CAA News Today
Barbara Nesin Is CAA President-Elect
posted by Christopher Howard — December 16, 2009
Barbara Nesin, the department chair of art foundations at the Art Institute of Atlanta, has been elected president of CAA’s Board of Directors for a two-year term, beginning May 2010. A member of the board since 2006, Nesin has served as secretary for the past two years. She will succeed Paul B. Jaskot, professor of art history at DePaul University in Chicago, who has served as president since May 2008.
An artist and educator, Nesin says, “The work of those who make, interpret, and preserve images in our global culture has never been more important than it is now. As a visual artist who has participated in the formulation of our association’s Strategic Plan for the next five years, I am particularly excited about this opportunity to tangibly demonstrate CAA’s special commitment to expanding services to our artist members. In addition, I view the work of art historians, museum professionals, and teachers as integral and inseparable from the work of artists and designers, and will advocate on their behalf. I am also excited about CAA’s renewed focus on developing partnerships with a variety of institutions, including our own affiliated societies, in order to further CAA’s goals.”
Previous to her appointment at the Art Institute of Atlanta earlier this year, Nesin was associate professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, where she chaired the Department of Art from 2002 to 2005. Before that, she taught art at Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, Colorado—the largest community college in the state—while directing its Visual Art Program.
After receiving a BFA in 1975 from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Nesin earned an MBA in 1984 at Long Island University in New York. She worked in the financial industry for twelve years—as a registered representative of the New York Stock Exchange and a vice president and department head of pension trust administration—before attending graduate school, earning her MFA in drawing and mixed media at Indiana State University in Terre Haute in 1996.
An overarching theme in Nesin’s art is a visual bridging of cultural differences by making connections to all aspects of her mixed-diaspora heritage. While her work is clearly about cultural narratives, it is difficult to place it neatly in existing categories. Nesin comments, “Narrow definitions of identity seem outdated in this age of globalization, which follows centuries of migration, exchange, acculturation, and syncretism. We seem to have plenty of new media for deeply entrenched paradigms, and not enough truly independent thinking.” Her mixed-media paintings and drawings often include photo transfers, retablos, and installations in which she employs a strategy of métissage—“mixing” in the political sense articulated by Françoise Lionnet as a practice of cultural survival—to navigate the layered terrain of humanity.
Her work has been shown internationally, most recently in the 2009 Havana Biennial in Cuba and in Cryptablos: Creole, Black & Jewish, a solo exhibition at the Dillard University Art Gallery in New Orleans. She has also presented work in solo shows in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, and Accra, Ghana, among others, and in juried and invitational group exhibitions across the United States. She maintains her studio at the Arts Exchange in Atlanta.
Nesin has traveled to Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, including numerous trips to Haiti. Her research, which informs her creative work, has been published in Anales del Caribe, Higher Education Exchange, and the Journal of Haitian Studies. Current projects include two books in progress and a creative collaboration with English faculty from Birmingham Southern University in Alabama, funded by a grant from Associated Colleges of the South.
At CAA, Nesin was chair of the Committee on Diversity Practices (2006–9) and cochair of the Governance Task Force (2007–9), which researched and drafted the proposed changes to the CAA By-laws. She also served on the Steering Committee, which wrote the recently approved 2010–2015 Strategic Plan. As secretary of the board, Nesin served on the Executive, Finance and Budget, and Audit Committees. She was also a board member of the Haitian Studies Association from 2005 to 2009 and was the president of Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE), a CAA affiliate, for two years, following eight years of board service.
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 the Board of Directors, please contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive assistant.
Artwork: Barbara Nesin, Sefarad, from the series Art in a Time of War, 2005, mixed media, 36 x 24 in. (artwork © Barbara Nesin; photograph provided by the artist)
December Obituaries in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — December 14, 2009
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, architects, scholars, teachers, collectors, and other important figures in the visual arts. Of note is John Carey’s text on the artist and author Robert Kaupelis, written especially for CAA.
