CAA News Today

Art Council of the African Studies Association

The current board members of the Art Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) are: President – Silvia Forni, Curator, Anthropology, Department of World Cultures, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; President Elect/Vice President – Shannen Hill, Associate Curator for African Art and Head of the AAAPI Department, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Senior Fellow, National Museum of African Art; Past President – Dominique Malaquais, Senior Researcher, Centre d’Etudes des Mondes Africains, CNRS; Secretary – Liese Van der Watt, Independent Writer and Researcher, London; Treasurer – Jordan Fenton, Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art, Miami University, Ohio; Website Editor – Cory Gundlach, PhD student (ABD) in African Art History, and Associate Curator of African and Non-Western Art at the University of Iowa Museum of Art; Newsletter Editor – Deborah Stokes, Curator for Education, National Museum of African Art; Assistant Newsletter Editor – Leslie Rabine, Professor Emerita at the University of California, Davis; ASA Liaison – Cécile Fromont, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History at the University of Chicago; CAA Liaison – Yaëlle Biro, Associate Curator for African Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Eric Appau Asante, Lecturer of African Art and Culture; Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology; Boureima Diamitani, Executive Director of the West African Museums Programme; and Sidney Kasfir, Professor Emerita, Art History Department, Emory University.

Art Libraries Society of North America and the Visual Resources Association Foundation

A Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management (SEI 2016) will be held at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill from June 7 to 10, 2016. Founded over ten years ago, SEI is a joint project of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF). It is designed to serve a wide range of professionals eager to learn about new technologies and update job skills: museum staff, visual-resources curators, librarians, archivists, art educators, and all those managing digital image media. This intensive workshop offers a mix of hands-on and lecture sessions presented by expert instructors. Registration for SEI 2016 opened in January. Please feel free to contact the SEI cochairs with any questions: Greta Bahnemann, University of Minnesota; and Jesse Henderson, University of Wisconsin.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) Leadership Seminar will take place June 19–24, 2016, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The application deadline is January 15, 2016. Join colleagues from throughout the United States and beyond for AAMG’s flagship professional development program at Northwestern’s prestigious Kellogg School Center for Nonprofit Management. Dynamic, engaging, highly interactive by design, and interspersed with team and individual problem-solving exercises in leadership and management, this intensive five-day certificate program will allow you to learn from one another and be guided and inspired by nationally recognized scholars drawn principally from Kellogg’s renowned faculty. To learn more about the program and to download an application, please visit the AAMG website.

Association of Art Editors

The Association of Art Editors (AAE) website underwent a major remodeling in the summer of 2015. The New York–based graphic designer Matt See created the fresh and attractive template, which was refined, detailed, and implemented by DataCom Ota of Duluth, Minnesota. The site’s format is now simpler, easier on the eyes (more legible type and appealing colors), and more flexibly viewable (including via smartphone). Among other improvements, the member entries and services index have greater clarity, and job opportunities are linked via the homepage rather than incorporated in the Services section, as before. Over all, navigation has been much enhanced. The AAE website is accessible—free to all.

International Center of Medieval Art

The International Center of Medieval Art (IMCA) is pleased to announce and solicit applications for two recently created awards. First, the Graduate Student Travel Award. Three grants will be awarded this year, at $3,000 each, for PhD students in the early stages of dissertation research. Applications are due on March 1, and applicants must be ICMA members. The second award, the new ICMA book prize, will be awarded in 2017 to the best single-authored, printed book on any topic in medieval art published in 2016. Books published in English, French, Spanish, Italian, or German are eligible for consideration. For more information, please contact Ryan Frisinger.

Italian Art Society

The annual members’ business meeting of the Italian Art Society (IAS) will take place at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference on Friday, February 5, 2016, 7:30–9:00 AM in the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington 4, Exhibition Level. In addition to reports on IAS activities and election results, three IAS founders will be honored, the 2016 IAS/Kress lecturer will be announced, and recipients of various grants and awards will be recognized. The IAS long session, “Beyond Texts and Academies: Rethinking the Education of the Early Modern Italian Artists,” organized by Jesse Locker of Portland State University, will follow at 9:30 AM in Washington 1, Exhibition Level. The IAS-sponsored short session, “Rethinking the Rhetoric and Force of Images,” organized by Robert Williams of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Anna Marazuela Kim of the Courtauld Institute of Art, will take place the same day, 12:30–2:00 PM, in the Maryland Suite, Lobby Level.

The deadline for the new IAS Conference Grant for Modern Topics is February 15, 2016. Up to $1,000 will be provided to subsidize transoceanic travel to present in an IAS-sponsored session on the art, architecture, or visual culture of Italy from the early nineteenth century to the present.

Public Art Dialogue

Public Art Dialogue (PAD) is excited to announce two events at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC. On Thursday, February 4, 6:00–8:00 PM, PAD will host a Public Art Salon and Award Reception in conjunction with Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) at the WPA gallery at 2124 8th Street NW. Local artists will show slides and talk about their public art projects in and around DC. At the event, Kirk Savage, professor of history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, will receive the 2016 PAD Award for Achievement in the Field of Public Art. On Friday, February 5, 5:30–7:00 PM, Savage will chair a roundtable, “Public Art: Process and Practice,” with Thomas Luebke of the US Commission of the Fine Arts and Lucy Kempf of the National Capital Planning Commission.

The Fall 2015 Public Art Dialogue (PAD) Newsletter has an interview by Marisa Lerer and Jennifer K. Favorite with Sarah Beetham on “Confederate Monuments and the Black Lives Matter Movement.” As Lerer and Favorite note: “Countries around the world, from Syria to Spain to Argentina, have grappled with the bronze and stone sculptural legacy of leaders who represent a dark chapter in their nation’s past.” This issue has a strong link PAD’s forthcoming journal issue, “The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence,” edited by Erika Doss. Also in the newsletter, Marisa Lerer has an essay “Public Art’s Role in International Biennials.” She considers the role of public-art practices in contemporary biennials and includes responses from curators, artists, and academics from Cuba, the United States, Ireland, and Canada. The guest editors of two special issues of PAD’s journal are seeking papers and artists’ projects for the topics “Borders and Boundaries” (coeditors: Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie; submission deadline: March 1, 2016); and “Higher Ed: College Campuses and Public Art” (editor: Monika Burczyk; submission deadline: September 1, 2016). For more information, go to the PAD website.

SECAC

The SECAC board and membership voted to change the name of the organization from the Southeastern College Art Conference to SECAC.

Awards presented at SECAC’s annual meeting, which took place October 22–24, 2015, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are:

• Excellence in Teaching: Debra Murphy, University of North Florida
• Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication: Bibiana Obler, George Washington University
• Outstanding Artistic Achievement: Matthew Kolodziej, University of Akron
• Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of Contemporary Materials: Hannah Israel and Michele McCrillis, Columbus State University
• Outstanding Professional Achievement in Graphic Design: Jerry Johnson, Troy University; and Scott Fisk, Samford University

The President’s Awards are:

• Award for Exemplary Achievement: Michael Aurbach, Vanderbilt University
• Certificates of Merit: Thomas Brewer, University of Central Florida; Carol Crown, University of Memphis; and Virginia Derryberry, University of North Carolina, Asheville

The Juried Exhibition featured:

• First-place award: Michael Holsombeck, Chattanooga State Community College
• Second-place awards: Efram Burk of Curry College; and Sara Madandar, University of Texas at Austin
• $5,000 Artist’s Fellowship: Duane Paxson, Troy University
• $5,000 William R. Levin Award for Research in the History of Art: John Ott, James Madison University

Society of Architectural Historians

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) will hold its next annual international conference April 6–10, 2016, at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 East Green Street, in Pasadena, California. Over seven hundred people from around the world will convene to share new research on the history of the built environment from antiquity to the critical present. “New Local/Global Infrastructures” is the theme of the 2016 Pasadena/Los Angeles conference, which includes forty-two sessions with papers, as well as roundtables, exhibits, talks, and public architecture tours. Regional sessions include “Los Angeles Infrastructure: Design, Aesthetics, Publics,” “Styles, Revival Styles, California Styles,” and “Reappraising California Counterculture.” Speakers include Eric Avila, professor of urban cultural history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Dana Cuff, UCLA architecture professor and director of the cityLAB research center. SAH will present “Surveying L.A.: Past, Present, Future,” a public seminar that will take an in-depth look at SurveyLA, the city’s comprehensive study of historic resources funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the City of Los Angeles. Panelists will discuss the local and global implications and applications of SurveyLA and its website, HistoricPlacesLA. Early registration ends February 3, 2016. View the complete program and register online.

Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture

Following voting in December 2015, the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has elected Ksenia Nouril as its new secretary/treasurer for a two-year term, succeeding Yelena Kalinsky. In addition, Amy Bryzgel will replace Ksenya Gurshtein as the web news editor for a one-year term.

On December 11–12, several SHERA members participated in “The 100 Years of Suprematism Conference” at the Harriman Institute, organized by the Malevich Society. The conference proved to be an important international event, bringing together scholars from the United States, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. The program of the conference is available on the website of the Malevich Society.

At CAA’s Annual Conference in February 2016, SHERA will sponsor the following sessions: “Collecting, Curating, Canonizing, Critiquing: The Institutionalization of Eastern European Art,” chaired by Ksenia Nouril; and a double session led by Alison Hilton called “Exploring Native Traditions in the Arts of Eastern Europe and Russia.”

Vivian Woo is CAA marketing and development manager.

The Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) held its 2015 meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—the first time ever in a city north of the Mason-Dixon line. This expansion may reflect “the continual growing membership of the organization beyond the traditional confines of the south,” as Kurt Pitluga, an art historian at Slippery Rock University and director of this year’s SECAC, put it in the conference program.

From October 21 to 24, 2015, the industrial city was descended upon by students, educators, and administrators from universities, colleges, community colleges, art schools, and museums, as well as by independent artists and scholars. The four-day event at the Wyndham Grand Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh offered a rich variety of sessions that encouraged conversation and facilitated cooperation about pertinent creative, scholarly, and educational issues among professionals in higher education.

Representing CAA at SECAC this year were Anna Cline, development and marketing assistant, and myself. CAA’s participation as an exhibitor at the conference—alongside the fine-art paper producer Canson, the publisher Thames and Hudson, and the book distributor Scholar’s Choice—was a great opportunity to connect face to face with current CAA members and to meet prospective members. Our table displayed the latest editions of the graduate-program directories, membership brochures, and free copies of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts—a publication that was especially warmly received. Most important, our presence reminded SECAC attendees of CAA’s own Annual Conference next year in Washington, DC, taking place February 3–6, 2016.

SECAC’s 2015 theme—“confluence”—alluded to Pittsburgh’s geographic location on the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, which form the Ohio River, and likened it to the conceptual convergence and fluidity of borders related to art, architecture, design, education, and pedagogy today. Highlights of the conference included sessions on various topics in art and design, including “Visual Art and the Aesthetics of Cuteness,” which examined Japanese culture and the power of cuteness in the arts, and “Is Graphic Design Fine Art? Does It Matter?,” where graphic designers and fine artists drew contrasts and comparisons to each other while also exploring the rise of the “meme” and the role of art and design in the internet age. The keynote address by Terry Smith, an art historian and theorist at the University of Pittsburgh, examined the two concepts in the title of his talk, “Defining Contemporaneity; Imagining Planetarity,” in an effort to finding productive connections between them.

Conference attendees were treated to perfect sunny fall weather in a city that offered plenty of art and culture outside the doors of the conference hotel. Gallery crawls were scheduled to visit the gallery Future Tenant, the Society for Contemporary Craft, and the Andy Warhol Museum. Paying tribute to the artist in his hometown, the Warhol Museum treated attendees to seven whole floors of gallery and exhibition space with an art collection that includes approximately nine hundred paintings, one hundred sculptures, and thousands of works on paper, prints, and photographs—a must see for any art lover visiting Pittsburgh. In addition, buses were arranged for attendees to visit the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, and the University Art Gallery at the University of Pittsburgh, among others.

Thank you, SECAC for allowing CAA to connect with familiar and new faces. We will see you again next year!

Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH)

The Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH) is very pleased to announce the establishment of a new program that will strengthen intellectual connections among art history disciplines in different regions of the world. With generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Getty Foundation, and the Terra Foundation for American Art, ARIAH’s East Asia Fellowship program will enable twelve scholars from countries in East Asia to conduct research at ARIAH member institutes on any topic in the visual arts. The project is funded for a three-year period, beginning in 2016, with four fellowships offered each year.

The East Asia Fellowship program is open to art history scholars from Japan, Mongolia, the People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong and Macau), the Republic of China (Taiwan), and South Korea. Each East Asia Fellow will be hosted by an ARIAH member institute, and will also have the opportunity to travel to other research centers during the fellowship period, which will last three to four months. Fellowships will be awarded through an open, competitive application process. The deadline for the first of three rounds of fellowships is December 31, 2015. Candidates can find more information about the program, including application instructions, at www.ariah.info/east_asia_fellowship.html.

