CAA News Today

The June 2009 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of art-historical scholarship, has just been published. It will be mailed to those CAA members who elect to receive it, and to all institutional members.

On the cover is a detail of a pillowcase designed ca. 1916 by the Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber, which accompanies an essay by Bibiana Obler that considers the difference between Taeuber’s and Hans Arp’s public and private identities through a set of collaborative and closely related works and why they kept their most “advanced” work to themselves.

For her contribution, Stephanie Leitch investigates Hans Burgkmair’s images of non-Western communities in the woodcut frieze The Peoples of Africa and India (1508), which neither played into iconographic presets nor invented new stereotypes. Two more essays round out the issue: Norma Broude explores the political dynamics of gender informing the intentions, subjects, production, and reception of Giambattista Tiepolo’s frescoes for the palazzina of the Villa Valmarana, and Laura Morowitz examines the extraordinary popularity and religious undercurrents of the Hungarian artist Mihály Munkácsy’s paintings Christ before Pilate and Christ on Golgotha in late-nineteenth-century America.

The June issue of The Art Bulletin also contains reviews of books on Chinese epigraphy, Giovanni Bellini, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Marcel Duchamp. Please read the full table of contents for more details.

The March 2009 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, has been published and was mailed to CAA members earlier this month.

Special to this issue is the publication of Picasso’s Closet, a play by the Chilean American writer and Duke University professor Ariel Dorfman, which examines Pablo Picasso’s thorny politics and raises questions about the role of an artist during wartime. The art historians Pepe Karmel and Patricia Leighton and the theorist Mieke Bal respond.

Two essays examine on art and culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France. Judy Sund reads Antoine Watteau’s Les charmes de la vie as a commentary on the ways that nature was domesticated and aestheticized for wealthy Parisians, with the artist standing as mediator between the realms of culture and nature. Meanwhile, Jennifer Olmsted considers how Eugène Delacroix’s The Sultan of Morocco and His Entourage was at odds with the triumphalist paintings of French domination over North Africa that were also on view at the Salon of 1845 in Paris.

This issue of The Art Bulletin also contains four book reviews on Roman visuality, the Buddhist afterlife in art, the Psalter of Saint Louis, and African architecture. Please read the full table of contents for more details.

The Art Bulletin publishes leading scholarship in the English language in all aspects of art history as practiced in the academy, museums, and other institutions. From its founding in 1913, the quarterly journal has published, through rigorous peer review, scholarly articles and critical reviews of the highest quality in all areas and periods of the history of art.

The Art Bulletin Seeks Editor-in-Chief

The Art Bulletin Editorial Board invites nominations and self-nominations for the position of editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, for a three-year term, July 1, 2010–June 30, 2013 (preceded by a year as editor designate, from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010).

The Art Bulletin comprises scholarly essays and documentation on the history of visual art of all periods and places. The editor-in-chief is responsible for the content and character of the journal. Each issue has approximately 150 editorial pages (135,000 words), not including book and exhibition reviews, which are the responsibility of the reviews editor. The editor-in-chief reads all submitted manuscripts, refers them to appropriate expert referees for scholarly review, provides guidance to authors concerning the form and content of submissions, and makes final decisions regarding acceptance or rejection of articles for publication.

In addition to working with authors, the editor-in-chief attends the three annual meetings of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board—held in the spring and fall in New York and once at the CAA Annual Conference—and submits an annual report to the CAA Board of Directors and editorial board. CAA reimburses the editor-in-chief for travel and lodging expenses for the spring and fall meetings in accordance with its travel policy, but the editor-in-chief pays these expenses to attend the Annual Conference. The editor-in-chief also works closely with the CAA staff in New York, where production for the publication is organized. This is a half-time position. CAA provides financial compensation to the editor’s institution, usually in the form of course release or the equivalent, for three years. The editor is not usually compensated directly.

Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Members may not publish their own work in the journal during the term of service. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name. Please send a letter describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, CV, and contact information to: Chair, Art Bulletin Editorial Board, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Deadline: April 15, 2009.

