CAA News Today

Art Council of the African Studies Association

The current board members of the Art Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) are: President – Silvia Forni, Curator, Anthropology, Department of World Cultures, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; President Elect/Vice President – Shannen Hill, Associate Curator for African Art and Head of the AAAPI Department, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Senior Fellow, National Museum of African Art; Past President – Dominique Malaquais, Senior Researcher, Centre d’Etudes des Mondes Africains, CNRS; Secretary – Liese Van der Watt, Independent Writer and Researcher, London; Treasurer – Jordan Fenton, Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art, Miami University, Ohio; Website Editor – Cory Gundlach, PhD student (ABD) in African Art History, and Associate Curator of African and Non-Western Art at the University of Iowa Museum of Art; Newsletter Editor – Deborah Stokes, Curator for Education, National Museum of African Art; Assistant Newsletter Editor – Leslie Rabine, Professor Emerita at the University of California, Davis; ASA Liaison – Cécile Fromont, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History at the University of Chicago; CAA Liaison – Yaëlle Biro, Associate Curator for African Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Eric Appau Asante, Lecturer of African Art and Culture; Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology; Boureima Diamitani, Executive Director of the West African Museums Programme; and Sidney Kasfir, Professor Emerita, Art History Department, Emory University.

Art Libraries Society of North America and the Visual Resources Association Foundation

A Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management (SEI 2016) will be held at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill from June 7 to 10, 2016. Founded over ten years ago, SEI is a joint project of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF). It is designed to serve a wide range of professionals eager to learn about new technologies and update job skills: museum staff, visual-resources curators, librarians, archivists, art educators, and all those managing digital image media. This intensive workshop offers a mix of hands-on and lecture sessions presented by expert instructors. Registration for SEI 2016 opened in January. Please feel free to contact the SEI cochairs with any questions: Greta Bahnemann, University of Minnesota; and Jesse Henderson, University of Wisconsin.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) Leadership Seminar will take place June 19–24, 2016, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The application deadline is January 15, 2016. Join colleagues from throughout the United States and beyond for AAMG’s flagship professional development program at Northwestern’s prestigious Kellogg School Center for Nonprofit Management. Dynamic, engaging, highly interactive by design, and interspersed with team and individual problem-solving exercises in leadership and management, this intensive five-day certificate program will allow you to learn from one another and be guided and inspired by nationally recognized scholars drawn principally from Kellogg’s renowned faculty. To learn more about the program and to download an application, please visit the AAMG website.

Association of Art Editors

The Association of Art Editors (AAE) website underwent a major remodeling in the summer of 2015. The New York–based graphic designer Matt See created the fresh and attractive template, which was refined, detailed, and implemented by DataCom Ota of Duluth, Minnesota. The site’s format is now simpler, easier on the eyes (more legible type and appealing colors), and more flexibly viewable (including via smartphone). Among other improvements, the member entries and services index have greater clarity, and job opportunities are linked via the homepage rather than incorporated in the Services section, as before. Over all, navigation has been much enhanced. The AAE website is accessible—free to all.

International Center of Medieval Art

The International Center of Medieval Art (IMCA) is pleased to announce and solicit applications for two recently created awards. First, the Graduate Student Travel Award. Three grants will be awarded this year, at $3,000 each, for PhD students in the early stages of dissertation research. Applications are due on March 1, and applicants must be ICMA members. The second award, the new ICMA book prize, will be awarded in 2017 to the best single-authored, printed book on any topic in medieval art published in 2016. Books published in English, French, Spanish, Italian, or German are eligible for consideration. For more information, please contact Ryan Frisinger.

Italian Art Society

The annual members’ business meeting of the Italian Art Society (IAS) will take place at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference on Friday, February 5, 2016, 7:30–9:00 AM in the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington 4, Exhibition Level. In addition to reports on IAS activities and election results, three IAS founders will be honored, the 2016 IAS/Kress lecturer will be announced, and recipients of various grants and awards will be recognized. The IAS long session, “Beyond Texts and Academies: Rethinking the Education of the Early Modern Italian Artists,” organized by Jesse Locker of Portland State University, will follow at 9:30 AM in Washington 1, Exhibition Level. The IAS-sponsored short session, “Rethinking the Rhetoric and Force of Images,” organized by Robert Williams of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Anna Marazuela Kim of the Courtauld Institute of Art, will take place the same day, 12:30–2:00 PM, in the Maryland Suite, Lobby Level.

The deadline for the new IAS Conference Grant for Modern Topics is February 15, 2016. Up to $1,000 will be provided to subsidize transoceanic travel to present in an IAS-sponsored session on the art, architecture, or visual culture of Italy from the early nineteenth century to the present.

