CAA News Today
2016 Annual Conference Highlights
posted by Nia Page — February 26, 2016
CAA hosted its 104th Annual Conference from February 3 to 6, 2016, at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, DC. This year’s program included four days of presentations and panel discussions on art history and visual culture, Career Services for professionals at all stages of their careers, a Book and Trade Fair, and a host of special events throughout the region.
Attendance
Close to 4,000 people from throughout the United States and abroad—including artists, art historians, students, educators, curators, critics, collectors, and museum staff—attended the conference. Visual-arts professionals from over 49 countries were represented.
Sessions
Conference sessions featured presentations by artists, scholars, designers, graduate students, and curators who addressed a range of topics in art history and the visual arts. In total, the conference offered over 200 sessions, developed by CAA members, affiliated societies, and committees. Over 750 individuals presented their work.
Career Services and Professional Development
Career Services included four days of job interviews with colleges, universities, and other art institutions while Professional Development offerings included career mentoring and portfolio-review sessions, professional-development workshops, professional development roundtables and a variety of Student and Emerging Professional Committee programming such as Brown Bag discussions and Mock Interviews. During the professional development programming, approximately 30 professionals served as mentors to 120 young professionals, 5 established professionals led free professional roundtable discussions, and 13 Visual Arts specialists conducted development workshops throughout the conference. During the week of the Annual Conference, there were over 189 active jobs posted on the Online Career Center and more than 24 employers participating onsite.
Book and Trade Fair
This year’s Book and Trade Fair presented 98 exhibitors—including participants from the United States, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Singapore, Canda, Mexico, United Kingdom and Ukraine—that displayed new publications, materials for artists, digital resources, and other innovative products of interest to artists, scholars, and arts enthusiasts. The Book and Trade Fair also featured book signings, lectures, and demonstrations, as well as three exhibitor-sponsored program sessions on art materials and publishing. The conference had generous sponsorship support from the exhibitors Artforum/Bookforum, Art in America, Blick Art Materials, Bloomsbury, Frieze, Laurence King Publishers, Pearson, Prestel, Richmond-The American International University in London, Routledge and Yale University Press.
ARTspace
ARTspace, a “conference within the conference” tailored to the needs and interests of practicing artists, presented programming that was free and open to the public, including this year’s Annual Distinguished Artists’ Interviews with Joyce Scott who spoke with George Ciscle, Maryland Institute College of Art and Rick Lowe, who conversed with LaToya Ruby Frazier, Independent Artist and The School of the Art Institute, Chicago. The latter was presented as a partnership with the MacArthur Foundation to celebrate 35 years of its Fellowship program. Both Lowe and Frazier received MacArthur Fellowships in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Watch the Annual Distinguished Artists’ Interviews
Over 150 people attended this lively event.
ARTspace also featured four days of panel discussions devoted to visual-arts practice, opportunities for professional development, and screenings of film and video.
ARTexchange, an open-portfolio event in which CAA artist members displayed drawings, prints, photographs, small paintings, and works on laptop computers, took place on Friday, February 5. Nearly 35 artists participated in ARTexchange this year.
The Media Lounge, a space for innovative new-media programming in conjunction with ARTspace. This year, the Media Lounge brought together academics, new media artists, artist collectives, alternative communities, guest speakers, filmmakers, and performers to lead workshops, present work, and generate productive discussions and crowd sourcing under the conceptual framework VISIBLE/INVISIBLE, Art & Politics.
The theme, VISIBLE/INVISIBLE, Art & Politics explored the legacy of identity and representation politics, considered in the context of our present culture where individuals, organizations and ideas can be easily captured, tracked, exposed, appropriated from the circulation of digital material which simultaneously feeds capitalist media assembly lines and alternative economies. The aim of the Media Lounge programming was to foster a dialog centered on emerging artistic sensibilities that mix art and a politics of representation amid a transforming sociopolitical landscape. The setting of CAA 2016, Washington DC and an election year, offered a unique opportunity to engage in these discussions.
ARTspace was made possible in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge
The Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge served as a hub for networking, information sharing, collaboration, professional development, and much more. The Student and Emerging Professionals Committee hosted an incredibly informative session on “Mentoring in the 21st Century” to a packed audience; a breakfast meet-and-greet with 200 attendees; five Brown Bag Sessions with attendance ranging from 45 to 160; a successful social night; and three days of Mock Interviews at full capacity.
Distinguished Scholar Session
Richard Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History and Dean of Humanities, Duke University was CAA’s 2016 Distinguished Scholar.
A panel including Kobena Mercer, Professor, History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University; Gwen Everett, Associate Dean of the Division of Fine Arts at Howard University; Kellie Jones, Associate Professor of Art History at Columbia University; and Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University joined in exploring and celebrating Powell’s many contributions.
Watch the Distinguished Scholar Session honoring Richard Powell.
