CAA News Today

American Society for Aesthetics

The American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), an association for aesthetics, criticism, and theory of the arts, will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the ASA Feminist Caucus Committee with a full day of workshop discussions, followed by a celebratory reception, on Saturday, November 14, 2015. The Feminist Caucus Committee anniversary is part of the annual ASA conference, to be held November 11–14 at the Desoto Hilton in Savannah, Georgia. Noted scholars will discuss the evolution and contributions of feminist scholarship within philosophical aesthetics and the history of the ASA and its publication, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Topics will include: “Forty Years of Feminist Scholarship in Aesthetics,” “The Influence—Hidden or Otherwise—of Feminist Scholarship in Aesthetics,” and “Feminist Pedagogy and Curricula in Aesthetics.” For more information, please visit http://www.aesthetics-online.org/feminist/ or contact Peg Brand.

American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies

The American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies (ASHAHS) announced an award at its business meeting at the CAA Annual Conference in February 2015. The Eleanor Tufts Book Award, which recognizes an outstanding English-language publication in the area of Spanish or Portuguese art history, went to Glaire D. Anderson for The Islamic Villa in Early Medieval Iberia: Architecture and Court Culture in Umayyad Córdoba (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013).

Art Libraries Society of North America

The Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS) met in Fort Worth, Texas, from March 19 through 23, 2015, for its forty-third annual conference. The conference’s theme, “New Frontiers on the Old Frontier,” allowed members to explore current and emergent interests in the art and visual-information profession. The society awarded the George M. Wittenborn Memorial Book Award to Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. of the National Gallery of Art for Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The ARLIS/NA Distinguished Service Award was given to Daniel A. Starr, deputy chief librarian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Read about incoming members of the executive board.

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) has awarded the 2015 Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art to Christopher Barrie for “Myth and Mythology on the Nile: The Surrealism of Georges Henein and ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Gazar.” Barrie is a master’s degree student in Middle East politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. His paper analyzes the treatment of myth in the poetry of Henein and the visual art of al-Gazzar. The paper challenges understandings of al-Gazzar’s “Contemporary Art Group” as the first example of a purportedly authentic national Egyptian art and instead looks to analyze the dialogical interpenetration of the cosmopolitan and the local in al-Gazzar’s work.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

Save the date for next annual conference of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) in Washington, DC: the weekend of May 20, 2016.

AAMG is in the process of compiling standards and documentation for Best Practices for University Museums and Collections. Once compiled, this can serve as a companion guide for accreditation as well as a resource for working within a parent institution. Please contact Barbara Rothermel, director of the Daura Gallery and assistant professor of museum studies at Lynchburg College, directly with documents, suggestions, or comments about practices with which you are most concerned.

Information about the AAMG Summer Leadership Seminar 2016 (rolling deadlines) is coming soon. Questions about the leadership seminar can be directed to David Robertson.

Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art

During its 2015 Annual Conference, CAA presented Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, past president of the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA), board member at large, and managing editor of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, with its 2015 Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award. Chu also received a certificate of appreciation from AHNCA’s membership for her organizational leadership and for the establishment of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Also at the CAA conference, AHNCA sponsored a two-part session entitled “What Is Realism?”and a shorter session on “Future Directions in Nineteenth-Century Art”; both were well attended. AHNCA’s major session for CAA’s 2016 conference will be “Between the Covers: The Question of Albums in the Nineteenth Century.”

During the AHNCA business meeting, Yvonne Weisberg extended her term as treasurer, but her successor must be in place by February 2016. Thus the organization now seeks nominations for the position; please send these via email to Peter Trippi, AHNCA president. Caterina Pierre also agreed to continue as newsletter editor.

AHNCA’s recent and upcoming activities include attending a Mellon lecture by Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, at the Yale Center for British Art (April 23); a tour of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts exhibition about artists’ gardens, with the curator Anna O. Marley (April 25); a tour of Sotheby’s nineteenth-century European art sale, with the expert Seth Armitage (May 1); and a visit to the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami with the museum’s director, Jill Deupi (May 12).

