CAA News Today
Proposed Amendment to the CAA By-Laws
posted by Anne Collins Goodyear — January 13, 2014
Dear Colleagues:
Thank you for your membership in the College Art Association. Starting on January 6, 2014, CAA will open its online election. Not only do we have an excellent slate of six candidates to be considered for Board service, but we request your vote on a proposed amendment to the By-laws of College Art Association.
The amendment grows out of a detailed analysis of CAA’s current membership structure, and reflects the results of a recent member survey evaluating the most highly valued aspects of membership. Based on this study, designed in part to assess the needs of contingent faculty, the Board determined that it made sense to streamline the numerous categories of membership now in place and to develop a structure based on benefits rather than on income. Some of the new benefits that will be made available include online journal access, additional online access to a non-CAA publication published by Taylor & Francis (the new co-publisher of CAA’s journals), and JPASS access at a fifty percent discount, as well as discounted, part-time membership for contingent faculty.
Because changing the membership categories requires amending the By-laws, the Board unanimously adopted a resolution at its October 27, 2013 meeting recommending the amendment to the By-laws available at http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/caa_by-laws_amendment_02_2014.pdf. The Board believes that this change will benefit members and sustain the services the Association provides. The amendment also provides for flexibility in enabling the Association to make further changes to the membership structure as may be deemed desirable in the future.
We encourage you to review the proposed amendment to the By-laws and we urge you to cast your vote on January 6th.
With appreciation of your support of CAA, we look forward to welcoming you at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago!
All best wishes for the season,
Sincerely yours,
Anne Collins Goodyear
President, College Art Association
Co-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art
2014–15 Nominating Committee Seeks Members
posted by Vanessa Jalet — December 04, 2013
CAA invites you to help shape the future of the organization by serving on the 2014–15 Nominating Committee. Each year, this committee nominates and interviews potential candidates for the CAA Board of Directors and selects the final slate for the membership’s vote. The candidates for the 2014–18 board election were announced on November 26, 2013.
The Board of Directors and the Nominating Committee strive to find the best candidates that represent the broad subdisciplines and practitioners represented in the membership. The current Nominating Committee will choose the new members of its own committee at its business meeting, to be held at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago in February. Once selected, all committee members must propose, in the spring, a minimum of five and a maximum of ten people for the board. Service on the committee also involves conducting telephone interviews with candidates during the summer and meeting in fall 2014 to select the final board slate. Finally, all Nominating Committee members attend their business meeting, at the New York conference in 2015, to select the next committee.
Nominations and self-nominations should include a brief statement of interest and a 2–3 page CV. Please email a statement and your CV as Word attachments to the attention of DeWitt Godfrey, CAA vice president for committees, care of Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison. Deadline: January 3, 2014.
Candidates for the Upcoming Board Election
posted by Vanessa Jalet — November 26, 2013
The 2013–14 Nominating Committee has announced a slate of six candidates for the annual election of four new CAA members to serve on the Board of Directors for a four-year term (2014–18). Voting will begin on Monday, January 6, 2014. The webpages for the election, which will include the candidates’ statements, biographies, endorsements, and video presentations, will be published in mid-December 2013.
The six candidates are:
- G. James Daichendt, Professor and Associate Dean, School of Visual and Performing Arts, Azusa Pacific University
- Helen C. Frederick, Professor, School of Art and Design, George Mason University
- Jim Hopfensperger, Professor of Art, Frostic School of Art, Western Michigan University
- Gunalan Nadarajan, Professor and Dean, Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan
- Dannielle Tegeder, Associate Professor of Art, Art Department, Lehman College, City University of New York
- David C. Terry, Director of Programs and Curator, New York Foundation for the Arts
If you have questions about the Nominating Committee, the candidates, or the voting process, please contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison.
Report from the October 2013 Meeting of the Board of Directors
posted by Anne Collins Goodyear — November 19, 2013
From October 24-27, the College Art Association Board of Directors, Editorial Boards, and Annual Conference Committee held their fall meetings to discuss current and future programming.
During a retreat held on Saturday, October 26, the Board met to discuss the development of the 2015-2020 strategic plan and the transition from an income-based membership model to one oriented to benefits. At the upcoming February 2014 meeting, CAA’s membership will have a chance to learn more about the proposed strategic plan and to provide feedback as well as to vote to amend the bylaws of the Association to permit the new membership structure. This will also us to maintain lower rates for students and retired members, provide discounted fees for part-time and contingent faculty, and allow all members greater flexibility in determining what benefits they would like to receive. Likewise, the new strategic plan prioritizes cultivating and serving the membership, placing a strong emphasis on the use of new technologies for enhancing communications from social media to publications to expanding the reach of the Annual conference virtually.