Convocation and Awards
More than 1,000 people attended CAA’s Convocation and presentation of the annual Awards for Distinction, which honor the outstanding achievements and accomplishments of individual artists, art historians, authors, conservators, curators, and critics whose efforts transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large. Tania Bruguera, the Cuban performance artist, delivered the keynote address.
Watch the CAA Convocation and Keynote Talk by Tania Bruguera.
The title of Bruguera’s talk was “Aest-ethics: Art with Consequences.” Bruguera’s work on issues of free speech and immigration and her fearlessness to speak out against forces of oppression—many of which she has experienced firsthand in Cuban prisons—is important and undeniably relevant to not just the art and academic worlds, but also the world at large.
The recipients of the 2016 Awards for Distinction were:
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
Krista Thompson
Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice
Duke University Press
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
Stephanie Barron and Sabine Eckmann
New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic 1919–1933
Los Angeles County Museum of Art and DelMonico Books
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions
Myroslava M. Mudrak and Tetiana Rudenko
Staging the Ukrainian Avant-Garde of the 1910s and 1920s
Ukrainian Museum
Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
Matthew C. Hunter
“Joshua Reynolds’s ‘Nice Chymistry’: Action and Accident in the 1770s”
The Art Bulletin, March 2015
Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism
Chika Okeke-Agulu
Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria
Duke University Press
Art Journal Award
Abigail Satinsky
“Movement Building for Beginners”
Art Journal, Fall 2015
Distinguished Feminist Award
Carrie Mae Weems
Distinguished Teaching of Art Award
Sabina Ott
Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award
Patricia Berger
Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
Arlene Shechet
Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement
Carmen Herrera
CAA/American Institute for Conservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
Debra Hess Norris
Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art
Rosalind E. Krauss
Morey and Barr Award Finalists
CAA recognizes the 2016 finalists for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Awards for their distinctive achievements:
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award Finalists
- Paul Binski, Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice, and the Decorated Style, 1290–1350, Yale University Press, for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
- Elina Gertsman, Worlds Within: Opening the Medieval Shrine Madonna, Pennsylvania State University Press
- Adam Herring, Art and Vision in the Inca Empire: Andeans and Europeans at Cajamarca, Cambridge University Press
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award Finalist
- Jens M. Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin, eds., Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World, J. Paul Getty Museum
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions Finalist
- Timothy Verdon and Daniel M. Zolli, eds., Sculpture in the Age of Donatello: Renaissance Masterpieces from Florence Cathedral, Museum of Biblical Art, in association with D. Giles
Special Events
Following Convocation, the Katzen Arts Center at American University was host to CAA’s Opening Reception on Wednesday evening, February 3. Over 250 attendees gathered to celebrate the conference while enjoying a stroll through the museum’s permanent collections.
CAA Travel Grant in Memory of Archibald Cason Edwards, Senior, and Sarah Stanley Gordon Edwards
Established by Mary D. Edwards with the help of others, the CAA Travel Grant in Memory of Archibald Cason Edwards, Senior, and Sarah Stanley Gordon Edwards will support women who are emerging scholars at either an advanced stage of pursuing a doctoral degree (ABD) or who have received their PhD within the two years prior to the submission of the application. Diana Seave Greenwald of the University of Oxford delivered her paper “Within the grade of certain obvious criteria of merit:” Sample Bias in Art History and Earl Shinn’s The Art Treasures of America in the “Very Generally Ignorant, Flippant: Art Criticism and Mass Media in the Nineteenth Century” session and Imogen Wiltshire of the University of Birmingham presented her paper Process and Function at the New Bauhaus in Chicago: Concepts of Modernism and the Development of Therapeutic Art Practices as part of the “Modernism and Medicine” 2-part session.
CAA-Getty International Travel Grant Program
In an effort to promote greater interaction and exchange between American and international art historians, CAA brought 15 scholars from around the world to participate in the Annual Conference. This is the fifth year of the program, which has been generously funded by grants from the Getty Foundation since its inception.
The CAA-Getty International Program participants’ activities began with a one-day preconference colloquium on international issues in art history, during which they met with North American–based CAA members to discuss common interests and challenges. The participants were assisted throughout the conference by CAA member hosts, who recommended relevant panel sessions and introduced them to colleagues who share their interests.
Representatives from several CAA affiliated societies served as hosts, including the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, the Association for Latin American Art, the Society of Contemporary Art Historians, and the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasia, and Russian Art and Architecture. More information about the group’s activities will appear in upcoming articles in CAA News and on the International Desk of the CAA website.
To date, this program has brought 90 scholars from 41 different countries to participate in CAA’s Annual Conference and expanded international networking and the exchange of ideas both during and after the conference.