- Samuel Bookatz, an artist who worked in many styles and media, including oil and tempera paintings and ranging from realist to abstract, died on November 16, 2009, at the age of 90
- John Craxton, a painter who also created scenery and costume designs for opera and ballet productions, died on November 17, 2009, at the age of 87
- Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who collaborated with her husband Christo Javacheff on many environmental art projects, died on November 18, 2009. She was 74
- Luciano Emmer, a distinguished Italian cinema director best known for his many art documentaries, including a film about Pablo Picasso, died on September 16, 2009, at the age of 91
- Rachel Evans-Milne, an artist of the original YBA generation, a teacher, and a counselor of children and young adults, died in November 2009 at the age of 44
- Peter Forakis, a California-based artist known for his geometric abstract sculptures, died on November 26, 2009, at age 82. Forakis was also a founder of the Park Place Gallery in New York in the early 1960s
- Walter Grallert, an architect, architectural conservator, poet, and environmentalist, died on November 27, 2009, at the age of 79
- Claude Harrison, a painter and the author of A Portrait Painter’s Handbook, died on September 13, 2009. He was 87
- Ikuo Hirayama, a painter whose subjects involved imagery of Buddhism and the Silk Road, died on December 2, 2009, at the age of 79
- Thomas Hoving, a former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on December 10, 2009. He was 78
- Alfred Hrdlicka, an Austrian artist whose controversial works, often containing religious themes, were done in metal, paint, and pencil, died on December 5, 2009. He was 81
- Robert Kaupelis, an artist, art teacher, and author of Learning to Draw, died on June 12, 2009, at the age of 81. John Carey contributes a special text on Kaupelis for CAA.
- Michael Kidner, an English abstract painter and sculptor whose precise and hard-edged images were often at odds with the style of the New York School, died on November 29, 2009. He was 92
- Harry C. McCray, Jr., the chairman of the board of trustees at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, died on November 28, 2009, at the age of 76
- Jan Mitchell, a collector of pre-Columbian gold pieces, which he donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a founding member of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, died on November 28, 2009. He was 96
- Daniel Rowen, a modernist architect who designed houses, apartments, and commercial spaces, died on November 17, 2009, at the age of 56
- Larry Sultan, a photographer and CalArts professor who used found images from industrial and government archives for his and Mike Mandel’s book Evidence, died on December 13, 2009. He was 63
- Anna McCullough Tyler, an art historian, teacher, and artist of abstract monoprints, died on November 29, 2009, at the age of 79
- Eddy Walker, an architect who improved housing conditions and designed and renovated community buildings in Leeds, died in November 2009. He was 59
- Harry Weinberger, a painter and collector of masks, which inspired him and appear throughout his oeuvre, died on September 10, 2009. He was 85
- Malcolm Wells, an architect, writer, and teacher whose unconventional approach included designs for earth-friendly structures, died on November 27, 2009. He was 83.
- Charis Wilson, a model and the inspiration for many of Edward Weston’s photographs, died on November 20, 2009. She was 95
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
November Obituaries in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — November 23, 2009
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, photographers, scholars, curators, critics, dealers, collectors, and other professionals and important figures in the visual arts. Of special note is Zena Pearlstone’s text on the Native American artist Michael Kabotie.
- Sarane Alexandrian, an art historian, poet, writer, and founder of the literary magazine Supérieur Inconnu, which was dedicated to Surrealism, died on September 11, 2009, at the age of 82
- Frances L. Brody, an arts advocate, collector, and benefactor of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Gardens, died on November 12, 2009, at the age of 93
- José Cisneros, a self-taught artist best known for his pen-and-ink sketches of history and life in the southwestern United States, died on November 14, 2009, at the age of 99. He was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2002.
