CAA News Today

American Society of Appraisers

The Personal Property Committee of the American Society of Appraisers invites you to its annual spring conference, “Current Issues in Determining Authenticity in Visual Art and Objects, the Catalogue Raisonné, Art Scholarship, and Value in the Marketplace,” to be held March 25–28, 2015, at the Yale Club in New York. This scholarly conference will gather highly regarded and renowned experts to discuss timely and relevant topics, including authentication of jade objects, certificates of authenticity, conservation issues, connoisseurship in collecting, authenticity of American paintings, who is an expert, and much more. Field trips to the Princeton University museum and library collections and gallery visits in New York will also be part of conference activities. Accommodations have been reserved at the Yale Club for this event. Early-bird registration pricing will be available. This will be a not-to-miss conference! There is limited space for this event, which is expected to sell out. Stay tuned for additional details.

Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence

Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence (ALMSD) will host the session “Symbolist Art and the Unconscious” at the CAA Annual Conference on Saturday, February 14, 2015, 12:30–2:00 PM. This session will feature papers on art and related disciplines that were influenced by the studies of hysteria and the unconscious conducted by the French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot, Sigmund Freud’s teacher.

ALMSD is organizing a conference on angst in visual arts, literature, and philosophy in Paris, to be held June 4–6, 2015, at Univ. Paris IV. The organization is also accepting the submission of articles on mental illnesses and the Symbolist movement for the first issue of its journal, to be published in fall 2015.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

This past summer, the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) and the Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Nonprofit Management held its second Academic Museum Leadership Seminar on the campus of Northwestern University (June 23–27, 2014). Forty-two museum leaders from throughout the United States, Canada, Qatar, and Ireland participated in the leadership-training program. Loyola University Museum of Art and Northwestern’s Block Museum also hosted dinners for seminar fellows during the weeklong program. Funding for the seminar was generously provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

New AAMG board and staff members are: Craig Hadley, DePauw University, board member at large (communications); Katie Kizer, Vanderbilt University, membership coordinator; and Joseph Mella, Vanderbilt University, executive board member

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) has established a permanent fund in memory of Professor Oleg Grabar and in support of the annual award of Grabar Grants and Fellowships. These competitive grants and fellowships, open to all nationalities, are intended to encourage and further the professional development of PhD students and postdoctoral scholars in the history of Islamic art, architecture and archaeology. The next deadline for the Grabar Travel Grant and Post-Doctoral Fellowship is December 15, 2014.

International Association of Art Critics

The International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA), in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, will present the eighth AICA/USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at the New School featuring Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, curator of the fourteenth Istanbul Biennale (2015). In addition to her other positions, Christov-Bakargiev has been appointed as a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute for 2015. Her lecture will be held at the New School, 12th Street Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, New York, on Thursday, November 20, 2014, 6:30–8:00 PM. Admission is free.

International Sculpture Center

International Sculpture Day, or IS Day, is an annual celebration event held worldwide on April 24, 2015, to further the International Sculpture Center (ISC) mission of advancing the creation and understating of sculpture and its unique, vital contribution to society. IS Day will include a wide range of events, openings, and educational and promotional activities around the world to include, but not limited to: open day at museum/sculpture park; open studios tours; demonstrations and workshops; panels, talks, presentations, and discussions; parties and openings; sculpture exhibits and shows; tours of private and public collections; pop-up shows; exhibitions; and more. Visit www.sculpture.org/isday to learn more about the event and how to participate.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) will sponsor a CAA annual meeting session in New York, organized by Christopher Bennett and Elizabeth Mangini entitled “Di politica: Intersections of Italian Art and Politics since WWII” (February 11, 2015, 12:30–2:00 PM). IAS will also cosponsor a related two-day conference entitled “Untying the Knot: The State of Postwar Italian Art History Today” at the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York on February 9–10, 2015. IAS encourages members and prospective members to attend the IAS business meeting on February 11, 7:30–9:00 AM. In March 2015, IAS will sponsor five sessions at the March annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Berlin.

IAS is pleased to provide a research and publication grant (deadline: January 10, 2015). In addition, the society seeks proposals of papers from senior scholars for the sixth annual 2015 IAS/Kress Lecture, scheduled for May 20, 2015, in Naples, Italy, on a Neapolitan topic (deadline: January 4, 2015).

