CAA News Today
International News: The Treasures of the Punjab Archives, Lahore, Pakistan
posted by CAA — Sep 28, 2020
The following article was written in response to a call for submissions by CAA’s International Committee. It is by Kanwal Khalid, Director of the Punjab Archives, Lahore, Pakistan, and an alumna of the CAA-Getty International Program.
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Figure 1. The Punjab Archives, housed in the Tomb of Anarkali, a building from the reign of Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1605-1627). (All photographs in this article provided by the author)
Having spent my career as a university professor, I recently was appointed the director of the Punjab Archives in Lahore. This rich collection is one of the best in South Asia and I am pleased to share a description of the institution, which also includes a library and museum, with readers of CAA News, who will soon be able to access many of the collection’s materials online.
The history of every nation is important and documents that reveal a nation’s history become increasingly precious over time. The majority of these documents are held in archives—collections that are both accumulations of historical data and repositories of record. Pakistan contains many rich archival collections: The National Archives of Pakistan and the National Documentation Centre, both located in Islamabad; the Sindh Archives in Karachi; and the Baluchistan Archives in Quetta. But the oldest of them all is the Punjab Archives in Lahore, located inside the Tomb of Anarkali.
The Punjab Archives is significant both for the immense value of its holdings and for the historical importance of its building (Fig.1), which was built during the reign of Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1605-1627). It was originally a tomb attributed to a woman named Anarkali, traditionally thought to be a concubine of Jahangir’s. According to the date written on the cenotaph, the monument was completed in 1615. The building has witnessed many ups and downs in its four-hundred-year history. After the annexation of Punjab by the British in 1849, the building was used as storage for documents pouring in from all parts of South Asia that were under the control of the British Raj. Two years later it became a church used for Sunday services, but in 1891 it was declared a record office.
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Figure 2. Inside view of the Archives.
Punjab Archives Collection
The Punjab Archives (Figs. 2, 3a-b) holds one of the largest repositories of documents in South Asia and it is responsible for the safekeeping of official documents and records of the Pakistan government. It houses census reports, civil and military gazettes, official files, historical documents, manuscripts, handouts, brochures, pamphlets, maps, notifications, memoranda, lithographs, research papers, journals, magazines, newspapers and periodicals. Many of these cannot be found anywhere else in the world. The archive also includes a fine collection of miniature paintings and seals.
The records in the Punjab Archives date back to the seventeenth century and cover the Mughal, precolonial, colonial and postcolonial eras in South Asia. Primarily the collection consists of:
- Persian Record of Mughal Period, 1629-1858
- Persian Record of Sikh Period, 1799-1849
- Akhbar Darbar-e-Lahore (Daily Court Proceedings of Sikh Rulers), 1835-1849
- Persian Record of British Period, 1809-1890
- Old Persian Newspapers, 1840-1845
- Colonial Agencies Record, 1804-1849
- Record of Princely States in Punjab, 1849-1947
- Record After the Annexation, 1849 to 1947
- Record After Independence, 1947
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Figure 3a, b. Beautifully illuminated wooden boards used as file holders, first half of 19th century.
The Archival Library
Sir Edward Meclagan served as chancellor of University of the Punjab (1919-1924) and Governor of Punjab (1923). He was a historian whose passion for knowledge is evidenced by his donation of rare and out of print books to the Archives. This initiative led to the establishment of a small but important library that still exists today.
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Figure 4. The oldest book in the Archives Library, Sir Thomas Roe’s Journal, 1616.
The collection consists of biographies, reports and travelogues. Currently the library holds more than 70,000 highly valuable reference books. The oldest book is a memoir, Journal of Sir Thomas Roe, which dates to 1616 and recounts the author’s journey to different parts of India (Fig. 4).
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Figure 5. The central hall of the tomb, housing the Archives Museum.
Archives Museum
Another person who played an important role for the Archives was Lord Malcolm Hailey. He went one step beyond his predecessor and established a small museum in 1924 in the central hall of the tomb (Fig. 5). This collection, still maintained today, contains portraits of important Lahore personalities (Fig. 6), along with paintings, prints, maps and lithographs. Mughal Farmans (proclamations), important official letters, old stamps, medals, weapons, and miniatures are also on display (Fig. 7).
Digitization
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Figure 7. A message from the Queen of England to the viceroy on the completion of the telegraph line to India, 1860.
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Figure 6. A general of Ranjit Singh’s army, General Avitabile, early 19th century.
For the past several years, the Punjab Archives has been in the process of digitizing its collection to improve accessibility to scholars. Approximately 500,000 pages of historic documents are currently being scanned and catalogued, precluding the need to move the fragile original documents, thus minimizing their wear and tear. A web portal will make these digitized documents accessible under the authorization of the Punjab Archives. This project is a first step towards a long-term strategy of modernizing the Punjab Archives and Libraries. To date, more then 120,000 pages have been digitized. Although the project was scheduled to be completed by June 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought all activities to a standstill. Once completed, the archives online services will be a primary resource for scholars throughout the world. In the meantime we are providing information to any researcher who contacts the Archives Department by email at archivesdirectorate@gmail.com.
CWA Picks for September 2020
posted by CAA — Sep 10, 2020
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Chiara Fumai, The Book of Evil Spirits, 2015. Film still. On view at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève through January 3, 2021. Courtesy the Church of Chiara Fumai
September picks by the Committee on Women in the Arts include a range of online and in-person exhibitions and events featuring works of women artists breaking boundaries. This month we focus on practices that explore boundaries, whether material, conceptual or methodological, and which performatively address space. Often, threshold spaces, literal and metaphorical, are interrogated in order to further explore the potential of the arts in creating change and claiming an equal and just society.
September 4 – 27, 2020
Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
A virtual exhibit with works by 120 artists from the United States, Austria, Canada, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Nigeria, and Turkey and in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, print-making, sculpture, photography, digital works and video, exploring the concept of loss.
September 7 – October 15, 2020
Richard Saltoun, online event
An online exhibition featuring a range of photographic works produced by Jo Spence, including her early commercial works as well as activist, feminist and social photography.
September 5, 2020 – January 7, 2021
Fondazione Berengo, Venice, Italy
An exhibition featuring works of art in glass produced by over sixty contemporary female artists from Europe, the United States, Latin America, Iran, and South Korea. Held in the heart of Murano in the Fondazione Berengo Art Space, an old glass furnace, it references and honors the history of the island and its relationship with glass production and its innovation. The works in the exhibition reference potentialities of glass and its transparency as a metaphor for the future healed from the scars from history.
November 4, 2020 – January 3, 2021
Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
The exhibition presents the first retrospective of Chiara Fumai’s works in which the artist developed the language of performance and made a significant contribution to the feminist aesthetics in the 21st century. Producing uncomfortable situations and environments through the use of concepts of boredom, threat, offense, revolt, vandalism and violence, she explored her ideals of anarchist feminism.
October 2, 2020 – January 3, 2021
Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich, Switzerland
The exhibition features the installation to the operetta which has been developed by Agnes Scherer since 2015. The production will be animated by the artist with Tobias Textor, Soya Arakawa and Claudia Barth at the opening on October 2nd, and on December 8th and 10th. Scherer’s operetta draws inspiration from theatre forms and versatile formats of presentation to activate work of art and give it a magical power.
September 23, 2020 – January 3, 2021
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France
After being closed due to the COVID-19 health emergency, the Fondation Louis Vuitton reopens on September 23rd with the exhibition featuring 170 works by Cindy Sherman produced between 1975 and 2020, including very recent and unseen series. To coincide with the retrospective, the Fondation will also present a selection of works from its Collection brought together under the title “Crossing Views.” Chosen together with Cindy Sherman and echoing her work, the artworks focus on the theme of the portrait and its interpretations in different mediums and disciplines.