More information about ARIAH, including a complete list of member institutes, can be found at www.ariah.info.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) Annual Conference: Call for Proposals

Communities in Dialog: Models of Best Practices for Academic Museums, Galleries, and Collections

When: Tuesday and Wednesday, May 24-25, 2016
Where: Katzen Arts Center, American University, Washington DC
Deadline for Submissions: Monday, November 30th, 2015

The AAMG conference committee requests proposals on topics that address and can help establish guidelines, benchmarks, and best practices in all areas of academic museum and galleries, including, but not limited to: collections care and registration, governance, assessment, community engagement, teaching and museum education, exhibitions, public programming, fundraising, and professional development. Topics may address systemic challenges and present model programs that could become “templates” for the field.

AAMG seeks proposals that are representative of a cross-section of the academic field, including anthropology, art, history, science, and natural history museums, galleries, and collections. AAMG particularly encourages students and faculty to submit.

Submission Guidelines:  A one-page outline of presentation proposal plus a contact list and CVs of each participant should be sent electronically to Vice President of Programs Leonie Bradbury, vp-programs@aamg-us.org  If multiple presenters please add a one paragraph abstract for each paper or subtopic.

More details online at AAMG Annual Conferences.

The Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture (HGCEA)

The Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture (HGCEA) recently changed its name to Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art and Architecture (HGSCEA).

Northern California Art Historians

Call for Papers: “Zones of Representation: Photographing Contested Landscapes, Contemporary West Coast Perspectives on Photography and Photograph-Based Media,” symposium organized by Makeda Best (California College of the Arts), Bridget Gilman (Santa Clara University), and Kathy Zarur (California College of the Arts), at SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA, on Saturday, April 23, 2016.

Contemporary global events and phenomena continue to shape visual interpretations of economic, social, environmental, and political geographies, and to disrupt conceptions of region, nation, citizenship, and community. “Zones of Representation” will consider how photographers and time-based media artists have responded to transformations in the global landscape through new ideas about the function of photographic media, and the shifting roles of makers and audiences. We want to know: how can novel visual practices disrupt traditional narratives of spatial representation?; in what unique ways do artists in time-based media acknowledge and respond to the historical contribution of their medium in defining, producing, and perpetuating these same narratives?; what new connections do these practices demonstrate and reveal?; and, in what ways do contemporary technologies, modes of distribution, and access impact interactions with the land?

We invite papers that address the expanded role of photography and time-based media in global landscape discourses and social fabrics. Proposals on contemporary topics or new perspectives on historic materials are encouraged. Proposals from image makers are also welcome. Please send a 300-word proposal, a one-paragraph biographical statement, and full contact information to zonesofrepresentation@gmail.com by January 8, 2015.

“Zones of Representation” aims to connect artists, historians, curators and arts professionals, and students in Northern California, facilitating a regional network for the latest art historical scholarship. The symposium is presented in collaboration with SF Camerawork and is co-sponsored by the Northern California Art Historians (NCAH), a College Art Association affiliated society.

American Society of Appraisers

The American Society of Appraisers will offer Signs and Symbols in the Visual Arts, a 2-day course, on January 15-16, 2016, at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA.

Since the beginning of history, human beings have used visual images to signify concepts, beliefs, and ideas. This class will explore visual vocabularies and how they are used in material culture. We will look at images of the cosmos, the earth, geometric forms, animals, plants and the human body and how they are used in art, architecture and design. The focus will be on imagery of the European tradition, though examples from India, China, Japan and indigenous American cultures will also be considered. Because painting, sculpture, books, furniture, decorative arts, buildings, coins, and other objects will be used as sources, the course will be quite useful for those interested in visual studies and anyone wishing to deepen their appreciation of the rich vocabulary of art, architecture and design.

For more information, visit http://www.appraisers.org/Education/View-Course?CourseID=528

Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and Visual Resources Association (VRA)

Join the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association (VRA) March 8-12, 2016 in Seattle, Washington for the third joint conference of the two organizations. The beautiful and technology-driven city of Seattle was proposed by a coalition of members from the VRA Pacific Rim Chapter and the Northwest Chapter of ARLIS/NA. Both chapters have proposed a theme of “Natural Connections” to highlight both the shared values of ARLIS and VRA as well as the close relationship in the Puget Sound area between its people and nature.

In addition to inspirational speakers, information-packed sessions, a preconference THATcamp, marquis events at the city’s hallmark art and library institutions, and many terrific opportunities for making “Natural Connections” with colleagues and friends old and new, the conference schedule allows a free weekend at either end. Come early, stay late, and check out what Seattle has to offer:  stunning natural landscapes, unique architecture, fabulous food & drink, and a huge variety of cultural activities. There is no other place like Seattle to visit in March when it offers cherry blossoms as a cure to your late-winter doldrums.

The Italian Art Society (IAS)

The Italian Art Society (IAS) is delighted to announce the success of its “Campaign for 500.” In early November we reached and surpassed our goal of 500 members, an historic high. Thanks to the generosity of one of our patron members, Mr. Peter Folgliano, next year we will be able to offer two new research and publication grants of up to $1000.00 each. One will be for graduate students, and the other for PhD holders, whose projects concern art and architecture in Italy between 1250 and 1600.

The next IAS/Kress lecture will take place at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, on Wednesday, June 1, 2016 in Florence, Italy. The speaker will be a senior or established scholar working on a topic related to Florence or its environs (application deadline January 8, 2015, please see our website, www.italianartsociety.org, for more information).

The IAS is pleased to announce the recipients of the extra research and publication grants we offered this summer: Dr. Allison Levy (Independent Scholar), for her book, Misfits, Monstrosities, and Madness at the Villa Ambrogiana and Dr. Johanna Heinrichs (Dominican University) for her book, Mobile Lives, Stable Homes: The Palladian Villa between City and Country.

Mid America College Art Association (MACAA)

Building on the success of the 2014 conference, the 2016 MACAA conference will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio and hosted by the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), with School of Art Director Kate Bonansinga and Kris Holland serving as Conference Co-Chairs. Numerous regional institutions and their faculty have been taking part in planning the conference including Ball State University, Miami University, Thomas Moore College, University of Dayton, University of Toledo, Wayne State University, and Western Michigan University. DAAP is also collaborating with FotoFocus 2016 on inviting and sponsoring keynote speakers.

The title of the conference, Studio Shift: MACAA2016 @ DAAP, was selected to underscore the constantly evolving character of art and design. During the last several decades there has been an escalating interest in socially engaged art and design. In this post-studio context, creative practitioners release control to the audience. While this conference will focus on past, present, and future kinds of creative research space for artists, designers, historians, curators, and critics, other presentation topics are also welcome. We welcome student participation in MACAA 2016 as well. The deadline for session proposals is December 1, 2015. The conference hotel is the Kingsgate Marriott on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.

MACAA continues to contract Eastern Illinois University continuing education for conference and membership support services. In 2014, MACAA was established as a non-profit registered in the State of Michigan and retained the services of a CPA to streamline its accounting and business practices. Since the last conference, we have elected Christopher Olszewski (Savannah College of Art and Design) as President of the organization, Barbara Giorgio (Ball State University) as Secretary, and welcome nine new board members. In addition to Kate Bonansinga (DAAP) and Kris Holland (DAAP), we are happy to welcome Mary Eisendrath (Virginia Commonwealth University), Heather Hertel (Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania), Jennifer Murray (Loyola University Chicago), Rod Northcutt (Miami University), Elizabeth Olton (University of New Mexico), and Scott Thorp (Georgia Regents University). Our new representative to Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) is Guen Montgomery (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

The 2014 MACAA conference, “Mash-Up: Navigating Art and Academia in This Millennium,” was held October 22-25, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas. The Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) was the conference host, with Dr. Scott A. Sherer serving as MACAA Conference Chair and Professor Greg Elliott serving as UTSA institutional coordinator. The city of San Antonio, with its well-known cultural history, provided a great foundation for camaraderie.

The conference featured 41 panels and presentations regarding diverse topics in studio disciplines, art history, and museum practices. Conference participants enjoyed a cabaret-style Hometown Artist’s Rodeo, organized by Ken Little (UTSA) and hosted by the Southwest School of Art; a keynote performance by The Art Guys hosted by the McNay Art Museum; and a keynote talk by Joseph Seipel (Virginia Commonwealth University) hosted by the San Antonio Museum of Art. Participants enjoyed presentations and extended discussions regarding research and creative endeavors.

The Members Meeting featured door prizes supplied by the University of Texas Press and Routledge/Taylor and Francis. The Green Bag Lady — Teresa VanHatten-Granath (Denver, CO) — contributed beautiful eco-friendly hand-made bags for all participants. Paula Owen, President of the Southwest School of Art, juried the Members’ Exhibition, held at the UTSA Art Gallery. Ellen Mueller (West Virginia Wesleyan College, Buckhannon, WV) won Best in Show and Rosemary Meza-DesPlas (El Centro College, Dallas, TX) was awarded Honorable Mention.

Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture, Inc. (SHERA)

The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture, Inc. (SHERA) is actively participating in the yearly convention of the Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), which took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 19-22, 2015.  SHERA members organized multiple sessions and roundtables on a wide range of topics covering history of art, theory of aesthetics, architecture, textile design, film, photography, and fashion among others.  A roundtable discussion devoted to the state of the discipline and new research in histories of art in Russia and the countries of East and Central Europe also took place at this convention.

SHERA has successfully launched its visiting scholar program to Russia by arranging visa invitations this summer for two British scholars, members of SHERA, as part of the visiting scholar program with the Russian State University of Humanities in Moscow (RGGU). The visiting scholar program enables scholars to conduct individual research while being involved in educational activities with a partner institution.  Apart from RGGU, SHERA has established working relationship with the Department of Art History of the European University in St. Petersburg.  Inquiries about the application process should be directed to: shera.artarchitecture@gmail.com.

Association of Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH)

Association of Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH) cosponsored with The Università of Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy an international conference on Arts and Politics, November 4-8, 2015.
Members of ATSAH who presented inlcude Profs. Maureen Pelta, Moore College of Arts and Design, PA; Tina Bizzarro, Rosemont College, PA; Sarah Lippert, University of Michigan-Flint; Emilie Passignat, University of Florence, Italy; Brian Steel, Texas Tech University; Debra Murphy, University of North Florida; Liesbeth Grotenhuis, Hanze University, Groningen, Netherlands; and Liana De Girolami Cheney, President of ATSAH.

Liana De Girolami Cheney, PhD, President of the Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH), recently published articles in the following publications:

“Lavinia Fontana’s Two Minervas,” Woman’s Art Journal (Fall/Winter 2015), 30-40.

“Sofonisba Anguissola’s Ponce Portrait of a Young Man,” SOURCE: Notes in the History of Art Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2015), 39-47.

“Giorgio Vasari’s Saint Michael: A Symbol of Neoplatonic Light,” Journal of Religious Studies, Davis Publishing Company, Vol. 3, No. 3 (May-June 2015), 152-66.

“Giorgio Vasari’s Saint Francis: Aretine Fervor,” Journal of Literature and Art Studies, David Publishing Company, Vol. 5, No. 8 (October 2015), 859-73.

“Giorgio Vasari’s “Sala degli Elementi” in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence: The Symbolism of Saturn as Heavenly Air,” in Heavenly Discourses, ed. Nicholas Campion (Bristol, UK: Sophia Centre Press, 2015), 14-24.

“Edward Burne-Jones’ Heavenly Conception: The Days of Creation,” in Brian Abbott, ed. City of Stars: New York: The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena (2015), 75-86.

Community College Professors of Arts and Art History

After successful sessions at last year’s CAA and FATE Conferences, the Community College Professors of Arts and Art History (CCPAAH) will hold two events at this year’s CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC. Our business meeting will be held on Friday, February 5, from 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM. Please bring a project idea to share with your colleagues. Our session “In and out of the Studio: New ideas for Art Appreciation” will be held at 12:30 PM on Thursday, February 4. We are looking for additional presenters who are doing interesting things in Art Appreciation. If you are interested in presenting or have any questions, please contact Susan Altman. We look forward to seeing you at the conference!

Japan Art History Forum

Yurika Wakamatsu, PhD candidate at Harvard University, was selected as the winner of the 2015 Chino Kaori Memorial Essay Prize for an essay titled “Feminizing Art in Modern Japan: Noguchi Shōhin (1847-1917) and the Changing Conceptions of Art and Womanhood.” The prize was established by the Japan Art History Forum in 2003 in memory of distinguished colleague Chino Kaori, and is awarded annually to the best research paper written in English on a Japanese art history topic.

American Academy in Rome

The American Academy in Rome (AAR) invites applications for the 2016 Rome Prize competition. Up to thirty fellowships (from six months to two years) are awarded to emerging and established artists and scholars working in a variety of disciplines, including a stipend, room & board, and individual workspace at our eleven-acre center in Rome. Please visit aarome.org/apply for submission guidelines. Applications are due November 1.

