CAA News Today

Teaching the History of Modern Design: The Canon and Beyond
NEH Summer Institute
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
July 6–July 31, 2015

“Teaching the History of Modern Design: The Canon and Beyond” is an exciting four-week NEH Summer Institute that will prepare twenty-five college faculty from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to meet the increasing demand for, as well as interest in, courses on modern design history. In-depth seminars will focus upon three interdependent thematic units: (1) taste and popular culture; (2) women as consumers and producers of design; and (3) political and global interpretations of design after World War II.

The director’s and visiting scholars’ complementary approaches to “The Canon and Beyond” will build upon and reinforce participants’ familiarity with standard material, while simultaneously introducing new material and critical perspectives. Field trips to regional museums and collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Hagley Museum in Delaware will provide participants direct experience with objects and suggest ways to use local collections in their own teaching. Group presentations by our participants will take place during the final week of the institute.

Application deadline: March 2, 2015

Notification date: March 30, 2015

Stipend: $3,300

Visiting scholars: Regina Lee Blaszczyk, University of Leeds, England; Maria Elena Buszek, University of Colorado, Denver; Catharine Rossi, Kingston University, England; Sarah Teasley, Royal College of Art, London; and Vladimir Kulic, Florida Atlantic University.

Project faculty: Carma R. Gorman, University of Texas at Austin

Institute director: David Raizman, Drexel University

The J. M. K. Innovation Prize is an exciting new initiative of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, a New York–based family foundation. In 2015 up to ten prizes will be awarded to US–based individuals or teams addressing our country’s most pressing needs through social-sector innovation.

Join us on Tuesday, February 24 at 12:00 PM EST for an informational webinar about the J. M. K. Innovation Prize. Topics of discussion will include the purpose of the prize, eligibility requirements, the application and selection timeline, and much more. You may register here:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2057012897150264066

If you’ve already registered for this webinar, it is not necessary to register again.

For more information about the J. M .K. Innovation Prize, please visit the J. M. Kaplan Fund’s website: www.JMKFund.org.

Thank you for your continued interest and support!

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an independent federal agency created in 1965 and one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2015–16. To mark this historic event, we would like you to tell us about an NEH grant or grant product that has made a difference in your life, career, community, or academic field. To contribute stories about NEH’s past or for more information, send an email to NEH50@neh.gov. Please include your name and telephone number in your message.

Because democracy demands wisdom, the NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans. The endowment accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers. NEH grants typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television, and radio stations, and to individual scholars. The grants:

• strengthen teaching and learning in schools and colleges
• facilitate research and original scholarship
• provide opportunities for lifelong learning
• preserve and provide access to cultural and educational resources
• strengthen the institutional base of the humanities

Since 1965, the endowment has opened new worlds of learning for the American public with noteworthy projects such as:

• Seven thousand books, 16 of which have won Pulitzer Prizes and 20 of which have received the Bancroft Prize
• The Civil War, the landmark documentary by Ken Burns viewed by 38 million Americans
• The Library of America editions of novels, essays, and poems celebrating America’s literary heritage
• The United States Newspaper Project, which catalogued and microfilmed 63.3 million pages of historic newspapers and paved the way for the National Digital Newspaper Program and its digital repository, Chronicling America
• Annual support for 56 states and territories to help support some 56,000 lectures, discussions, exhibitions, and other programs each year

We look forward to hearing from you!

Smarthistory at Khan Academy recently received a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to accelerate the creation of content for the Smarthistory website. The grant funds three types of fellows:

• Art History Travel Fellows
• Art History Digital Learning Fellow
• Content and Community Specialist

Smarthistory is looking to fill these positions quickly—hopefully in advance of the CAA Annual Conference in New York. Deadline: January 5, 2015.

CAA has published short biographies for this year’s recipients of travel support through the CAA-Getty International Program.  In an effort to promote greater interaction and exchange between American and international art historians, CAA will bring scholars from around the world to participate in the 2015 program, held during the association’s Annual Conference in New York City from February 11–14, 2015. This is the fourth year of the program, which has been generously funded by grants from the Getty Foundation since its inception. The participants—professors of art history, curators, and artists who teach art history—were selected by a jury of CAA members from a highly competitive group of applicants. In addition to covering travel expenses, hotel accommodations, and per diems, the CAA-Getty International Program includes support for conference registration and a one-year CAA membership.

Click here to read the biographies of the fifteen participants.

