CAA News Today

The Getty Foundation has awarded CAA a grant to fund the CAA-Getty International Program for a tenth consecutive year. Unlike previous years, the 2021 program will take place virtually, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges of bringing international scholars to New York to attend the 2021 Annual Conference. CAA is especially grateful to the Getty Foundation for sustaining its support during these uncertain times, when maintaining contact with our international colleagues is more important than ever. Turning this crisis into an opportunity, the twenty participants in next year’s program will spend the time between now and February exploring the advantages of online technology for enriching scholarly research and building global bonds. Meme Omogbai, CAA’s new executive director, stated “We appreciate not only the Getty Foundation’s ongoing support, but also its faith in the CAA-Getty program to pursue scholarly excellence and innovation in an acutely challenging time. We believe the participants in this program will help lead the way for CAA’s future growth in international programs and membership.”

Over the coming months, the participants—all alumni of the program—will work in small online groups to workshop their conference papers, originally planned to be presented in person at the 2021 Annual Conference. What can be gained by geographically-distanced scholars collaborating regularly over the next six months, discussing and critiquing each other’s work? How will ideas evolve and change from early conversations to completed presentations?

The 2021 CAA-Getty program participants will also explore opportunities provided by online exchanges to produce resource materials for other scholars. Using recordings of the online discussions and the conference presentations, the group will initiate a virtual archive containing video and text documentation of the year’s work, including podcasts, bibliographies, and references related to the themes of the conference sessions. Although this virtual program breaks with the patterns established by the first nine years of the program, its forward-looking experiment in online scholarship is a fitting way to celebrate the tenth anniversary of a program that promises new models for robust scholarship in the post-COVID world.

“We applaud CAA for a taking a bold step to reimagine the international program online,” says Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation. “This thoughtful approach to digital engagement will teach us all a great deal about how to maintain international perspectives and connections in this new post-pandemic reality.”

The CAA-Getty International Program was established in 2011-12 to increase international participation in CAA and the CAA Annual Conference. The program fosters collaborations between North American art historians and curators and their international colleagues and introduces visual arts professionals to the unique environments and contexts of practices in different countries. Since the CAA-Getty International Program began, it has brought 135 first-time attendees from 49 countries to CAA’s Annual Conference. Historically, the majority of international registrants at the conference have come from Canada, the United Kingdom, and Western European countries. The CAA-Getty International Program has greatly diversified attendance, adding scholars from Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and South America. The majority of the participants teach art history, visual studies, art theory, or architectural history at the university level; others are museum curators and researchers.

About the Getty Foundation

The Getty Foundation fulfills the philanthropic mission of the Getty Trust by supporting individuals and institutions committed to advancing the greater understanding and preservation of the visual arts in Los Angeles and throughout the world. Through strategic grant initiatives, it strengthens art history as a global discipline, promotes the interdisciplinary practice of conservation, increases access to museum and archival collections, and develops current and future leaders in the visual arts. It carries out its work in collaboration with the other Getty Programs to ensure that they individually and collectively achieve maximum effect.

2021 CAA-Getty International Program Participants

Danielle Becker, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Federico Freschi, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand

Georgina Gluzman, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Richard Gregor, Trnava University, Slovenia

Alison Kearney, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Sandra Krizic Roban, Institute of Art History, Croatia

Peju Layiwola, University of Lagos, Nigeria

Daniela Lucena, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Priya Maholay-Jaradi, National University of Singapore

Ana Mannarino, Federal University of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Parul Mukherji, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

Cristian Nae, George Enescu National University of Arts, Romania

Marton Orosz, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungary

Ceren Ozpinar, University of Brighton, United Kingdom

Dasha Panaiotti, Hermitage Museum, Russia

Valeria Paz Moscoso, Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo, Bolivia

Judy Peter, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Horacio Ramos Cerna, City University of New York

Nora Veszpremi, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Giuliana Vidarte, Pontifical Catholic University, Peru