CAA News Today
An Interview with Holly Hughes of the NEA Four
posted by CAA — May 11, 2017
Hunter O’Hanian, CAA executive director, recently spoke to the artist Holly Hughes about proposed budget cuts for the National Endowment for the Arts. Hughes is known for being one of the NEA Four—artists whose work was described by Republican lawmakers as controversial and even pornographic. The debacle over the NEA Four led to the closing of the federal agency’s program of giving grants to individual artists.
O’Hanian and Hughes discuss ten points that originated with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that advised Trump on his recent federal budget proposal. The two take on each suggestion point by point, offering a rebuttal to the Heritage Foundation’s logic.
Though we know the most recent budget does fund the NEA and NEH through the fall of 2017 with a small increase in funding—and we are thrilled about that—we do not believe we are in the clear. When funding is allocated again in the fall this conversation should serve as a reminder to why the arts and humanities are so important to our world.
CAA Seeks Jury Members for the Terra Foundation Publication Grant
posted by CAA — May 04, 2017
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, 2020. 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, defined as art of the geographic United States from 1500 to 1980. 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 more information, visit http://www.collegeart.org/programs/publishing-grants/terra-foundation.
Members of the Terra Foundation International Publication Jury review letters of intent for eligibility and meet once each year to select awardees. The first meeting of the jury will take place at CAA’s Annual Conference in Los Angeles, February 21–24, 2018. The 2019 meeting will also take place at the Annual Conference, while the 2020 meetings will take place via teleconference. 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 2018 and 2019 jury meetings 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 Sarah Zabrodski, szabrodski@collegeart.org. Deadline: June 20, 2017.
About CAA
The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, 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.
Join the Wyeth Publication Grant Jury
posted by CAA — May 04, 2017
CAA seeks nominations and self-nominations for three individuals with expertise in any branch of American art history, visual studies, or a related field to serve on the jury for the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant for a three-year term, July 1, 2017–June 30, 2020. Candidates must be actively publishing scholars with demonstrated seniority and achievement; institutional affiliation is not required.
Since 2005, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art has supported the publication of books on American art through the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, administered by CAA.
For this grant program, “American art” is defined as art created in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. 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. The deadline for the receipt of applications is September 15 of each year.
The Wyeth jury awards funds that subsidize the publication of book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art and related subjects. Members review manuscripts and grant applications once a year and meet in New York in the fall to select awardees. CAA reimburses jury members for travel and lodging expenses in accordance with its travel policy.
Candidates must be current CAA members 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 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 of interest describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and contact information to: Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or send all materials as email attachments to Sarah Zabrodski, szabrodski@collegeart.org. Deadline: June 20, 2017.
CAA Members Win NEH Summer Stipends
posted by CAA — April 13, 2017
On March 29, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced funding for 208 humanities projects totaling $21.7 million. These grants include programs that support international collaboration, engage students in interdisciplinary courses, and help veterans.
Among the recipients are the following CAA members, all of whom received a $6,000 Summer Stipend to work on their various research projects:
- Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire of the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library in Winterthur, Delaware, for “Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia and the Color Printing Revolution: A Translation and Critical Study”
- Jennifer Germann of Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, for “A Study of the Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, an 18th-century British Artwork”
- Laura Morowitz of Wagner College in Staten Island, New York, for “Art Exhibitions in Vienna, Austria, during the Nazi Occupation”
- Allie Terry-Fritsch from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, for “Cosimo de’Medici, Fra Angelico, and the Public Library of San Marco”
- Anne Verplanck of Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg for “The Business of Art: Transforming the Graphic Arts in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
These awards come just weeks after President Donald J. Trump’s administration released a budget proposal calling for the elimination of the NEH, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Department of Education’s international education programs, the Institute for Museums and Library Services, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Our attention now turns to Congress, which can fund these programs despite the administration’s proposals. We have been heartened that these programs—which have been supported by presidents of both parties—have seen growing support in Congress in recent years. Indeed, over the past two years, the Republican-controlled Congresses have supported increases for the NEH.