AAR presents Bodies of Knowledge, the 2015 – 2016 series of lectures, exhibitions and events. Programming features artists and scholars offering multiple readings across disciplinary and geographical boundaries — questioning assumptions about the ways in which we structure knowledge and how these categories define our understanding of history, identity and culture. Fall events in Rome include a conversation with artist Isaac Julien and curator Mark Nash on filmmaking inspired by architect Lina Bo Bardi, and an exhibition of Cy Twombly photographs, accompanied by a talk with photographer Sally Mann. In New York, the Academy presents an evening on poetry and language with Edward Hirsch and Robert Polito, and a panel discussion on cultural patrimony and collective responsibility with scholar C. Brian Rose, antiquities expert Deborah Lehr and art historian James Cuno. Visit aarome.org for details.

Women’s Caucus for Art

The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) is pleased to announce Susan M. King (previously Susan King Obarski), Ph.D., as the incoming president of the organization. An art historian and artist, she teaches at the Laguna College of Art and Design and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. Her doctorate in Visual Studies at UC, Irvine, “Surrealism: A Marxist Enterprise in 1930s London,” included a chapter on artist Eileen Agar. She recently reviewed the J.M.W. Turner exhibitions and catalogue for caa.reviews (in press). Susan is a long time board member of WCA and past chair of the Lifetime Achievement Awards. Her two-year term as president begins in February 2016 after the CAA and WCA conferences. One of her key goals is to cross the generational divide of feminist artists, writers, and scholars to engage an open and fruitful dialogue on a range of feminist and activist issues. To that end, she is curating WATER: AN ESSENTIAL CONVERSATION, featuring historical posters from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics and contemporary graphic and video art. Founded in 1972, the WCA is an affiliate society of CAA and a founding member of The Feminist Art Project. More at nationalwca.org.

Renaissance Society of America

The Renaissance Society of America will hold its 62nd annual meeting in Boston, 31 March–2 April 2016. The program will include nearly 700 sessions, with more than 200 in Renaissance and early modern art history. The full, searchable program and schedule can be viewed on our website.

The Renaissance Society of America annually awards short-term grants supporting research projects and publications that aim to advance scholarly knowledge about the Renaissance. Many grants in art history are funded by the generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, through the Kress Mid-Career Research and Publication Fellowships in Renaissance Art History and the Kress Short-Term Research Library Fellowships for Art Historians programs. Please see our website for more information. Applicants must be members of RSA. Application deadline is 1 December 2015.

Public Art Dialogue

The newest issue of Public Art Dialogue (Volume 5, Issue Number 1) has been published. Edited by John Craig Freeman and Mimi Sheller, it is devoted to the theme of Hybrid Space and Digital Public Art. Articles include “Down the Rabbit Hole” by Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum; “Networked Monumental: Site, Production, and Distributed Publics—Online, and in Everyday Life,” by Dylan Gauthier; “Future Museums Now—Augmented Reality Musings” by Geoffrey Alan Rhodes; “#sQavengeRhunt: LoVid” by Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus; and “The Digital: A False Division?” by Patrick Lichty. Two interviews by Dorothy Santos are included: Kate Durban and Jim Dessicino. Finally, there are two book reviews: one on Vladimir Geroimenko’s Augmented Reality Art: From an Emerging Technology to a Novel Creative Medium by Lenore Metrick-Chen; and a second on Ricciarda Belgiosojoso’s Constructing Urban Space with Sounds and Music by Shawn Greenlee. More information is available on the journal’s website.

Association of Academic Museums & Galleries

AAMG/Kellogg 2016 Leadership Seminar: Join colleagues from throughout the U.S. and beyond for AAMG’s flagship professional development program at the prestigious Kellogg School Center for Nonprofit Management, Northwestern University. Now accepting applications online. APPLICATION DEADLINE JANUARY 15, 2016.

WHO: Faculty drawn from the Kellogg School of Management Center for Nonprofit Management and seasoned professionals in the academic museum field. Up to 40 Seminar Fellows selected from a national and international application pool by the Application Review Team.

WHAT: A Certificate Program. Intensive, week-long, highly interactive learning and sharing experience with top faculty in the field of leadership and management and academic museum and gallery colleagues from across the U.S. and abroad.

WHEN: June 19 – June 24, 2016

WHERE: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois (metro-Chicago)

TUITION: $4,500. Limited scholarship funds may be available.

Association for Latin American Art

ALAA has launched a redesigned website aimed at providing current news and events on Latin American art to the public. The website features updated information on the ALAA bylaws, officers, book and dissertation awards, a newsletter archive, and a list of academic programs that offer graduate degrees in art history with a focus on Latin America. A Members Portal allows registered ALAA members to access a membership directory, discover fellow members’ research interests, and contribute to the public Events Calendar.

Triennial Conference: ALAA is pleased to invite proposals for papers to be presented at its Fourth Triennial Conference “Art at Large: Public and Monumental Arts in the Americas.” Hosted by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, the conference will be held the weekend of March 18–20, 2016 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Deadline September 15, 2015.

Book Award: ALAA announces its Fourteenth Annual Book Award for the best scholarly book published on the art of Latin America from the Pre-Columbian era to the present. Deadline November 15, 2015.

Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey

AMCA is currently accepting submissions for the 2016 Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art. Established in 2010, the award aims to recognize and promote excellence in the field of modern and contemporary Arab art. The prize honors our respected colleague and dear friend, Rhonda (1979-2010), who was, at the time of her tragic passing, in the process of researching a doctoral dissertation on modern Palestinian art in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University. Over the last five years, the prize has recognized excellence in graduate work completed on a variety of subjects in a number of disciplines at universities in the U.S. and abroad. This year, we are opening the competition to graduate students as well as to recent post-doctoral students who earned a PhD no earlier than 2013.

The prize is offered to a graduate student or recent PhDs working in any discipline whose paper is judged to provide the most significant contribution to the disciplines of Art History and Middle East Studies. Submissions must have been produced between June 2014 and December 2015, must not exceed 35 pages (excluding notes and bibliography), and must not have been previously published or be currently under consideration for publication.

Submissions are due to info@amcainternational.org by December 1, 2015. The winner will be announced during the AMCA Members Meeting, held this year at the College Art Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, in February 2016. The author of the winning paper will be awarded $500USD and the winning paper will be considered for publication in the Arab Studies Journal, pending the standard review process.

International Forum on Contemporary Islamic Art, Design and Architecture: Where/How does the North meet the East?

Joint Conference of School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA) and Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCU, Qatar) Date: 7 – 9 October 2015

In October 2015, the School of Art, Design, and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore brought together designers, artists, architects, and academics for a multi-disciplinary conference on contemporary Islamic art, design, and architecture. Although each discipline has its own practice and methodology, when collectively grouped under an Islamic identity, we are forced to redefine the term “Islamic.” While new forms, spaces, images, typographies, symbols, colors, and materials of contemporary Islamic art, design, and architecture share distinct cultural narratives from individual geographies, it remains essential to address how comparative and connective perspectives reorient our understanding of contemporary Islamic visual communication. This three-day conference took place October 7-9 and was an unprecedented forum dedicated to convening professionals and scholars from throughout Asia, Europe, and America who share an investment in contemporary Islamic art, design, and architecture. For more information, visit http://www.ciada2015.com/. Organization Committee: Gül İnanç, Peer Sathikh, Nada Shabout, Sarah Rogers and Dina B.

Association of Art Museum Curators and American Academy in Rome

The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) and the American Academy in Rome (AAR) are pleased to announce the third year of The Samuel H. Kress Foundation AAMC Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. The program is intended to honor exceptional curatorial vision and help curators advance deserving projects. The purpose of the award is to provide essential funding for curators to develop projects that require research in Italy.

The Affiliated Fellowship is a 4-week appointment at the AAR, which includes housing, six lunches and five dinners a week, and access to residence hall kitchens; $1,500 in airfare; and $2,000 stipend. Affiliated Fellows have access to all the AAR facilities (including 24-hour a day access to the library and overall grounds) and all activities that occur at the Academy, such as concerts, exhibitions, conferences, lectures, and tours, etc. If desired, the Fellow can also schedule to give a talk about their project at the AAR during the Fellowship. For more information, visit http://www.artcurators.org/?KressAARFellowship or email aamc@artcurators.org.

Save the date: The 2016 AAMC Annual Conference & Meeting will be May 7 – 10 in Houston, Texas.

Society for Photographic Education

Society for Photographic Education (SPE) offers student member scholarships to offset the cost of attending SPE’s 2016 National Conference in Las Vegas, NV, March 10-13. Each award includes a $550 travel stipend, conference fee waiver, and complimentary one-year membership in SPE. For more information, visit www.spenational.org or contact info@spenational.org. Application deadline is October 15, 2015, at 11:59 PM EST.

Southeastern College Art Conference

Kevin Cates, Associate Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has been appointed to the SECAC Board of Directors.

American Society for Aesthetics

The American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), an association for aesthetics, criticism, and theory of the arts, will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the ASA Feminist Caucus Committee with a full day of workshop discussions, followed by a celebratory reception, on Saturday, November 14, 2015. The Feminist Caucus Committee anniversary is part of the annual ASA conference, to be held from November 11–14 at the Desoto Hilton Hotel in Savannah, Georgia. Noted scholars will discuss the evolution and contributions of feminist scholarship within philosophical aesthetics, focusing on three main topics: “History, Feminism, and the American Society for Aesthetics”; “Feminist Scholarship Today OR the Impact—Hidden or Otherwise—of Feminist Scholarship”; and “Feminist Pedagogy and Curricula in Aesthetics.” For more information, please visit www.aesthetics-online.org/feminist or contact Peg Brand.

Arts Council of the African Studies Association

The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) is pleased to announce the large number of association members who will be participating in the upcoming European Conference on African Studies (Paris, July 8–10, 2015). The increased participation of ACASA members in events taking place outside the United States is evidence of the organization’s growing presence on a global scale. It also reflects concerted efforts to create synergies with international partners.

ACASA is currently inviting nominations and self-nominations for service on its board. New board members will begin service at the African Studies Association (ASA) meeting on November 19, 2015. Applicants must be members of ACASA to participate in the nomination and election process. The deadline for nominations is September 20, 2015.

Asian American Women Artists Association

The board president of the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA), Cynthia Tom, is one of three recipients of the Commons Curatorial Residency at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco for A Place of Her Own, on view November 19–December 11, 2015. The Commons, entering its sixth year, is a competitive, yearlong incubator for exhibition research, planning, installation, and realization. The Commons supports risk taking, intercultural learning, and awareness of social issues by providing space and support for exhibitions that instigate accessible, multifaceted participation in the arts. A Place of Her Own excavates the vital dreams and hopes of women and features more than thirty found object art works and large-scale installations by women artists. Each piece is a courageous visual answer to the question, “If you had a place of your own, what would it be?” Exhibited artworks, marked by a saturation of color, imaginative use of materials, and visual storytelling, highlight the personal yet universal journey to seek out and claim a place without external rules or expectations. Events and an interactive installation, Community House, invite the audience to join the journey.

Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey

The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) has launched the H-AMCA reviews program with six new reviews. The organization is thrilled to have partnered with the H-Net editorial team. Readers may access the reviews through the H-Net reviews page. This announcement marks an exciting transition for the established AMCA reviews program that was originally accessible through the AMCA website. The website’s “reviews” section will now act as a supplement to the full reviews published through H-Net.

The AMCA editorial committee that will oversee the new reviews program is: Tiffany Floyd, H-AMCA commons editor and PhD student at Columbia University; Jessica Gerschultz, assistant professor at the University of Kansas and AMCA board member (secretary); Berin Golonu, doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester; Sarah-Neel Smith, assistant professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (fall 2015); and Saima Akhtar, postdoctoral fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. If you have questions about the new H-AMCA reviews program or are interested in reviewing books or events, please contact Tiffany Floyd or Jessica Gerschultz.

Association of Historians of American Art

The board of the Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) thanks two outgoing members—Sarah Kelly Oehler, chair emerita; and Katherine Smith, sessions coordinator—for their service. The board welcomes incoming cochair Ellery Foutch and sessions coordinator Elizabeth Lee.

AHAA hosted its successful third biennial symposium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this past October with 139 members in attendance. At its CAA business meeting on February 13, 2015, AHAA chair Anna Marley proposed a vote to add a new symposium liaison position to the board. The symposium liaison will serve a term of three years and, in consultation with the cochairs, facilitate the coordination of the biennial symposium and act as a liaison between the AHAA board and the local symposium steering committee. AHAA solicited candidates for this position this spring and have named the first symposium liaison: Sarah Kelly Oehler.

The next biannual AHAA symposium will to be held in Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas, in fall 2016. The symposium will be chaired by Maggie Adler and Shirley Reece-Hughes of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Mark Thistlethwaite of Texas Christian University.

Also in 2015, the active AHAA membership grew from 180 to 350, and the AHAA journal was launched.

AHAA looks forward to its sponsored sessions at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC: a professional session, “Claiming the Unknown, the Forgotten, the Fallen, the Lost, and the Dispossessed,” chaired by Robert Cozzolino; and a scholarly session, “Art and Invention in the US,” led by Ellery Foutch and Hélène Valance.

Association of Print Scholars

The Association of Print Scholars (APS) has grown to almost three hundred members since its official launch in October 2014. In May 2015, APS shared its new website, which allows members to create profiles, share scholarship, and learn about upcoming events.