Affiliated Society News for September 2020
posted by CAA — Sep 01, 2020
Affiliated Society News shares the new and exciting things CAA’s affiliated organizations are working on including activities, awards, publications, conferences, and exhibitions.
Interested in becoming an Affiliated Society? Learn more here.
The Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH)
Announces two major changes: a new website: https://www.atsha.com/ and the formation of a new journal through Brill, A Journal of Contestations in the Arts https://brill.com/view/journals/para/para-overview.xml?lang=en.
Publications:
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Lavinia Fontana’s Mythological Paintings: Art, Beauty, and Wisdom. London: Cambridge Scholar Press, 2020.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, “Botticelli’s Minerva and the Centaur: Artistic and Metaphysical Conceits,” Journal of Culture and Religious Studies Vol. 8, No. 4 (April 2020): 187–216.
BSA (Bibliographical Society of America)
- October 15: Applications due for the BSA’s Call for Program Proposals. The BSA sponsors lectures, workshops, conference sessions, and receptions which are bibliographical in nature. Only virtual events considered at this time. See https://bibsocamer.org/programs/bsa-programs/.
- September 8, applications due BSA’s 2021 New Scholars Program. Those who have not previously published, lectured, or taught on bibliographical subjects are encouraged to apply. New approaches and diverse perspectives welcome. International applicants and joint applications accepted. See https://bibsocamer.org/awards/new-scholars-program/.
- November 1, applications due: BSA Fellowships. To foster the study of books and other textual artifacts in traditional and emerging formats. See https://bibsocamer.org/awards/fellowships/.
- November 2, applications due: William L. Mitchell Prize for research on British serials. Supports bibliographical scholarship on 18th-century periodicals in any language within the British Isles, its colonies, former colonies, and occupied territories. See https://bibsocamer.org/awards/william-l-mitchell-prize/.
- Ongoing: Community Subtitling Project: The BSA provides free public programming, accessible through the BSA’s YouTube channel. We offer free one year memberships to all who submit complete translations of edited English transcripts of individual videos. A guide to editing English subtitles and to adding foreign language translations can be viewed here. La guía también está disponible en español, aquí.
- September 2020 (vol 114:3), The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America:
Articles
J. Christopher Warner, “Recovered Books: On the Contents and Fate of John Fowler’s Stock Left with Christopher Plantin”
Tara L. Lyons, “New Evidence for Ben Jonson’s Epigrammes (ca. 1612) in Bodleian Library Records”
Bibliographical Note
Minoru Mihara, “Recycled and Reincarnated Relics of Ancient Poetry: Editorial Practice in Percy’s Reliques”
Book Reviews
Proot, Goran, McKitterick, David, Nuovo, Angela, and Gehl, Paul F., eds. Lux Librorum: Essays on Books and History for Chris Coppens
Reviewed by Sandro Jung
Eggert, Paul. The Work and the Reader in Literary Studies: Scholarly Editing and Book History
Reviewed by Anna Muenchrath
Barker, Nicolas. At First, All Went Well … & Other Brief Lives
Reviewed by Daniel J. Slive
Eckhardt, Joshua. Religion Around John Donne
Reviewed by Georgina Wilson
SHERA
SHERA Publication Grant—Deadline: October 15, 2020
The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) is pleased to announce the SHERA Publication Grant. The $3000 grant supports the realization of publications of the highest scholarly and intellectual quality in the field of Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian art and architecture. The grant is intended to offset the substantial production expenses associated with the publication of an art-historical monograph, edited volume, or exhibition catalogue. Book projects must have been accepted by a publisher in order to be considered. Funds may be directed toward production costs and does not fund research, writing, or editorial labor. Applicants do not need to be SHERA members to apply, but the recipient must join in order to accept the award. For more information about applying, see http://www.shera-art.org/grants/publication-grant.php.
SHERA Emerging Scholar Prize–Deadline: Oct. 15, 2020.
The SHERA Board is pleased to invite applications for the 2020 Emerging Scholar Prize. The Emerging Scholar Prize aims to recognize and encourage original and innovative scholarship in the field of East European, Eurasian, and Russian art and architectural history. Applicants must have published an English-language article in a scholarly print or online journal, or museum print or online publication within the twelve-month period preceding the application deadline. Additionally, applicants are required to have received their PhD within the last 5 years and be a member of SHERA in good standing at the time that the application is submitted. The winner will be awarded $500 and republication (where copyright allows) or citation of the article on H-SHERA. For more information about applying, see http://www.shera-art.org/grants/emerging-scholar-prize.php.
American Society of Appraisers (ASA)
The American Society of Appraisers (ASA) wishes to spotlight its Personal Property sessions and experts for the upcoming 2020 ASA International Conference to be held virtually online October 12-13. Click here to learn more.
ALAA (Association for Latin American Art)
Please note that this is a living document; if there is a resource that you would like to see included or corrected, please follow the link above and there is a hyperlink where you can submit suggestions/changes.
Society of Architectural Historians
The Society of Architectural Historians is accepting proposals for SAH 2021 Virtual Programs to be presented after the SAH 74th Annual International Conference in Montréal on dates/times between May 3–28, 2021. These programs will complement the regular conference programming and should differ from the paper sessions in both topic and organization. Submissions that address the current conditions of research, teaching, and scholarship are encouraged. Submit a proposal by September 14, 2020.
SAH is accepting applications for Membership Grants for Emerging Professionals. These awards are intended for emerging scholars, regardless of age or employment status, who are new to the field of architectural history or its related disciplines. The award consists of a one-year digital SAH Individual membership. Emerging scholars who are adjuncts or unemployed are encouraged to apply. Apply by September 15, 2020.
The SAH Nominating Committee seeks nominations and self-nominations for two officer positions of Treasurer and Secretary. As two of five officers with full voting rights on the Executive Committee and the Board, these positions are among the most important in SAH; the other officers on the Executive Committee are the President, First Vice President and Second Vice President. In close collaboration with the SAH Board and staff, the Executive Committee governs the Society, proposes policies and programs, and provides service to the membership. Serving in these capacities offers an opportunity to shape the Society’s and the profession’s future. Submit a nomination by September 30, 2020.
SAH will present the webinar “Disability Studies and Architectural History” on October 29, 2020. Presenters and participants will consider key concepts in research and pedagogical methods for integrating histories of disability and efforts to pursue disability justice in architecture. The discussion highlights the importance of disability activism as it relates to design. Registration is free and open to the public.
Association of Print Scholars
The Association of Print Scholars is happy to announce that Clare Rogan, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Detroit Institute of Arts, has been elected as the APS Director-at-Large for a three-year term. Additionally, we would like to congratulate the APS Director-at-Large Jan Howard and APS member Tatiana Reinoza, PhD on their appointments to the National Advisory Committee of Artura, a project of Brandywine Workshop and Archives. Howard is the Chief Curator and Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at RISD Museum. Reinoza is the Assistant Professor of Art History and Latinx Studies at University of Notre Dame.
We are still accepting individual paper proposals for our 2021 CAA panel “The Graphic Conscience,” chaired by Dr. Ksenia Nouril, The Jensen Bryan Curator at The Print Center in Philadelphia. The session invites papers addressing transhistorical and transnational case studies of print as a tool for raising public consciousness.
APS is currently accepting submissions until January 31, 2021 for two awards. The first is the 2021 Schulman and Bullard Article Prize, which carries a $2,000 prize and is generously sponsored by Susan Schulman and Carolyn Bullard, both private print dealers. The second is the APS Collaboration Grant, which funds public programs and projects that foster collaboration between members of the print community and/or encourage dialogue between the print community and the general public. Further application information for the two awards can be found on the APS website.