2017 TERRA FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATION GRANT WINNERS
posted by CAA — April 03, 2017
CAA is pleased to announce the 2017 recipients of the Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant. This program, which provides financial support for the publication of book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, is made possible by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. For this grant, “American art” is defined as art (circa 1500–1980) of what is now the geographic United States.
“This year’s publication grant recipients demonstrate once again how this program serves the mission of advancing and internationalizing scholarship on American art,” says Francesca Rose, Program Director for Publications at the Terra Foundation for American Art. “Whether by funding translations or supporting original research in languages other than English and publications by early-career U.S. scholars, the 2017 publication grants allow for the dissemination of important scholarship to the global Americanist community. In addition, providing for travel to the CAA Annual Conference facilitates participation by non-U.S. authors in U.S. professional networks.”
The six Terra Foundation grantees for 2017 are:
- Philippe Artières, Attica, USA, 1971, Le Point du Jour
- Emily Burns, Transnational Frontiers: The Visual Culture of the American West in the French Imagination, 1867–1914, University of Oklahoma Press
- Sophie Cras, The Artist as Economist: Art and Capitalism in the 1960s, Yale University Press
- Kenji Kajiya, Formless Modernism: Color Field Painting and 20th-Century American Culture, University of Tokyo Press
- Kate Lemay, Triumph of the Dead: The American War Cemeteries in France, University of Alabama Press
- ShiPu Wang, The Other American Moderns, Pennsylvania State University Press
Two non-US authors of top-ranked books have also been awarded travel funds and complimentary registration for CAA’s 2018 Annual Conference in Los Angeles; they also received one-year CAA memberships.
The two author awardees for 2017 are:
- Sophie Cras
- Kenji Kajiya
“The Terra Foundation award is unique in that it supports publishers in the United States and abroad and also provides funds for authors of award-winning books to attend the CAA Annual Conference,” says Betty Leigh Hutcheson, Director of Publications at CAA. “Scholars outside the United States who receive travel grants can expand their networks, gain exposure to new ideas, meet publishers at the Book and Trade Fair, and apply to present papers at the conference. The success of the Terra Foundation program is grounded in the high quality of manuscripts CAA receives each year and our ability to financially support these projects. CAA has played a vital role in this process for the past three years, which is particularly gratifying as we see awarded projects reach completion.”
About CAA
The College Art Association is the world’s largest professional association for artists, art historians, designers, arts professionals, and arts organizations. 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.
About the Terra Foundation for American Art
Established in 1978, the Terra Foundation for American Art is dedicated to fostering the exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States. With financial resources of more than $350 million, an exceptional collection of American art from the colonial period to 1945, and an expansive grant program, it is one of the leading foundations focused on American art, supporting exhibitions, academic programs, and research worldwide.
Meiss Call for Jurors 2017
posted by CAA — March 13, 2017
CAA seeks nominations and self-nominations for one individual to serve on the Millard Meiss Publication Fund Jury for a four-year term, July 1, 2017–June 30, 2021. Candidates must be actively publishing scholars with demonstrated seniority and achievement; institutional affiliation is not required.
The Meiss jury awards subsidies to support the publication of book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art and related subjects. Members review manuscripts and grant applications twice a year and meet in New York in the spring and fall to select the awardees. CAA reimburses jury members for travel and lodging expenses in accordance with its travel policy. Members volunteer their services to CAA without compensation.
Candidates must be CAA members 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 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 CV, and contact information to: Millard Meiss Publication Fund Jury, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or send all materials as email attachments to Deidre Thompson, CAA publications assistant, dthompson@collgeart.org. Deadline: April 21, 2016.
2016 Recipients of CAA’s Professional Development Fellowships
posted by Christopher Howard — January 23, 2017
CAA has awarded two 2016 Professional-Development Fellowships—one in visual art and one in art history—to graduate students in MFA and PhD programs across the United States. In addition, CAA has named one honorable mention in art history and two in visual art. The fellows and honorable mentions also receive a complimentary one-year CAA membership and free registration for the 2017 Annual Conference in New York.