Offline, APS held receptions for members during the CAA Annual Conference in New York, the Renaissance Society of America conference in Berlin, and the Salon de l’estampe in Paris. APS also announced the establishment of the Schulman and Bullard Article Prize, which will be given yearly to recognize an outstanding article by an emerging scholar in the field.

In the coming year, Peter Parshall, former curator of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, will give the APS inaugural lecture, entitled “Why Study Prints Now?” on September 25, 2015, in New York. During the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC, Freyda Spira of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Elizabeth Rudy of Harvard Art Museums will chair the session “The Art of Collecting.”

Coalition of Women in the Arts Organization

At the 2015 CAA Annual Conference in New York, the Coalition of Women in the Arts Organization (CWAO) presented a panel on “Women Artists and Installation Art,” which discussed numerous and innovative approaches that women artists use to present the concepts and issues of their concerns. For CAA’s 2016 meeting in Washington, DC, the organization is preparing a panel on “Technology and Women Artists.” The panel is currently open for proposals, which may include artists who use technology or incorporate it into either traditional or new mediums in order to convey their concepts and their social concerns. Art historians may apply, if presenting a paper about one or more women that use technology in their papers. The panel chair is Kyra Belan, Broward College, PO Box 275, Matlacha, FL 33993.

International Association of Word and Image Studies

The International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS) has announced the latest in its book series, Interactions. The Imaginary: Word and Image/L’Imaginaire: texte et image, edited by Claus Clüver, Matthijs Engelberts, and Véronique Plesch, has just been published by Brill. The imaginary as a critical concept originated in the twentieth century and has been theorized in diverse ways. It can be understood as a register of thought; the way we interpret the world; the universe of images, signs, texts, and objects of thought. In this volume, the imaginary is explored as it manifests itself in encounters between the verbal and the visual. A number of the essays brought together here explore the transposition of the imaginary in illustrations of texts and verbal renditions of images, as well as in comic books based on paintings or on verbal narratives. Others analyze ways in which books deal with film or television and investigate the imaginary in digital media. Special attention is paid to the imaginary of places and the relationship of the imaginary with memory. Written in English and French, these contributions by European and American scholars demonstrate the various concerns and approaches characteristic of contemporary scholarship in word and image studies.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) has been awarded a grant of $8400 from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to continue the IAS/Kress lecture series in Italy for another three years. The 2016 lecture will take place in Florence. IAS announces a one-time, extra IAS Research and Publication Grant of up to $1,000 to fund or subsidize a research trip or publication (deadline: July 15, 2015) and a new grant of up to $1,000 that will support transoceanic conference travel for scholars holding the PhD presenting a paper on Italian art and architecture from the early nineteenth century to the present (deadline: October 1, 2015). Please visit the IAS website for further information and application guidelines.

IAS is currently accepting proposals for its sponsored long (2½ hours) and short (1½ hours) sessions at the 2017 CAA Annual Conference in New York (deadline: August 15, 2015). Visit the IAS website for further information and submission guidelines. IAS secretary Sean Roberts now serves as the society’s executive vice president; the organization will appoint an acting secretary this summer. Please consider writing for the IASblog on any topic related to Italian art and architecture from prehistory to the present!

National Art Education Association

The National Art Education Association (NAEA), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum invite you to participate in SummerStudio: Design Thinking for Art Educators, taking place July 13–17, 2015, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

NAEA has published two new practical curriculum resources and texts for your classes: Curriculum Inquiry and Design for School- and Community-Based Art Educationand Design Standards for School Art Facilities.

Pacific Arts Association

The Pacific Arts Association-Europe conference will be held July 2–4, 2015, at the Museo de América in Madrid, Spain. The theme of the conference is “Recent Research in Pacific Arts.” For more information, please contact adama@adamaamerica.com.

Pacific Arts Association-Pacific seeks interest in its 2015 conference on “Trading Traditions: The Role of Art in the Pacific’s Expansive Exchange Networks,” to be held at the Fa’onelua Conference Centre in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, from September 30 to October 4, 2015. For further information, contact Karen Stevenson.

A three-day international conference entitled “Pacifique(S)” will take place at the University of Le Havre in France from November 4 to 6, 2015. The organizers of this interdisciplinary conference seek papers addressing the following broad thematic concerns: Oceans, Histories, and Diaspora. If you wish to participate, please send an abstract of up to 250 words to Jacqueline Charles-Rault.

The Pacific Arts Association – North America looks forward to you attending the session “Photography in and of the Pacific: Collecting the Past, Visualizing the Future” at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington DC. This session will be of interest to those studying historic and contemporary photography. Look for a detailed description in CAA’s Conference Program.

The twelfth Pacific Arts Association International Symposium 2016, to be hosted by Auckland Museum in New Zealand, promises to be a dynamic and engaging symposium that will take place between two iconic Pacific events in Auckland: Pasifika Festival (March 11–12) and Polyfest (most likely to occur March 18–20).

Society for Photographic Education

The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) seeks curators, professors, gallerists, art historians, and scholars to review student and/or professional member portfolios at SPE’s fifty-third national conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference will take place March 10–13, 2016; portfolio reviewers will receive discounted admission to the four-day event in exchange for their participation. For more information on the conference offerings, visit the SPE website. To express interest in serving as a portfolio reviewer, please contact info@spenational.org.

Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture

As of April 1, 2015, the Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has become incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in the State of New York. As a CAA affiliate society, SHERA will sponsor a 1½-hour session at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington DC, entitled “Collecting, Curating, Canonizing, Critiquing: The Institutionalization of Eastern European Art” and organized by Ksenia Nouril. SHERA is successfully implementing its visiting scholar program with the Russian State University of Humanities in Moscow (RGGU) and the Art Department of the European University in St. Petersburg. Applications need to be submitted six weeks in advance of the planned trip for RGGU and ten weeks for the European University. Inquiries about the process should be submitted to shera.artarchitecture@gmail.com.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) held its annual conference in Denver, Colorado, from March 11–14, 2015. With fourteen sessions, six workshops, nine posters, and numerous other events, the program covered digital humanities, visual literacy, mapping and geospatial projects, image rights and reproductions, usability testing, digital asset management, crowdsourcing, metadata, sharing collections, archives, research data management, visualization, and more. The two plenary speakers shared thought-provoking perspectives from museums and digital libraries. The opening speaker, Aaron Straup Cope, head of engineering for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, addressed experiences as design objects. Can a design museum collect objects that convey the full experience of, say, Virgin America as service design? Extending the concept of collecting to museum visitors, Cope described the New Cooper Hewitt Experience and new interactive pen that allows visitors to “collect” and “save” objects to customized webpages. The closing speaker, Emily Gore, director for content for the Digital Public Library of America, discussed content and collections workflows, including the DPLA Hubs program. DPLA is currently focused on sustainable collaborations, building community, data quality, and use/reuse. Gore is working to establish new Service Hubs and a framework for rights statements for cultural-heritage materials in partnership with experts in the United States and Europe.

Women’s Caucus for Art

The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has announced the recipients for the 2016 WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards: Tomie Arai, Helene Aylon, Sheila Levrant de’ Bretteville, and Juana Guzman. The recipient for the 2016 President’s Art and Activism Award is Stephanie Sherman. The WCA Lifetime Achievement (LTA) Awards were first presented in 1979 in President Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe. The LTA awards were the first awards recognizing the contribution of women to the arts and their profound effect on society. Today the WCA’s Lifetime Achievement Awards continue to honor women and their work, vision, and commitment. Past honorees have represented the full range of distinguished achievement in the visual arts. This year’s awardees are no exception, with considerable accomplishment, achievement, and contributions to the arts. Join us for the celebration! The LTA awards will be held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, on Thursday February 4, 2016. The event will include a ticketed cocktail reception (6:00–7:30 PM) and the LTA ceremony (8:00–9:30 PM), which is free and open to the public. More information will be available online beginning August 1, 2015.

The Directory of Affiliated Societies, a comprehensive list of all eighty groups that have joined CAA as affiliate members, has just been updated. Please visit the directory to view a single webpage that includes the following information for each group: name, date of founding, size of membership, and annual dues; a brief statement on the society’s nature or purpose; and the names of officers and/or contacts for you to get more details about the groups or to join them. In addition, CAA links directly to each affiliated society’s homepage.

American Society for Aesthetics

The American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), an association for aesthetics, criticism, and theory of the arts, will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the ASA Feminist Caucus Committee with a full day of workshop discussions, followed by a celebratory reception, on Saturday, November 14, 2015. The Feminist Caucus Committee anniversary is part of the annual ASA conference, to be held November 11–14 at the Desoto Hilton in Savannah, Georgia. Noted scholars will discuss the evolution and contributions of feminist scholarship within philosophical aesthetics and the history of the ASA and its publication, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Topics will include: “Forty Years of Feminist Scholarship in Aesthetics,” “The Influence—Hidden or Otherwise—of Feminist Scholarship in Aesthetics,” and “Feminist Pedagogy and Curricula in Aesthetics.” For more information, please visit http://www.aesthetics-online.org/feminist/ or contact Peg Brand.

American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies

The American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies (ASHAHS) announced an award at its business meeting at the CAA Annual Conference in February 2015. The Eleanor Tufts Book Award, which recognizes an outstanding English-language publication in the area of Spanish or Portuguese art history, went to Glaire D. Anderson for The Islamic Villa in Early Medieval Iberia: Architecture and Court Culture in Umayyad Córdoba (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013).

Art Libraries Society of North America

The Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS) met in Fort Worth, Texas, from March 19 through 23, 2015, for its forty-third annual conference. The conference’s theme, “New Frontiers on the Old Frontier,” allowed members to explore current and emergent interests in the art and visual-information profession. The society awarded the George M. Wittenborn Memorial Book Award to Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. of the National Gallery of Art for Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The ARLIS/NA Distinguished Service Award was given to Daniel A. Starr, deputy chief librarian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Read about incoming members of the executive board.

Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey

The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) has awarded the 2015 Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art to Christopher Barrie for “Myth and Mythology on the Nile: The Surrealism of Georges Henein and ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Gazar.” Barrie is a master’s degree student in Middle East politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. His paper analyzes the treatment of myth in the poetry of Henein and the visual art of al-Gazzar. The paper challenges understandings of al-Gazzar’s “Contemporary Art Group” as the first example of a purportedly authentic national Egyptian art and instead looks to analyze the dialogical interpenetration of the cosmopolitan and the local in al-Gazzar’s work.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

Save the date for next annual conference of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) in Washington, DC: the weekend of May 20, 2016.

AAMG is in the process of compiling standards and documentation for Best Practices for University Museums and Collections. Once compiled, this can serve as a companion guide for accreditation as well as a resource for working within a parent institution. Please contact Barbara Rothermel, director of the Daura Gallery and assistant professor of museum studies at Lynchburg College, directly with documents, suggestions, or comments about practices with which you are most concerned.

Information about the AAMG Summer Leadership Seminar 2016 (rolling deadlines) is coming soon. Questions about the leadership seminar can be directed to David Robertson.

Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art

During its 2015 Annual Conference, CAA presented Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, past president of the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA), board member at large, and managing editor of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, with its 2015 Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award. Chu also received a certificate of appreciation from AHNCA’s membership for her organizational leadership and for the establishment of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Also at the CAA conference, AHNCA sponsored a two-part session entitled “What Is Realism?”and a shorter session on “Future Directions in Nineteenth-Century Art”; both were well attended. AHNCA’s major session for CAA’s 2016 conference will be “Between the Covers: The Question of Albums in the Nineteenth Century.”

During the AHNCA business meeting, Yvonne Weisberg extended her term as treasurer, but her successor must be in place by February 2016. Thus the organization now seeks nominations for the position; please send these via email to Peter Trippi, AHNCA president. Caterina Pierre also agreed to continue as newsletter editor.

AHNCA’s recent and upcoming activities include attending a Mellon lecture by Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, at the Yale Center for British Art (April 23); a tour of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts exhibition about artists’ gardens, with the curator Anna O. Marley (April 25); a tour of Sotheby’s nineteenth-century European art sale, with the expert Seth Armitage (May 1); and a visit to the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami with the museum’s director, Jill Deupi (May 12).

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) has announced the winners of its recent grant and essay competitions. Anna McSweeney, a senior teaching fellow in Islamic art and archaeology at SOAS, received a Grabar Fellowship to complete the research for her book, The Alhambra Cupola at the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin.Natalia Di Pietrantonio, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, was awarded a Grabar Travel Grant to deliver a paper at the 2015 Association of Art Historians conference at the University of East Anglia. Sugata Ray, assistant professor of art history at the University of California, Berkeley, received the 2014 Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize for his essay, “Shangri La: The Archive-Museum and the Spatial Topologies of Islamic Art History.” The Grabar Grants and Fellowships Program, which supports the scholarly activity and professional development of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in Islamic art, was established in memory of Professor Oleg Grabar. The Ševčenko Prize, awarded annually for the best unpublished article written by a young scholar on any aspect of Islamic visual culture, honors the memory of Margaret Ševčenko, the longtime managing editor of Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World.