The Art Bulletin Seeks Editorial-Board Members

CAA invites nominations and self-nominations for two individuals to serve on the Art Bulletin Editorial Board for a four-year term, July 1, 2009–June 30, 2013.

The ideal candidate has published substantially in the field and may be an academic, museum-based, or independent scholar; institutional affiliation is not required. Applicants who have specializations in East or South Asian, Renaissance, or early modern European art are especially invited to apply.

The editorial board advises the editor-in-chief and assists him or her to seek authors, articles, and other content for the journal; guides its editorial program and may propose new initiatives for it; performs peer reviews and recommends peer reviewers; and may support fundraising efforts on the journal’s behalf. Members also assist the editor-in-chief to keep abreast of trends and issues in the field by attending and reporting on sessions at the CAA Annual Conference and other academic conferences, symposia, and events in their fields.

Each year the editorial board meets twice in New York and once at the CAA Annual Conference. CAA reimburses members for travel and lodging expenses for the spring and fall New York meetings in accordance with its travel policy, but members pay these expenses to attend the conference.

Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Members may not publish their own work in the journal during the term of service. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name. Please send a letter describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, CV, and contact information to: Chair, Art Bulletin Editorial Board, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Deadline: April 15, 2009.

The December 2008 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of art history in English, has just been published. Your copy will arrive in the mail in the coming days.

In his essay for the journal’s Interventions series, Partha Mitter interrogates the nexus of power and authority that has effectively marginalized non-Western modernism and proposes a revisionist methodology. Alastair Wright, Rebecca M. Brown, Saloni Mathur, and Ajay Sinha write brief responses to Mitter’s text.

For “The Body of Eve in Andrea Pisano’s Creation Relief,” Jack M. Greenstein examines the artist’s treatment of the figures in the fourteenth-century Creation of Eve panel on the campanile of Florence Cathedral, which set a new standard for naturalism in relief sculpture.

With “In Form We Trust: Neoplatonism, the Gold Standard, and the Machine Art Show,” Jennifer Jane Marshall considers the Museum of Modern Art’s 1934 exhibition as a case study for investigating interwar American modernism’s negotiation between meaning, materiality, and value. Also in twentieth-century art, Claude Cernuschi and Andrzej Herczynski clarify the mechanics of Jackson Pollock’s handling of liquid paint under gravity and the broader implications for the meaning and ethos of his work.

The reviews section includes Ellen T. Baird’s assessment of Elizabeth Hill Boone’s recent book Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate, and Kymberly N. Pinder’s evaluation of the exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love at the Walker Art Center, among other reviews. Please read the full table of contents for more details.

As the current term of the Art Bulletin reviews editor is coming to its conclusion, CAA invites applicants for the next term, July 1, 2009–June 30, 2012 (with service as incoming reviews editor designate from February to June 2009). The Art Bulletin, published quarterly by CAA, is the leading publication of art history in English.

Candidates should be art scholars with stature in the field and experience in editing book and/or exhibition reviews; institutional affiliation is not required. Candidates should be published authors of at least one book.

The reviews editor is responsible for commissioning all book and exhibition reviews in The Art Bulletin. He or she selects books and exhibitions for review, commissions reviewers, and determines the appropriate length and character of reviews. The reviews editor also works with authors and CAA’s director of publications in the development and preparation of review manuscripts for publication. He or she is expected to keep abreast of newly published and important books and recent exhibitions in the fields of art history, criticism, theory, visual studies, and museum publishing. This is a three-year term, which includes membership on the Art Bulletin Editorial Board.

The reviews editor attends the three annual meetings of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board—held in the spring and fall in New York and in February at the CAA Annual Conference—and submits an annual report to CAA’s Publications Committee. CAA reimburses the reviews editor for travel and lodging expenses for the spring and fall New York meetings in accordance with its travel policy, but he or she pays these expenses to attend the conference.

Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, CV, and at least one letter of recommendation to: Director of Publications, Art Bulletin Reviews Editor Search, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Deadline: September 15, 2008; finalists will be interviewed on October 24, 2008, in New York.