Accepting the $10,000 fellowship in visual art is Daniel Seth Krauss, an MFA student in photography in the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The recipient of the $10,000 fellowship in art history is Sara Blaylock, a doctoral candidate in visual studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The honorable mention for art history goes to Lex Lancaster, a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The two honorable mentions in visual art are Allison Rose Craver, an MFA candidate at Ohio State University in Columbus, and Andrew Jilka, an MFA student at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Suzanne Preston Blier, president of the CAA Board of Directors, will formally recognize the two fellows and three honorable mentions at the 105th Annual Conference during Convocation, taking place on Wednesday, February 15, 2017, at the New York Hilton Midtown.
CAA’s fellowship program supports promising artists and art historians who are enrolled in MFA and PhD programs nationwide. Awards are intended to help them with various aspects of their work, whether for job-search expenses or purchasing materials for the studio. CAA believes a grant of this kind, without contingencies, can best facilitate the transition between graduate studies and professional careers. The program is open to all eligible graduate students in the visual arts and art history. Applications for the 2017 fellowship cycle will open in the late spring.
FELLOW IN VISUAL ART
Daniel Seth Kraus
Daniel Seth Kraus‘s work blends historical research with photographic practice to deepen our understanding of people and places. Currently his research investigates faith and work in the American South. Kraus’s work has been featured in numerous print and online publications, including Fraction Magazine, SeeSaw Magazine, Oxford American, and Aint Bad Magazine. His photographs have been exhibited in national and international juried exhibitions, including one at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia. He earned a BFA in photography and a BA in history from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville and is pursuing a MFA in photography at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
FELLOW IN ART HISTORY
Sara Blaylock
Sara Blaylock will complete her PhD in visual studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in spring 2017. To date, the bulk of her research has concerned the experimental film, art, and visual culture of the German Democratic Republic during the 1980s. Her dissertation, “Magnitudes of Dissent: Art from the East German Margins,” focuses on how photography and film, body-based practices, print media, and galleries addressed issues of representation, performativity, and collectivity. It argues that experimental practice in a 1980s GDR was not only an antidote for but also an interpretation of a weakening state—a foil and a mirror to official culture.
Blaylock’s dissertation research has been supported by the German Academic Exchange Service and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, as well as by numerous grants from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has published in numerous academic forums. Most recently, an article appeared in Gradhiva, a French-language journal of art history and anthropology, and Blaylock contributed an essay in both German and English to the catalogue for the exhibition Gegenstimmen. Kunst in der DDR 1976–1989 [Voices of Dissent: Art in the GDR 1976–1989], held at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Another article, “Bringing the War Home to the United States and East Germany: In the Year of the Pig and Pilots in Pajamas,” will appear in Cinema Journal later this year.
Blaylock was recently invited to codirect the International Association for Visual Culture, a scholarly organization that encourages inquiry and debate within the field and that advocates the critical and theoretical expansion of visual-culture studies in academic and artistic venues. She looks forward to helping to advance and strengthen the association’s vision.
HONORABLE MENTIONS IN VISUAL ART AND ART HISTORY
Allison Rose Craver
Allison Rose Craver will complete her MFA, with a concentration in ceramics, at Ohio State University in in Columbus in May 2017. Craver grew up in East Aurora, New York, and earned a BFA in 2010 from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred. A year later she studied as a special student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Craver has shown her work nationally, including exhibitions at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana, and the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. In 2014 she was invited to demonstrate in the Process Room at the annual National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts conference in Milwaukee. Craver’s work is process driven, using ceramics materials in conjunction with fiber and found objects to explore the nature of care and work.