The 2016 recipients were: Sarena Abdullah, Senior Lecturer, School of the Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang; Abiodun Akande, Principal Lecturer, Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo State, Nigeria; María Isabel Baldasarre, Associate Professor, Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Danielle Becker, Lecturer in Art History and Visual Studies, University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University, South Africa; Heloisa Espada, Postdoctoral Researcher, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of Saõ Paulo, Brazil; Ildikó Fehér, Associate Professor, Art History Department, University of Fine Arts of Hungary, Budapest, Hungary; Peyvand Firouzeh, Post-doctoral Fellow, Museum fur Islamische Kunst, Berlin, Germany; Lev Maciel, Associate Professor, National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia; Bui Thi Thanh Mai, Lecturer of Art History, Head of Department of Academic Research Management and International relations, Vietnam University of Fine Arts, Ha Noi, Vietnam; Emmanuel Moutafov, Associate Professor, Director, Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria; Ceren Ozpinar, Lecturer, Isik University and Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey; Horacio Ramos, Associate Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; Olaya Sanfuentes, Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Paulo Silveira, Professor, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil; Sandra Uskokovic, Assistant Professor, University of Dubrovnik, Arts & Restoration Department, Croatia.
CAA 2015 Professional-Development Fellowships
CAA awarded four 2015 Professional-Development Fellowships—two in the visual arts and two in art history—to graduate students in MFA and PhD programs across the United States. In addition, CAA has named two honorable mentions in art history and four in the visual arts. The fellows and honorable mentions also receive a complimentary one-year CAA membership and free registration for the 2016 Annual Conference where they were honored at Convocation and at a private reception.
Recipients of the fellowships in the visual arts were:
- Delano Dunn, School of Visual Arts, $10,000
- Derrick Woods-Morrow, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, $4,000 (gift of the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation)
Recipients of the fellowship in art history were:
- Marin Sarvé-Tarr, University of Chicago, $10,000
- Emilie Boone, Northwestern University, $2,500 (gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum Educational Trust)
The honorable mentions for art history were awarded to: Adrian Anagnost, University of Chicago; and Monica Bravo, Brown University. For the visual arts, honorable mentions are bestowed upon: Zhiwan Cheung, Carnegie Mellon University; Sarah Hewitt, Purchase College, State University of New York; Victoria Maidhof, San Francisco Art Institute; and Kaiya Rainbolt, San Diego State University.
Board of Directors Update
Results of the Board of Directors election were announced on February 3, 2016, during the Annual Members’ Business Meeting. The new directors are: appear below.
- Carma Gorman Associate Professor & Assistant Chair, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin
- Elizabeth Schlatter Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University of Richmond Museums, Richmond
- Andrew Schulz Associate Dean for Research & Associate Professor, College of Arts and Architecture, Pennsylvania State University
- Anuradha Vikram Lecturer, Graduate Public Practice, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles
They will take office at the next board meeting in May 2016.
New board officers were elected:
- Doralynn Pines, Vice President for External Affairs
- Jim Hopfensberger, Vice President for Committees
Affiliated Societies
CAA would like to welcome two new affiliated societies:
Thank You
Members of CAA’s Board of Directors and staff would like to extend their gratitude to all conference funders and sponsors, attendees, volunteers, and participants; the organization’s committees and award juries; the Washington Marriott Wardman Park staff; the museums and galleries that opened their doors to conference attendees free of charge; and everyone else involved in helping to make the 104th Annual Conference such a tremendous success!
A warm thanks to the following for their generous support of CAA:
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
- Artforum/Bookforum
- Art in America
- Blick Art Materials
- Bloomsbury
- Frieze
- Getty Foundation
- Katzen Arts Center
- Laurence King Publishing
- National Endowment for the Arts
- Pearson
- Prestel
- Richmond, The American International University in London
- Routledge
- Samuel H. Kress Foundation
- Terra Foundation for American Art
- Wyeth Foundation for American Art
- Yale University Press
Save the Date
CAA’s 105th Annual Conference will be held in New York, February 15–18, 2017.
About CAA
The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, websites, and other events. CAA focuses on a wide range of issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching.
Image Captions
Conference attendees gather for a Professional Development Roundtable (photograph by Bradley Marks)
Conference attendees meet vendors in the Book and Trade Fair (photograph by Bradley Marks)
Rick Lowe and LaToya Ruby Frazier in conversation in ARTspace (photograph by Bradley Marks)
Mentoring activities in the SEP Lounge (photograph by Bradley Marks)
Tania Bruguera speaks at Convocation (photograph by Bradley Marks)
Friends gather at the Opening Reception at the Katzen Art Center (photograph by Bradley Marks)
The 2016 participants in the CAA-Getty International Program (photograph by Bradley Marks)
Fellowship recipients and honorable mentions in art history (photograph by Bradley Marks)
Conference Registration Extended to January 6, 2016!
posted by Nia Page — December 18, 2015
UPDATE: CONFERENCE REGISTRATION HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2016.
The clock is ticking! Early Conference Registration Rates end December 21, 2015! Submit your Individual Registration Information to attend the largest gathering of visual arts professionals! This year, don’t miss Tania Bruguera, the chairs of the NEA and NEH, MacArthur Fellows LaToya Ruby Frazier and Rick Lowe, and much more!