International Center of Medieval Art

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) will present sessions and receptions at the fiftieth International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held May 14–17, 2015, at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Sessions presented by the organization include the “Cross in Medieval Art,” “Moving Women, Moving Objects,” and “Super Medieval! Visual Representations of ‘Medieval Superheroes.’” This last session is sponsored by the organization’s student committee. Two receptions are planned, one for all members and another for students.

International Sculpture Center

The International Sculpture Center will host the twenty-fifth International Sculpture Conference, “New Frontiers in Sculpture,” to be held November 4–7, 2015, in Phoenix, Arizona. The conference will feature panel discussions at Phoenix Art Museum and Arizona State University; special programming at Bollinger Atelier; optional trips to James Turrell’s Skyspaces and Cosanti, among others; gallery hops, the annual ISC members’ littleSCULPTURE show; and much more. Registration opens in June. For more information and to join the mailing list for updates, please visit www.sculpture.org/az2015.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) has announced information regarding the sixth annual IAS/Kress Lecture in Italy: Nino Zchomelidse of Johns Hopkins University will present her paper “Scena Sacra Scena–Tribuna Civica: Il ruolo dell’ambone nella Campania medievale” on May 20, 2015. The lecture will take place in the Dipartimento degli studi umanistici of the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. The Emerging Scholars Committee of IAS has inaugurated a new mentoring program that will match established scholars with graduate students and junior scholars with similar interests.

On May 15, IAS will host three linked sessions on the topic “Civic Foundation Legends in Italian Art” at the 2015 International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. IAS will also sponsor a long session titled “Beyond Texts and Academies: Rethinking the Education of the Early Modern Italian Artist” at the next CAA Annual Conference, taking place February 3–6, 2016, in Washington, DC.

The deadline for IAS/KRESS travel grants for scholars undertaking transoceanic travel to the annual meeting of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference in Vancouver is May 20, 2015. Please consider writing for the IASblog on any topic related to Italian art from prehistory to the present.

IAS has announced its new executive board: Sheryl E. Reiss, president; Anne Leader, executive vice president; Frances Gage, vice president for program coordination; Martha Dunkelman, treasurer and membership coordinator; and Sean Roberts, secretary.

Mid-America College Art Association

The School of Art in the College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati will host the biennial conference of the Mid-America College Art Association (MACAA), October 26–28, 2016. This follows the 2014 conference, “Mash Up,” which was hosted by the University of Texas at San Antonio. Jeffrey Adams, current MACAA president, and Kate Bonansinga, director of DAAP’s School of Art and site coordinator, are working with the MACAA board and DAAP faculty to develop ideas for sessions for the conference and a potential theme. Since the 1930s MACAA has provided a forum for artists/teachers of America to discuss and debate the issues of our profession, to share ideas and information of mutual benefit, and to affirm the friendships and collegiality that bind us together. The College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati has as its primary mission the creation of a better visual and design environment. Through excellence in educational programs, research, creative works, and service to the community, the faculty, the students, and administrative officers of DAAP are dedicated to achieve this mission.

National Art Education Association

The National Art Education Association (NAEA) invites you to participate in Summer Vision, joining a professional learning community and spending four days in America’s heartland or the nation’s capital exploring art, architecture, nature, and the museum as a work of art!

New Media Caucus

The New Media Caucus (NMC) has reported the results of its recent elections. The new board members are: Nadav Assor, assistant professor, Connecticut College; Rachel Clarke, associate professor, California State University, Sacramento; Renate Ferro, visiting assistant professor of art, Cornell University; Meredith Hoy, assistant professor, Arizona State University; Patrick Lichty, assistant professor, Columbia College Chicago; Jessye McDowell, assistant professor of art and exhibitions and lectures coordinator, Auburn University; Carlos Rosas, associate professor, Pennsylvania State University; Daniel Temkin, independent artist; and Stephanie Tripp, associate professor of communication, University of Tampa.

The newly elected officers are: Jim Jeffers, treasurer, assistant professor, Indian River State College; A. Bill Miller, chair, Communication Committee, assistant professor, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater; and Joyce Rudinsky, chair, Events Committee, associate professor, University of North Carolina.

These artists and scholars will be joining the following: Vagner Whitehead, president, associate professor, Oakland University; Mat Rappaport, secretary, associate professor, Columbia College Chicago; Pat Badani, editor-in-chief of Media-N Journal, independent artist and scholar; Victoria Bradbury, researcher at CRUMB, Sunderland, United Kingdom; Mina Cheon, interdisciplinary professor, Maryland Institute College of Art; Kevin Hamilton, associate professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Barbara Rauch, associate professor, Ontario College of Art and Design University, Toronto; Josua Selman, president, Artist Organized Art; and Jessica Westbrook, assistant professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Pacific Arts Association

The Pacific Arts Association-Europe conference will be held July 2–4, 2015, at the Museo de América in Madrid, Spain. The presentation of papers is open to any topic within the theme of “Recent Research in Pacific Arts.” Presentations can be either thirty minutes (twenty to twenty-five minutes of talk, five to ten minutes of discussion) or ten-minute reports on current exhibition projects or work in progress in museums or galleries. For more information, please contact adama@adamaamerica.com.

Pacific Arts Association-Pacific is calling for interest in its 2015 conference on “Trading Traditions: The Role of Art in the Pacific’s Expansive Exchange Networks,” to be held at the Fa’onelua Conference Centre in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, September 30–October 4, 2015. The conference theme examines the role art has played in the exchange of objects, peoples, technologies, and ideologies in the prehistoric, historic, or modern Pacific. It is not limited to “physical” exchanges but also addresses complex social, economic, and political arrangements and interactions among interconnected systems, structures, and peoples. For further information, please write to Karen Stevenson.

Public Art Dialogue

Public Art Dialogue (PAD) sponsored two sessions at CAA’s 2015 Annual Conference in New York. “Museums and Public Art: Coexistence or Collaboration,” chaired by Harriet Senie and Cher Krause Knight, featured papers by Kasia Ozga (“False Advertising? Public Art and Monographic Exhibitions”),Glenn Wallace (“‘Western Exposure’: The Contemporary Art Museum, Public Art, and the Global City”),Andrew Wasserman (“Sites of Counter Culture: Navigating a Future Bowery”), and Carole Anne Meehan(“Raising Expectations for the Public Sphere”). The artist Norie Sato chaired a second session, “Student Debt, Real Estate, and the Arts”; participating in the panel were Tom Finkelpearl, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the artists Caroline Woolard and Paul Ramirez Jonas. Finkelpearl received the 2015 PAD award for achievement in the field of public art. This award recognizes an individual whose contributions have influenced public art practice.

Society for Photographic Education

Each spring, the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) hosts a forum for the presentation of artistic work and research to a community of peers. SPE has announced the call for proposals for “Constructed Realities,” the fifty-third national conference, to be held March 10–13, 2016, in Las Vegas, Nevada. SPE is accepting proposals for the 2016 conference with a submission deadline of June 1, 2015. Topics are not required to be theme-based and may include but are not limited to: image-making, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. SPE membership is required to submit, and proposals are peer reviewed.

The presentation formats are:

• Graduate Student: short presentation of your own artistic work and a brief introduction to your graduate program
• Imagemaker: presentation of your own artistic work (photography, film, video, performance, installation, multidisciplinary approaches)
• Lecture: presentation of a historical topic, theory, or another artist’s work
• Panel: group led by a moderator to discuss a chosen topic
• Teaching: presentations, workshops, demos that address educational issues, including teaching resources and strategies; curricula to serve diverse artists and changing student populations; seeking promotion and tenure; avoiding burnout; and professional exchange

Please www.spenational.org for information on SPE membership and full proposal guidelines.

Society for the Study of Early Modern Women

The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW) has announced the following awards for 2014 at its annual meeting, held during the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, last October:

• Best Book: Melinda S. Zook, Protestantism, Politics, and Women in Britain, 1660–1714 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
• Honorable Mention: George McClure, Parlour Games and the Public Life of Women in Renaissance Italy (University of Toronto Press, 2013)
• Josephine Roberts Award for a Scholarly Edition: Barbara Torelli Benedetti, Partenia, a Pastoral Play, ed. and trans. Lisa Sampson and Barbara Burgess-Van Aken (Toronto, 2013)
• Best article: Diane Wolfthal, “Household Help: Early Modern Portraits of Female Servants,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8 (2013): 5–52
• Best collaborative project: Noelia S. Cirnigliaro and John Beusterien, eds., Touching the Ground: Women’s Footwear in the Early Modern Hispanic World 14.2 (2013). Special issue of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies
• Honorable Mention: Anne J. Cruz and Maria Galli Stampino, eds., Early Modern Habsburg Women: Transnational Contexts, Cultural Conflicts, Dynastic Continuities (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013)
• Best Translation: Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores, Three Spanish Querelle Texts: “Grisel and Mirabella,” “The Slander against Women,” and “The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers,” ed. and trans. Emily Francomano (Toronto, 2013)
• Best Teaching Edition: Valerie Worth-Stylianou, ed. and trans., Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (1581–1625) (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013)
• Best Digital Scholarship, New Media, and Art Project: Caroline Bowden, principal investigator, 2012–13; James Kelly, project manager, 2012–13; along with Jan Broadway, David Horne, Katherine Keats-Rohan, and Michael Questier, coinvestigator and principal investigator, 2008–11), Who were the Nuns: A Prosopographical study of the English convents in exile 1600–1800

Society of Architectural Historians

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) is accepting abstracts for its sixty-ninth annual international conference in Pasadena and Los Angeles, California, April 6–10, 2016. Please submit abstracts by June 9, 2015, for one of the thirty-eight thematic sessions, the Graduate Student Lightning Talks, or the open sessions. The thematic sessions have been selected to cover topics across all time periods and architectural styles. SAH encourages submissions from architectural, landscape, and urban historians; museum curators; preservationists; independent scholars; architects; and members of SAH chapters and partner organizations.

SAH is accepting applications for the 2015 H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship. The prestigious $50,000 fellowship allows a recent graduate or emerging scholar to study by travel for one year. The deadline to apply is October 1, 2015.

Registration is open for the 2015 SAH Field Seminar, “Architecture in the Rio de la Plata Basin: Between Tradition and Cosmopolitanism.” The seminar features a customized itinerary and includes visits to sites not open to the general public, supplemental lectures, and a significant educational component designed to enhance your experience of the region’s built environment.

Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture

The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) seeks proposals of papers for its sponsored 2½-hour session, “Exploring Native Traditions in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia,” at CAA’s 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, DC. Within a broad historical and geographical framework of the region, which assimilated and reacted to a succession of cultures from Greek, Roman, and Byzantine to Mongol, Ottoman, and Soviet, the session seeks to balance the significance of international contacts and the experiences of artists who worked primarily in their native land. Artists expressed regional identities through distinctive themes and motifs in every art form; some made use of traditional techniques and designs, or represented provincial spaces, distinct ethnicities, and social customs. Papers may focus on individual artists or on broader institutional contexts that affected evolving concepts of regionalism and nationalism. The discussions might also address contemporary tensions surrounding regional and national identity. Interested contributors should see CAA’s 2016 Call for Participation and send proposals with other required materials to the session’s chair, Alison Hilton. The deadline for proposals is May 8, 2015.

Southeastern College Art Conference

The application for the 2015 Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) Artist’s Fellowship, which carries a $5,000 award, is August 1, 2015.

New directors to the Board of Directors were elected in February:

• Alabama: Wendy Deschene, Auburn University
• Kentucky: Boris Zakic, Georgetown College
• Louisiana: Jill Chancey, Nicholls State University
• North Carolina: Lawrence Jenkens, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The new issue of the Southeastern College Art Conference Review (vol. 16, no. 4, 2014) is now available.

The next four conferences will take place:

• October 21–24, 2015: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• October 19–22, 2016: Virginia Tech with Hollins University, in Roanoke, Virginia
• October 25–28, 2017: Columbus College of Art and Design, in Columbus, Ohio
• October 17–20, 2018: University of Alabama in Birmingham

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) honored the recipients of the organization’s highest honors at a members and awards dinner on March 12, 2015, during the VRA’s thirty-third annual conference in Denver, Colorado. Maureen Burns of IMAGinED Consulting received the Distinguished Service Award for her contributions to visual resources and image management. Comments from Burns’s nominators and a description of her engagement with visual-resources advocacy, service to the profession, and long-term involvement with VRA and the VRA Foundation throughout her career can be found online. VRA presented the Nancy DeLaurier Award for distinguished achievement to the editors of Cataloging Cultural Objects (Chicago: American Library Association, 2006). The editors are: Murtha Baca, head of the Getty Digital Art History Access Program; Patricia Harpring, managing editor of the Getty Vocabulary Program; Eliza Lanzi, director of digital strategies and services at Smith College; Linda McRae, retired director of the Visual Resources Library at the University of South Florida; and Ann Baird Whiteside, librarian and assistant dean for information resources for the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. The Nancy DeLaurier Award nomination and acceptance remarks by Patricia Harpring are available online. VRA publishes images and information about the awards presentation on its website.

