CAA News Today
Join a CAA Professional Committee
posted by CAA — June 15, 2020
Artist Jill Odegaard (left) and participant work on Woven Welcome as part of ARTexchange at the 2020 Annual Conference, an event organized by CAA’s Services to Artists Committee. Photo: Stacey Rupolo
Call for applicants to CAA’s Professional Committees (for term 2021-2024)
The Professional Committees address critical concerns of CAA’s members. Each Professional Committee works from a charge that is put in place by the Board of Directors. Committee members serve three-year terms, with the term of service beginning and ending at the CAA Annual Conference. Candidates must be current CAA members, or be so by the start of their committee term and possess expertise appropriate to the committee’s work. All committee members volunteer their services without compensation. It is expected that once appointed to a committee, a member will attend committee meetings (including an annual business meeting at the conference), participate actively in the work of the committee, and contribute expertise to defining the current and future work of the committee. For many CAA members, service on a Professional Committee becomes a way to develop professional relationships and community outside of one’s home institution, and to contribute in meaningful ways to the pressing professional issues of our moment.
The following Professional Committee are open for terms beginning in February 2021. Please click on the links in order to review the charge of each committee, as well as the roster of current committee leadership and members:
- Committee on Design
- Committee on Diversity Practices
- Committee on Intellectual Property
- Committee on Research and Scholarship
- Committee on Women in the Arts
- Education Committee
- International Committee
- Museum Committee
- Professional Practices Committee
- Services to Artists Committee
- Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee
- Student and Emerging Professionals Committee
Committee applications are reviewed by the current committees, as well as CAA leadership (CAA’s President, the Vice President for Committees, and Executive Director). Appointments are made by late October, prior to the Annual Conference. New members are introduced to their committees during their respective business meetings at the Annual Conference in February 2021 in New York City.
In applying to serve on a committee, applicants commit to beginning a term in February 2021, provided that they are selected for committee service.
Prospective applicants may direct logistical questions to Vanessa Jalet (vjalet@collegeart.org). Questions about the committee charge and current work to the current committee chair and/or to the Vice President of Committees: Julia Sienkewicz (julia.a.sienkewicz@gmail.com)
Self-nominations should include a brief statement (no more than 150 words) describing your qualifications and experience, combined with an abbreviated CV (no more than 2–3 pages). These two items should be forwarded in a single PDF document emailed to: vjalet@collegeart.org
Deadline for applications: Monday, August 31, 2020
Kindly enter subject line in email: 2021 Professional Committee Applicant
An Interview with Nicole Archer, Editor-in-Chief of Art Journal Open
posted by CAA — June 15, 2020
Nicole Archer.
We’re delighted to introduce readers to Nicole Archer, the current Editor-in-Chief of Art Journal Open (AJO), CAA’s online forum for the visual arts that presents artists’ projects, conversations and interviews, scholarly essays, and other forms of content from across the cultural field. Founded in 2012 as an open-access affiliate of Art Journal, Art Journal Open has been independently edited since 2014. It remains open access and is always free to explore.
Nicole Archer researches contemporary art and design, with an emphasis in textile and garment histories. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Design at Montclair State University, where she extends this research through a teaching practice that encourages students to explore politics and aesthetics via close examinations of style, embodiment, and desire.
Amidst the end of the academic year, we corresponded with her over email to learn more about her research, her thoughts on the impact of COVID-19, and her aspirations for Art Journal Open.
Where are you from originally?
I was born in Brooklyn and raised mainly in South Florida, but I spent most of my adult life in San Francisco. In 2018, I returned to New York City.
What pathways led you to the work you do now?
My path has been shaped by a long line of committed feminist art historians, theorists, and activists who have inspired me to pursue work that is wildly curious, ethically responsible, and politically committed to issues of social justice. This, coupled with the fact that I started my college career in the mid-1990s, when the field of Visual Studies was demanding that Art History be held accountable for the role it played in supporting certain cultural hegemonies. It was a time when we were recognizing the benefit that many art historical methods could bring to critical cultural studies (and vice versa).
When did you first become a CAA member?
I have been a CAA member since 2011, but I was an avid reader of Art Journal and The Art Bulletin long before that (thanks to my library access).
What are you working on or thinking about currently?
I am currently finishing a book manuscript that considers how textiles (our key mediums of comfort and security) have been strategically manipulated over the last two decades to aid in the systematic reshaping of what constitutes “legitimate” versus “illegitimate” forms of state violence. The book tells interwoven, materially grounded stories regarding global arts and design practice, on the one hand, and military, police, and governmental action, on the other, to theorize how feelings of insecurity are produced, aesthetically.
What are your thoughts on the impact of COVID-19 on the work you do? On the field?