National Council of Arts Administrators

The forty-second annual conference of the National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) convened September 23–26, 2014 in Nashville, Tennessee. The organization is indebted to Mel Ziegler and Heather Rippetoe of Vanderbilt University for organizing a provocative, powerful conference. Featured speakers included: Pablo Helguera, artist, writer, and raconteur; Jon Rubin, artist and social practitioner; Steven J. Tepper, a sociologist focused on creativity in education; and Ruby Lerner, founding director of Creative Capital.

The membership elected three new board members: Lynne Allen, Boston University; Elissa Armstrong, Virginia Commonwealth University; and Cathy Pagani, University of Alabama. They join these returning directors: Leslie Bellavance, Alfred University (secretary); Steve Bliss, Savannah College of Art and Design; Cora Lynn Deibler, University of Connecticut; Andrea Eis, Oakland University (treasurer); Amy Hauft, University of Texas at Austin (president); Jim Hopfensperger, Western Michigan University (past president); Lydia Thompson, Texas Tech University; and Mel Ziegler, Vanderbilt University. Special thanks goes to Sergio Soave of Ohio State University for his excellent service; he rotates off the board this year.

Activities at the 2015 CAA Annual Conference in New York include the annual NCAA reception (February 12, 5:00–8:00 PM) and an affiliated-society session, “Hot Problems/Cool Solutions in Arts Leadership,” a fast paced series of presentations on leadership (February 12, 12:30–2:00 PM). NCAA welcomes new and current members as well as all interested parties.

Society for Photographic Education

The fifty-second national conference of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), titled “Atmospheres: Climate, Equity and Community in Photography,” will take place March 12–15, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Connect with 1,600 artists, educators, and photographers from around the world for programming that will fuel your creativity—four days of presentations, industry seminars, and critiques to engage you! Explore an exhibits fair featuring the latest equipment, processes, publications, and photography/media schools. Participate in one-on-one portfolio critiques and informal portfolio sharing or attend as a student volunteer for free admission. Other highlights include a print raffle, silent auction, mentoring sessions, film screenings, exhibitions, receptions, a dance party, and more! The guest speakers will be Rebecca Solnit, Chris Jordan, and Hank Willis Thomas. Registration will open on November 3, 2014. Preview the conference schedule and register online at www.spenational.org/conference.

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

The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) looks forward to the ASEEES annual convention November 20–23, 2014, in San Antonio, Texas, where its members will participate on a dozen panels ranging from eighteenth-century prints to twentieth-century art and architecture in Eastern Europe and Russia. SHERA’s business meeting, to be held on Saturday, November 22, at 3:30 PM, is open to both members and nonmembers.

In recent months SHERA’s members have been busy organizing exhibitions, publishing new research, and planning conferences. To see their activities, go to www.shera-art.org and click on News; for members’ recent publications and work in progress, click on Research.

SHERA is delighted to welcome the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC) as a new institutional member. CCRAC is a joint initiative between the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London to provide a forum for the investigation of Russian and Soviet art. It aims to stimulate debate, support collaborative work, and generate and disseminate research on all aspects of the visual arts, architecture, design, and exhibitions in Russia and the Soviet Union.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) presented the organization’s highest honors at a membership and awards dinner on March 13, 2014, during the VRA’s thirty-second annual conference, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Virginia Mason Green (Macie) Hall of the Center for Educational Resources at Johns Hopkins University received the Distinguished Service Award for her contributions to visual resources and image management. Her service as the VRA representative to the Conference on Fair Use and the National Information Infrastructure at the US Patent and Trademark Office from 1994 to 1999 was only the beginning of her contributions to the field of visual resources.

The Nancy DeLaurier Award for distinguished achievement in the field of visual resources was presented to Ann Baird Whiteside of Harvard University. Whiteside was honored for her leadership in the development and implementation of the Society of Architectural Historians’ SAHARA Project. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, SAHARA was developed by the Society of Architectural Historians in collaboration with ARTstor. It contains over 47,000 images of architecture and landscapes contributed by architects, scholars, photographers, graduate students, preservationists, and others who share an interest in the built environment. Nominator and recipient acceptance remarks are available on the VRA Awards website.