- Roy DeCarava, a photographer and professor of art who sought creative expression, rather than social documentary, through his photography of life in Harlem, died on October 27, 2009. He was 89
- Evelyn Hofer, a photographer of both human and architectural subjects who excelled at still, composed portraits and scenes, died on November 2, 2009. She was 87
- Michael Kabotie, a Hopi artist, muralist, jeweler, poet, and printmaker whose work promoted understanding of traditional Hopi teachings, died on October 23, at the age of 67. Read Zena Pearlstone’s text, written especially for CAA
- Wolfgang Ketterer, a German art dealer whose gallery in Stuttgart and Munich specialized in modern art, died on October 14, 2009. He was 89
- Irving Kriesberg, a figurative expressionist painter praised for his bold forms and intense colors, died on November 11, 2009, at the age of 90
- Robert Lautman, an architectural photographer whose work focuses on the use of light to capture architectural design, died on October 20, 2009, at the age of 85
- Claude Lévi-Strauss, a preeminent anthropologist whose structuralist approach influenced many writers, theorists, and art historians worldwide, died on October 30, 2009. He was 100
- A. John Poole, an architectural sculptor, letter cutter, restorer of sculpture, and teacher whose often-ecclesiastical work can be found throughout Britain, died on September 2, 2009. He was 83
- Meir “Mike” Ronnen, an art critic for the Jerusalem Post and a cartoonist known for his satirical commentary about life in Israel, died on August 30, 3009, at the age of 83
- Robert Taylor, a former chief art and book critic for the Boston Globe, died on October 25, 2009, at the age of 84
- Nick Waterlow, an art curator and the director of three Sydney Biennales whose exhibitions sought to challenge Australian and international views of contemporary art, died on November 9, 2009. He was 68
- Albert York, a reclusive artist who painted intimate landscapes and still lifes with a quiet sense of the mysterious, died on October 27, 2009, at the age of 80
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Jules Prown Is CAA Distinguished Scholar
posted by Christopher Howard — November 13, 2009
Jules David Prown, a devoted teacher of the history of American art and material culture and Paul Mellon Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Yale University, will be honored at the 2010 Distinguished Scholar Session. Held at the CAA Annual Conference in Chicago, this special event takes place on Thursday, February 11, 2010, 2:30–5:00 PM in Grand EF, East Tower, Gold Level, Hyatt Regency Chicago.
Bryan J. Wolf, a professor of American art and culture at Stanford University, writes this about Prown:
His remarkable career marks the coming of age of American art history. His two-volume study of the painter John Singleton Copley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966) overturned the usual concerns of positivistic biography. His growing focus during the next several decades on the formal properties of objects, together with what he termed the system of cultural “belief” embedded within them, led to a methodological revolution that still resonates loudly in classrooms wherever American art and material culture are taught.
Please read Wolf’s article on Prown and his accomplishments, which is also published in the November 2009 CAA News.
Prown is CAA’s tenth distinguished scholar. He joins a list of illustrious past honorees: Svetlana Alpers (2009), Robert L. Herbert (2008), Linda Nochlin (2007), John Szarkowski (2006), Richard Brilliant (2005), James Cahill (2004), Phyllis Pray Bober (2003), Leo Steinberg (2002), and James Ackerman (2001).
The 2010 Distinguished Scholar Session is generously funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
New Members Appointed to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities
posted by Christopher Howard — November 03, 2009
Several artists, architects, filmmakers, and other supporters of the arts and humanities have recently been named to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Among the new members to the committee are:
- Paula Hannaway Crown, an artist and member of the board of trustees for the Museum of Modern Art
- Christine Forester, an architect and board member for the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the Museum of Photographic Arts
- Liz Manne, an independent film producer and consultant
- Thom Mayne, an architect whose projects include the Cooper Union academic building in New York and the San Francisco Federal Building
- Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, who was instrumental in fundraising efforts for the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Other well-known members newly appointed to the committee include actors Edward Norton and Sarah Jessica Parker and the musician Yo-Yo Ma. For the full list of members, please see the Chicago Tribune’s Cityscapes. (In the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight laments the lack of visual artists on the committee.)
The twenty-six-member committee works closely with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services to promote the value of the arts and humanities in the United States through education, cultural diplomacy, and recognition of excellence in those fields.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — October 27, 2009
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, curators, photographers, collectors, architects, museum directors, and other professionals and important figures in the visual arts.