SECAC
SECAC 2020
VCUarts is honored to host the SECAC 2020 conference as a fully virtual event beginning on November 30 and concluding on December 11, 2020. We are planning for more than 80 online sessions, round tables, and town halls at the 2020 conference. Additionally, we have exciting virtual programming for conference participants, including a keynote lecture by Valerie Cassel Oliver, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and a virtual Juried Members’ Exhibition in collaboration with the Anderson at VCUarts. We are also excited to announce reduced registration rates for members and non-members. For more information, please visit https://secacart.org/page/Richmond. Questions regarding the conference should be directed to 2020 Conference Director Carly Phinizy, secac2020@vcu.edu.
SECAC at CAA
The SECAC affiliate session at CAA in 2021 will be chaired by William Perthes of the Barnes Foundation and Adrian Banning from Drexel University. They will oversee a selection of speakers on the subject of, “Arts and Humanities Multidisciplinary Education Collaborations.”
SECAC Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
SECAC stands in solidarity with our Black colleagues, students, and communities to affirm Black Lives Matter. SECAC must resist the legacies of racism and white supremacy in our organization and disciplines. Together, we can imagine and create a better world, united in the pursuit of justice, equity, and transformation. We invite you to share your confidential feedback by email to SECAC’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion committee at SECACaction@gmail.com, and join in the SECAC Town Hall on Racial Justice during the 2020 virtual conference.
To recognize the exceptional work of those who are historically underrepresented in SECAC, higher education, and arts institutions, applications for the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) awards, which cover the cost of conference registration plus two years of SECAC membership for five selected awardees, are due September 30. For details on the award, contact SECACaction@gmail.com or visit the SECAC Awards page.
CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ SCHOLARS ASSOCIATION (CRSA)
https://www.catalogueraisonne.org/
The CRSA has recently added a profile interview article on the Betye Saar Catalogue Raisonné Project (https://www.catalogueraisonne.org/profiles) as well as a new installment of personal responses from the art research and publication community on how they are managing during the pandemic (https://www.catalogueraisonne.org/ellipsis).
Historians of Netherlandish Art
The open-access, peer-reviewed, semi-annual Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (jhna.org) encourages submissions on Netherlandish, German, and Franco-Flemish art and architecture (c. 1350-1750) and its global reach, including topics of interest surrounding colonialism, the slave trade, and the markets that supported them.
Renaissance Society of America
2021 RSA Research Fellowships
The Renaissance Society of America’s Research Fellowships competition is underway and submissions are due by 15 September 2020. We are awarding fellowships of $2,000 to scholars working in the field of Renaissance studies (1300–1700). The application site and details about the application process, eligibility, residential fellowship, non-residential fellowships, and publication subventions can be found here. Please email the RSA with questions.
International News: “My World Now Is Black in Color:” Pandemic-Era Programming, Anti-Racist Activism, and Contemporary Art in Italy
posted by CAA — Aug 11, 2020
The following article was written in response to a call for submissions by CAA’s International Committee. It is by Tenley Bick, Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Art, Department of Art History, Florida State University, and the 2019–20 Scholar in Residence at Magazzino Italian Art Foundation, New York. A related essay, “Ghosts for the Present: Countercultural Aesthetics and Postcoloniality for Contemporary Italy,” will be included in an edited volume forthcoming from Lexington Books.
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Figure 1. “Indro Montanelli, imbrattata la statua a Milano” (Indro Montanelli, statue smeared in Milan). Corriere della Sera, June 13, 2020 (https://www.corriere.it/cronache/20_giugno_13/indro-montanelli-statua-imbrattata-81a5c120-adad-11ea-84a7-c6d5b5b928b0.shtml). Photo: AP
June 13, Milan. The 2006 monument to Italian journalist Indro Montanelli was found covered in red paint and tagged “razzista, stupratore”: racist, rapist. The intervention targeted the statue of Montanelli and the journalist’s past as a colonial soldier in East Africa. In 1935, Montanelli bought a twelve-year-old Eritrean girl, Destà, to serve as his wife under the practice of madamismo. Montanelli never apologized. The intervention ignited public debate in Italy on racism and public monuments, bringing the country popularly known for apathy toward its colonial and fascist histories, pervasive associated monuments and street names into renewed transatlantic debates on these topics. Four days prior, Italian-Somali writer Igiaba Scego, writing on anti-Black racism, Black Lives Matter, and monument debates in the United States and Europe in the Italian weekly Internazionale, made a call for Italy to confront the “uncomfortable traces of our past.” Citing an earlier intervention at the Montanelli monument in 2019, Scego noted the absent memorialization of Destà: “It would be nice if someone, whether a street artist or a municipality, dedicated a statue, a drawing, a memory to that distant child” (trans. Bick). Street artists and activists responded (Figs. 2–3). Cities did not. The Montanelli monument was cleaned and, by mayoral decision, remains in place.
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Figure 2. In Milan, Italian street artist Ozmo’s mural depicts a fictional monument to Destà, the Eritrean child “bride” of Indro Montanelli, when the famous journalist was a colonial soldier. Working specifically in response to Igiaba Scego’s call, the artist used a photo of a contemporary Eritrean girl of approximately the same age as Destà upon her “marriage,” to stand defiantly in place of Montanelli on the base of his monument, relabeled in memory to “Montanelli’s child bride” (IG @ozmone, June 15). The mural was vandalized within two days. Inkjet on blueback paper, measurements to site (dimensioni ambientali). Photo by Gianfranco Candida, @wallsofmilano. Courtesy of Ozmo.
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Figure 3. In Palermo, artists Mr. Cens, Betty Macaluso, and Ulrike conceived the mural depicting the vandalized monument to Montanelli and a portrait of Destà. Mr. Cens executed the large public mural. Acrylic on tissue paper, 9.8 x 9.8 ft. (3 x 3 m). Palermo, June 16, 2020. Courtesy of Mr. Cens. The mural builds upon a 2018 work by Wu Ming 2 (Giovanni Cattabriga) and Palermo-based artist collective Fare Ala (Luca Cinquemani, Andrea Di Gangi, Roberto Romano), Viva Menilicchi!, which temporarily renamed via Montanelli “via Destà.”
One of the first hotspots in the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy was then emerging from a three-month lockdown. During that time, Italian museums (public and private) became leaders in innovative arts programming for a pandemic-era world. The Museo Madre launched an #iorestoacasa “call to action” campaign, publishing artists’ responses to the pandemic online; the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna invited and posted videos about its permanent collection; the Fondazione Prada produced podcasts and alternative exhibition encounters through its #innerviews and #outerviews programs, using social media as a “laboratory” for “new formats and codes” (@FondazionePrada, Mar. 18). This innovation has since extended to safety technology. Florence’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo introduced wearable sensors to ensure social distancing—technology subsequently implemented by institutions of Italian art outside of Italy. Magazzino Italian Art Foundation (New York) is the first museum in the United States to use the technology, reopening with Homemade (cur. Vittorio Calabrese with Chiara Mannarino), an exhibition of work made during the pandemic by New-York-based Italian artists.
While the Montanelli debate coincided with a moment of reckoning for institutions in the United States and Western Europe, the overwhelming majority of art museums in Italy have not announced such programming, policy changes, or statements of solidarity. This inattention is not due to a lack of anti-racist social justice activism in Italy (Black Lives Matter Roma, Neri Italiani, the Stati Popolari movement, among others), nor is it due to an absence of Black Italians in Italian popular culture, especially in literature (Scego), cinema (Fred Kuwornu, Amin Nour), and music (Ghali).