I think the current pandemic makes two things particularly clear. First, it highlights the important role that art and design can play in helping a society understand (and bear) emergent and acutely difficult circumstances. From movie marathons, artist talks, and book readings that we have enjoyed during our nights spent ‘sheltering in place,’ to the protest banners, photographs, and balcony performances that have led our communities towards acts of collective care and solidarity with one another.
Second, COVID-19 puts the varied inequities that underwrite the field in high relief. It makes the economic precarity of so many cultural workers glaringly obvious, and it forces us to recognize how undervalued cultural work actually is. We need to ask why we have allowed the arts to become so defunded and privatized (despite the social value it clearly delivers). Calls for austerity are circulating, and we know this means further cuts to already underfunded public arts initiatives. We need to resist this and seize this moment as an opportunity to insist on our value. We need to stop undercutting ourselves and our peers, and refuse to accept the exploitation of adjunct professors and graduate student teachers. We must do this as we push against the increasingly prohibitive costs of arts education.
What led you to be interested in working on Art Journal Open?
It is our shared responsibility, as arts and design professionals, to constantly “check” our field of practice—to find time to celebrate what we are doing well, and to redress and learn from our shortcomings. I believe this responsibility is a cornerstone of AJO’s editorial mission. Working on AJO is a unique opportunity to hold myself, and others, accountable on this front.
What is your vision for Art Journal Open during your tenure?
I hope to build on the solid foundation laid by the journal’s previous editors, and to further emphasize the open dimension of the publication’s identity—to treat “Open” as a verb, a call to action. We hope to accomplish this by leveraging the journal’s digital format, to open space for more multi-media Creative Projects, and to take advantage of our lack-of-paywall to help draw new readers to AJO and new voices to CAA.
The first three pieces published after Nicole Archer fully took over as Editor-in-Chief of Art Journal Open.
What would you say is your top arts-related recommendation (book, website, resource) at the moment?
I know I am late to this, but I recently found an online radio station called NTS and it is giving me life! I miss trusting my night to a DJ, hearing a new song out of nowhere, and dancing with strangers. I am also tired of soundscapes controlled by algorithms. People should give it a listen in their studios and kitchens, and at their computers and writing desks.
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A favorite artwork?
Last year, I had the opportunity to see Sonya Clark’s Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. Clark’s work epitomizes the important role art can play in ensuring that political discourse maintains its complexity in the face of a mediascape set on transforming these conversations into flat lines in the sand.
At the center of the exhibit was a monumental replica (15’x30’) of a white dish towel waived by Confederate troops in April 1865, before General E. Lee negotiated the terms of the Confederacy’s surrender. Displayed in a manner akin to the Star Spangled Banner (a centerpiece of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s collection), Monumental Cloth presented the Confederate Truce Flag as testament to a decisive moment in US history. It demanded that we ask why we do not know this flag, as a means to discuss anti-Blackness and the persistence of white supremacy in the United States. It provided a poignant, aesthetic counterstrategy to other manners of “memorializing” the Confederacy. The exhibit offered spaces of contemplation alongside opportunities for direct action—by setting-up looms that visitors could use to weave additional Truce Flag replicas, in opposition to the endless flow of commercially produced items made to bear the image of the Confederate Battle Flag.
What are you looking forward to?
Honestly, I am looking forward to the end of the Trump presidency, and to the possibility that the moment we are in could force real political and cultural change; that conversations around universal basic income and healthcare will gain traction, and that widespread recognition of the systemic racism inherent in the criminal justice system will open the door to both abolishing the prison system and defunding and demilitarizing the police that tyrannize communities of color in the US.
NICOLE ARCHER BIOGRAPHY
Nicole Archer researches contemporary art and design, with an emphasis in textile and garment histories. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Design at Montclair State University, where she extends this research through a teaching practice that encourages students to explore politics and aesthetics via close examinations of style, embodiment, and desire.
Her work has been published in various journals, edited collections, and arts publications, including: Criticism: A Quarterly Journal for Literature and the Arts; Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture; Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (published by the New Museum + MIT Press); Where are the Tiny Revolts? (published by the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts + Sternberg Press); Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory.
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — June 12, 2020
Komozi Woodard reviews The Black Arts Movement and the Black Panther Party in American Visual Culture by Jo-Ann Morgan. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Imogen Hart discusses the exhibition and catalog James Tissot: Fashion & Faith, Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by CAA — June 10, 2020
The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, via ARTnews.
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New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — June 05, 2020
Elizabeth Petersen Cyron writes about Christina Neilson’s Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Verrocchio and the Epistemology of Making Art. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Michael Gaudio reviews Disharmony of the Spheres: The Europe of Holbein’s “Ambassadors” by Jennifer Nelson. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
CAA Solidarity Statement
posted by CAA — June 05, 2020
The College Art Association (CAA) condemns all forms of systemic racism, violence, bias, aggression and the marginalization of Black, Indigenous, and all Peoples of Color (BIPOC) as well as discrimination based on race, intersectionality, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. As a community of those who study, teach, write about, advocate for and/or create art and design, we have committed our life’s work to learning-from, exploring-with, and creating-towards our shared humanity. As a membership organization we choose to use our voices to speak to one another and speak up for one another.