- Maurice Agis, a London-born sculptor and creator of Dreamspace, an inflatable, interactive sculpture that explores color, form, movement, light and sound, died on October 12, 2009, at the age of 77
- Maryanne Amacher, a composer of site-specific sound installations that explore psychoacoustic properties, died on October 22, 2009. She was 66
- Ruth Duckworth, a modernist sculptor of abstract ceramic forms, a muralist, and a ceramics teacher at the University of Chicago, died on October 18, 2009, at the age of 90
- Amos Ferguson, a Bahamian folk artist known for his depictions of biblical scenes and of the landscape and culture of his country, died on October 19, 2009. He was 89.
- Gerald Ferguson, an artist who established the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where he taught for thirty-eight years, as a major international center of conceptual art, died on October 8, 2009, at the age of 72
- Suzanne Fiol, the founder of Issue Project Room, an art and performance space in Brooklyn, died on October 5, 2009. She was 49
- Nat Finkelstein, the house photographer for Andy Warhol’s Factory for three years in the mid-1960s, died on October 2, 2009. He was 76
- Donald Fisher, a cofounder of the Gap who collected modern art and supported the arts and civic culture in San Francisco, died on September 27, 2009, at the age of 81
- Anne Friedberg, an art historian, theorist, and teacher whose work combined media and film studies, art history, and architecture, died on October 9, 2009, at the age of 57
- Bernard Leo Fuchs, an illustrator whose works for Cosmopolitan, Sports Illustrated, and TV Guide combined realism with avant-garde techniques, died on September 17, 2009. He was 76
- Lawrence Halprin, a landscape architect whose best-known works include the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC, and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, died on October 25, 2009 at the age of 93
- Jenelsie Walden Holloway, an artist, advocate for African American art, and a teacher at Spelman College for thirty-eight years, died on October 15, 2009, at the age of 89
- Henry T. Hopkins, former director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Hammer Museum, founder of the Huysman Gallery in Los Angeles, and professor and chair of the Department of Art at UCLA, died on September 27, 2009, at the age of 81
- Barry Horn, executive director of the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in Brownsville, Texas, died on October 24, 2009. He was 59
- Michael Komechak, a teacher of English and art and a curator at Benedictine University in Illinois, where he helped to acquire over 3,700 works of art from around the world, died on August 19, 2009. He was 77
- Barbara Morris, a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum who was one of the first scholars to treat the study of Victorian art and design as an academic discipline, died on July 15, 2009, at the age of 90
- Robert M. Murdock, an independent curator and scholar of modern and contemporary art who was also a museum director and curator, died on October 8, 2009, at the age of 67
- Emile Norman, an artist and sculptor whose best-known works are the glass mosaic window and sculptural reliefs created for a Masonic temple in San Francisco, died on September 24, 2009. He was 91
- Irving Penn, a fashion photographer whose elegant, minimal works appeared in the pages of Vogue and on the walls of museums, died on October 7, 2009, at the age of 92
- Monica Pidgeon, an editor at Architectural Design who promoted the work of major modernist architects, died on September 17, 2009. She was 95
- Don Ivan Punchatz, an illustrator of novels, magazines, and the first Star Wars film poster, died on October 22, 2009, at the age of 73
- Richard Robbins, a painter, etcher, and sculptor who was the head of fine art at Middlesex University in London, died on July 28, 2009, at the age of 82
- George Sample, an architect who founded the nonprofit Chicago Architectural Assistance Center, which provided design and construction support to inner-city neighborhoods, died on October 4, 2009. He was 90
- Harry Sefarbi, a painter and teacher at the Barnes Foundation whose colorful paintings can be found in many museum collections, died on September 28, 2009. He was 92
- Charles Seliger, an Abstract Expressionist painter whose small works of imaginary forms were influenced by Surrealism and automatism, died on October 1, 2009, at the age of 83
- Nancy Spero, an artist and feminist who combined drawing, painting, collage, and printmaking to create politicized work, died on October 18, 2009 at the age of 83. She was a member of Women Artists in Revolution and a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, which promotes women’s art
- Alfred Brockie Stevenson, an American realist painter known for his nostalgic images of American life, died on September 1, 2009. He was 89
- Dietrich von Bothmer, curator emeritus of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a professor at the Institute of Fine Art at New York University, died on October 12, 2009, at the age of 91. He helped to develop the museum’s collection of Greek vases into one of the largest in the world
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Photographer Dawoud Bey Is the Keynote Speaker for the Chicago Conference
posted by Christopher Howard — October 22, 2009
The renowned photographer Dawoud Bey will deliver the keynote address during Convocation at the 2010 CAA Annual Conference in Chicago. A resident of the conference city, Bey is Distinguished College Artist and Associate Professor of Art at Columbia College Chicago. He is the second photographer in four years to speak at Convocation, with Duane Michals delivering the keynote address at the 2007 conference in New York.