A few exceptions demonstrate the potential for institutionally supported, sustained, collaborative programs to counter anti-Black racism in Italy. The Uffizi has partnered with Black Lives Matter Florence on a series of virtual programs to address “the presence of black culture in European art, told through the works of the Gallerie degli Uffizi” (https://www.uffizi.it/video-storie/black-presence). Organized by Justin Randolph Thompson, co-founder and director of Black History Month Florence (BHMF), in collaboration and partnership with the Uffizi as part of their On Being Present program, the eight-week series entitled “Black Presence” debuted July 4th with Thompson’s video discussion of a Piero di Cosimo work and continues with concerts and video tours on representations of Black Africans in Renaissance art. MAXXI, one of Italy’s major contemporary museums, launched a short-lived social media initiative: #MAXXIforblacklivesmatter. The campaign “aims in raising awareness and consciousness of the @blklivesmatter movement through art” (@museomaxxi). With eighteen tagged Instagram posts (most recently dated June 17), the museum posted images of BLM protests in Italy and works by African and African diaspora artists Robin Rhode, John Akomfrah, and Yinka Shonibare from MAXXI’s 2018–19 exhibitions. The initiative was highlighted on June 12 by Italian-Haitian-Ghanaian cultural curator and Griot founder Johanne Affricot in an essay for Artribune as a “necessary” if late action amidst the generally delayed response from arts and culture in Italy to BLM in comparison to the global context (“Black Lives Matter ma non in Italia. Il ritardo dell’arte e della cultura nel paese,” June 12). Program information is notably no longer available on MAXXI’s bio.
Beyond these varied efforts, Black artists have been included in major museum and gallery exhibitions, and Black curators have curated exhibitions at prominent museums, but these figures are almost always non-Italian artists and art workers. While Italy is becoming increasingly multi-ethnic (and multi-racial), the country does not track ethno-racial statistics (Reynolds 2018, BBC; Ambrosetti and Cela 2015). Instead, citizenship and place of birth serve as “proxies” for race and ethnicity (Ambrosetti and Cela 2015). This is one of many reasons—from racial laws under fascism to renewed racism in response to cross-Mediterranean migration—why Blackness in Italy is most associated with foreign identity (with populations of African migrants, immigrants, and residents) rather than with Italian identity as well.
Two Afro-Italian artists—Jem Perucchini (b. 1995) and Luigi Christopher Veggetti Kanku (b. 1979), both based in Milan—are making inroads that might change that. Perucchini made a series of portraits of Black Italians in history for Vogue Italia during Black History Month (see Jordan Anderson, Mar. 12, 2020) (Fig. 4).
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Figure 4. Jem Perucchini’s Alessandro Sinigaglia (2020) depicts a little-known Black, Jewish Italian member of Italy’s anti-fascist resistance during World War II. Oil on linen, 15.75 x 12 in. (40 x 30 cm). Courtesy of Jem Perucchini.
Harper’sBazaarTV followed with a “visual interview” in mid-July. When asked “What colour is your world, these days?” the Ethiopian-Italian artist responded: “Certainly my world now is black in color. I think it is the color that is most suited to represent the situation that the whole world is experiencing, in terms of sanitary, economic, social problems” (interview by Laura Taccari, trans. Bick). At the end of lockdown, Perucchini had completed a large painting of the Stele of Axum: the ancient obelisk that Italy returned to Ethiopia in 2005, nearly seventy years after stealing it as war spoils (Zoom interview with Bick, Fig. 5).
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Figure 5. Jem Perucchini, Axum, 2020. Oil on linen, 55 x 43 in. (140 x 110 cm). Courtesy of Jem Perucchini. Completed during the lockdown, Perucchini’s Axum depicts the fourth-century stele that was taken as war spoils during Italy’s second colonial invasion of Ethiopia. The stele remained on display in Rome for nearly seventy years.
Veggetti Kanku (represented by Galleria Rubin, Milan) has confronted the institutional and cultural marginalization of Black people in Italy directly. In late June, the Congolese-Italian artist held a soft opening of a new exhibition space in Milan’s center for Afro-Italian artists (Zoom interview with Bick, Jun. 29). Entitled The Office, the evenings-and-weekends-only arts space is a legal office during regular business hours. Veggetti Kanku’s monumental portraits of Black women (Fig. 6), intended to bring Black figures into (white) Italian bourgeois homes (Griot, Mar. 25; Zoom interview with Bick), hang in the space, to be inaugurated this fall with his solo show SOTTOPELLE: “A show dedicated to black women, inclusive of social status, a show that destabilizes and puts up for discussion the canons of strictly Western beauty in an ever-increasing multi-ethnic Italian reality” (Veggetti Kanku, email correspondence with the author, July 16, trans. Bick).
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Figure 6. Luigi Christopher Veggetti Kanku, Untitled, 2020. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 65 x 39 in. (165 x 100 cm). Veggetti Kanku’s monumental portraits of Black women will be exhibited in his solo show, SOTTOPELLE (UNDERSKIN) at his new space for Afro-Italian artists, The Office, located in the center of Milan.
The museum complex now perhaps most directly engaged with Italy’s colonial history, the Museo delle Civiltà (home to Italy’s national ethnographic museum and partial repository of Italy’s colonial collection, formerly at the Museo Coloniale di Roma and various iterations that followed), has announced plans for a new museum (in development since 2017) dedicated to Italian colonialism in Africa (including postcolonial periods and an engagement with contemporary art): the Museo Italo-Africano Ilaria Alpi, to open in 2023. (See Scego, and Giulia Grechi and Viviana Gravano’s interview with colonial collections’ curator and cultural anthropologist Rosa Anna Di Lella in Roots–Routes). As Italy begins to address the presentness of its colonial past, the absence of Black Italian artists in Italy’s museums and galleries persists. What might a Perucchini or Veggetti Kanku exhibition look like at MAXXI or the Galleria Nazionale? What might happen if the innovation of Italian arts programming and centrality of the arts to Italian identity made space for the multi-ethnicity of Italy today? It remains to be seen if and how the country’s art museums and galleries—leaders in arts programming in many ways—will address racial inequity in their own collections.
In Memoriam: Richard Brettell
posted by CAA — Aug 11, 2020
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Dr. Richard (Rick) Brettell.
We were saddened to learn of the passing of longtime CAA member Dr. Richard Brettell last month at the age of 71. Dr. Brettell was a tireless advocate for the arts, a well-respected scholar, former director of the Dallas Museum of Art, and founding director of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas, Dallas. Read an remembrance by Jonathan D. Katz, Interim Director, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies and Associate Professor of Practice in the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, below.
In Memoriam
Richard (Rick) Brettell died July 24, 2020 in Dallas after a long battle with prostate cancer—and entirely characteristically, he was working until the very end. A tireless advocate for the arts in general, for French Impressionism in particular and for Texas artists and the local cultural scene, Brettell spanned genres, chronologies, nationalities and professions with an acrobatic grace. He was a world class scholar, a museum director and builder, and above all a connector, of people to ideas, of money to institutions, of museums in France to museums in the US, of friends to other friends. Seemingly limitless in his capacity to extend friendship and take it up again, I’m sure there are legions out there who think Rick was their best friend. A man of sure and independent judgment, Brettell was as thrilled to bring attention to an underknown or even unsung artist as he was to Gauguin, and approached both with the same profound curiosity and boosterism.
A graduate of Yale University, Brettell’s dissertation on Pissarro set the pattern for the rest of his life. Once he became interested in something, he would not only write about it, he’d also work up an exhibition spotlighting it—in this case, the very first international Pissarro exhibition, curated when he was still quite young. He turned his enthusiasms into scholarship with a speed and assurance that suggested he saw no difference between the two modes. And the goal was always the same, to kindle the viewer’s own enthusiasm, to seduce close looking and careful thought and make art history, art criticism, and art appreciation one and the same.