To ensure lasting change:
- We encourage the creative community to examine biases, micro-aggressions, and who we leave out.
- We encourage learning from sharing narratives of BIPOC.
- We encourage providing services and support for underrepresented and entirely non-represented members of the community.
- We will work to create and promote standards and systems that actively support equity in anti-racist teaching, research, publication and creative practices.
In solidarity, CAA, its board, and its staff continue to amplify equity, diversity, and inclusion and call our community to action with us in this commitment to change.
CAA Values Statement on Diversity and Inclusion
For additional resources see the Committee on Diversity Practices as well as resources shared via CAA News, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
CWA Picks for June 2020
posted by CAA — June 04, 2020
From the series Cutbacks by Maria Kapajeva, 2017. Courtesy the artist and the Gallery of Photography Ireland.
In response to COVID-19, artists, curators, institutions and organizations have initiated virtual exhibitions, presentations, screenings, and curated newsletters, among other innovative approaches, welcoming the public to online platforms and opening dialogues on a range of topics. May and June 2020 CWA Picks present a number of initiatives that not only demonstrate ways in which social media channels and websites can be repurposed in light of social distancing measures currently in place; but most importantly emphasize the social role of the arts being a healing positive force in these unprecedented challenging times. June Picks focus on the continued presence and significance of feminist art both independently and in conversation with each other, in the context of our current virtual living circumstance.
- Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear: an online exhibit of Maria Kapajeva considers the history of a community surrounding a textile mill in Narva, Estonia, now closed, where members of the artist’s family once worked. On view online May through June 2020, by Gallery of Photography Ireland.
- Artist video features by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Suzanne Lacy: Women Fight Back; Suzanne Lacy: We Are Here; Close Looking: The Artist Initiative with Vija Celmins; Vija Celmins: Saying the Unsayable; and Veja Celmins on her life in (and out of) the studio.
- White Chapel Gallery Artists’ Film International, since 2008, has premiered world-class artists from modern artists featuring Rosa Barba, Mwangi Hutter, Theresa Traore Dahlberg; Dominika Olszowy, Lisa Tan, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain; or Rhea Storr, Vika Kirchenbauer, Yu Gou and more on their YouTube channel.
- Michelle Handelman – BloodSisters: Leather Dykes and Sadomasochism: films and discussions in celebration of the 25 year anniversary of Michelle Handelman’s ground-breaking documentary, by the London BFI Flare 2020 Festival programmer Jay Bernard. The post-screening panel called BODILY AUTONOMY on the significance of Bloodsisters 25 years on–and current consent laws that restrict queer sexualities and subcultures also on view.
- Feminism is A Browser, a new film by Charlotte Eifler, was previewed online at the 58th Annual Ann Arbour Film Festival. The trailer can be viewed on vimeo here.
- Professional Organization for Women in the Arts is hosting ongoing online conversations around the arts during the COVID-19 crisis.
- Toward Freedom: A Progressive Perspective released a “Feminist emergency plan in the face of the Coronavirus crisis” in Chile by the Coordinadora Feminista 8M, a central force over the last five months of popular uprisings of millions of women.
- Johanna Unzueta: Tools for Life, a virtual exhibition by Modern Art Oxford.
- Google Art and Culture Online Feminist Exhibits: From large collections to smaller virtual exhibits, Google Art and Culture has several feminist and women-centered online offerings.
- Women Being Talks: the COVID-19 experience, a series of interviews by journalist Natalia Bonilla and WomenBeing Magazine Founder Monica Martins, through June.
- AIR Gallery’s Intimacy without Proximity, the collective of women-identified artists regularly shares resources, readings and prompts for communal making and thinking.
- Creative Mornings, a worldwide creative community, hosts free virtual zoom gatherings daily from locations across the globe.
- I Like Your Work podcast, hosted by artist and curator Erika b Hess, provides opportunities and resources centered around the weekly podcast interviews with creative people from painters and artists to collectors and curators.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by CAA — June 03, 2020
A makeshift memorial and mural by local artists to honor George Floyd, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: Kerem Yucel/AFP, via CNN
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New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — May 29, 2020
Benjamin A. Bross discusses Eugenics in the Garden: Transatlantic Architecture and the Crafting of Modernity by Fabiola López-Durán. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by CAA — May 27, 2020
David Litvin checks the tomatoes growing outside the Guggenheim Museum, where he is one of the few people who show up each day for work. Credit: Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
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