Convocation, which also includes the presentation of the CAA Awards for Distinction, takes place at the Hyatt Regency Chicago on Wednesday evening, February 10, 2010, 5:30–7:00 PM. The event is free and open to the public.
Bey earned a BA at Empire State College and an MFA at the Yale University School of Art, and he has been teaching for more than thirty years. He began his artistic career in 1975 with a series of photographs, Harlem, USA, that was later exhibited in his first solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. He has since had numerous exhibitions worldwide, at such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Barbican Centre in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, where his works were included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial.
Since 1992 he has completed several collaborative projects working with young people and museums together in a broad dialogue that seeks to create an engaging space for art making and institutional interrogation. These projects, such as photographs from the Character Project, have also been aimed at broadening the participation of various communities served by these institutions.
The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis organized a midcareer survey of his work in 1995 that traveled to institutions throughout the United States and Europe. A major publication, Dawoud Bey: Portraits, 1975–1995, was published in conjunction with that show. Aperture published his latest project, Class Pictures, in 2007 and mounted an exhibition of this work that has been touring museums nationally.
Bey’s works are included in permanent collections of art museums worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, among others. He has received numerous fellowships over the course of his career, including those from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
A writer as well as an artist, Bey has published critical writings on contemporary art in books and journals throughout the US and Europe. He is the author of several groundbreaking essays, including “The Black Artist as Invisible (Wo)Man” in the catalogue for High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967–1975 (2006), in which he places the work of African American artists Al Loving, Joe Overstreet, Howardena Pindell, and Jack Whitten within this important era in art history. Bey is also the author of “David Hammons: In the Spirit of Minkisi” (1994), which was one of the first texts to place this important African American artist within the tradition of Black Atlantic cosmological tradition. This essay appeared as the catalogue essay for Hammon’s survery exhibition at the Salzburger Kunstverein in Vienna. Closer to home, his text “Authoring the Black Image” was published in the Art Institute of Chicago’s book The VanDerZee Studio, accompanying the eponymous exhibition from 2004.
The above portrait photograph is © Bart Harris.
Women’s Caucus for Art Announces 2010 Lifetime Achievement Awards
posted by Christopher Howard — October 05, 2009
The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has announced the recipients of the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Awards: Tritobia Hayes Benjamin, an educator and art historian from Washington, DC; Mary Jane Jacob, a curator and educator in Chicago; Senga Nengudi, an artist based in Colorado Springs; Joyce J. Scott, a visual and performance artist from Baltimore; and New York’s Spiderwoman Theater, comprising Lisa Mayo, Gloria Miguel, and Muriel Miguel.
These awards were first awarded in 1979 to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe in a ceremony at President Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office. Past honorees have represented the full range of distinguished achievement in the visual arts, and this year’s awardees are no exception, with considerable accomplishment, achievement, and contributions represented by their professional efforts.
Tritobia Hayes Benjamin
Tritobia Hayes Benjamin is professor of art history and director of the Gallery of Art at Howard University in Washington, DC, where she is also associate dean of the Division of Fine Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences. After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art history from Howard, she earned a PhD in the same subject from the University of Maryland. On the faculty of Howard since 1970, Benjamin has written and lectured widely on African American art and artists, including the 1994 publication, The Life and Art of Lois Mailou Jones.