Initially hired as a professor at the University of Texas, in 1980 Brettell left Texas to become the Searle Curator of European Painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. Renovating and reinstalling the Art Institute’s vast European art collection hardly impeded the string of notable international exhibitions he curated, most centrally the one that earned him the honor of being named a Chevalier (Arts et Lettres) by the French government: A Day in the Country, Impressionism and the French Landscape. Because Brettell traveled in some of the most rarified circles in the country, his genuine friendships with some of the country’s wealthiest citizens made him a rainmaker in a class by himself. When he was a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago and I was still a grad student, I remember visiting him at the museum to ask about the whereabouts of a specific Gauguin painting, the subject of a paper I was assigned. Rick reached down to the safe at his feet, opened it, pulled it out and nonchalantly asked, “this one?”
In 1988, Brettell moved to Dallas to become the McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. There he continued to develop important international exhibitions—including a new emphasis on the arts of Latin America and Africa—while also raising the funds to build a major new wing. In 1998, Brettell became the Margaret McDermott Distinguished Chair in Art and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas, Dallas (UTD). He would soon transform UTD, bringing in such transformational gifts as a huge endowment to build the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History. With the assistance of Margaret McDermott, in 2017 Brettell created a $150,000 bi-annual lifetime achievement in the arts award, The Richard Brettell Award in the Arts. The following year, he acquired the Barrett collection of Swiss art for UTD, consisting of 400 works, including a large percentage by the Swiss 19th/early 20th-century master Ferdinand Hodler. And last year, he helped UTD acquire the extensive Crow Collection of Asian Art, along with 23 million dollars to build a new museum, the second for the collection, on campus. A lifelong student of architecture, he helped to found the Dallas Architecture Forum. Many doubtless fondly remember his loud, enthusiastic, no holds barred architecture tours, where he would alternately vigorously praise and vehemently excoriate architects, and the houses and institutions they built.
Brettell was the author of numerous books and catalogs, including the editor of the forthcoming Gauguin catalogue raisonné. As a leading international specialist in French art history, he joined forces with his friend Elizabeth Rohatyn, then the wife of the Ambassador to France under Clinton, and Françoise Cachin, former Director of the French National Museums, to found an organization called FRAME (French/Regional/American Museum Exchange). He directed this project in cultural diplomacy bringing together twelve French and twelve American museums to cooperatively share works and develop exhibitions. For this effort, he was named a Commandeur in the French Order of Arts et Lettres. For decades, Brettell was loyally assisted by Pierrette Lacour, who shared his grand visions, but was rather more attentive to the nuts and bolts work of bringing them about.
Immensely erudite, opinionated, and frank, Brettell would assert that fame was no barometer of quality. He loved complicated, intelligent work regardless of the artist’s standing. He boosted Texas artists in general, and none more so than James Magee, an artist he frequently called the most underrated in the country. He was central to the ongoing effort to protect Magee’s extraordinary project in the desert outside of El Paso, The Hill, a hand-built mytho-poetic compound that has taken the bulk of Magee’s artistic life.
A famous raconteur, fabulous cook, witty tour guide, emotional lover of beauty and gossip, Brettell was roundly adored. He leaves behind his wife Caroline, his 94 year-old mother, his assistant Pierrette, and legions on every continent who basked, however briefly, in the warmth of his attention. A celebration of his life will be held at a later date. But those who wish to remember Brettell are encouraged to make donations to the University of Texas at Dallas’ Richard Robson Brettell Reading Room in the future UTD Athenaeum, which Brettell helped conceive.
Remembrance by Jonathan D. Katz.
CWA Picks for July 2020
posted by CAA — Jul 28, 2020
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Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Native American, b. 1969) Mark, Polar Bear, 2019. Acrylic polymer, polar bear fur, fabric flag, metal brackets, 40 x 65 in. © 2019 Sonya Kelliher-Combs. Courtesy of the artist and Minus Space.
In response to COVID-19, artists, institutions, and organizations have initiated virtual exhibitions, presentations, screenings, and curated newsletters, among other innovative approaches, welcoming the public to online platforms and opening dialogues on a range of topics. May and June 2020 CWA Picks presented a number of initiatives that demonstrated ways in which social media channels and websites can be repurposed in light of social distancing measures currently in place; these Picks emphasized the social role of the arts as a healing positive force during these challenging times. As protests about systemic racism and structural injustices raged globally, museums and institutions were inclined to acknowledge their fundamental accountability and engagement in the misrepresentation or excision of Black and Indigenous histories from white imperialist and colonial narratives, including the prevalent or implicit use of racist language and practices. As the world witnesses and participates in “good trouble” and social unrest, our July Picks cover a range of online and in-person exhibitions and events and strike a balance between feminist ecologies of care and political activism. At this unprecedented historical juncture, some art spaces have opened their doors to audiences and slowly resumed activities, enforcing precautions and timed visits:
- ecofeminism(s) curated by Monika Fabijanska at Thomas Erben Gallery (7.19.20-7.24.20) takes us on a visual journey of the pioneering environmental art works of the 1970s and 80s through the present. Countering patriarchal and corporate structures and philosophies, many artists engage scientific and analytic approaches to experimental practices, utilizing photographic documentation, archives, time-based media, and ritual performances. Advancing principles of spiritual feminism, feminist metaphors of the Great Goddess and Cosmic Mother, and anti-nuclear activism, among other social and technological positions, the early eco–feminists underscore earth’s fragility and vulnerability—thinly veiling our fears and prophetically imagining our current global crises and pandemic—yet glimmers of care, community, and agency strikingly emerge. As an intergenerational show presenting contemporary women artists making ecological art, Fabijanska proposes, “What makes today’s female environmental artists ‘ecofeminists’?” Artists include Andrea Bowers, Helène Aylon, Eliza Evans, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Hanae Utamura, Betsy Damon, Aviva Rahmani, Jessica Segall, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Bilge Friedlaender, Carla Maldonado, Mary Mattingly, Cecilia Vicuña, Barbara Kruger, and Agnes Denes. Public programming with Zoom conversations between artists, art historians, and critics: July 8, July 15, and July 22.
- Earthkeeping, Earthshaking – art, feminisms and ecology (Earthkeeping/Earthshaking – arte, feminismos e ecologia), curated by Giulia Lamoni and Vanessa Badagliacca at Galerias Municipais (Galeria Quadrum) in Lisbon (7.25.20-10.4.20) takes its title from the thirteenth issue of the pioneering US feminist art magazine called Heresies (1981) published by the feminist collective. Lucy Lippard, Ana Mendieta, and Faith Wilding, among other contributors to this issue, raised complex points around the following question: ‘What can women do about the disastrous direction the world is taking?’ Curators Lamoni and Badagliacca return to this pressing question in a global 21st-century context by reframing ideas of capitalism, colonialism, and current environmental pressures, further exploring a Portuguese perspective. Earthkeeping, Earthshaking presents radical feminist artists from the 1970s through the present day: Alexandra do Carmo, Alicia Barney, Ana Mendieta, Bonnie Ora Sherk, Cecilia Vicuña, Clara Menéres, Emilia Nadal, Faith Wilding, Gabriela Albergaria, Gioconda Belli, Graça Pereira Coutinho, Irene Buarque, Laura Grisi, Lourdes Castro. Maren Hassinger, Maria José Oliveira, Mónica de Miranda, Rui Horta Pereira, Teresinha Soares, Uriel Orlow.
- AWARE (Archives of Women Artists Research & Exhibitions) has launched the podcast Woman House in response to the pandemic. Each episode invites a female narrator to read stories and texts by women writers on the broad theme of confinement. For example, hear Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse read by Julie Wolkenstein; Céleste Albaret’s Monsieur Proust read by Jeanne Balibar; and Marguerite Dumas’s Writing read by Camille Morineau.