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) has announced the winners of its recent grant and essay competitions. Anna McSweeney, a senior teaching fellow in Islamic art and archaeology at SOAS, received a Grabar Fellowship to complete the research for her book, The Alhambra Cupola at the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin.Natalia Di Pietrantonio, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, was awarded a Grabar Travel Grant to deliver a paper at the 2015 Association of Art Historians conference at the University of East Anglia. Sugata Ray, assistant professor of art history at the University of California, Berkeley, received the 2014 Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize for his essay, “Shangri La: The Archive-Museum and the Spatial Topologies of Islamic Art History.” The Grabar Grants and Fellowships Program, which supports the scholarly activity and professional development of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in Islamic art, was established in memory of Professor Oleg Grabar. The Ševčenko Prize, awarded annually for the best unpublished article written by a young scholar on any aspect of Islamic visual culture, honors the memory of Margaret Ševčenko, the longtime managing editor of Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World.

International Center of Medieval Art

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) will present sessions and receptions at the fiftieth International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held May 14–17, 2015, at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Sessions presented by the organization include the “Cross in Medieval Art,” “Moving Women, Moving Objects,” and “Super Medieval! Visual Representations of ‘Medieval Superheroes.’” This last session is sponsored by the organization’s student committee. Two receptions are planned, one for all members and another for students.

International Sculpture Center

The International Sculpture Center will host the twenty-fifth International Sculpture Conference, “New Frontiers in Sculpture,” to be held November 4–7, 2015, in Phoenix, Arizona. The conference will feature panel discussions at Phoenix Art Museum and Arizona State University; special programming at Bollinger Atelier; optional trips to James Turrell’s Skyspaces and Cosanti, among others; gallery hops, the annual ISC members’ littleSCULPTURE show; and much more. Registration opens in June. For more information and to join the mailing list for updates, please visit www.sculpture.org/az2015.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) has announced information regarding the sixth annual IAS/Kress Lecture in Italy: Nino Zchomelidse of Johns Hopkins University will present her paper “Scena Sacra Scena–Tribuna Civica: Il ruolo dell’ambone nella Campania medievale” on May 20, 2015. The lecture will take place in the Dipartimento degli studi umanistici of the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. The Emerging Scholars Committee of IAS has inaugurated a new mentoring program that will match established scholars with graduate students and junior scholars with similar interests.

On May 15, IAS will host three linked sessions on the topic “Civic Foundation Legends in Italian Art” at the 2015 International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. IAS will also sponsor a long session titled “Beyond Texts and Academies: Rethinking the Education of the Early Modern Italian Artist” at the next CAA Annual Conference, taking place February 3–6, 2016, in Washington, DC.

The deadline for IAS/KRESS travel grants for scholars undertaking transoceanic travel to the annual meeting of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference in Vancouver is May 20, 2015. Please consider writing for the IASblog on any topic related to Italian art from prehistory to the present.

IAS has announced its new executive board: Sheryl E. Reiss, president; Anne Leader, executive vice president; Frances Gage, vice president for program coordination; Martha Dunkelman, treasurer and membership coordinator; and Sean Roberts, secretary.

Mid-America College Art Association

The School of Art in the College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati will host the biennial conference of the Mid-America College Art Association (MACAA), October 26–28, 2016. This follows the 2014 conference, “Mash Up,” which was hosted by the University of Texas at San Antonio. Jeffrey Adams, current MACAA president, and Kate Bonansinga, director of DAAP’s School of Art and site coordinator, are working with the MACAA board and DAAP faculty to develop ideas for sessions for the conference and a potential theme. Since the 1930s MACAA has provided a forum for artists/teachers of America to discuss and debate the issues of our profession, to share ideas and information of mutual benefit, and to affirm the friendships and collegiality that bind us together. The College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati has as its primary mission the creation of a better visual and design environment. Through excellence in educational programs, research, creative works, and service to the community, the faculty, the students, and administrative officers of DAAP are dedicated to achieve this mission.

National Art Education Association

The National Art Education Association (NAEA) invites you to participate in Summer Vision, joining a professional learning community and spending four days in America’s heartland or the nation’s capital exploring art, architecture, nature, and the museum as a work of art!

New Media Caucus

The New Media Caucus (NMC) has reported the results of its recent elections. The new board members are: Nadav Assor, assistant professor, Connecticut College; Rachel Clarke, associate professor, California State University, Sacramento; Renate Ferro, visiting assistant professor of art, Cornell University; Meredith Hoy, assistant professor, Arizona State University; Patrick Lichty, assistant professor, Columbia College Chicago; Jessye McDowell, assistant professor of art and exhibitions and lectures coordinator, Auburn University; Carlos Rosas, associate professor, Pennsylvania State University; Daniel Temkin, independent artist; and Stephanie Tripp, associate professor of communication, University of Tampa.