During its meeting on Sunday, October 27, the Board of Directors elected a new director: Debra Riley Parr, who replaces Saul Ostrow, whose term she will complete. It approved a balanced budget for the second half of the FY 2014 and adopted several new resolutions. These include the creation of a new Web Editor position for the Art Journal to support the ongoing development of its website as well as the adoption of several new guidelines developed by its Professional Practices Committees. These comprise: Guidelines for CAA Interviews, Guidelines for Part-Time Professional Employment, Guidelines for Presenting Works in a Digital Format, Standards for Professional Placement, and a Statement Concerning the Deaccession of Works of Art. At the request of the Committee on Women in the Arts, it approved a revision to the committee’s charge, which now designates:
“The Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) promotes the scholarly study and recognition of women’s contributions to the visual arts and to critical and art historical studies; advocates for feminist scholarship and activism in art; develops partnerships with organizations with compatible missions; monitors the status of women in the visual arts professions; provides historical and current resources on feminist issues; and supports emerging artists and scholars in their careers.”
The Board heard updates on two signature projects: the ongoing development of its Best Practices Code for Fair Use in the Creation and Curation of Artworks and Scholarly Publishing in the Visual Arts and the digitization of its publications. With respect to CAA’s Fair Use Code, the first phase of the project is close to completion, with an Issues Report distilling the results of interviews with 100 thought leaders in the field, a survey of CAA membership, and a literature review, due to be released in early 2014. CAA’s Committee on Intellectual Property will devote its annual session at the Annual Conference to this topic, at noon on Saturday, February 15th.
The Board also learned that CAA’s negotiations with Taylor and Francis to serve as a copublisher for its journals were close to conclusion. Thanks to this agreement, which is now complete, as recently reported, CAA will be able to digitize its print journals, Art Journal and The Art Bulletin and to offer caa.reviews open access. Both The Art Bulletin and Art Journal will also continue in printed form.
It also turned its attention toward the future. To this end, the Board heard from Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communications at the Modern Language Association about the MLA’s new Humanities Commons. CAA will consider whether it might make sense to partner with MLA as this new virtual space of scholarly discussion and exchange continues to grow.
The Board also entertained discussion about the status of the Ph.D. in art practice and its relationship to the terminal Master of Fine Arts. CAA’s Professional Practices Committee is currently engaged in researching and developing a statement regarding these degrees and the expertise they represent.
Finally, the Board selected its new President-Elect, DeWitt Godfrey, Associate Professor at Colgate University. A talented sculptor and CAA Board Member since 2009, Professor Godfrey will assume office in May 2014, and current President, Anne Collins Goodyear, will serve as past-President until May 2015.
The Board looks forward to meeting with CAA’s membership at the Annual Business meeting on Friday, February 14th at 5:30 pm.
DeWitt Godfrey Elected CAA President for 2014–16.
posted by Nia Page — November 05, 2013
DeWitt Godfrey, associate professor of sculpture in the Department of Art and Art History at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, has been elected president of the CAA Board of Directors for a two-year term, beginning May 2014. A member of the board since 2009, Godfrey has served on the board’s Executive Committee as secretary (2010–12) and vice president for committees (2012–14). He succeeds Anne Collins Goodyear, codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Bowdoin, Maine, who has led the board since May 2012.
Godfrey writes, “During my tenure on the board, CAA has evolved into an organization that can look to the future with greater confidence than in the past. The next president must provide continuity and leadership that builds on our already realized strategic plans and advance the remainder of our unfinished, unmet goals. We must be mindful that our current and future strategic initiatives should be part of a coherent strategy for the growth and improvement of CAA, that individual initiatives contribute to both short- and long-term success, that we recognize the extent of our resources in relation to our ambitions, and finally that the strategic plan is seen as dynamic and of a whole.”
Godfrey did his undergraduate work at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, was a member of the inaugural group of fellows in the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and received his MFA from Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. He is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Japan Foundation, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Godfrey’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. His commissioned work includes Concordia for LexArts in Lexington, Kentucky; Blanchard Road for the Cambridge Arts Council in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Greenwich South, a visioning exercise for the Downtown Alliance in New York. His installations can be seen at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan; the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts; Lehman College in New York; and the Kennedy Museum of Art at Ohio University in Athens. Godfrey currently serves on CAA’s Task Force for Fair Use and on its 2015–2020 Strategic Plan Task Force.