- Virtual Views: Faith Ringgold at MoMA explores Ringgold’s extraordinary position in the sixties as an African-American woman painter and offers personal commentary about cultural identity and documentation during the civil rights movement. Ringgold’s American People Series #20: Die, a masterpiece from the museum collection, visualizes the realities of race, police brutality, and violence, and makes direct references to Picasso’s Guernica.
- Not Yet Written Stories is an online archival repository of avant-garde women artist practices (documentation, exhibitions, conferences, publications), supported by workshops and conferences. Managed by the SCCA-Ljubljana Center for Contemporary Arts, Arton Foundation, Warsaw, and Latvian Center for Contemporary Art (Riga), Office for Photography, Zagreb.
- Whitechapel Gallery offers an instructional list of audio resources (podcasts and audiobooks) on Black Lives Matter.
- Carla Repice: The White Problem Redux, an online exhibition at Equity Gallery, highlights the “optics of whiteness and the ways in which white supremacy virally replicates itself in visual culture,” according to the accompanying online essay by Ronika McClain. Repice’s intimate, gestural figurative paintings unveil quick glimpses into childhood, focused sharply on youth and education as primary source material for the formulation of implicit racism, symbols, and narratives. Public programming includes a series of poetry readings by Black writers, organized by poet Maya Pindyck.
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — Jul 24, 2020
David Haberstich considers the exhibition catalog Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop by Sarah L. Eckhardt. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Laurence Schmidlin discusses Christina Weyl’s The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Meet the Meiss Fund Recipients for Spring 2020
posted by CAA — Jul 08, 2020
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MEET THE GRANTEES
Twice a year, CAA awards grants through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund to support book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of 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.
Thanks to the generous bequest of the late Prof. Millard Meiss, CAA began awarding these publishing grants in 1975.
The Millard Meiss Publication Fund grantees for Spring 2020 are:
- Sarah Betzer, Animating the Antique: Sculptural Encounter in the Age of Aesthetic Theory, Penn State University Press
- Peter Chametzky, Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art, The MIT Press
- Pamela Corey, The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia, University of Washington Press
- Christina Crawford, Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union, Cornell University Press
- Frank Feltens, Ogata Kōrin: Art in Early Modern Japan, Yale University Press
- Andrew Finegold, Vital Voids: Cavities and Holes in Mesoamerican Material Culture, The University of Texas Press
- Marika Knowles, Realism and Role-Play: The Human Figure in French Art from Callot to the Brothers Le Nain, University of Delaware Press
- Ginger Nolan, Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Racial Science and Twentieth-Century Design, University of Minnesota Press
- Joanna Pawlik, Remade in America: Surrealist Art, Activism, and Politics 1940–1978, University of California Press
Read a list of all recipients of the Millard Meiss Publication Fund from 1975 to the present. The list is alphabetized by author’s last name and includes book titles and publishers.
BACKGROUND
Books eligible for a Meiss grant must currently be under contract with a publisher and be on a subject in the arts or art history. The deadlines for the receipt of applications are March 15 and September 15 of each year. Please review the Application Guidelines and the Application Process, Schedule, and Checklist for complete instructions.
CONTACT
Questions? Please contact Cali Buckley, Grants and Special Programs Manager, at cbuckley@collegeart.org.
Affiliated Society News for Summer 2020
posted by CAA — Jul 06, 2020
Affiliated Society News shares the new and exciting things CAA’s affiliated organizations are working on including activities, awards, publications, conferences, and exhibitions.
Interested in becoming an Affiliated Society? Learn more here.
Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA)
ARLIS/NA will be holding its 2021 Annual Conference in Montréal, Québec, Canada from May 9 through May 15 at the Hotel Bonaventure, Montreal. For update information please see https://www.arlisna.org/news/conferences/1405-2021-49th-annual-conference.
On June 8, 2020 ARLIS/NA issued its Statement Against Anti-Black Racism and Violence which can be accessed here: https://www.arlisna.org/news/news-events/2057-arlis-na-advocacy-statement-against-anti-black-racism-and-violence
Nominations are open for the following Executive Board positions: Vice President/President Elect, Secretary, Advancement Liaison, and Chapters Liaison; nominations must be received by July 13, 2020 for terms beginning at the Montreal Conference in May 2021. For more information please see the official announcement here: https://www.arlisna.org/news/news-events/2056-call-for-interest-nominations-for-2021-executive-board
BSA (Bibliographical Society of America)
- Applications due September 8 for BSA’s 2021 New Scholars Program: The Bibliographical Society of America’s New Scholars Program seeks to promote the work of scholars who are new to the field of bibliography, broadly defined. The New Scholars selection committee welcomes new methods and new approaches, including applications from candidates applying bibliographical theory and principles to diverse materials and media. In addition, the committee welcomes scholarly submissions that embrace diverse, multicultural perspectives. The committee particularly encourages applications from those who have not previously published, lectured, or taught on bibliographical subjects.International applicants are welcome to apply. New: Joint applications will be accepted in 2021. For more information, see https://bibsocamer.org/awards/new-scholars-program/.
- Applications due November 1 for BSA Fellowships: To foster the study of books and other textual artifacts in traditional and emerging formats, and in keeping with the value which the Society places on the field of bibliography as a critical interpretive framework for understanding such artifacts, the BSA funds a number of fellowships designed to promote bibliographical inquiry and research. For more information see https://bibsocamer.org/awards/fellowships/.
- Community Subtitling Project: The BSA records many events to offer free, virtual programming to a broader public. These videos are accessible through the BSA’s YouTube channel. To improve accessibility, as of Spring 2020 we are working to provide edited English and other language subtitles, with a focus on Spanish. We need English speakers to edit automated transcriptions, and speakers of other languages to translate them in YouTube. We are pleased to offer free one year memberships to all who submit complete translations of edited English transcripts of individual videos. We created a guide to editing English subtitles and to adding foreign language translations that you can view on our website, here.
La guía también está disponible en español, aquí.
- June 2020 (vol 114:2) issue, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America:
Articles
Sonia Hazard, “The American Tract Society and the Refinement of the Evangelical Book, 1825–1861”
David Atkinson, “Distribution of Street Literature in the Later Eighteenth Century: Some Imprint Evidence from the West of England”
MacDonald P. Jackson, “Two Variants in Poems by Keats: Textual and Literary Evidence”
Book Reviews
Jung, Sandro. The Publishing and Marketing of Illustrated Literature in Scotland, 1760–1825
Reviewed by Kristin Bluemel
Stephens, Walter, and Earle A. Havens, eds. Literary Forgeries in Early Modern Europe 1450–1800
Reviewed by Linda Isaac
Duncan, Sara Jeanette. A Social Departure: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by Ourselves. Ed. Linda Quirk, with Cheryl Cundell
Reviewed by Kathryn James
Lallier, Monique. Monique Lallier: A Retrospective
Reviewed by Kevin M. O’Sullivan
Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey
CFP: Modern Art in the Arabian Peninsula: A collection of essays to be published in collaboration with Barjeel Art
Foundation and the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA)
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Over the last two decades, the Arabian Peninsula has been the subject of critical attention regarding the rapid development of art initiatives and institutions, notably blockbuster transnational partnerships and attendant labor inequities. Less attention, however, has been given to the longer history of modern art in the region and the Peninsula’s artistic practices in comparative perspective. This publication brings together scholarly voices from across disciplines to consider the various movements, schools, collectives, manifestos, and debates that emerged in the countries of the Arabian Peninsula: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen throughout the 20th century. Contributions might address the following subjects: artists’ monographs, aesthetic debates in the press, artists’ collectives, exhibition histories, role of public sculpture, and the contextualization of art movements within regional histories. Themes may also consider the international scope of exhibitions and events that have molded the Arabian Peninsula into a global art capital. This call for essays welcomes scholarly explorations centered on the exchange of art and ideas between Gulf countries and their neighbors (e.g, Iran, South Asia, East Africa, and other Arab States) and how those dialogues have informed modern art in the Arabian Peninsula. We encourage submissions that consider the ways in which studies of modern art in the Arabian Peninsula might challenge conventional regional studies of modern Arab art or serve as a catalyst for broader disciplinary concerns with decolonizing art history.