The newly elected officers are: Jim Jeffers, treasurer, assistant professor, Indian River State College; A. Bill Miller, chair, Communication Committee, assistant professor, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater; and Joyce Rudinsky, chair, Events Committee, associate professor, University of North Carolina.

These artists and scholars will be joining the following: Vagner Whitehead, president, associate professor, Oakland University; Mat Rappaport, secretary, associate professor, Columbia College Chicago; Pat Badani, editor-in-chief of Media-N Journal, independent artist and scholar; Victoria Bradbury, researcher at CRUMB, Sunderland, United Kingdom; Mina Cheon, interdisciplinary professor, Maryland Institute College of Art; Kevin Hamilton, associate professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Barbara Rauch, associate professor, Ontario College of Art and Design University, Toronto; Josua Selman, president, Artist Organized Art; and Jessica Westbrook, assistant professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Pacific Arts Association

The Pacific Arts Association-Europe conference will be held July 2–4, 2015, at the Museo de América in Madrid, Spain. The presentation of papers is open to any topic within the theme of “Recent Research in Pacific Arts.” Presentations can be either thirty minutes (twenty to twenty-five minutes of talk, five to ten minutes of discussion) or ten-minute reports on current exhibition projects or work in progress in museums or galleries. For more information, please contact adama@adamaamerica.com.

Pacific Arts Association-Pacific is calling for interest in its 2015 conference on “Trading Traditions: The Role of Art in the Pacific’s Expansive Exchange Networks,” to be held at the Fa’onelua Conference Centre in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, September 30–October 4, 2015. The conference theme examines the role art has played in the exchange of objects, peoples, technologies, and ideologies in the prehistoric, historic, or modern Pacific. It is not limited to “physical” exchanges but also addresses complex social, economic, and political arrangements and interactions among interconnected systems, structures, and peoples. For further information, please write to Karen Stevenson.

Public Art Dialogue

Public Art Dialogue (PAD) sponsored two sessions at CAA’s 2015 Annual Conference in New York. “Museums and Public Art: Coexistence or Collaboration,” chaired by Harriet Senie and Cher Krause Knight, featured papers by Kasia Ozga (“False Advertising? Public Art and Monographic Exhibitions”),Glenn Wallace (“‘Western Exposure’: The Contemporary Art Museum, Public Art, and the Global City”),Andrew Wasserman (“Sites of Counter Culture: Navigating a Future Bowery”), and Carole Anne Meehan(“Raising Expectations for the Public Sphere”). The artist Norie Sato chaired a second session, “Student Debt, Real Estate, and the Arts”; participating in the panel were Tom Finkelpearl, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the artists Caroline Woolard and Paul Ramirez Jonas. Finkelpearl received the 2015 PAD award for achievement in the field of public art. This award recognizes an individual whose contributions have influenced public art practice.

Society for Photographic Education

Each spring, the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) hosts a forum for the presentation of artistic work and research to a community of peers. SPE has announced the call for proposals for “Constructed Realities,” the fifty-third national conference, to be held March 10–13, 2016, in Las Vegas, Nevada. SPE is accepting proposals for the 2016 conference with a submission deadline of June 1, 2015. 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. 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, 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

Please www.spenational.org 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) has announced the following awards for 2014 at its annual meeting, held during the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, last October:

• Best Book: Melinda S. Zook, Protestantism, Politics, and Women in Britain, 1660–1714 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
• Honorable Mention: George McClure, Parlour Games and the Public Life of Women in Renaissance Italy (University of Toronto Press, 2013)
• Josephine Roberts Award for a Scholarly Edition: Barbara Torelli Benedetti, Partenia, a Pastoral Play, ed. and trans. Lisa Sampson and Barbara Burgess-Van Aken (Toronto, 2013)
• Best article: Diane Wolfthal, “Household Help: Early Modern Portraits of Female Servants,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8 (2013): 5–52
• Best collaborative project: Noelia S. Cirnigliaro and John Beusterien, eds., Touching the Ground: Women’s Footwear in the Early Modern Hispanic World 14.2 (2013). Special issue of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies
• Honorable Mention: Anne J. Cruz and Maria Galli Stampino, eds., Early Modern Habsburg Women: Transnational Contexts, Cultural Conflicts, Dynastic Continuities (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013)
• Best Translation: Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores, Three Spanish Querelle Texts: “Grisel and Mirabella,” “The Slander against Women,” and “The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers,” ed. and trans. Emily Francomano (Toronto, 2013)
• Best Teaching Edition: Valerie Worth-Stylianou, ed. and trans., Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (1581–1625) (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013)
• Best Digital Scholarship, New Media, and Art Project: Caroline Bowden, principal investigator, 2012–13; James Kelly, project manager, 2012–13; along with Jan Broadway, David Horne, Katherine Keats-Rohan, and Michael Questier, coinvestigator and principal investigator, 2008–11), Who were the Nuns: A Prosopographical study of the English convents in exile 1600–1800