We are very pleased to invite you to join us for the College Art Association’s Annual Conference. The 104th Annual Conference will be held in Washington, DC at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel from Wednesday, February 3 to Saturday, February 6, 2016. As the world’s largest international forum for professionals in the visual arts, the conference offers more than 200 sessions, panel discussions, roundtables, and meetings on topics in current art scholarship and practice. Join more than 4,000 artists, art historians, designers, museum directors and curators, arts administrators, and educators in networking opportunities and the exchange of ideas and information between colleagues from across the globe. We invite you to join us.
This year’s highlights include Convocation Keynote address by Cuban installation and performance artist, Tania Bruguera; Opening Night Reception at the Katzen Center at American University; and the Fourteenth Annual Distinguished Scholar session honoring Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History and Dean of Humanities at Duke University.
Additional highlights include the NEA and NEH 50th Anniversary Presentation Lecture with Jane Chu, Chair of the NEA, in conversation with William “Bro” Adams, Chairman of the NEH; the Annual Distinguished Artists’ Interviews with Joyce Scott, artist of social commentary on racism, sexism and violence, in conversation with George Ciscle, Curator-in-Residence of MICA; and conversation between two MacArthur “genius” fellowship recipients, Rick Lowe (2014) and LaToya Ruby Frazier (2015); Jarl Mohn; National Public Radio CEO and President, will speak on the visual arts and the public; a special tribute to Linda Nochlin, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at New York University; and the Book and Trade Fair with over 120 publishers, art materials manufacturers, and services in the arts, and much more.
The 2016 CAA conference will also host ARTspace, a conference within the conference. ARTspace is programmed by artists, and tailored to the interests and needs of artists. It is open to all attendees and includes the Annual Artists’ Interviews mentioned above, Media Lounge, and ARTexchange.
CAA has arranged for a curator-led tour of “Marvelous Objects: Surrealist Sculpture From Paris to New York” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; a US Capitol Building Tour; a tour of the Kogod House and Art Collection (Donor Circle and Life Members only); a tour of the Glenstone Museum, a Charles Gwathmey-designed private museum housing prime examples of Post-WWII works; and tours of DC-based artist studios and galleries.
CAA members receive substantial discounts on conference registration. For those members who are not eligible for CAA’s discounted memberships, the best overall value on combined membership and conference registration is with the Premium or Donor Circle level membership. CAA members at the Basic level planning to attend the Annual Conference are encouraged to upgrade to the Premium level, which when combined with the discounted conference registration will provide the greatest value. To upgrade your membership please email us or call 212.691.1051, ext. 1 with any feedback or questions.
CAA’s partners are offering exclusive discounts on airfare, car rentals, train travel, and hotel rooms to all conference attendees. Book now and save even more. It is strongly encouraged that you reserve your accommodations at one of the official Conference Hotels. Please note that CAA commits to a block of rooms at these hotels on behalf of its members and has a financial obligation to fill those blocks. Please help us avoid potential penalties and control costs for future events by staying at one of the official hotels.
We look forward to seeing you in DC!
Support CAA with a Gift to the Annual Fund
posted by Nia Page — December 10, 2015
As a member of the College Art Association, you understand the importance of the work of CAA in service to the individuals and institutions that make up the world’s largest international professional community in the visual arts. The Association supports and enhances the field through advocacy efforts on important issues such as those impacting populations, like part-time faculty, and the protection of archaeological and historical sites in countries of conflict, to name a few; vital professional tools like CAA’s Standards and Guidelines; critical projects like the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts; prestigious publishing grants for books; career-development resources, including the Online Career Center; Professional-Development Fellowships; new scholarship published in The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, and caa.reviews; and CAA’s forum for exchange of creative work, scholarly research and critical issues in the field at the Annual Conference. None of this would be possible without the support of dedicated members like you.
With an ever-changing academic and museum landscape, CAA is responding to the evolving needs of its constituents. Many new member opportunities are being created, such as flexible and expanded Annual Conference programming, as well as new communication tools and platforms to further our dialogue beyond the conference. Even as CAA innovates, it continues its longstanding leadership in career development for early, mid, and senior level visual-arts professionals.
Today, I ask that you support CAA’s important work with a gift to the Annual Fund. Your contribution will enable us to continue providing invaluable resources and services to members like you. Voluntary support from individuals is critical to our collective advancement, and your contribution to the Annual Fund makes this possible. Your gift will benefit those who share your dedication to the visual arts.
Should you have given in the past, please know that your gift was very much appreciated. We hope you will continue your generosity at the same or even greater level. On behalf of the artists, art historians, collectors, critics, curators, designers, educators, and other professionals who make up CAA, I thank you for your dedication. Please give generously!
Sincerely,
John J. Richardson
VP for External Affairs and President-Elect
P.S. This year’s conference in Washington, DC February 3–6 will be one that you will not want to miss. I look forward to seeing you there.