We welcome abstracts for proposals addressing but not limited to the topics listed. Please submit a 500-word abstract along with a brief, one-page CV by September 15, 2020. Up to three accompanying images may be included in the body of the word document (optional). Abstracts should be submitted in MS office format (any recent version). Proposals in both English and Arabic will be accepted. Send your abstract to: MAAP@barjeel.com
The book will be edited by Nada Shabout, Sarah Rogers and Suheyla Takesh. Accepted contributions due on June 1, 2021. All essays will undergo a double-blind, peer-review process before final acceptance. Papers will be accepted in either English or Arabic and may include up to 7 images.
Association of Art Museum Curators Foundation
2020 Mentorship Program Applications Open June 30
Due July 14 at 12PM ET
Up to 10 Mentees with a required minimum of at least 3-5 years of curatorial experience in the field will be selected through a competitive application process for a career advancement experience. The program’s goal is to advance the skills, experience and knowledge needed to succeed in a curatorial career.
The program incorporates three main pillars:
- An immersive Virtual Learning Residency creating a peer to peer cohort held online;
- Digital engagement with a Mentor establishing one on one connections for feedback and guidance; and
- Attendance at the 2021 Art Curators Conference furthering expansion of the Mentee’s network (pending confirmation in early 2021 due to COVID-19).
Past program participants and additional program details and benefits are outlined in detail here.
All applicants must:
- Be art curators at nonprofit organizations in any country around the globe, with direct responsibility for works of art. In addition, independent curators and others that work a minimum of 50% of the time for/with nonprofit organizations will be considered.
- Have a minimum of 3-5 years of direct working curatorial experience in the field, excluding internships.
- Commit to all program requirements at the time of application, including all deadlines (non-negotiable), timelines, and travel. All Mentees are provided funding to accommodate travel, which will be disbursed in early 2021.
Applications open June 30 and are due by noon ET on July 14.
Questions/Concerns? Email programs@artcurators.org.
This program is made possible through the generosity of Barbara Futter, Catherine Futter, and the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.
Society for the History of Collecting
The Society for the History of Collecting is pleased to announce a series of lectures that will take place online via Zoom. The inaugural lecture will be delivered by Charles Sebag Montefiore on Jewish British Art Collectors. It will take place on Thursday, July 2 at 1:30pm (EDT) (see below for further details).
Stacey Pierson of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, will deliver a lecture Art in China/Chinese art in Europe: a comparative study of approaches to collecting in China and Europe, 1500-1900 the following week (Thursday, July 9 at 1:30pm (EDT))
This illustrated lecture will explore almost 250 years of Jewish collecting in Britain, from the opening of Bevis Marks Synagogue in 1701 to the start of World War II. It will explore the role of prominent individuals, such as Sampson Gideon, Ralph Bernal, Ludwig Mond, the Rothschilds, Sir Philip Sassoon and Sir Percival David. The talk will cover a wide range of works of art from Old Master paintings and drawings to Classical sculpture and bronzes, as well as silver, Delftware, Hebraica and oriental ceramics. It will conclude by seeking to answer whether or not differences of religious background have any bearing on the way that people collected.
Charles Sebag-Montefiore is a Trustee of the National Gallery. He has served for many years as Treasurer of the Friends of the National Libraries, the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust and The Walpole Society, and is a former trustee of the Samuel Courtauld Trust and the Art Fund. He is joint author of The British as Art Collectors: From the Tudors to the Present (2012) and of A Dynasty of Dealers: John Smith and Successors 1801-1924 (2013).
To Join the lecture Please follow the zoom instructions below
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86005302560?pwd=Ylp6eitSN3RJbFpLMXlrZWp4WGdZdz09
Meeting ID: 860 0530 2560
Password: 774341
Renaissance Society of America
RSA 2021 Dublin
The Renaissance Society of America warmly invites submissions for its 67th Annual Meeting, to be held in Dublin, Ireland on 7-10 April 2021. The Convention Centre Dublin will serve as the site of our conference headquarters, with sessions also held at premier cultural and scholarly institutions such as the Chester Beatty , Marsh’s Library , and the Royal Irish Academy . We are delighted to announce that the Dublin conference has been expanded to four days instead of three, to accommodate more presenters and allow plenty of time for special events and visits to the city’s museums and archives. Submissions are due 15 August 2020. For more information about RSA 2021 Dublin and details on how to submit CfPs and sessions for the conference, please click here.
New Media Caucus
In response to worldwide protests mobilizing for Black Lives, the New Media Caucus, in collaboration with the Queer Caucus for Art, has created a sale of Digital Artifacts. 100% of all sales go to the Movement for Black Lives. Please visit https://www.defunddefend.newmediacaucus.org/
The New Media Caucus recently launched the Header/Footer Gallery, a digital exhibition space curated by NMC members. Flesh Spaces, opening in July, examines the challenges that cyberfeminists in the 1990s posed against a male-dominant technoculture. Via Net.art, installations and DIY publications, these artists interjected their bodies into cyberspace to celebrate physical presence, gender, and sexuality, challenging the dominate notion of cyber as disembodied and transcendent. However, despite the group’s efforts for coalition, cyberfeminism remained predominantly white and cisgender. 30 years later, H/F Gallery’s exhibition, curated by Constanza Salazar, champions work by WOC and members of the LGBTQ+ community – work that interrogates recent issues surrounding online spaces and digital technologies. https://www.newmediacaucus.org/hfgallery/#content
NMC continues to feature member spotlight on our website including a recent interview with Shawné Michaelain Holloway. A new media artist and poet, Holloway creates critical software, video installations, and real-time performances to initiate conversations about power and control. Her work re-shapes the rhetorics of technology and sexuality by critically engaging the technical language of instruction, specifically from queer feminist BDSM communities, to direct viewers to read, play, or listen their way through narratives that guide them in and out of visceral memories. Her work leverages both tech and poetic mechanisms to navigate through and/or away from abuses of power. This choreography of viewership is constructed through a decidedly black, queer, feminist discipline, forefronting agency and consent within the experience. Read KT Duffy’s interview with Holloway: https://www.newmediacaucus.org/member-spotlight-shawne-michaelain-holloway/
NMC’s journal Media-N is seeking proposals for a special issue – No Template: Art and the Technicity of Race. Updated deadline for abstracts: July 31, 2020. A decade ago, Beth Coleman and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun introduced the concept of race and/as technology.* Turning to Heidegger’s notion of techne as prosthesis or skill, Coleman and Chun imagine race itself as a technology that can be leveraged, a tool for navigating systems of power. This distances race from its mythological status as biological fact, creating a critical framework that returns historical agency to the individual and helps us understand how race and ethnicity function in the visual–and technological–world. Recently, the concept has received renewed attention as the intersections between race and ethnicity and the technological have come to the fore in popular discourse, raised by issues ranging from representation in film to bias in facial recognition. Critical work by scholars such as Simone Browne and Lisa Nakamura and the Precarity Lab has also continued to interrogate the technicity of race and its relationship to other technologies, both historical and contemporary. Artistic research and practice on the subject, however, has often been either neglected or instrumentalized as illustrative of a larger debate. This special issue of Media-N responds to the urgent need to examine the state of dialogue on race and/as technology in art practice, history, and criticism. It will feature a ten years on reflection on the concept by Beth Coleman, opening discussion onto the way this framework has shaped, and has been shaped by, art of the past and present. The guest editor for this issue is Megan Driscoll. For more information and guidelines: https://www.newmediacaucus.org/media-n-cfp-no-template-art-and-the-technicity-of-race/
*See Beth Coleman, “Race as Technology,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 24, no. 1 (70) (May 1, 2009): 176-207; and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, “Race and/as Technology, or How to Do Things to Race,” in Race After the Internet, eds. Lisa Nakamura, Peter Chow-White, and Alondra Nelson (New York: Routledge, 2012), 38-60.