Mary Jane Jacob
Mary Jane Jacob is a curator, educator, and author noted for her work on the national and international art scene. She currently serves as professor in the Department of Sculpture and executive of exhibitions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She began her curatorial career at the Detroit Institute of Arts in the late 1970s before becoming chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In the public realm, Jacobs has organized multiyear installations and commissioned outdoor sculptures in urban and park settings. She has also published numerous books and exhibition catalogues on contemporary art.
Senga Nengudi
Senga Nengudi is strongly committed to both creating art and arts education. Currently a lecturer at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs in the Visual Arts and Performing Arts Department, she has always been involved with bringing arts programs emphasizing diversity to the communities in which she resides. Presently Nengudi’s sculptures are taking the form of installations of increasing size. She has been a featured performance artist, dancer, and installation artists in numerous exhibitions at major museums.
Joyce J. Scott
A native of Baltimore, Joyce J. Scott is a highly internationally regarded artist whose work incorporates various artistic media, including sculpture, jewelry, glass, printmaking, installation, and performance art. Her pieces draw strong influence from a wide range of sources: African and Native American experiences, comic books, television, popular American culture, and the culture of the streets of her urban Baltimore neighborhood. The use of beads is a central element throughout Scott’s work, helping turn her works into bold statements about such issues as racism, sexism, violence, and other forms of social injustice.
Spiderwoman Theater (Lisa Mayo, Gloria Miguel, and Muriel Miguel)
Spiderwoman Theater was founded in 1976 when Muriel Miguel gathered a diverse company of women of varying ages, races, sexual orientations, and worldviews, which included her two sisters. As the oldest women’s theater company in North America and originally emerging from the feminist movement, Spiderwoman continues moving toward its goal of creating an artistic environment where indigenous arts and culture—the three are from the Kuna and Rappahannock nations—thrive as an integrated and vital part of the larger arts community. Taking its name from the Hopi creation goddess Spiderwoman, who taught the people to weave, the theater calls its technique of creating their theatrical pieces “story weaving,” in which performers write and present personal and traditional stories that are layered with movement, text, sound, music, and visual images.
Award Ceremony in Chicago
The Lifetime Achievement Awards will be held at the Chicago Cultural Center, 77 East Randolph Street, on Saturday, February 13, 2010, in conjunction with the WCA and CAA annual conferences (WCA is a CAA affiliated society). A dinner will be held from 6:30 to 7:30 PM in the center’s G.A.R. Hall. The awards ceremony will follow at 7:30 PM in the Cassidy Theater. Tickets for the dinner—$90 before January 1, 2010, and $100 after—will be available for purchase from the WCA website. Reserved seating tickets for the awards ceremony will also be available for $10; limited general-audience seating for the awards ceremony is free and available on a first-come, first-served basis—please arrive early. For more information about WCA, please contact Karin Luner, national administrator.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — September 22, 2009
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, curators, photographers, and other professionals and important figures in the visual arts. Of special note is an obituary written especially for CAA: Jay Garfield on Bernard Hanson.