Support CAA’s Journals with a Gift to the Publications Fund
posted by Nia Page — December 08, 2015
CAA’s publications deliver the world’s leading scholarship in the visual arts in formats that include long-form essays, innovative artists’ projects, and critical reviews. With the addition of our new digital platforms, we can now engage readers with new multimedia forms of scholarly publications and broader interactive functionality.
In The Art Bulletin, online versions of essays can now incorporate supplemental media files, for example, allowing Halle O’Neal to animate the calligraphy on a jeweled pagoda painting and Lisa Pon to model the effects of Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles tapestries on sound and music in the Sistine Chapel. Art Journal’s website, Art Journal Open, publishes probing interviews with artists and curators, most recently by curator Dina Deitsch exploring the creative processes of three artists with whom she worked on exhibitions, William Lamson, Kate Gilmore, and robbinschilds. Our fully open-access online publication caa.reviews now includes about 150 reviews a year, and covers digital publications on diverse topics and geographic regions, like Hypercities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities (book and website, http://www.hypercities.com/). caa.reviews is now read on every continent, and its audience has grown over 100 percent since it became open access in January 2014.
Readers like you enable CAA to carry out our work. Please support our mission of advancing the highest standards of intellectual engagement in the arts by making a fully tax-deductible gift to the Publications Fund today.
Here are some are some highlights from CAA publications:
In The Art Bulletin:
- The long-form essay remains the backbone of the journal. Recent authors have included Sun-ah Choi on the medieval Chinese reception of an Indian statue of the Buddha, Kim Sexton on architectural manifestations of self-government in communal-period Italy, P. Park on surprising sources of artistic inspiration in late Chosŏn Korea,and Therese Dolan and Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby in twin essays on overlooked aspects of Manet’s Olympia
- In the “Whither Art History?” series, prominent art historians trace advances in the discipline, among them Florina Capistrano-Baker on diasporic art andFiliz Yenişehirlioğlu on global elements of Ottoman art and architecture
- Reviews of books on a wide range of topics, from temporality in Mesopotamian art, to the worldwide textile trade from 1500 to 1800, to art history through a Marxist lens
In Art Journal:
- In a project that will be of critical value to both present-day and future art historians and artists, the artist Carolee Schneemann shared thirty pages of key texts, artworks, and photographs from her personal archive; in the artist’s project “Yoga for Adjuncts,” Christian Nagler considered the working conditions of adjunct professors with wily humor
- Recent essays have featured Silvia Bottinelli on nomadism in Italian art and architecture of the 1960s and 1970s, Caroline V. Wallaceon the work of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition in diversifying US museum exhibitions, Raven Falquez Munsell on the impact of the overthrow of the Chilean Allende government on the 1974 Venice Biennale, and Christopher Tradowsky on Nietzschean ressentiment in current art of a political cast
- Reviews of new books on topics as diverse as how artists sustain their careers, the art of Bruce Nauman, and feminism in museum culture
- The website Art Journal Open launched a new feature, Bookshelf, with annotated snapshots of books in queue on the shelves of scholars and artists such as Steven Nelson, Judith Rodenbeck, and Lenore Chinn
In caa.reviews:
- Recently reviewed books included: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the Art of the Figure by Michael Cole, Aesthetic of the Cool: Afro-Atlantic Art and Music by Robert Ferris Thompson, Escultura monumental mexica (revised edition) by Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and Leonardo López Luján, and Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Present and Future of Photography by David Levi Strauss. Exhibitions reviewed include Italian Style: Fashion Since 1945 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Playthings: The Uncanny Art of Morton Bartlett at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In at the National Gallery of Art, and Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston
These highly regarded journals reach tens of thousands of readers around the world and serve as essential resources to those working in the visual arts—none of which would be possible without your support. Contributors who give at a level of $250 or higher are prominently acknowledged in the publication they support for four consecutive issues, as well as on the publication’s website for one year, through CAA News, and in the Annual Conference’s convocation booklet. On behalf of the scholars, critics, and artists who publish in the journals, we thank you for your continued commitment to maintaining a strong and spirited forum for the visual-arts community.
With best regards,
Gail Feigenbaum
Vice President for Publications
CAA Receives Mellon Grant to Support Online Resource for Academic Art Museums
posted by Nia Page — July 30, 2015
The College Art Association (CAA) has been awarded a $132,600 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the development of Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals (RAAMP), a free, publicly accessible website that will collect, store, and share resources for professionals in academic art museums. RAAMP will promote scholarship, advocacy, and discussion related to academic art museums and their contributions to the educational mission of their parent institutions. CAA and its Museum Committee will develop RAAMP and manage its peer-generated content with the assistance of project partners, which include the Association for Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) and the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC).
Linda Downs, CAA executive director, said, “The RAAMP project was initiated by the CAA Museum Committee members N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University of Richmond and Celka Straughn, Andrew W. Mellon Director of Academic Programs at the Spencer Museum of Art who recognized the professional needs of academic art museum to share resources in order to better integrate museum collections into interdisciplinary study through a social community system. CAA is excited about this important initiative that will provide a prototype for similar forums.”