American Council for Southern Asian Art

As approved by a vote of the membership, the American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) membership dues will be increasing. In addition, there are new membership categories and, as per request of the membership, multiyear options. ACSAA membership dues have not changed in more than ten years. Since then the organization has grown and thus taken on more expenses, such as the creation and regular maintenance of a website. The new dues structure brings ACSAA into alignment with other similar organizations.

The new membership dues structure is as follows:

• Students, Retired Members, Independent Scholars, and Scholars in South and Southeast Asia: $20 and $40 (two years)
• Regular Member: $50 and $100 (two years)
• Contributing Member: $100 and $200 (two years)
•  Institutional Member: $100
• Sustaining Member: $250 minimum
• Lifetime Patron: $3,000

To join or renew as an ACSAA member, go to http://www.acsaa.us/membership.

ACSAA is also pleased to announce that the 2015 symposium, which celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the organization’s founding, will be held in Toronto, Ontario, this coming October. Additional details will soon be available on the website.

American Institute for Conservation

Please join the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) at its forty-third annual meeting in Miami, Florida, from May 13 to 15, 2015. The theme is “Practical Philosophy, or Making Conservation Work.” All aspects of conservation, from preventive care to inpainting, include both theory and practice. In most cases, theory supports practice. Nonetheless, conservation professionals are sometimes challenged in their efforts to smoothly meld the two. Many factors, ranging from available resources to questions of public access and politics, can thwart even the best treatments plans and noblest intentions. The transition from what is initially envisioned as ideal to what is eventually acknowledged as realistic often requires compromise. But, are less than satisfactory outcomes inevitable? Or, can better solutions evolve from necessity? Attend AIC’s annual meeting to learn how philosophical principles can be successfully translated into workable—even superior—practice. In addition, as UNESCO has proclaimed 2015 the International Year of Light, presentations on practical solutions that take advantage of optical technology to examine and preserve cultural heritage are being highlighted. Learn more and register at www.conservation-us.org/meetings.

American Society for Aesthetics

The American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), an association for aesthetics, criticism, and theory of the arts, will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the ASA Feminist Caucus Committee with a full day of workshop discussions, followed by a celebratory reception, on Saturday, November 14, 2015. The Feminist Caucus Committee anniversary is part of the annual ASA conference, to be held November 11–14 at the Desoto Hilton in Savannah, Georgia. Noted scholars will discuss the evolution and contributions of feminist scholarship within philosophical aesthetics, the history of the ASA, and its publication, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Topics will include: “Forty Years of Feminist Scholarship in Aesthetics,” “The Influence—Hidden or Otherwise—of Feminist Scholarship in Aesthetics,” and “Feminist Pedagogy and Curricula in Aesthetics.” For more information, please visit http://www.aesthetics-online.org/feminist/ or contact Peg Brand.

American Society of Appraisers

The Personal Property Committee of the American Society of Appraisers invites you to its annual spring conference, “Current Issues in Determining Authenticity in Visual Art and Objects, the Catalogue Raisonné, Art Scholarship, and Value in the Marketplace,” to be held March 25–27, 2015, at the Yale Club in New York. This scholarly conference will bring together highly regarded and noted experts in their fields. Speakers and topics to be addressed will include numerous aspects of the problems appraisers, art-industry professionals, and collectors must continually consider. An optional field trip to the Princeton University Art Museum, Sculpture Collection, and Libraries will take place on Saturday, March 28. Accommodations have been reserved at the Yale Club and the Roosevelt Hotel for this event. This will be a not-to-miss conference! Register now to save your spot. Limited spaces are available for the conference, which is expected to sell out. Go to www.appraisers.org or call 800-272-8258.

Arts Council of the African Studies Association

The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) continues to have a sustained presence at national and international conferences in the first part of 2015. Numerous member-developed panels and individual papers have been accepted at the sixth European Conference on African Studies (ECAS 6), which will be held at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. The principal theme of ECAS 6 is “Collective Mobilizations in Africa: Contestation, Resistance, Revolt,” and ACASA panels will engage with topics ranging from the circulation of African art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to censorship and politically engaged artists to the consumption of African art in the electronic age. In addition, Jordan Fenton chaired the ACASA-sponsored panel “African Art and Economics in Urban Spaces,” at the 2015 CAA Annual Conference. Finally, plans for the seventeenth ACASA Triennial Symposium on African Art continue to make positive advancements. The symposium, which will take place at the University of Ghana in Legon in August 2017, will be ACASA’s first meeting on the African continent, marking the association’s longstanding commitment toward promoting greater understanding of African expressive culture from a global perspective.

ArtTable

This summer, ArtTable is expanding its Summer Mentored Internship for Diversity in the Visual Arts Professions program, one of the longest standing internship programs supporting diversity in the visual arts in the country. ArtTable’sprogram places women graduate students from cultural/ethnic backgrounds underrepresented in the field with ArtTable mentors at institutions around the country, providing them with a one-on-one mentoring relationship, valuable professional experience, and a stipend. Through the support of private donors, the Sam Francis Foundation, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the program will expand to provide internships to six young women this summer.

ArtTable and the arts community suffered a great loss with the passing of Lea K. Green this year. Lea was a long-standing ArtTable member, a vice president and client strategy director at Christie’s, a recent member of ArtTable’s board of directors, and an active and passionate member of the arts community. In collaboration with Lea K. Green’s family, ArtTable has established a fund to support its Diversity Internship Program and host a Lea K. Green summer intern. To make a contribution in Lea’s name, please contact info@arttable.org.

Association of Art Museum Curators

The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) has announced the keynote speaker and hosts for its fourteenth annual conference and meeting, taking place May 9–12, 2015. The keynote speaker will be Tom Finkelpearl, commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. His experience and perspective on the powerful and mutually rewarding relationship that can exist between a museum and its immediate community and the ways in which to engage a culturally diverse region will resonate with and inspire the conference attendees. Conference sessions and events will be held at several New York area cultural institutions, including the Newark Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. “The historically adventurous characteristics of these institutions and the ways in which they have met the challenges of the twenty-first-century art museum will make for thought-provoking and insightful case studies for our AAMC members,” said Emily Ballew Neff, AAMC president. “The AAMC looks forward to learning more about the challenge and success of each museum in connecting effectively with its communities, and we are honored to be so warmly welcomed by each venue for the conference.”

Community College Professors of Art and Art History

The Community College Professors of Art and Art History (CCPAAH) had a successful session at this year’s CAA Annual Conference. “Foundations Flipped? Active Learning in Art History and the Studio” was the topic of the 2015 session. Thanks to Monica Anke Hahn (chair) and Lauren Patterson of the Community College of Philadelphia and Richard Thompson and Susan Altman of Middlesex County College for presenting, and also to all the attendees for their lively discussion. CCPAAH would also like to thank the twenty-five-plus faculty members who shared their “best practices” and project ideas at the business meeting. Everyone left with new ideas to take back to their classrooms. Join CCPAAH for “Beyond Good, Bad, and ‘I Like It’: A New Take on Critique,” to be presented at this year’s Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. Please email the group at ccpaah@gmail.com if you are interested in learning more or if you have questions. You can also like CCPAAH’s Facebook page.

Historians of British Art

The board of the Historians of British Art welcomes two new members: Julie Codell, professor of art history at Arizona State University; and Melinda McCurdy, associate curator of British art for the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. We would also like to welcome Douglas Fordham, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Virginia, as the incoming Book Prize Committee chair. Hyeyun Chin of Binghamton University, State University of New York, has been awarded HBA’s Travel Grant to support the presentation of a paper at CAA’s 2015 Annual Conference. For more information on HBA, including our prizes and membership, visit the website or find HBA on Facebook.

International Association of Art Critics

The International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) is pleased to announce that Martha Schwendener, art critic for The New York Times, has joined the organization’s board.

The panel “Art Critics’ Websites: Options and Rationales” has been rescheduled for Monday, March 16, 2015, 6:15–7:45 PM, at Artists Space, 55 Walker Street. Judith Stein will chair the panel, and four panelists will speak. Please RSVP to info@aicausa.org. Seating is limited to eighty people and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

International Center of Medieval Art

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) is pleased to announce a new initiative. Drawing upon its own resources, the organization plans to make available a number of small grants to graduate students; these grants are designed to underwrite a month or so of travel to sites, collections, or libraries abroad. The awards will most likely be offered to graduate student members in the first stages of dissertation research. For more information, contact icma@medievalart.org.

International Sculpture Center

You’re invited to join International Sculpture Center (ISC) to celebrate International Sculpture Day, or IS Day for short. This event is an annual celebration held worldwide on April 24 to further the ISC’s mission of advancing the creation and understating of sculpture and its unique, vital contribution to society. IS Day is free and open to anyone or organization with an interest in sculpture; it will include a wide range of events, openings, and educational and promotional activities around the world. Visit www.sculpture.org/isday to learn how you can participate and to view events in your area. Visit ISC on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation.

ISC will hold the twenty-fifth International Sculpture Conference, on “New Frontiers in Sculpture,” from November 4 to 7, 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. Over three hundred sculpture enthusiasts from around the world will gather for engaging panel discussions, exciting cultural events, and peer networking surrounding topics in contemporary sculpture. Conference registration will open summer 2015. For more information, visit www.sculpture.org/az2015.

National Art Education Association

Don’t miss the largest gathering of art educators in the world! Register now for the 2015 National Art Education Association (NAEA) national convention. Focusing on “The Art of Design: Form, Function, and the Future of Visual Arts Education,” the event will take place March 26–28, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. New NAEA publications that will at the convention are: Connecting Creativity Research and Practice in Art Education: Foundations, Pedagogies, and Contemporary Issues (2015), edited by Flávia Bastos and Enid Zimmerman; and Curriculum Inquiry and Design for School- and Community-Based Art Education (2015) by Lynn Beudert and Marissa McClure.

National Council of Arts Administrators

The forty-third National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) annual meeting, “Changing Lanes: Adapting, Reacting, Navigating,” convenes September 23–25, 2015, in Boston, Massachuhsetts. Please join NCAA at Boston University for a conversation about the road(s) to best practices in our changing educational climate. We all know that the very structure of universities is shifting beneath our feet. How do and will art programs and administrators not only accommodate but also harness these changes? We invite current and aspiring art department chairs, directors, and deans to attend. The keynote speaker will be the architect and artist Maya Lin. Visit the website to learn more about the conference and to join NCAA.

Pacific Arts Association

The Pacific Arts Association-Europe conference will be held July 2–4, 2015, at the Museo de América in Madrid, Spain. The presentation of papers is open to any topic within the theme of “Recent Research in Pacific Arts.” Presentations can be either 30 minutes (20–25 minutes talk, 5–10 minutes discussion) or 10-minute reports on current exhibition projects or work in progress in museums or galleries. For more information, please contact adama@adamaamerica.com.

Pacific Arts Association-Pacific is calling for interest in its 2015 conference on “Trading Traditions: The Role of Art in the Pacific’s Expansive Exchange Networks,”to be held at the Fa’onelua Conference Centre in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, from September 30 to October 4, 2015. The conference theme examines the role art has played in the exchange of objects, peoples, technologies, and ideologies in the prehistoric, historic, or modern Pacific. It is not limited to “physical” exchanges but also addresses complex social, economic, and political arrangements and interactions among interconnected systems, structures and peoples. For further information, contact Karen Stevenson.

Public Art Dialogue

Harriet F. Senie and Kelly Pajek are stepping down as cochairs of Public Art Dialogue (PAD), and Juilee Decker is stepping down as membership coordinator. (PAD officers are limited to two three-year terms according to its bylaws.) In addition, Natasha Khandekar departs from her role as newsletter editor and web-content editor. PAD’s new cochairs are Cameron Cartiere and Jennifer Wingate. PAD’s membership coordinator is Anna Heineman. Marisa Lerer will serve as newsletter and web-content editor in addition to serving as PAD’s public relations coordinator.

Society for Photographic Education

The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) is accepting proposals for its fifty-third conference, “Constructed Realities,” to be held from March 10–13, 2016, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Topics are not required to be theme-based, and may include but are not limited to: image-making, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. SPE membership is required to submit and proposals are peer reviewed. The presentation formats are:

• Graduate Student: short presentation of your own artistic work and a brief introduction to your graduate program
• Imagemaker: presentation of your own artistic work (photography, film, video, performance, installation, multidisciplinary approaches)
• Lecture: presentation of a historical topic, theory, or another artist’s work
• Panel: group led by a moderator to discuss a chosen topic
• Teaching: presentations, workshops, demos that address educational issues, including teaching resources and strategies; curricula to serve diverse artists and changing student populations; seeking promotion and tenure; avoiding burnout; and professional exchange

Visit www.spenational.org for information on SPE membership and full proposal guidelines.

Society of Architectural Historians

Registration is open for the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) sixty-eighth annual international conference in Chicago, Illinois, taking place April 15–19, 2015. The conference features over 180 speakers presenting new research on built environment topics from antiquity to the critical present. Public programming includes the SAH Chicago Seminar and over thirty architectural tours. The seminar includes a keynote address by Harvard University professor Charles Waldheim and two panels of local speakers addressing the transformation of Chicago waterways and neighborhoods.