- David K. Anderson, a contemporary art dealer from Buffalo, NY, who donated his art gallery and part of his collection to the University at Buffalo, died on August 15, 2009, at the age of 74
- Hyman Bloom, a Latvian-born American artist whose pre–Abstract Expressionist paintings were influenced by his interest in mysticism and spirituality, died on August 26, 2009. He was 96
- Humphrey Case, an English prehistorian and archaeologist who specialized in Neolithic Beaker culture, died on June 13, 2009, at the age of 91
- Michael Dailey, a teacher and abstract painter from Seattle who continued to paint while living with multiple sclerosis, died on August 9, 2009, at age 71
- John Edwards, a British abstract painter, sculptor, and teacher whose later work was influenced by his time spent in India, died on August 22, 2009. He was 71
- Barry Flanagan, a sculptor and printmaker whose interdisciplinary interests in dance, poetry, and literature influenced his work, died on August 31, 2009, at the age of 68. He experimented with Minimalism and land art but is best known for his bronze hares
- Donald Hamilton Fraser, a British artist and journalist for Arts Review who, at different times, employed both abstraction and figuration in his painting, died on September 2, 2009, at the age of 80
- Robinson Fredenthal, a sculptor from Philadelphia whose work was influenced by his struggle with Parkinson’s disease, died on August 31, 2009, at age 69
- Frederick Gore, an English art teacher, author, and plein-air painter of landscapes and cityscapes, died on August 31, 2009, at the age of 95
- Max Gurvich, a Seattle arts patron who supported the Seattle Art Museum and the Cornish College of the Arts, died on June 15, 2009, at age 91
- Bernard Hanson, a New England-based art historian, art critic, and professor, died on June 21, 2009. He was 86. Jay Garfield of Smith College has written a special text for CAA
- Charles Harrison, an art historian, critic, and former editor of Art-Language and Studio International, died on August 6, 2009, at age 67. He also taught, organized exhibitions, and was instrumental in creating the anthology Art in Theory 1900–1990, with Paul Wood
- James Krenov, a Russian-born woodworker, teacher, and writer whose furniture designs are responsive to the unique characteristics of the wood he used, died on September 9, 2009, at the age of 88
- James Lord, a memoirist and biographer of Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti, died on August 23, 2009. He was 86
- Janet MacLeod, a British sculptor of bronze, marble, and silver who focused on the theme of regeneration, died in summer 2009 at the age of 72
- Michael Mazur, a teacher, painter, printmaker, and illustrator who specialized in monotypes, died on August 18, 2009. He was 73
- Richard Merkin, a teacher, painter, and illustrator whose colorful images appeared in various publications, including the New Yorker, died on September 5, 2009, at age 70. His extravagant and flamboyant style not only influenced his art, but also led him to write a style column for GQ
- Milo M. Naeve, a former curator of American art at the Art Institute of Chicago, died on August 10, 2009. He was 77
- Mario Cravo Neto, a Brazilian photographer whose work, often spiritual, documented the people of the Bahia region where he was from, died on August 9, 2009, at age 62
- Alexander Podlashuc, a South African artist, teacher, and cofounder, with his wife, of the Bloemfontein Group, died on September 5, 2009, at the age of 79
- Willy Ronis, a French photographer and former photojournalist who documented street scenes in Paris, died on September 12, 2009. He was 99
- Buky Schwartz, an Israeli sculptor and video artist, died on September 2, 2009, at the age of 77
- Paul Shanley, a former publisher of the magazines Art in America and Arts, died on September 2, 2009. He was 83
- David Thomson, a British writer on art and architecture of the Renaissance and a lecturer on art history, died in summer 2009, at age 57
- Maurizio Valenzi, a Tunisian-born painter and a communist politician, died on June 23, 2009. He was 99
- Christina Von Hassell, an art critic and auction reporter in New York, died on August 15, 2009, at the age of 85
- Leslie Worth, an English watercolor artist, teacher, former president of the Royal Watercolour Society, and author of The Practice of Watercolour Painting, died on July 21, 2009, at age 86
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Obama Names Committee on the Arts and the Humanities Leaders
posted by Christopher Howard — September 18, 2009
Barack Obama has appointed new leaders to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. George Stevens, Jr., and Margo Lion will serve as cochairs, and Mary Schmidt Campbell will be vice chair.
This committee, founded in 1982 and comprised of private citizens from across the United States, advocates for the arts and humanities as core of a vital society. It works with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services to advance nonpartisan cultural objectives of the Obama administration.
Stevens is a writer, director, producer of motion pictures and television, founder of the American Film Institute, and creator of the Kennedy Center Honors. He fostered a new generation of documentary filmmakers as head of the US Information Agency’s Motion Picture Service during the Kennedy presidency.
As a Broadway producer, Lion has worked with Tony Kushner, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, August Wilson, and George C. Wolfe, and her work has earned Tony and Olivier awards and a Pulitzer Prize. She is also an adjunct professor and a member of the Dean’s Council at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Tisch is also home to Campbell, where she is dean. A former chair of the New York State Council on the Arts, Campell was executive director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she wrote the catalogue for the exhibition Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden, 1940–1987.
In early August, President Obama appointed Rachel Goslins, an independent television and film producer, as the committee’s executive director.