This fall, CAA awarded grants to the publishers of nine books in art history and visual culture through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund. Thanks to the generous bequest of the late Prof. Millard Meiss, CAA gives these grants to support the publication of scholarly books in art history and related fields.

The nine Meiss grantees for fall 2014 are:

• Amy R. Bloch, Lorenzo Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”: Humanism, History, and Artistic Philosophy in the Italian Renaissance, Cambridge University Press
• Elena Boeck, Imagining the Byzantine Past, Cambridge University Press
• Palmira Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans: Sovereignty, Territory, and Identity in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Cambridge University Press
• Robert DeCaroli, Image Problems: The Origin and Development of the Buddha’s Image in Early South Asia, University of Washington Press
• Lisa Pon, Printed Icon: Forlì’s Madonna of the Fire in Early Modern Italy, Cambridge University Press
• Maggie Popkin, The Architecture of the Roman Triumph: Monuments, Memory, and Identity, Cambridge University Press
• Stephanie Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, Pennsylvania State University Press
• Mary Roberts, Istanbul Exchanges: Ottomans, Orientalists, and Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture, University of California Press
• Freek Schmidt, Passion and Control: Dutch Architectural Culture of the Eighteenth Century, Ashgate

Books eligible for Meiss grants must already be under contract with a publisher and on a subject in the visual arts or art history. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information.

CAA is pleased to announce four 2014 recipients of the annual Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, established in 2005. Thanks to a generous grant from the Wyeth Foundation, these awards are given annually to publishers to support the publication of one or more book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, visual studies, and related subjects. For this grant program, “American art” is defined as art created in the United States, Canada, and Mexico through 1970.

The four grantees for 2014 are:

• Bill Anthes, Hock E Aye Vi: Edgar Heap of Birds, Duke University Press
• Susan Cahan, The Politics of Race in American Museums, 1966–1972, Duke University Press
• Miguel de Baca, Memory Work: Anne Truitt and Sculpture, University of California Press
• Elizabeth Milroy, The Grid and the River: Histories of Philadelphia’s Green Places, 1682–1876, Pennsylvania State University Press

Eligible for the grant are book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, visual studies, and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher on their merits but cannot be published in the most desirable form without a subsidy. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information.

CAA has announced the four recipients of the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award for fall 2014. Thanks to a grant of $60,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CAA is supporting the work of emerging authors who are publishing monographs on the history of art and related subjects.

The four Meiss/Mellon grantees for fall 2014 are:

• Amy R. Bloch, Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise: Humanism, History, and Artistic Philosophy in the Italian Renaissance, Cambridge University Press
• Susan Cahan, The Politics of Race in American Museums, 1966–1972, Duke University Press
• Maggie Popkin, The Architecture of the Roman Triumph: Monuments, Memory, and Identity, Cambridge University Press
• Akiko Walley, Constructing the “Dharma King”: Hōryūji Śākyamuni Triad and the Birth of the “Prince Shōtoku Cult,” Brill

The purpose of the Meiss/Mellon subventions is to reduce the financial burden that authors carry when acquiring images for publication, including licensing and reproduction fees for both print and online publications.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the College Art Association (CAA) a $90,000 grant to partner with the Society for Architectural Historians (SAH) in the development of guidelines for the evaluation of digital scholarship in art and architectural history for promotion and tenure. CAA and SAH will convene a task force, hire a researcher to examine evaluative practices in departments of art and architectural history, develop a survey to seek current practices from CAA and SAH members, and provide evaluative guidelines. CAA President DeWitt Godfrey said, “Since its founding in 1911, CAA has regularly issued Standards and Guidelines for the fields of art and art history. These guidelines will encompass projects in art and architectural history that use digital technologies in research, production, publication, and/or exhibition. These growing forms of scholarship are in critical need of support and recognition, and this grant will allow CAA and SAH to provide standardized guidelines for those evaluating digital art and architectural history.”

This project will mark the first time that CAA and SAH will collaborate on professional practice guidelines, although the two associations have worked closely in other areas in the past. Pauline Saliga, SAH executive director announced, “The Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to collaborate with our sister organization, the College Art Association, on this important endeavor.  Because art and architectural historians are increasingly working collaboratively and using digital tools and data to construct their arguments, it is very important that we develop a set of guidelines for universities to recognize this innovative work.”