Registration is open for two Study Programs: SAH Study Day at the Museum of Modern Art and the United Nations Headquarters (New York, March 27, 2015); and Architectures in the Rio de la Plata Basin: Between Tradition and Cosmopolitanism (Uruguay and Argentina, September 1–12, 2015).

SAH is accepting applications for the SAH/Mellon Author Awards, which provide financial relief to scholars who are publishing their first monograph on the history of the built environment and who are responsible for paying for rights and permissions for images or for commissioning maps, charts, or line drawings in their publications. Deadline: June 1, 2015. The call for papers for the SAH sixty-ninth annual international conference will open on April 1, 2015. The H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship will open on April 1, 2015.

Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture

Following elections in January 2015, the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has elected Eva Forgacs as its new vice president/president elect. Ksenya Gurshtein, the web news editor, was running unopposed. Margaret Samu stepped down as SHERA’s president after the end of her two-year term, and Natasha Kurchanova assumed the duties of this position.

At CAA’s Annual Conference in New York, Margaret Samu served as host to visitors from Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine who were part of the CAA-Getty International Program. Samu arranged meetings with specialists in the visitors’ expertise and facilitated their participation in a full-day preconference program organized by the CAA International Committee about international issues in art history, as well as in other events organized connected to the conference.

SHERA sponsored three sessions at CAA this year: a session on teaching methods, “Infiltrating the Pedagogical Canon”; and a double session, “Reconsidering Art and Politics: Towards New Narratives in Russian and East European Art.” During CAA, the society held its membership meeting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library. After the meeting, Jared Ash, SHERA member and the museum’s librarian, hosted a reception at which he showed the attendees rare books and materials related to Russian, East European, and Eurasian art and architecture from the library’s collection.

Southeastern College Art Conference

The next meeting of the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 21–24, 2015. The deadline for the call for entries in the annual juried exhibition is April 1. The deadline for the call for papers is April 20. For more information, please visit www.secollegeart.org/conference.

New officers were elected at the members meeting on October 11, 2014, which took place at the seventieth annual meeting of SECAC, held in Sarasota, Florida: Jason Guynes of the University of South Alabama is president; Sandra Reed of Marshall University is first vice president; and Kevin Concannon of Virginia Tech is second vice president. The new board members are: Heather Deyling of Savannah College of Art and Design (appointed to fill vacated seat for Georgia); Ute Wachsmann-Linnan of Columbia College (South Carolina); and Heather Stark, Marshall University (West Virginia).

The new issue of the Southeastern College Art Conference Review (vol. XVI, no. 4) is now available. Rachel Stephens of the University of Alabama is the new editor. The name of the journal will change to Art Inquiries with volume XVII.

The future conference locations for SECAC will be:

• 2016 Roanoke, Virginia (hosted by Virginia Tech with Hollins University)
• 2017 Columbus, Ohio (hosted by Columbus College of Art and Design)
• 2018 Birmingham, Alabama (hosted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham)

The $5,000 Artist’s Fellowship award has a deadline of August 1, 2015. Membership is required for applications For details, visit http://www.secollegeart.org/artists-fellowship.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) has opened registration for the 2015 Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management (SEI), a joint project of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF). SEI seeks to provide information professionals with a substantive educational and professional-development opportunity focused on digital imaging, the information and experience needed to stay current in a rapidly changing field, and the opportunity to create a network of supportive colleagues. This intensive three-and-a-half-day workshop will feature a curriculum that specifically addresses the requirements of today’s visual-resources and image management professionals. Expert instructors will cover: intellectual property rights, digital imaging and digital preservation, metadata and cataloging, project management, and professional growth and development. SEI 2015 will be held at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, June 9–12, 2015. SEI is a residential learning workshop for library-school students, new graduates, and midcareer professionals interested in learning more about digital collections, including metadata, project management, and professional best practices. For more information, please go to the SEI website.

American Society of Appraisers

The American Society of Appraisers (ASA) will host the upcoming 2015 Personal Property Conference, titled “Issues in Determining the Authenticity in Visual Art and Objects, the Catalogue Raisonné, Art Scholarship, and Value in the Marketplace.” The conference will be held at the prestigious Yale Club in New York from March 25 to 27, 2015. World renown and highly regarded experts in art law, art, and antiques will gather together for discussion on relevant and timely issues facing art-industry professionals, collectors, museum curators, dealers, auctioneers, insurance underwriters, estate attorneys, and appraisers. Individuals practicing in any of these areas of fine art and decorative arts will not want to miss this important gathering of respected scholars and authorities. Topics of discussion include connoisseurship, authentication, conservation, research, provenance, and value in the markets. In addition, a representative from the Internal Revenue Service will cover issues of compliance regarding appraisals for estates and charitable contributions, and an FBI agent will discuss fraud and art crime as they affect the global marketplace. For registration and more information, please visit www.appraisers.org or call 800-272-8258.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) has appointed Christopher Bedford, director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, to be the keynote speaker for the organization’s next annual conference, taking place April 24–26, 2015, in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2009, the Rose became infamous for Brandeis’ attempt to sell significant objects from its collection. Bedford was hired in 2012 to turn this situation around and has been building staff and acquiring new works. He also recently commissioned a work by Chris Burden that highlights the university’s renewed commitment to the museum and its collection.

For a limited time, AAMG is offering free student memberships. Student membership is an important way to explore the field while preparing informed professionals. In addition, student membership provides access to scholarship funds to help attend educational programs such as the AAMG’s annual conference, which offers a résumé workshop and the opportunity to connect first-hand with over two hundred attendees.

Whether you are a student, new to the field, or a seasoned professional, AAMG’s listserv connects more than four thousand museum professionals and those in related fields, from across the country and the world, who can provide assistance and mentoring on a wide range of issues facing museums today.

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The Historian of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) held its fourth biennial symposium at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Ontario, from October 16 to 18, 2014. The HIAA conference is the biennial forum for the presentation and discussion of papers on various aspects of Islamic art history, and is open to all, regardless of nationality or academic affiliation. The overarching theme of the symposium was “Forms of Knowledge and Cultures of Learning in Islamic Art.”

International Association of Art Critics

The International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) welcomed the return of Judith Stein to its board in fall 2014. The organization will hold its session at the CAA Annual Conference in New York on Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 12:30–2:00 PM in the Beekman Parlor, 2nd Floor, New York Hilton Midtown, 1335 Avenue of the Americas. The title of the session is “How Dare We Criticize: Contemporary Art Critics on the State of Their Art.”

International Association of Word and Image Studies

Over 150 scholars met this summer for the tenth international conference of the International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS/AIERTI), held August 11–15, 2014, in in Dundee, New Zealand. Focusing on the theme of “Riddles of Form: Exploration and Discovery in Word and Image,” the conference was hosted by the Scottish Word and Image Group at the University of Dundee. Over fifty panels were presented around thirty-two themed sessions, ranging from “Exploring Neuroscience” and “Science in the Twentieth-Century Avant Gardes” to “Charting Interior Spaces” and “Spirals in Nature and Art.” Anchoring the themes in locality, influential ideas from two of Dundee’s renowned visual thinkers and polymaths, D’Arcy Thompson and Patrick Geddes, served as springboards into global debates. Keynotes addressed the themes from complementary perspectives: in “Real Unicorns and Other Strange Tales,” Martin Kemp (emeritus professor, University of Oxford) explored the topic of truth claims in evolving forms of mediated knowledge; while in “Burnsiana,” professor of photography Calum Colvin Duncan (of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee) raised fundamental questions about processes of perceiving and discovering though his own multimedia artworks about Scotland’s national bard. A highlight was the excursion to Little Sparta, retreat of the “avant-gardener” and word/image artist Ian Hamilton Finlay.

International Center of Medieval Art

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) is pleased to announce that it was recently awarded a renewal of its grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation—$10,000 a year for the next three years—to support travel costs for members participating in conference sessions sponsored by ICMA. ICMA regularly sponsors sessions at such major conferences as the CAA Annual Conference and the ICMA at Western Michigan University, as well as at a number of smaller conferences here and abroad. For the next three years, ICMA members who deliver papers in these sponsored sessions will be eligible for funding that can be used to defer the costs of travel and lodging at these conferences. To learn more about ICMA funding opportunities for scholars working in the field of medieval art or to become a member, please visit www.medievalart.org. For information about proposing an ICMA-sponsored session, please contact Janis Elliott.

International Sculpture Center

Each year the International Sculpture Center (ISC) presents an award competition to its member colleges and universities as a means of supporting, encouraging, and recognizing the work of young sculptors and their supporting schools’ faculty and art program. The Student Award winners participate in an exhibition at Grounds for Sculpture, as well as in a traveling exhibition hosted by arts organizations across the country. Winners’ work is also featured in Sculpture magazine. Each winner receives a one-year ISC membership; all winners are eligible to apply for a fully sponsored residency to study in Switzerland. To nominate a student for this competition, a nominee’s university must first be an ISC university-level member. University membership costs $200 for universities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico or $220 for international universities; this level includes a number of benefits. Interested students should talk to their professors about getting involved. To find out more about the program, please visit http://www.sculpture.org/StudentAwards/2015 or email studentawards@sculpture.org. Deadlines: Nominations open: January 1, 2015; university membership registration: March 16, 2015; online student nomination form: March 23, 2015; online student submission form: April 13, 2015.

ISC seeks proposals for panels for the twenty-fifth “International Sculpture Conference: New Frontiers in Sculpture in Central Arizona.” Taking place in fall 2015, the conference will feature keynote speakers, panels, and breakout sessions. The conference will explore: Creative Placemaking; Multi-Disciplinary Artist Led Investigations; Desert as Site: New Earthworks; and other topics in contemporary sculpture. The panel proposal submission deadline is March 1, 2015. All accepted submissions will be notified in May 2015. To learn more about topics, guidelines, and deadlines and to submit a proposal, please visit www.sculpture.org/az2015.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) will sponsor a session, entitled “Di politica: Intersections of Italian Art and Politics since WWII” and organized by Christopher Bennett and Elizabeth Mangini, at the upcoming CAA Annual Conference in New York on Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 12:30–2:00 PM. Current and prospective members are invited to attend the IAS business breakfast meeting on Thursday, February 11, at 7:30–9:00 AM, Madison Suite, 2nd Floor, New York Hilton Midtown. IAS will cosponsor two related study days entitled “Untying the Knot: The State of Postwar Italian Art History Today” at the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York, February 9–10, 2015. Additionally, the IAS will sponsor five sessions at the meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Berlin, Germany, in March 2015.

IAS seeks member applicants for its annual research and publication grant (deadline: January 10, 2015) and for the sixth annual 2015 IAS/Kress Lecture by an established scholar on a Neapolitan topic in Naples, Italy, on May 20, 2015 (deadline: January 4, 2015). IAS welcomes all interested in Italian art to join the society.

National Council of Arts Administrators

The National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) convened its forty-second annual meeting on September 24–26, 2014, in Nashville, Tennessee. The organization owes a debt of gratitude to Mel Ziegler of Vanderbilt University for organizing a provocative and compelling conference. Speakers included: Pablo Helguera, an artist and the director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Education Department; Steven Tepper, a sociologist and dean of the Herberger Institute at Arizona State University; and Ruby Lerner, executive director of Creative Capital.

Three new board members were elected: Lynne Allen, Boston University; Elissa Armstrong, Virginia Commonwealth University; and Cathy Pagani, University of Alabama. They join these returning directors: Leslie Belavance, Alfred University (secretary); Tom Berding, Michigan State University; Steve Bliss, Savannah College of Art and Design; Cora Lynn Deibler, University of Connecticut, Storrs; Andrea Eis, Oakland University (treasurer); Nan Goggin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Amy Hauft, University of Texas at Austin (president); Jim Hopfensperger, Western Michigan University (past president); Lydia Thompson, Texas Tech University; and Mel Ziegler, Vanderbilt University.

Activities at the 2015 CAA Annual Conference in New York include the annual NCAA reception (Thursday, February 12, 5:00–8:00 PM) and an NCAA–CAA affiliate session, “Yes Is a World: Creativity in an Expanding Field,” which will be a fast-paced series of five-minute presentations (Thursday, February 12, 12:30–2:00 PM). NCAA enthusiastically welcomes new members, current members, and all interested parties.

Pacific Arts Association

The Pacific Arts Association (PAA) will hold a session at the 2015 CAA Annual Conference in New York called “Early Missionary Activity on Erromango and Its Impact on Local Material Culture.” Four panelists will examine the interplay between imposed change and local innovation in objects past and present.

An event titled “Trading Traditions: The Role of Art in the Pacific’s Traditional Trading Networks” will be organized by PAA (Pacific) in Tonga on September 28, 2015. For further information, please contact Karen Stevenson, vice president of PAA (Pacific).

Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture

The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) made a strong showing at the annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies from November 20 to 23, 2014, in San Antonio, Texas. Members participated in numerous panels ranging from eighteenth-century prints to twentieth-century art and architecture, as well as film and contemporary art, in Eastern Europe and Russia.