“Through its College and University Art Museums program, the Mellon Foundation has been a long-term supporter of the integration of college and university art museums into the curriculum and research cultures of their host institutions,” said Mariët Westermann, vice president of the Mellon Foundation. “We are therefore pleased to provide a grant to CAA for the creation of an online repository and exchange hub that will further strengthen the collaboration between academic museums and their campus communities.”
RAAMP aims to strengthen the educational mission of academic museums and their parent institutions by providing a dynamic repository of resources, by functioning as a site for news and information, and by supporting public discussion through online forums. The anticipated primary users of RAAMP include academic museum staff: administrators, educators, curators, directors, and conservators. The site would also be a significant asset for university and college administrators, faculty and staff in art and art-history departments, undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars of academic museums. Because RAAMP’s content addresses particular demographic groups—higher education and the visual arts—that are also served by nonacademic museums, the project would be valuable to museum professionals from any institution or background.
RAAMP would specifically benefit users seeking publications, information, research, case studies, professional development, and networking opportunities. Support from the Mellon Foundation will help CAA to determine types of content that would be most beneficial to RAAMP’s audience and contributors, how best to deliver and share this content, and how to facilitate dialogue related to the project’s mission.
DeWitt Godfrey, CAA president and professor of art and art history at Colgate University, said, “This is an important step for the Association to strengthen ties with academic art museums throughout the United States.”
RAAMP was conceived during a 2013 CAA Annual Conference session organized by the Museum Committee, titled “The Position of Academic Programs in Campus Art Museums: What, Why, Who, and Where To?” Session attendees expressed the need to better and more efficiently share information, strategies, and best practices for communicating academic museums’ educational contributions to their parent institutions. Many museums have created innovative programs and practices to serve their campus communities and fully integrate their collections and activities into the academic mission of their college or university. Museums have also worked to apply quantitative and qualitative metrics for mission success.
Leading the project as principal investigators will be: N. Elizabeth Schlatter, deputy director and curator of exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums in Virginia and a member of CAA’s Museum Committee; and Celka Straughn, Andrew W. Mellon Director of Academic Programs at the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum of Art and a member of CAA’s Museum Committee. “We are excited to work with colleagues to further develop this accessible resource that reflects that many innovative activities happening at academic museums today. We hope it will serve academic art museums to promote collaboration and demonstrate their educational and scholarly contributions.”
About CAA
The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other programs, services, and events. CAA focuses on a wide range of advocacy issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching. Learn more about CAA at www.collegeart.org.
For more information please contact Nia Page, CAA director of membership, development, and marketing.
Support CAA’s Publications Fund
posted by Nia Page — June 02, 2015
This year, CAA’s journals made impressive use of their new digital platforms to provide access to their incredibly rich and influential back archive, engage an ever-broadening international audience, and explore new multimedia forms of scholarly publication. These digital efforts augment and support the journals’ longstanding mission to deliver the world’s leading scholarship in the visual arts in forms that engage the field at its most exciting frontiers while maintaining a commitment to the rigorous standards for which they are known.
We invite you to support our mission of advancing the highest standards of intellectual engagement in the arts by making a tax-deductible gift to the Publications Fund today.
Here are some recent highlights from CAA publications:
In The Art Bulletin:
- The long-form essay remains the cornerstone of the journal. Recent authors have included Marvin Trachtenberg on new elements in the history of the basilica of S. Lorenzo in Florence, Mark Rosen on Pietro Tacca’s sculptural portraits of slaves on a seventeenth-century monument in Livorno, Susan Siegfried’s exploration of the intersection of the classical ideal and post-Revolutionary fashion in a painting by Marie-Denise Viller, and Bridget Alsdorf on the figure of the gawker in woodcut illustrations by Félix Vallotton for this novel The Murderous Life
- For the “Whither Art History?” series, prominent art historians from around the world respond to that very inquiry about the direction of the discipline, among them Richard W. Hill Sr. on the art of being indigenous and Moye Okediji on the nature of African art
- Reviews of books on a wide range of topics, from prehistoric visual culture, to eighteenth-century eye miniatures, to humor and politics in recent German art
In Art Journal:
- The journal’s essays have recently featured Anna C. Chave on the career of Carl Andre, Luis M. Castañeda on mid-century art in Haiti, and Kenneth R. Allan on artists influenced by the thinking of Marshall McLuhan
- An artist’s project by Conrad Bakker delved into the library of Robert Smithson, and the artist Brian Molanphy offered a freewheeling annotated bibliography of ceramic art
- Art Journal Open, the journal’s independent website, has lately featured the interview format, with the artists William Lamson, Kate Gilmore, and the art duo robbinschilds each speaking about recent work with the curator Dina Deitsch, and Rudy Lemcke speaking with Tina Takemoto
- Reviews of new books on artists as diverse as Adrian Piper, Andrew Wyeth, and Andy Warhol; on Panamericanism during the Cold War; and on reevaluating modern artists who eschewed abstraction
In caa.reviews (now fully open access!):
- Continual publication reviews on diverse topics and geographic regions, including reviews of books: Performing China: Virtue, Commerce, and Orientalism in Eighteenth-Century England, 1660–1760 by Chi-ming Yang, Grupo Antillano: The Art of Afro-Cuba, edited by Alejandro de la Fuente, and Mio Wakita’s Staging Desires: Japanese Femininity in Kusakabe Kimbei’s Nineteenth-Century Souvenir Photography; and exhibitions: Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910, Passion and Virtuosity: Hendrick Goltzius and the Art of Engraving, and A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography
These highly regarded journals reach tens of thousands of readers around the world and serve as essential resources to those working in the visual arts—none of which would be possible without your support. Contributors who give at a level of $250 or higher are prominently acknowledged in the publication they support for four consecutive issues, as well as on the publication’s website for one year, through CAA News, and in the Annual Conference’s convocation booklet. On behalf of the scholars, critics, and artists who publish in the journals, we thank you for your continued commitment to maintaining a strong and spirited forum for the visual-arts community.