Godfrey continues, “As CAA begins its second one hundred years, we look forward to the imminent roll-out of the 2015–2020 Strategic Plan and to the completion and dissemination of the findings of the Task Force on Fair Use. I hope to continue the work of our great predecessors to maintain CAA as the preeminent professional arts organization worldwide, to serve and grow membership, and to ready the association to respond effectively to future challenges, both known and unknown.”
The CAA board chooses its next president from among the elected directors in the fall of the current president’s final year of service, providing a period in which the next president can learn the responsibilities of the office and prepare for his or her term. For more information on CAA and on the Board of Directors, please contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive assistant.
Members Respond Enthusiastically to Survey for CAA’s 2015–2020 Strategic Plan
posted by Michael Fahlund — October 08, 2013
The results of the September 4th survey to members identified the most critical concerns in the visual arts field as: 1) the availability of full-time positions in academia and professional careers outside of academia; 2) access to information on professional opportunities and grants; 3) copyright, image licensing costs and fair use; and 4) the need for networking (survey results: www.collegeart.org/pdf/2013CAAMembershipSurvey.pdf). These and other critical interests of the members will assist in shaping the future of CAA as it develops the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan.
The CAA Board of Directors will hold a planning retreat on October 26th to review the survey results along with information gathered from interviews with 20 leaders in related fields, discussions with artists and art historians held at the Clark Research Institute September 19 – 24, and ideas from the CAA standing committees. The Task Force on the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan (www.collegeart.org/about/plan) will prepare a draft of the plan before the February 2014 Annual Conference.
All members are invited to attend the Open Discussion on the Future of CAA at the Annual Members Business Meeting at the Annual Conference in Chicago on Friday, February 14th, 5:30 PM.
Some 670 members expressed interest in one or more of CAA’s 16 different committees, juries, or editorial boards. If you would like to become more involved with CAA and wish to pursue your interest, please contact Vanessa Jalet (vjalet@collegeart.org); information about the various committees is also available on the CAA website (www.collegeart.org/committees/).
And, congratulations to Monta May and Mimi Whalen whose names were selected at random for a one-year, complimentary, individual membership with CAA!
Thank you for your time and ideas.
Report on Part-Time Faculty in Art History and Studio Art
posted by Linda Downs — June 07, 2013
The more information that is made available on critical issues in the field, the greater a case can be made for advocacy to promote change. One of the major challenges for the visual-arts field is ensuring that all faculty are properly supported so that they may provide outstanding teaching, research and creative work. It is estimated that over 70% of faculty at colleges and universities in the United States are now hired on a contingent bases. This upward trend began in the 1970s and appears to dominate the future.
Data on working conditions of part-time faculty is not easily available since the funding for the National Study on Postsecondary Faculty at the Department of Education was discontinued in 2003. Data on art history, studio art, and art education faculty is even more difficult to obtain since visual arts and performing arts faculty were historically aggregated together by the Department of Education.
In response to the lack of data, the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, http://www.academicworkforce.org/ comprising twenty six academic associations including CAA, organized an extensive survey. The report on this survey was published in June 2012 http://www.academicworkforce.org/CAW_portrait_2012.pdf. Of the 20,000 part-time faculty participating in the survey, 1,034 were CAA members. The data they contributed has been compiled and is now available [http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/CAA-CAWContingentFacultySurvey.pdf].
Some of the major findings from the art historians, artists and art educators indicate that: 1) part-time faculty in the visual arts field have a slightly higher salary rate than the median; 2) there are gender disparities in salaries within the visual arts; and 3) resources and benefits provided by institutions are two to three times lower for visual-arts faculty than the full sample of respondents.
What is CAA doing to address these issues? The Board adopted the Guidelines for Part-Time Faculty in 2004. The Professional Practices Committee under the chairmanship of Jim Hopfensperger and an ad hoc committee led by Tom Berding and CAA board member, John Richardson are working to update these guidelines to respond to present needs in order to provide standards for the field.
Several CAA annual conference sessions have been devoted to resources for administrators and part-time faculty. At the 2013 New York Annual Conference, a panel which included John Curtis from the American Association of University Professors and Rosemary Feal from the Modern Language Association, among others, provided valuable resources for networking among part-time faculty. An example is organizations such as CAW that are actively addressing workforce issues and state and national government advocacy. These resources can be found at http://www.collegeart.org/resources/contingentfaculty.