At CAA’s Annual Conference in February, SHERA will sponsor two sessions: “Infiltrating the Pedagogical Canon,” chaired by Marie Gasper-Hulvat; and a double session led by Galina Mardilovich and Maria Taroutina, titled “Reconsidering Art and Politics: Toward New Narratives of Russian and Eastern European Art.”

In January 2015, Natasha Kurchanova became president of SHERA, as Margaret Samu’s term ended. Elections are planned for early January for the next vice president/president elect.

SHERA is delighted to welcome ARTINRUSSIA as a new institutional member. A division of the School of Russian and Asian Studies, ARTINRUSSIA creates study abroad programs, organizes faculty-led tours, and offers travel-assistance services. The organization’s website serves as a platform for publishing student writing about art in Russia and Eurasia.

Society for Photographic Education

Registration is open for the fifty-second national conference of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), titled “Atmospheres: Climate, Equity, and Community in Photography” and taking place March 12–15, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Connect with 1,600 artists, educators, and photographers from around the world for programming that will fuel your creativity—four days of presentations, industry seminars, and critiques to engage you! Explore an exhibits fair featuring the latest equipment, processes, publications, and photography/media schools. Participate in one-on-one portfolio critiques and informal portfolio sharing and take advantage of student volunteer opportunities to receive a full rebate on admission. Other highlights include a print raffle, a silent auction, mentoring sessions, film screenings, exhibitions, receptions, a dance party, and more. The guest speakers are Rebecca Solnit, Chris Jordan, and Hank Willis Thomas. Preview the conference schedule and register at www.spenational.org/conference. Preregistration ends on February 20, 2015.

Southeastern College Art Conference

The seventieth annual meeting of the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) was held October 8–11, 2014, in Sarasota, Florida, and hosted by the Ringling College of Art and Design. Jeff Schwartz served as conference director. Five hundred thirty people attended 122 sessions and workshops. Brandon Oldenburg, a Ringling alumnus, an Academy Award winner, and the founder of Moonbot Studios, delivered the keynote lecture.

Notable awards presented:

• $5000 Artist’s Fellowship: Derek Larson, Georgia Southern University
• $5000 William R. Levin Award for Research in the History of Art: Michelle Moseley-Christian, Virginia Tech
• Achievement in Graphic Design: Doug Barrett, University of Alabama, Birmingham
• Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of Contemporary Materials: Ron Meyers: A Potter’s Menagerie (Stephen Driver)
• Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Folk Art vol. 23 (Carol Crown, University of Memphis)
• Excellence in Teaching: Jeff Schwartz, Ringling College of Art and Design
• Certificates of Merit: Jane Hetherington Brown, University of Arkansas, Little Rock; Carol Mattusch, George Mason University; and Cheryl Goldsleger, University of Georgia
• Awards of Distinction: Peter Scott Brown, University of North Florida; and Jenny Hager, University of North Florida
• Annual Juried Exhibition: juror’s choice: Rob Tarbell, New College; honorable mention: Hye Young Kim, Winston-Salem State University; Margy Rich, State College of Florida; and Jennifer Brickey, Pellissippi State Community College

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association is pleased to present its thirty-third annual conference, to be held March 11–14, 2015, in Denver, Colorado. Attendees will converge in Colorado to exchange information about the latest developments in image and media management within the educational, cultural heritage, and commercial environments. The top-notch conference program includes representation from a broad range of perspectives, with sessions and workshops addressing digital humanities, visual literacy, mapping and geospatial projects, image rights and reproductions, usability testing, new technologies, digital asset management, crowdsourcing, cataloging, embedded metadata, sharing collections, professional advancement, archives, research data management, and visualization. The plenary speakers will frame the conference with inspiring talks on image and media management in two unique contexts. The opening speaker, Aaron Straup Cope, head of engineering at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum and also an artist, will discuss how the New Cooper Hewitt Experience engages visitors with interactive and immersive creative technologies. The closing speaker, Emily Gore, director for content for the Digital Public Library of America, will discuss the strategic vision for DPLA content and oversight of the DPLA Hubs program. Online registration is available through February 20, 2015 (with discounted registration offered until February 6). Onsite registration will be available in Denver.

Women’s Caucus for Art

The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has announced three recipients of the 2015 WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards: Sue Coe, Kiki Smith, and Martha Wilson. The recipient for the 2015 President’s Art and Activism Award is Petra Kuppers. The WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards were first presented in 1979 in President Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe. The awards were the first awards recognizing the contribution of women to the arts and their profound effect on society.

Join WCA for the awards celebration on Thursday, February 12, 2015, in New York. The event will be held at the New York Institute of Technology Auditorium at 1871 Broadway. The evening will kickoff with a ticketed cocktail reception from 5:30 to 7:00 PM. The reception will include food, open bar, and the opportunity to congratulate the awardees. The awards ceremony (free and open to the public) will take place from 7:30 to 9:00 PM; coffee and desserts will follow from 9:00 to 10:00 PM. The celebration is held during the annual WCA and CAA conferences. For more information on the event or to purchase tickets (which includes a special rate for CAA members) please visit www.nationalwca.org.

American Society of Appraisers

The Personal Property Committee of the American Society of Appraisers invites you to its annual spring conference, “Current Issues in Determining Authenticity in Visual Art and Objects, the Catalogue Raisonné, Art Scholarship, and Value in the Marketplace,” to be held March 25–28, 2015, at the Yale Club in New York. This scholarly conference will gather highly regarded and renowned experts to discuss timely and relevant topics, including authentication of jade objects, certificates of authenticity, conservation issues, connoisseurship in collecting, authenticity of American paintings, who is an expert, and much more. Field trips to the Princeton University museum and library collections and gallery visits in New York will also be part of conference activities. Accommodations have been reserved at the Yale Club for this event. Early-bird registration pricing will be available. This will be a not-to-miss conference! There is limited space for this event, which is expected to sell out. Stay tuned for additional details.

Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence

Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence (ALMSD) will host the session “Symbolist Art and the Unconscious” at the CAA Annual Conference on Saturday, February 14, 2015, 12:30–2:00 PM. This session will feature papers on art and related disciplines that were influenced by the studies of hysteria and the unconscious conducted by the French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot, Sigmund Freud’s teacher.

ALMSD is organizing a conference on angst in visual arts, literature, and philosophy in Paris, to be held June 4–6, 2015, at Univ. Paris IV. The organization is also accepting the submission of articles on mental illnesses and the Symbolist movement for the first issue of its journal, to be published in fall 2015.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

This past summer, the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) and the Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Nonprofit Management held its second Academic Museum Leadership Seminar on the campus of Northwestern University (June 23–27, 2014). Forty-two museum leaders from throughout the United States, Canada, Qatar, and Ireland participated in the leadership-training program. Loyola University Museum of Art and Northwestern’s Block Museum also hosted dinners for seminar fellows during the weeklong program. Funding for the seminar was generously provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

New AAMG board and staff members are: Craig Hadley, DePauw University, board member at large (communications); Katie Kizer, Vanderbilt University, membership coordinator; and Joseph Mella, Vanderbilt University, executive board member

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) has established a permanent fund in memory of Professor Oleg Grabar and in support of the annual award of Grabar Grants and Fellowships. These competitive grants and fellowships, open to all nationalities, are intended to encourage and further the professional development of PhD students and postdoctoral scholars in the history of Islamic art, architecture and archaeology. The next deadline for the Grabar Travel Grant and Post-Doctoral Fellowship is December 15, 2014.

International Association of Art Critics

The International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA), in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, will present the eighth AICA/USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at the New School featuring Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, curator of the fourteenth Istanbul Biennale (2015). In addition to her other positions, Christov-Bakargiev has been appointed as a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute for 2015. Her lecture will be held at the New School, 12th Street Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, New York, on Thursday, November 20, 2014, 6:30–8:00 PM. Admission is free.

International Sculpture Center

International Sculpture Day, or IS Day, is an annual celebration event held worldwide on April 24, 2015, to further the International Sculpture Center (ISC) mission of advancing the creation and understating of sculpture and its unique, vital contribution to society. IS Day will include a wide range of events, openings, and educational and promotional activities around the world to include, but not limited to: open day at museum/sculpture park; open studios tours; demonstrations and workshops; panels, talks, presentations, and discussions; parties and openings; sculpture exhibits and shows; tours of private and public collections; pop-up shows; exhibitions; and more. Visit www.sculpture.org/isday to learn more about the event and how to participate.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) will sponsor a CAA annual meeting session in New York, organized by Christopher Bennett and Elizabeth Mangini entitled “Di politica: Intersections of Italian Art and Politics since WWII” (February 11, 2015, 12:30–2:00 PM). IAS will also cosponsor a related two-day conference entitled “Untying the Knot: The State of Postwar Italian Art History Today” at the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York on February 9–10, 2015. IAS encourages members and prospective members to attend the IAS business meeting on February 11, 7:30–9:00 AM. In March 2015, IAS will sponsor five sessions at the March annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Berlin.

IAS is pleased to provide a research and publication grant (deadline: January 10, 2015). In addition, the society seeks proposals of papers from senior scholars for the sixth annual 2015 IAS/Kress Lecture, scheduled for May 20, 2015, in Naples, Italy, on a Neapolitan topic (deadline: January 4, 2015).

National Council of Arts Administrators

The forty-second annual conference of the National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) convened September 23–26, 2014 in Nashville, Tennessee. The organization is indebted to Mel Ziegler and Heather Rippetoe of Vanderbilt University for organizing a provocative, powerful conference. Featured speakers included: Pablo Helguera, artist, writer, and raconteur; Jon Rubin, artist and social practitioner; Steven J. Tepper, a sociologist focused on creativity in education; and Ruby Lerner, founding director of Creative Capital.

The membership elected three new board members: Lynne Allen, Boston University; Elissa Armstrong, Virginia Commonwealth University; and Cathy Pagani, University of Alabama. They join these returning directors: Leslie Bellavance, Alfred University (secretary); Steve Bliss, Savannah College of Art and Design; Cora Lynn Deibler, University of Connecticut; Andrea Eis, Oakland University (treasurer); Amy Hauft, University of Texas at Austin (president); Jim Hopfensperger, Western Michigan University (past president); Lydia Thompson, Texas Tech University; and Mel Ziegler, Vanderbilt University. Special thanks goes to Sergio Soave of Ohio State University for his excellent service; he rotates off the board this year.

Activities at the 2015 CAA Annual Conference in New York include the annual NCAA reception (February 12, 5:00–8:00 PM) and an affiliated-society session, “Hot Problems/Cool Solutions in Arts Leadership,” a fast paced series of presentations on leadership (February 12, 12:30–2:00 PM). NCAA welcomes new and current members as well as all interested parties.

Society for Photographic Education

The fifty-second national conference of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), titled “Atmospheres: Climate, Equity and Community in Photography,” will take place March 12–15, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Connect with 1,600 artists, educators, and photographers from around the world for programming that will fuel your creativity—four days of presentations, industry seminars, and critiques to engage you! Explore an exhibits fair featuring the latest equipment, processes, publications, and photography/media schools. Participate in one-on-one portfolio critiques and informal portfolio sharing or attend as a student volunteer for free admission. Other highlights include a print raffle, silent auction, mentoring sessions, film screenings, exhibitions, receptions, a dance party, and more! The guest speakers will be Rebecca Solnit, Chris Jordan, and Hank Willis Thomas. Registration will open on November 3, 2014. Preview the conference schedule and register online at www.spenational.org/conference.

Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture

The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) looks forward to the ASEEES annual convention November 20–23, 2014, in San Antonio, Texas, where its members will participate on a dozen panels ranging from eighteenth-century prints to twentieth-century art and architecture in Eastern Europe and Russia. SHERA’s business meeting, to be held on Saturday, November 22, at 3:30 PM, is open to both members and nonmembers.

In recent months SHERA’s members have been busy organizing exhibitions, publishing new research, and planning conferences. To see their activities, go to www.shera-art.org and click on News; for members’ recent publications and work in progress, click on Research.

SHERA is delighted to welcome the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC) as a new institutional member. CCRAC is a joint initiative between the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London to provide a forum for the investigation of Russian and Soviet art. It aims to stimulate debate, support collaborative work, and generate and disseminate research on all aspects of the visual arts, architecture, design, and exhibitions in Russia and the Soviet Union.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) presented the organization’s highest honors at a membership and awards dinner on March 13, 2014, during the VRA’s thirty-second annual conference, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Virginia Mason Green (Macie) Hall of the Center for Educational Resources at Johns Hopkins University received the Distinguished Service Award for her contributions to visual resources and image management. Her service as the VRA representative to the Conference on Fair Use and the National Information Infrastructure at the US Patent and Trademark Office from 1994 to 1999 was only the beginning of her contributions to the field of visual resources.

The Nancy DeLaurier Award for distinguished achievement in the field of visual resources was presented to Ann Baird Whiteside of Harvard University. Whiteside was honored for her leadership in the development and implementation of the Society of Architectural Historians’ SAHARA Project. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, SAHARA was developed by the Society of Architectural Historians in collaboration with ARTstor. It contains over 47,000 images of architecture and landscapes contributed by architects, scholars, photographers, graduate students, preservationists, and others who share an interest in the built environment. Nominator and recipient acceptance remarks are available on the VRA Awards website.