With best regards,
Gail Feigenbaum
Vice President for Publications
NEA Awards Seventh Consecutive Grant for ARTspace
posted by Nia Page — May 08, 2015
CAA has been awarded a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support the next installment of ARTspace, taking place during the 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, DC. Spearheaded by CAA’s Services to Artists Committee, ARTspace is a forum for programming designed by artists for artists that is among the most vital and exciting aspects of the conference. Held at each Annual Conference since 2001, ARTspace is intended to reflect the current state of the visual arts and arts education.
ARTspace offers free program sessions and includes diverse activities such as the Annual Distinguished Artists’ Interviews (most recently with William Pope.L and Ursula von Rydingsvard in New York in February 2015); screenings of film, video, and multimedia works; live performances; and papers and presentations that facilitate a conversational yet professional exchange of ideas and practices designed to engage CAA’s artist members as well as the general public.
The grant, which is the NEA’s seventh consecutive award to CAA for ARTspace, will help fund programs such as ARTexchange, the popular open-portfolio exhibition for artists; the Distinguished Artists’ Interviews; and the Media Lounge, a space dedicated to curated programs of film, video, and multimedia work. ARTspace programming at the 2015 conference in New York included panels that explored the shifting landscape of the field, from “Surveillance as Art Practice” and “Art Collectives and the Contemporary World” to “Balancing Act: Art, Family, and Other Distractions” and “Imagining an Alternative School of Art.” You can explore all of the 2015 ARTspace programming on the conference website.
CAA’s 104th Annual Conference will take place February 3–6, 2016, in Washington, DC. Through grants to thousands of nonprofits each year, the NEA promotes opportunities for people in communities across America to experience the arts and exercise their creativity.
Image Caption
Jenny Schlenzka of MoMA PS 1 interviews the artist William Pope.L during ARTspace at the 2015 Annual Conference in New York (photograph by Bradley Marks)
Support CAA’s Annual Fund
posted by Nia Page — April 27, 2015
Since 1911, the College Art Association has served the individuals and institutions that make up the world’s largest professional association in the visual arts. As you know, CAA supports and enhances the community in the visual arts through advocacy efforts; vital professional documents like CAA’s Standards and Guidelines; critical projects like the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts; prestigious publishing grants for book manuscripts; career-development resources including the Online Career Center; important new writing and scholarship published in The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, and caa.reviews; and CAA’s central forum for exchange of creative work and scholarly research at the Annual Conference.
What you may not realize is that CAA does a great deal behind the scenes to support its members. The organization subsidizes more than half of its members through discounted memberships for students, retirees, part-time faculty, and independent artists and scholars, and it provides reduced conference registration fees for student and retired members. CAA’s Strategic Plan (2015–2020) has made part-time faculty issues a priority, and the organization recently asked tenured faculty and administrators in the visual arts to implement its Guidelines for Part-Time Professional Employment. CAA has even devoted an entire website section providing resources for part-time faculty. At the conference, CAA offers Professional-Development Workshops and mentoring opportunities to artists, art historians, designers, and students at the Annual Conference. It also presents ARTspace, an annual forum of programming designed by artists for artists that is free and open to the public.
Today, I ask that you support all that CAA does with a gift to the Annual Fund.
Your contribution to the Annual Fund will enable CAA to continue providing invaluable resources to its members. Voluntary support from CAA members is critical to our collective advancement, and your contribution to the Annual Fund makes this important work possible.
On behalf of the artists, art historians, curators, critics, collectors, designers, educators, and other professionals who make up CAA, I thank you for your dedication. Please give generously!
Sincerely,
John J. Richardson
Vice President for External Affairs
CAA Salutes Its Fifty-Year Members
posted by Nia Page — April 23, 2015
CAA warmly thanks the many contributions of the following dedicated members who joined CAA in 1965 or earlier. This year, the annually published list welcomes eighteen artists, scholars, and curators whose distinguished exhibitions, publications, and teaching practices have shaped the direction and history of art over the last fifty years.