Andrew Jilka
Andrew Jilka was born in in 1986 to a working-class home in Salina, Kansas. The son of a bus driver and a lunch lady, Jilka has been employed as a fast-food worker, a cigarette warehouse stocker, a furniture deliveryman, a Hewlett-Packard call-center representative, a bartender, and later an assistant to the artist Tom Sachs. After selling his Camaro, he enrolled at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where he received a BFA in printmaking in 2009, as well as a scholarship to study printmaking at Hongik University in Seoul, Korea. Jilka’s work is greatly influenced by the instabilities and anxieties of his Midwestern upbringing. His painting is an attempt to reconcile the “high” of the history and lineage of contemporary painting with the Walmart culture he was raised in. Jilka approaches painting with both the deference of Brahms and the irreverence of the Ramones—and perhaps a touch of Taylor Swift. His work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions in Kansas City, Atlanta, New York, and Seoul. He is currently an MFA candidate at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Lex Lancaster
Lex Morgan Lancaster is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where they will complete their degree in May 2017. Lancaster’s dissertation, “Dragging Away: Queer Abstraction in Contemporary Art,” investigates abstraction as a tactic of queering in the work of contemporary artists who deploy nonrepresentational form for political ends. Their related article, “Feeling the Grid: Lorna Simpson’s Concrete Abstraction,” was published in ASAP/Journal (2017), and “The Wipe: Sadie Benning’s Queer Abstraction” is forthcoming in Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture. Lancaster is chairing the session on “New Materialisms in Contemporary Art” at CAA’s 2017 Annual Conference in New York.
Lancaster received their BA in art history from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. They have assisted with exhibitions and public programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art as coordinator of teen programs and intern to the curator of contemporary art, and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, as a paid summer intern in the Department of Photographs. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Lancaster curated the exhibition Our House! Unsettling the Domestic, Queering the Spaces of Home at the Chazen Museum of Art.
2016 Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant Winners
posted by Christopher Howard — November 29, 2016
CAA is pleased to announce eight recipients of the annual Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant for 2016. 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.
The eight grantees for 2016 are:
- Ella Diaz, Flying under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History, University of Texas Press
- Jason Hill, Artist as Reporter: Weegee, Ad Reinhardt, and the PM News Picture, University of California Press
- Wadsworth Jarrell, AfriCOBRA: Experimental Art toward a School of Thought, Duke University Press
- Kellie Jones, South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s, Duke University Press
- Jennifer Josten, Mathias Goeritz: Modernist Art and Architecture in Cold War Mexico, Yale University Press
- Lauren Kroiz, Cultivating Citizens: The Regional Work of Art in the New Deal Era, University of California Press
- Tirza Latimer, Eccentric Modernism: Making Differences in the History of American Art, University of California Press
- Jennifer Van Horn, The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America, University of North Carolina 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.
Fall 2016 Recipients of the Millard Meiss Publication Fund
posted by Christopher Howard — November 28, 2016
This fall, CAA awarded grants to the publishers of seven 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 seven Meiss grantees for fall 2016 are:
- Rebecca Brown, Displaying Time: The Many Temporalities of the Festival of India, University of Washington Press
- Richard Emmerson, Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts, Pennsylvania State University Press
- Michele Greet, Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars, Yale University Press
- Sharon Hecker, A Moment’s Monument: Medardo Rosso and the International Origins of Modern Sculpture, University of California Press
- Katie Hornstein, Picturing War in France, 1792–1856, Yale University Press
- Amy Neff, A Soul’s Journey into God: Art, Theology, and Devotion in a Franciscan Manuscript of the Late Duecento, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
- Hsueh-man Shen, Authentic Replicas: Buddhist Art in Medieval China, University of Hawai‘i Press
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 and presses must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information.
CAA Local College Tour
posted by CAA — September 30, 2016
Students are crucial to CAA and the work we do. Support and interest from student members allows us to provide fellowships, professional development, mentorships, and job placement services to those very same students. In the coming months, CAA is visiting several local New York colleges and universities in order to connect with our youngest and one of our most vital constituencies. Below is our upcoming schedule. We hope to see you there.
Monday Oct. 10, 10AM-12PM at Parsons Fine Arts
Tuesday Nov. 1st at Pratt Institute (Time TBD)
Wednesday Nov. 2nd at Pratt Institute (Time TBD)
Friday Nov. 18th, 12PM-4PM at School of Visual Arts