The CAA Board has organized a planning task force of members to address critical issues in the field over the next five years. The profound changes in the structure of faculty, teaching formats, digital research, publishing and creative work are some of the greatest challenges identified. The members of the task force welcome your comments in shaping how CAA can address these and other major issues of our profession. Please send your ideas and comments to CAA at nyoffice@collegeart.org.
I would like to thank Peter Bucchianeri at Harvard University for compiling the data and writing the report on the responses of CAA member respondents to the contingent faculty survey.
Members of the 2013–14 Nominating Committee
posted by Vanessa Jalet — May 21, 2013
CAA is pleased to announce the members of the 2013–14 Nominating Committee, which is charged with identifying and interviewing potential candidates for the Board of Directors and selecting the final slate of candidates for the membership’s vote. The committee members, their institutional affiliations, and their positions are:
- DeWitt Godfrey, Colgate University, Vice President for Committees and Chair
- Dina Bangdel, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar and Member at Large
- Leslie Bellavance, Alfred University and CAA Board Liaison
- Kevin Hamilton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Member at Large
- Beauvais Lyons, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Member at Large
- Denise Mullen, Oregon College of Art and Craft and CAA Board Liaison
- Sabina Ott, Columbia College Chicago and CAA Board Liaison
- Melissa Potter, Columbia College Chicago and Member at Large
- Linda Downs, CAA Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer (ex officio)
The 2012–13 Nominating Committee chose the new members of the committee at its recent business meeting, held during the 2013 Annual Conference in New York in February. The Board of Directors also appointed three liaisons. CAA publishes a call for nominations and self-nominations for Nominating Committee service on the website in late fall of every year and publicizes it in CAA News. Please direct all queries regarding the committee to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison.
Reflections on the Annual Conference, the Year Past, and the Year to Come
posted by Anne Collins Goodyear — March 05, 2013
Anne Collins Goodyear is president of the CAA Board of Directors.
CAA’s Annual Conference was typically lively and rewarding. With nearly six thousand participants, representing all fifty states—and the District of Columbia—and fifty-three countries, CAA hosted well over two hundred sessions addressing a broad range of topics, including contemporary art practice, criticism, pedagogy, issues in museums, and the history of art. As participation in the conference by colleagues from around the world continues to grow, we were pleased to welcome twenty recipients of CAA International Travel Grants, generously supported by the Getty Foundation, and further discussed by Ann Albritton, Chair of CAA’s International Committee, in an article that will soon be published on the CAA website.
The conference took advantage of new technologies, providing, for the first time, wireless internet access free of charge to conference goers throughout the conference rooms, and making possible the broad spread use of Skype to involve panelists and respondents unable to be in New York. CAA also hosted its first ever THATCamp (The Humanities And Technology) on February 11 and 12, fully subscribed with seventy-five scholars, just before the official start of the conference. A follow up session held during the conference continued a stimulating discussion about the promise and current role of new technologies for art historians.
New technologies are shaping CAA’s publications, two of which celebrate major milestones this year. The Annual Conference enabled us to mark the centennial of The Art Bulletin and the fifteenth anniversary of caa.reviews—both of which were toasted with cake and champagne following our Annual Members’ Business Meeting. In connection with this, each publication, thanks to a $20,000 grant from the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, has undertaken open-access online projects using the Scalar platform. Thelma Thomas, chair of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board, graciously demonstrated her online compilation “Publishing The Art Bulletin: Past, Present, and Future,” (http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/the-art-bulletin/index) at the meeting. A forthcoming Scalar project by the caa.reviews editor-in chief, Sheryl Reiss, will address the exhibition Bernini: Sculpting in Clay at the Kimbell Art Museum.
As the terrain of scholarly publishing continues to evolve, the high cost of scholarly publications, due in large part to the necessity of obtaining copyright and other clearance permissions for reproductions, concerns all of us. CAA is thus deeply appreciative of a one-year Meiss/Mellon Author Grant for $69,698 to offer subventions to emerging scholars who are publishing monographs in art history and visual studies and to advertise the award. Applications for the first round of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award are now being accepted. The deadline for spring submissions is March 15, 2013. Fall applications are due October 1, 2013. For more information see: http://www.collegeart.org/meissmellon/.