1965: Jean M. Borgatti; Norma Broude; Wanda M. Corn; Elaine K. Gazda; Diana Gisolfi; Dorothy F. Glass; Andree M. Hayum; Ellen V. Kosmer; Lillian D. MacBrayne; Jerry D. Meyer; Ann Lee Morgan; Myra N. Rosenfeld-Little; Ted E. Stebbins; Eugenia Summer; Charles Talbot; MaryJo Viola; Michele Vishny; and Wallace E. Weston.
1964: Richard J. Betts; Ruth Bowman; Vivian P. Cameron; Kathleen R. Cohen; Paula Gerson; Ronald W. Johnson; Jim M. Jordan; William M. Kloss; Rose-Carol Washton Long; Phyllis Anina Moriarty; Annie Shaver-Crandell; Judith B. Sobre; and Alan Wallach.
1963: Lilian Armstrong; Richard Brilliant; Eric G. Carlson; Vivian L. Ebersman; Francoise Forster-Hahn; Walter S. Gibson; Caroline M. Houser; Susan Koslow; E. Solomon; Lauren Soth; Richard E. Spear; Roxanna A. Sway; Athena Tacha; and Roger A. Welchans.
1962: Jo Anne Bernstein; Phyllis Braff; Jacquelyn C. Clinton; Shirley S. Crosman; Frances D. Fergusson; Gloria K. Fiero; Jaroslav Folda; Rosalind R. Grippi; Harlan H. Holladay; Seymour Howard; Alfonz Lengyel; Mary L. Maughelli; David Merrill; Francis V. O’Connor; John T. Paoletti; Aimee Brown Price; Nancy P. Sevcenko; Thomas L. Sloan; Elisabeth Stevens; Anne Betty J. Weinshenker; and William D. Wixom.
1961: Matthew Baigell; Margaret Diane David; Bowdoin Davis Jr.; David Farmer; J. D. Forbes; Isabelle Hyman; Henry A. Millon; Marion E. Roberts; and Conrad H. Ross.
1960: Shirley N. Blum; Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt; Dan F. Howard; Eugene Kleinbauer; Edward W. Navone; Linda Nochlin; and J. J. Pollitt.
1959: Adele M. Ernstrom; Geraldine Fowle; Carol H. Krinsky; James F. O’Gorman; and Ann K. Warren.
1958: Samuel Y. Edgerton Jr.; Carla Lord; Damie Stillman; and Clare Vincent.
1957: Marcel M. Franciscono; Bruce Glaser; E. Haverkamp-Begemann; Jane Campbell Hutchison; and Susan R. McKillop.
1956: Svetlana L. Alpers; John Goelet; Joel Isaacson; and Jack J. Spector.
1955: Lola B. Gellman; Irving Lavin; and Suzanne Lewis.
1954: Franklin Hamilton Hazlehurst; Patricia Cummings Loud; Thomas J. McCormick; Jules D. Prown; Irving Sandler; and Lucy Freeman Sandler.
1953: Dorathea K. Beard; Margaret McCormick; and Jack Wasserman.
1951: Wen C. Fong.
1950: Alan M. Fern; and Marilyn J. Stokstad.
1949: Ann-Sofi Lindsten.
1947: David G. Carter; Ellen P. Conant; and Ilene H. Forsyth.
1945: James S. Ackerman.
Membership Categories and Conference Registration
posted by Nia Page — February 26, 2015
This past spring CAA restructured its membership program in order to provide more options and better serve its members. CAA added new benefits such as online access to The Art Bulletin and Art Journal as well as discounted access to JPASS. CAA also added new, discounted membership categories for part-time faculty and independent artists and scholars. These changes were made in direct response to important feedback from CAA members.
The four income-based levels of membership that CAA used for many years were replaced by two general categories: Basic and Premium. The Basic level ($125 a year) provides a lower-cost option for members who aren’t planning to attend the Annual Conference. If they do attend, Basic members receive a 20 percent discount on registration. The Premium level ($195 a year) costs a bit more but offers a much greater value for conference attendees: a 55 percent registration discount.
CAA communicated this information through letters, eblasts, a presentation on CAA’s YouTube Channel, and an Individual Member Guide and member FAQs posted on the website. We have since learned from members, however, that some confusion has arisen over the new membership categories and their respective benefits related to conference discounts.
We are in the process of reviewing and updating the Membership section of the website, and we will aim to be clearer in member correspondence throughout the year. Please keep in mind that if you are renewing your membership and you know at that time that you will attend the Annual Conference, the Premium membership with its larger conference registration discount will provide you with the greatest overall value when combined with the conference cost.
If you ever have any questions about your membership, please do not hesitate to contact us at membership@collegeart.org. Thank you for your continued support of CAA.
John Richardson, CAA Vice President for External Affairs
Professor and Chair, Department of Art and Art History, Wayne State University