Society of Architectural Historians

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) is accepting abstracts for its sixty-ninth annual international conference in Pasadena and Los Angeles, California, April 6–10, 2016. Please submit abstracts by June 9, 2015, for one of the thirty-eight thematic sessions, the Graduate Student Lightning Talks, or the open sessions. The thematic sessions have been selected to cover topics across all time periods and architectural styles. SAH encourages submissions from architectural, landscape, and urban historians; museum curators; preservationists; independent scholars; architects; and members of SAH chapters and partner organizations.

SAH is accepting applications for the 2015 H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship. The prestigious $50,000 fellowship allows a recent graduate or emerging scholar to study by travel for one year. The deadline to apply is October 1, 2015.

Registration is open for the 2015 SAH Field Seminar, “Architecture in the Rio de la Plata Basin: Between Tradition and Cosmopolitanism.” The seminar features a customized itinerary and includes visits to sites not open to the general public, supplemental lectures, and a significant educational component designed to enhance your experience of the region’s built environment.

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) seeks proposals of papers for its sponsored 2½-hour session, “Exploring Native Traditions in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia,” at CAA’s 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, DC. Within a broad historical and geographical framework of the region, which assimilated and reacted to a succession of cultures from Greek, Roman, and Byzantine to Mongol, Ottoman, and Soviet, the session seeks to balance the significance of international contacts and the experiences of artists who worked primarily in their native land. Artists expressed regional identities through distinctive themes and motifs in every art form; some made use of traditional techniques and designs, or represented provincial spaces, distinct ethnicities, and social customs. Papers may focus on individual artists or on broader institutional contexts that affected evolving concepts of regionalism and nationalism. The discussions might also address contemporary tensions surrounding regional and national identity. Interested contributors should see CAA’s 2016 Call for Participation and send proposals with other required materials to the session’s chair, Alison Hilton. The deadline for proposals is May 8, 2015.

Southeastern College Art Conference

The application for the 2015 Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) Artist’s Fellowship, which carries a $5,000 award, is August 1, 2015.

New directors to the Board of Directors were elected in February:

• Alabama: Wendy Deschene, Auburn University
• Kentucky: Boris Zakic, Georgetown College
• Louisiana: Jill Chancey, Nicholls State University
• North Carolina: Lawrence Jenkens, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The new issue of the Southeastern College Art Conference Review (vol. 16, no. 4, 2014) is now available.

The next four conferences will take place:

• October 21–24, 2015: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• October 19–22, 2016: Virginia Tech with Hollins University, in Roanoke, Virginia
• October 25–28, 2017: Columbus College of Art and Design, in Columbus, Ohio
• October 17–20, 2018: University of Alabama in Birmingham

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) honored the recipients of the organization’s highest honors at a members and awards dinner on March 12, 2015, during the VRA’s thirty-third annual conference in Denver, Colorado. Maureen Burns of IMAGinED Consulting received the Distinguished Service Award for her contributions to visual resources and image management. Comments from Burns’s nominators and a description of her engagement with visual-resources advocacy, service to the profession, and long-term involvement with VRA and the VRA Foundation throughout her career can be found online. VRA presented the Nancy DeLaurier Award for distinguished achievement to the editors of Cataloging Cultural Objects (Chicago: American Library Association, 2006). The editors are: Murtha Baca, head of the Getty Digital Art History Access Program; Patricia Harpring, managing editor of the Getty Vocabulary Program; Eliza Lanzi, director of digital strategies and services at Smith College; Linda McRae, retired director of the Visual Resources Library at the University of South Florida; and Ann Baird Whiteside, librarian and assistant dean for information resources for the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. The Nancy DeLaurier Award nomination and acceptance remarks by Patricia Harpring are available online. VRA publishes images and information about the awards presentation on its website.