving, diverse cultural scene: it is home to renowned architecture, public art displays, galleries, museums, and colleges, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Millennium Park. GAS will hosts its conference at well-known venues such as the historic Palmer House Hotel and the Chicago Cultural Center, both centrally located in the heart of downtown. GAS will partner with a new addition to Chicago’s flourishing art scene, Ignite Glass Studios, located in the West Loop neighborhood. Hot glass, flame working, and cold working will be showcased in this state-of-the-art learning center. The second demo site is West Supply, a unique facility that joins glass production with a foundry, which casts concrete and metals for many notable collections in the high-end design, interiors, and gallery markets.

View the complete list of presentations. GAS will also be hosting special conference events such as the preconference reception, live and silent auction, Goblet Grab, gallery hop, an international student exhibition, and a closing night party. For additional information about the conference schedule and to register, visit the website.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) is delighted to announce the selection of the fifth annual IAS/Kress Lecturer in Italy: Jean Cadogan, professor of fine arts at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, who will speak on “‘Maravigliose istorie:’ The Mural Decoration of the Camposanto in Pisa.” Cadogan will share her intriguing work on the multiphase, comprehensive program of painting on the walls of the Camposanto in a presentation on May 27, 2014, in Pisa. IAS is happy to establish a link with a respected Italian university, as the lecture will take place in the Gipsoteca of the Università di Pisa. Mark your calendars to visit Pisa if you are in Italy in late May! More details to follow on the IAS website. In addition, please look at the organization’s website for details about the five IAS-sponsored sessions and a reception that IAS hopes to host at the upcoming Renaissance Society of America meeting in New York on March 27–29, 2014.

Leonardo Education and Art Forum

The chair of Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF), Adrienne Klein of the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has announced the election of two new chairs-elect. Klein will be immediately succeeded by David Familian, who is artistic director of the Beall Center for Art and Technology at the University of California, Irvine. Familian will then be succeeded in 2015 by the newly elected Suzanne Anker and in 2016 by J. D. Talasek.

Anker is a visual artist and theorist working at the intersection of art and biology in a variety of media ranging from digital sculpture and installation to large-scale photography to plants grown by LED lights. She is chair of the Fine Arts Department in the School of Visual Arts in New York. Talasek is director of cultural programs of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, which explores the intersections of science, medicine, technology, and visual culture. For the past three years, Talasek has organized and moderated DC Art Science Evening Rendezvous events in Washington, DC, in collaboration with Leonardo/ISAST.

Midwest Art History Society

The Midwest Art History Society (MAHS) will hold its forty-first annual conference in Saint Louis, Missouri, from April 3 to 5, 2014. In addition to more than twenty scholarly sessions, conference activities will include a special viewing of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis and a curator-led tour of Impressionist France at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Axel Ruger, director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, will offer the keynote address. For more information about the conference and access to online registration forms, please visit the MAHS website.

National Council of Arts Administrators

The forty-second annual meeting of the National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) convenes September 23–26, 2014, in Nashville, Tennessee, hosted by Vanderbilt University.

Yes is a world
and in this world of yes…e.e. Cummings
(creativity in the expanding field)

The world is the new studio. Artists are involved in an ever-expanding production involving constituents beyond the art world and marketplace. As educational institutions, how do we respond to this massive shift in artistic attitude? Is there a balance between standard nineteenth- and twentieth-century production and the new twenty-first-century practice centered on global and social interconnectedness? This conference will investigate art’s expanding field by exploring the influences of globalization, art education, and integrated practice. Participants will consider their role as educators of creativity, how they influence our institutions, and their effect on local and world communities. Speakers include: Richard Lloyd, author of Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Post Industrial City; David Owens, author of Creative People Must Be Stopped! Six Ways We Stop Innovation (without Even Trying); and Steven Tepper, author of Not Here, Not Now, Not That! Protest over Art and Culture in America.Visit the NCAA website to learn more about this conference and to join the organization.

Public Art Dialogue

Established in 2009, the Public Art Dialogue (PAD) award for achievement in the field of public art is given annually to an individual whose contributions have greatly influenced public art practice. Awardees are chosen from nominations made by PAD members. Award winners receive a three-year PAD membership, which includes a subscription to the journal and all other membership benefits. Each year, the recipient accepts the award at a ceremony during the CAA Annual Conference, at which he or she makes a special presentation open to the public. Nominations for the 2015 award are due on May 1, 2014. Past winners have been Suzanne Lacy, Mary Jane Jacob, Anne Pasternak, Ben Rubin, and Penny Balkin Bach. Jack Becker is the 2014 recipient. For more information see http://publicartdialogue.org/award.

Society for Photographic Education

Each spring, Society for Photographic Education (SPE) hosts a conference for the presentation of artistic work and research to a community of peers. “Atmospheres: Climate, Equity and Community in Photography,” SPE’s fifty-second national conference, will be held from March 12–15, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. SPE is accepting proposals for the 2015 conference from March 6 to June 1, 2014. Topics are not required to be theme based and may include (but are not limited to): imagemaking, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. SPE membership is required to submit and proposals are peer reviewed. The presentation formats are:

• Graduate Student: short presentation of your own artistic work and a brief introduction to your graduate program
• Imagemaker: presentation of your own artistic work (photography, film, video, performance and installation, multidisciplinary approaches)
• Lecture: presentation of a historical topic, theory, or another artist’s work
• Panel: group led by a moderator to discuss a chosen topic
• Teaching: presentations, workshops, 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 SPE membership and full proposal guidelines

Society for the Study of Early Modern Women

The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW) held its annual meeting at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in October 2013. The results of the election of new officers were announced. Megan Matchinske, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, stepped into the office of president, which was vacated by Jane Couchman, emerita of the Department of French and Women’s Studies at York University in Glendon, Canada. A full list of the new officers will be available shortly on the SSEMW website.

