CAA News Today

The Distinguished Scholar Session at the CAA 113th Annual Conference will honor the career of Dr. Jack Flam, explore the broad range of Dr. Flam’s scholarly interests, and celebrate his ongoing legacy of support and amplification of innovative voices in the field. 

Dr. Flam is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art and Art history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, where he taught from 1975–2010. Dr. Flam was also President of the Dedalus Foundation from 2002–24.   

His career in education took hold at Rutgers University and the University of Florida, and he subsequently taught a wide range of courses at CUNY, where he was mentor to many students, both undergraduate and graduate, in studio art as well as art history. In addition to serving as a dissertation and thesis advisor, he continues to steadfastly support the professional lives of his former students.  

Dr. Flam is the author of several books, articles, and exhibition catalogs on various aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, and on African art. He is a leading authority on Henri Matisse, and his influential book Matisse on Art has been in print since its publication in 1973. His Matisse: The Man and His Art, 1869–1918 received CAA’s Charles Rufus Morey Award in 1988. Dr. Flam’s other books include Motherwell (1991); Richard Diebenkorn: Ocean Park (1992); Matisse: The Dance (1993); Western Artists/African Art (1994); Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship (2003); Manet: Un bar aux Folies-Bergère ou l’abysse du mirror (2005). He has written extensively on postwar American art, especially on Robert Motherwell. He is coauthor of Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941–1991 (2012) and of Robert Motherwell: 100 Years (2015). 

He is the series editor of the Documents of Twentieth-Century Art (currently published by the University of California Press) and in addition to Matisse on Art, has edited two volumes for it: Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (1996) and Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art (2003). He has served on a number of juries, committees, and boards focused on supporting artists and art historians, including the advisory board of Source: Notes in the History of Art and the board of directors of the United States section of the International Association of Art Critics. Dr. Flam was also the art critic of the Wall Street Journal from 1984–92.  

He has been the recipient of several awards and honors, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He won the Art World Manufacturers Hanover Prize for Distinguished Newspaper Criticism in 1987.  

His articles and reviews have appeared widely, including in African Arts, American Heritage, Apollo, The Art Bulletin, Artforum, Art in America, Art International, Art Journal, ARTnews, Connaissance des Arts, Arts Magazine, Connoisseur, Journal of African Studies, Journal de la Société des Africanistes, Leonardo, New York Review of Books, Storia dell’Arte, The Sciences, Source, and the Times Literary Supplement. 

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Dr. Flam’s career and his impact on the field will be celebrated with presentations and a dialogue with scholars and colleagues: 

Session Chair:  

Lisa Farrington, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York 

Session Participants:  

Deborah Cullen-Morales, Mellon Foundation 

Jennifer Farrell, Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Julie Reiss, Columbia University 

Nari Ward, Hunter College, City University of New York 

John Yau,  Rutgers University 

Register now for the CAA 113th Annual Conference, February 12–15, 2025, in New York City!  

The CAA113 Distinguished Scholar Session will be held on Thursday, February 13, 4:30–6:30 p.m. ET at the New York Hilton Midtown. This event will also be livestreamed via YouTube.