The larger question of when copyrighted material may be used without licensing in accordance with the principles of fair use is at the heart of a major initiative by CAA to establish Fair Use Best Practice Guidelines, undertaken with the assistance of generous support from the Kress and Mellon Foundations. The project is addressed in greater depth in Jeffrey Cunard’s article, published today. See: https://www.collegeart.org/news/2013/03/05/caas-task-force-on-fair-use-meets-during-annual-conference/.
As the Strategic Plan for 2010–2015 draws to its conclusion (available at http://www.collegeart.org/about/plan), the Board of Directors has now embarked, having convened a task force for the purpose, on the development of a 2015–2020 Strategic Plan. We are eager for your input into the plan and to hear from you about what you feel is working well within the organization and where our services could be strengthened. A related survey will be distributed later this year, and key issues will be discussed with the CAA membership next February at the 2014 Annual Members’ Business Meeting.
As always, CAA welcomes input from its membership on any topic of interest to the field. Please feel free to consult directly with the staff and board and/or to take advantage of CAA’s Facebook page to share your views. See: https://www.facebook.com/collegeartassociation.
Board of Directors’ Meeting
posted by Linda Downs — March 05, 2013
Anne Collins Goodyear and Linda Downs
Sunday, February 17, 2013
The CAA Board of Directors convened its regularly scheduled meeting after the conference and welcomed Abigail Van Slyck, President, Society of Architectural Historians and Dayton Professor of Art History and Associate Dean of the Faculty, Connecticut College; and Pauline Saliga, Executive Director, Society of Architectural Historians as guests. Van Slyck presented the latest initiatives of the SAH and extended an invitation to CAA to explore projects of mutual interest. The latest collaboration was on the development of the CAA authors’ grants funded for one year by the A.W. Mellon Foundation.
President, Anne Collin Goodyear, announced the election results for the new CAA Board members—Constance Cortez, Jennifer Milam, Sheila Pepe and John Richardson—and thanked everyone who ran for these positions. She also thanked Board members rotating off: Patricia Matthews, Barbara Nesin, Past President; and Randall Griffin, outgoing Vice President for Publications. She then congratulated staff and Board members on the Annual Conference, and presented her annual report, providing updates on major Board initiatives and CAA accomplishments. (See, in this issue of CAA News, Goodyear’s “Reflections on the Annual Conference, the Year Past, and the Year to Come,” https://www.collegeart.org/news/2013/03/05/reflections-on-the-annual-conference-the-year-past-and-the-year-to-come/.
The officers of the Board of Directors and the Senior Staff presented their annual reports to the Board (coming soon).
Jeffrey P. Cunard, CAA Counsel and cochair of the Task Force on Fair Use, presented the method and procedure being followed in this four-year project to develop a code of fair use in creative work and scholarly publishing in the visual arts.
The Executive Director, the Senior Staff, and officers of the Board of Directors presented their annual report to the Board (coming soon).
Consistent with CAA practice, the Vice President for Committees presented three triennial reviews of three of the nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees (PIPS). This year the Diversity Practices Committee, Education Committee, and Museum Committees were reviewed and renewed.
The Professional Practices Committee updated and submitted for adoption by the board, the Standards for Sculptural Reproduction and Preventive Measures to Combat Unethical Casting in Bronze. It was adopted with one abstention. See: http://www.collegeart.org/guidelines/sculpture.
Jacqueline Francis, Vice President for Annual Conference, presented the final report of the Task Force on Annual Conference Technologies and announced that many of the recommendations will be implemented at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago. See: https://www.collegeart.org/news/2013/03/05/final-report-of-the-task-force-on-annual-conference-technologies/.
Francis reported on the success of THAT Camp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) held in conjunction with the CAA Annual Conference in New York and coorganized by Columbia University Libraries, Smarthistory at Khan Academy, The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Macaulay Honors College, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Seventy five people attended and shared their online publications, discussed issues in online publishing, constructed an online survey textbook in one hour, and exchanged ideas for networking and gathering information on art history databases. Plans are to hold THATCamp at the 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago.
The annual election of officers took place. The new officers are:
Vice President for External Affairs – Maria Ann Conelli
Vice President for Committees – DeWitt Godfrey
Vice President for Annual Conference – Jacqueline Francis
Vice President for Publications – Suzanne Preston Blier
Secretary – Patricia McDonnell
The following Board members were elected to the Nominating Committee: Leslie Bellevance, Denise Mullen, and Sabina Ott.
The subject of fees charged by universities to apply for university faculty positions was discussed. CAA has posted a comment on the Online Career Center stating that the association does not condone this practice.