Public Art Dialogue

Public Art Dialogue (PAD) is excited to announce two events at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC. On Thursday, February 4, 6:00–8:00 PM, PAD will host a Public Art Salon and Award Reception in conjunction with Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) at the WPA gallery at 2124 8th Street NW. Local artists will show slides and talk about their public art projects in and around DC. At the event, Kirk Savage, professor of history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, will receive the 2016 PAD Award for Achievement in the Field of Public Art. On Friday, February 5, 5:30–7:00 PM, Savage will chair a roundtable, “Public Art: Process and Practice,” with Thomas Luebke of the US Commission of the Fine Arts and Lucy Kempf of the National Capital Planning Commission.

The Fall 2015 Public Art Dialogue (PAD) Newsletter has an interview by Marisa Lerer and Jennifer K. Favorite with Sarah Beetham on “Confederate Monuments and the Black Lives Matter Movement.” As Lerer and Favorite note: “Countries around the world, from Syria to Spain to Argentina, have grappled with the bronze and stone sculptural legacy of leaders who represent a dark chapter in their nation’s past.” This issue has a strong link PAD’s forthcoming journal issue, “The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence,” edited by Erika Doss. Also in the newsletter, Marisa Lerer has an essay “Public Art’s Role in International Biennials.” She considers the role of public-art practices in contemporary biennials and includes responses from curators, artists, and academics from Cuba, the United States, Ireland, and Canada. The guest editors of two special issues of PAD’s journal are seeking papers and artists’ projects for the topics “Borders and Boundaries” (coeditors: Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie; submission deadline: March 1, 2016); and “Higher Ed: College Campuses and Public Art” (editor: Monika Burczyk; submission deadline: September 1, 2016). For more information, go to the PAD website.

SECAC

The SECAC board and membership voted to change the name of the organization from the Southeastern College Art Conference to SECAC.

Awards presented at SECAC’s annual meeting, which took place October 22–24, 2015, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are:

• Excellence in Teaching: Debra Murphy, University of North Florida
• Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication: Bibiana Obler, George Washington University
• Outstanding Artistic Achievement: Matthew Kolodziej, University of Akron
• Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of Contemporary Materials: Hannah Israel and Michele McCrillis, Columbus State University
• Outstanding Professional Achievement in Graphic Design: Jerry Johnson, Troy University; and Scott Fisk, Samford University

The President’s Awards are:

• Award for Exemplary Achievement: Michael Aurbach, Vanderbilt University
• Certificates of Merit: Thomas Brewer, University of Central Florida; Carol Crown, University of Memphis; and Virginia Derryberry, University of North Carolina, Asheville

The Juried Exhibition featured:

• First-place award: Michael Holsombeck, Chattanooga State Community College
• Second-place awards: Efram Burk of Curry College; and Sara Madandar, University of Texas at Austin
• $5,000 Artist’s Fellowship: Duane Paxson, Troy University
• $5,000 William R. Levin Award for Research in the History of Art: John Ott, James Madison University

Society of Architectural Historians

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) will hold its next annual international conference April 6–10, 2016, at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 East Green Street, in Pasadena, California. Over seven hundred people from around the world will convene to share new research on the history of the built environment from antiquity to the critical present. “New Local/Global Infrastructures” is the theme of the 2016 Pasadena/Los Angeles conference, which includes forty-two sessions with papers, as well as roundtables, exhibits, talks, and public architecture tours. Regional sessions include “Los Angeles Infrastructure: Design, Aesthetics, Publics,” “Styles, Revival Styles, California Styles,” and “Reappraising California Counterculture.” Speakers include Eric Avila, professor of urban cultural history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Dana Cuff, UCLA architecture professor and director of the cityLAB research center. SAH will present “Surveying L.A.: Past, Present, Future,” a public seminar that will take an in-depth look at SurveyLA, the city’s comprehensive study of historic resources funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the City of Los Angeles. Panelists will discuss the local and global implications and applications of SurveyLA and its website, HistoricPlacesLA. Early registration ends February 3, 2016. View the complete program and register online.

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

Following voting in December 2015, the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has elected Ksenia Nouril as its new secretary/treasurer for a two-year term, succeeding Yelena Kalinsky. In addition, Amy Bryzgel will replace Ksenya Gurshtein as the web news editor for a one-year term.

On December 11–12, several SHERA members participated in “The 100 Years of Suprematism Conference” at the Harriman Institute, organized by the Malevich Society. The conference proved to be an important international event, bringing together scholars from the United States, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. The program of the conference is available on the website of the Malevich Society.

At CAA’s Annual Conference in February 2016, SHERA will sponsor the following sessions: “Collecting, Curating, Canonizing, Critiquing: The Institutionalization of Eastern European Art,” chaired by Ksenia Nouril; and a double session led by Alison Hilton called “Exploring Native Traditions in the Arts of Eastern Europe and Russia.”