CAA News Today

DeWitt Godfrey, associate professor of sculpture in the Department of Art and Art History at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, has been elected president of the CAA Board of Directors for a two-year term, beginning May 2014. A member of the board since 2009, Godfrey has served on the board’s Executive Committee as secretary (2010–12) and vice president for committees (2012–14). He succeeds Anne Collins Goodyear, codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Bowdoin, Maine, who has led the board since May 2012.

Godfrey writes, “During my tenure on the board, CAA has evolved into an organization that can look to the future with greater confidence than in the past. The next president must provide continuity and leadership that builds on our already realized strategic plans and advance the remainder of our unfinished, unmet goals. We must be mindful that our current and future strategic initiatives should be part of a coherent strategy for the growth and improvement of CAA, that individual initiatives contribute to both short- and long-term success, that we recognize the extent of our resources in relation to our ambitions, and finally that the strategic plan is seen as dynamic and of a whole.”

Godfrey did his undergraduate work at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, was a member of the inaugural group of fellows in the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and received his MFA from Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. He is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Japan Foundation, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Godfrey’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. His commissioned work includes Concordia for LexArts in Lexington, Kentucky; Blanchard Road for the Cambridge Arts Council in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Greenwich South, a visioning exercise for the Downtown Alliance in New York. His installations can be seen at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan; the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts; Lehman College in New York; and the Kennedy Museum of Art at Ohio University in Athens. Godfrey currently serves on CAA’s Task Force for Fair Use and on its 2015–2020 Strategic Plan Task Force.

Godfrey continues, “As CAA begins its second one hundred years, we look forward to the imminent roll-out of the 2015–2020 Strategic Plan and to the completion and dissemination of the findings of the Task Force on Fair Use. I hope to continue the work of our great predecessors to maintain CAA as the preeminent professional arts organization worldwide, to serve and grow membership, and to ready the association to respond effectively to future challenges, both known and unknown.”

The CAA board chooses its next president from among the elected directors in the fall of the current president’s final year of service, providing a period in which the next president can learn the responsibilities of the office and prepare for his or her term. For more information on CAA and on the Board of Directors, please contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive assistant.