The ten-person task force will be chaired by CAA President DeWitt Godfrey and SAH President Ken Breisch. In addition to the chairs, the task force will comprise eight members with substantial experience in traditional and digital scholarship: two art historians, two architectural historians, a librarian, a museum curator, a scholar from another humanities or social-science field with expertise in digital scholarship, and a graduate student or emerging professional in art or architectural history.

The need for evaluative guidelines has been expressed by professors of art and architectural history who have developed research and/or publications using digital technologies, have created new digital tools for interpretation and understanding of art-historical and place-based subjects, or have collaborated with other scholars to develop digital archives and resources; by professors and administrators who have responsibility for dissertations and promotion and tenure committees but lack the necessary tools to assess digital scholarship; by CAA’s and SAH’s editorial boards and advisory committees, whose journals and online academic resources now require guidelines to facilitate critical reviews of digital scholarship; by CAA and SAH publication and award juries who need protocols for judging the quality of digital scholarship to determine awards; by academic publishers; and by other disciplines and their learned societies.

CAA and SAH anticipate that the guidelines will address different types of scholarly digital contributions: those that provide new resources, such as archives and new research tools (examples include SAH Archipedia and SAHARA); those that create scholarship in art and architectural history using publishing platforms such as Scalar and the JSTOR Current Scholarship program; those that create scholarship based on spatial and visualization technologies; and those that engage in new computational technologies.

CAA and SAH anticipate that shared guidelines will reassure art and architectural historians that new forms of digital research and scholarship will be evaluated and credentialed; provide tenure committees with specific criteria for evaluating digital projects in art and architectural history; and ensure that digital scholarship can be evaluated and supported through juries and grants, thereby increasing awareness and participation of scholars in the digital realm.

About CAA

The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other programs, services, and events. CAA focuses on a wide range of issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage, preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching. Learn more at collegeart.org.

About SAH

Founded in 1940, the Society of Architectural Historians is a nonprofit membership organization that promotes the study, interpretation and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes and urbanism worldwide. SAH serves a network of local, national and international institutions and individuals who, by vocation or avocation, focus on the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life. SAH promotes meaningful public engagement with the history of the built environment through advocacy efforts, print and online publications, and local, national and international programs. Learn more at sah.org.

For more information, please contact Hillary Bliss, CAA development and marketing manager, at hbliss@collegeart.org or 212-392-4436.

The College Art Association (CAA) seeks nominations and self-nominations for one US scholar and two scholars based outside the United States to serve on the jury of CAA’s Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant through June 30, 2017. Candidates must be actively publishing scholars with expertise in any branch of American art history, visual studies, or a related field with demonstrated seniority and achievement; institutional affiliation is not required.

The Terra Foundation for American Art awarded CAA a major, three-year grant to administer an annual program to support book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art. The Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant will award funds of up to $15,000 to US and non-US publishers for books that examine American art in an international context, increase awareness of American art internationally through publication outside the United States, allow wider audiences to access important texts through translation, and/or result from international collaboration. For grant guidelines, detailed eligibility requirements and application instructions, please visit www.collegeart.org/terrafoundation.

Members of the Terra Foundation International Publication Jury meet once each year to select awardees. The first meeting of the jury will take place at CAA’s Annual Conference in New York on February 11, 2014. Subsequent meetings will take place via teleconference each February. Two months prior to the meeting, CAA staff will provide all application materials and reader’s reports to jurors for review prior to the jury meeting. Jurors for this grant would serve as volunteers and would not be entitled to receive compensation for service, however, travel and hotel expenses for the 2014 jury meeting will be paid by the College Art Association.

US candidates must be CAA members in good standing and should not currently serve on another CAA editorial board or committee. Jury members may not themselves apply for a grant in this program during their three-year term of service. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a letter describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a curriculum vitae, and contact information to: Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or send all materials as email attachments to Betty Leigh Hutcheson, bhutcheson@collegeart.org. Deadline: December 1, 2014.

About CAA

The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other programs, services, and events. CAA focuses on a wide range of advocacy issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, workforce topics in universities and museums, and access to networked information technologies. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching. Learn more about CAA at www.collegeart.org.

About the Terra Foundation

The Terra Foundation for American Art is dedicated to fostering exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States for national and international audiences. Recognizing the importance of experiencing original works of art, the foundation provides opportunities for interaction and study, beginning with the presentation and growth of its own art collection in Chicago. To further cross-cultural dialogue on American art, the foundation supports and collaborates on innovative exhibitions, research, and educational programs. Implicit in such activities is the belief that art has the potential both to distinguish cultures and to unite them.