An excerpt from Jane Couchman’s letter to the society’s membership at the close of her term as president in 2013:

The highlights of this year were our meetings at SCSC in San Juan, and especially the talk given jointly by Susan Amussen and Allyson Poska, “Shifting the Frame: Trans-imperial approaches to Gender in the Atlantic World,” a topic chosen to mark our presence in Puerto Rico. The large and enthusiastic audience found their gendered, collaborative, transnational, transatlantic approach relevant and exciting. Susan and Allyson modeled the best of the kind of scholarship that SSEMW encourages, and that we hope to offer to early modern scholarship more generally. The Society’s principal work is very visible and we can all be proud of it: Co-sponsored Sessions (17 panels at 6 different conferences in 2013), the Annual Meeting, Reception and Plenary talk, Travel grants to graduate students (5 each year), the slate of Nominations, the Awards for scholarly work (http://ssemw.org/2013-award-winners/), the SSEMW website and Listserv, our support for Early Modern Women, an Interdisciplinary Journal, our collaboration with Attending to Early Modern Women.

Society of Architectural Historians

Registration is open for the Society of Architectural Historians’ annual conference (#SAH2014), taking place April 9–13, 2014, at the Hyatt Regency Austin in Austin, Texas. The conference offers thirty-five paper sessions along with public programming that includes twenty-one guided architectural tours and the SAH Austin Seminar, “Austin and the Place of Historic Architecture in Rapidly Growing Cities.” Please visit sah.org/2014 for more information on the conference, including a complete schedule of events and how to register.

The call for papers for the 2015 conference in Chicago (April 15–19) opens on April 16, 2014. For abstract submission instructions, visit sah.org/2015.

Registration is open for the Croatia Study Tour, a land-and-cruise program tailored for architecture professionals and enthusiasts that will take place August 18–29, 2014. This customized tour from Sarajevo to Venice along the Adriatic Coast, developed by Boris Srdar, will include visits to UNESCO World Heritage sites, exclusive access to landmark buildings as well as those off the beaten path, and admission to the Venice Biennale on August 30. A fellowship is available for this program. To register, visit sah.org/study-tours.

Buildings of Vermont, the latest volume in the Buildings of the United States series, is now available.

Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture

Following elections in January, the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has updated its by-laws and added two new officers: Tamara Jhashi is now SHERA’s listserv administrator, a role she has filled since 2004, and Ksenya Gurshtein is web news editor. Joining SHERA’s board as members-at-large are Anna Novakov, Andrea Rusnock, and Nicolas Iljine, as well as one returning member, Eva Forgacs.

At CAA’s Annual Conference in Chicago, Eva Forgacs served as host to visitors from Eastern Europe and Russia who were part of CAA’s International Travel Grant Program. Along with the visitors, Forgacs participated in a full-day preconference program organized by the CAA International Committee about international issues in art history, as well as other events throughout the conference itself.

SHERA is delighted to welcome three new institutional members: the Kolodzei Art Foundation, which promotes the contemporary art of Russia and the former Soviet Union through exhibitions and grants; the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, the largest private collection of Russian icons in North America; and the M. T. Abraham Foundation, a collection of Russian and European modern art.

Southeastern College Art Conference

The Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) will meet October 8–11, 2014, in Sarasota, Florida, hosted by the Ringling College of Art and Design. Submissions for the annual juried exhibition is April 1, 2014. The deadline for the call for papers is April 20, 2014. For more information, visit SECAC’s conference page.

Future conferences will be held: October 21–24, 2015 (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania); October 19–22, 2016 Virginia Tech (Roanoke, Virginia); 2017 (dates TBA) Columbus College of Art and Design (Columbus, Ohio).

SECAC has introduced a new award, the William R. Levin Award for Research in the History of Art. Thanks to the generosity of William R. Levin, professor emeritus at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, SECAC will offer an award of an annual total of $5000 to one or more art historians who are members of the organization. Levin has been a member of SECAC since 1987; served on the Board of Directors; published in the scholarly journal, Southeastern College Art Conference Review; received the SECAC Award for Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication in 2004; and has been recognized with two of the organization’s highest honors, the Excellence in Teaching Award and the Exemplary Achievement Award. Deadline for applicants: March 1, 2014.

The deadline for a $5,000 SECAC Artist’s Fellowship is August 1, 2014.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association’s thirty-second annual conference will be held March 12–15, 2014, at the historic Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Take a moment to view the full schedule. Selected highlights are:

• Sessions and case studies covering topics such as collaborative practices amongst traditional and nontraditional disciplines within archival and special collections, international copyright and resources, broadening professional roles, management of moving image collections, basic and advanced (RDF and LOD) cataloging procedures, DAM implementation, expanding VRA Core 4 capabilities, personal digital archiving
• Opening speaker, Philip Yenawine, cofounding director of Visual Thinking Strategies
• Tours of Harley-Davidson Museum and Design Archive and Lakefront Brewery
• Networking opportunities provided by Birds of a Feather Lunches throughout the conference and the Sponsors’ Meet and Greet and Poster Presentations
• Members and Awards Dinner
• Informative workshops (many free for conference registrants)
• Unwind with colleagues at the Drink ‘n’ Draw with Stephanie Barenz (Pfister Hotel’s artist in residence).
• Closing speaker Matthew Israel, director of the Art Genome Project at Artsy

The online conference schedule allows for sign up/log in via SCHED to connect with social-media sites, create custom schedules, and share interests with fellow attendees. Search for “vra32.sched.org“ on your mobile device to download the schedule.