NCHA
The NCHA announces that the quadrennial CIHA congress scheduled this year for Sao Paulo, Brazil, has been postponed one year until August 2021. We hope to see many of our CAA colleagues there! In addition, NCHA has elected new officers who begin their terms July 1, 2020: Paul Jaskot (President-Elect, beginning his term officially at the August 2021 CIHA), Anne Collins Goodyear (Vice President), Jesús Escobar (Treasurer), and Suzanne Blier (Secretary). Finally, NCHA is pleased to inform CAA members that the last CIHA colloquium, organized by the Japanese committee at the National Museum of Tokyo (March 2019, has published its papers which are available for download. The title of the conference was Toward the Future: Museums and Art History in East Asia. We are grateful to the Otsuka Museum of Art’s for making the publication available for free download on its Home Page at the following address :
http://srv0001.heteml.net/is/museums/ .
Design Incubation
CFP: the 2020 Design Incubation Communication Design Awards
Call for Nominations and Entries for the 2020 Design Incubation Communication Design Awards for Educators and Graduate Students
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2020 Jury
- Gail Anderson, School of Visual Arts, United States
- Audrey G. Bennett (Chair), University of Michigan, United States
- Fatima Cassim, University of Pretoria, South Africa
- Denise Gonzales Crisp, North Carolina State University, United States
- Paul Nini, Ohio State University, United States
- Maria Rogal, University of Florida, United States
- Teal Triggs, Royal College of Art, United Kingdom
Design Incubation announces a call for nominations and entries for the 2020 awards for communication design educators and graduate students in the areas of scholarship, teaching, service. The aim of the awards program is to discover and recognize new scholarship (creative work and publications), teaching, and service in our broad and varied discipline. We hope to expand the design record, promote excellence and share knowledge within the field.
This year, the jury also will be considering commendations for work covering the area of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in communication design. We encourage submissions of work that relate to these areas for consideration.
Nominations
We kindly ask colleagues and mentors to identify outstanding creative work, publications, teaching, and service being done by design educators and graduate students in our field and to nominate these individuals for an award. Nominations will be accepted from April 15 to July 31, 2020.
Entry Guidelines
Entries will be accepted from June 1–August 31, 2020. Complete the online entry form with the following:
- Title: Description of project and outcomes (not to exceed 500 words)
- Supporting Materials (limited to 5-page medium resolution pdf of artwork; web links to websites, videos, other online resources; published documents or visual documents)
- Bio of applicant/s (150 words per applicant)
- Curriculum vitae of applicant/s
New Initiative for the 2020 Design Incubation Awards: Graduate Student Work
Beginning this year, Design Incubation is accepting entries in a new juried area of Graduate Student Work. The future of communication design education begins with the work of future faculty and researchers in the field of Communication Design. Recognition of graduate student work will be grouped and reviewed in the categories of scholarship, creative projects, and service. Graduate students currently enrolled in graduate design programs are invited to submit scholarship, creative projects, and service projects they completed during graduate study or up to one year after graduation.
ICMA
The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) has been awarded a grant from the NEH CARES: Cultural Organizations funding program. These NEH grants were distributed as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and roughly 14% of applicants were funded. A press release offers full information. The ICMA will use the award to support a Coordinator for Digital Engagement who will develop and oversee online offerings that serve the needs of scholars, instructors, museum professionals, and other enthusiasts and specialists in medieval art history at a time when we cannot gather in person.
Due 31 August 2020: ICMA-Kress Exhibition Development Grant (https://www.medievalart.org/exhibition-grant) and the ICMA-Kress Research and Publication Grant (https://www.medievalart.org/kress-research-grant).
Visual Resources Association News
The VRA invites proposals for papers, sessions, special interest/user groups, and workshops for the 2021 Conference program. The VRA’s 2021 Annual Conference will be held in Chicago, IL, from Tuesday, March 23th through Friday, March 26th, 2021 at the Westin, Michigan Avenue. Hybrid (in-person and online) conference options are being explored, so please consider ways to present materials to both physical and virtual audiences.
Presenting at the VRA Conference provides opportunities to see how your ideas, research, work, and passion connect to those of other dedicated professionals while building networks and friendships in an open, collaborative environment.
Presentation Types:
- Individual Paper- A paper is an individual idea submission, which will be reviewed for possible grouping into a session. Your ideas, whether they come to us alone or in a group, are equally valued in the Board’s proposal and selection process.
- Session – A session is typically a 60-minute moderated panel with 3 presenters, speaking for 15 to 18 minutes, followed by a brief facilitated question and answer period. If you feel your session topic requires more time, consider dividing it into two sessions, consisting of a Part I and a Part II.
- SIG/SUG- A special interest/user group is a 60-minute informal, community -driven, facilitated group discussion on topics related to a specific segment of the VRA membership.
- Workshop- A workshop is a 2, 4, or 8-hour workshop to develop skills and experience in the field of visual resources with hands-on activities.
All proposals are welcome, and if you have other conference ideas or suggestions that do not fit the conference proposal form, please reach out to the Vice President for Conference Program, Sara Schumacher at vpcp@vraweb.org.
To Apply:
The deadline for submissions is Monday, July 27, 2020. Program submissions received after this date will not be considered for the 2021 conference.
Preview the Paper, Sessions, Special Interest/User Groups Submission Form. Preview the Workshop Submission Form.
Submit your proposal here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/cfpvra2021.
All speakers/presenters must register for the conference and may register under the Conference Speaker rate for the full conference (same as member rate) or under the one-day rate. Speakers/Presenters may apply for Travel Awards through the VRA Travel Awards Committee or through select VRA Chapters.
Suggested topics:
- Challenges and Lessons Learned from Remote Work
- The Workplace, Institutional Transitions, Personnel Issues
- Copyright & IP in Education and Beyond
- Teaching & Research Needs, Visual Literacy
- Equity, Ethics, Privacy, Advocacy
- Metadata
- Best Practices and Standards (VRA Core 4, CCO, etc.)
- Critical Cataloging, Alt-Text, Rights Statements, Geolocation Data
- Crowdsourcing
- Managing Collections
- Digital Asset Management, Digital and Institutional Repositories
- Preservation, Planning for Collections Growth
- Outreach and Instruction
- Instruction using Materials, Special, and Digital Visual Collections
- Accessibility, Universal Design, Open Educational Resources, Online Exhibitions, Social Media
- Emerging Technologies and Applications
- 3D Photography Imaging and Digitization, Audio and Video Editing
- Coding, GIS, IIF, Omeka S, Story Maps
- Digital Humanities/Scholarship Tools, Projects, Research Processes
The Visual Resources Association is a multidisciplinary organization, founded in 1982, dedicated to furthering research and education in the field of image management within the educational, cultural heritage, and commercial environments. Since its foundation and even earlier, VRA has been affiliated with or had committee ties to CAA http://vraweb.org/. For more information about the important work and professional development activities sponsored by the Visual Resources Association or the VRA Foundation, please contact Maureen Burns, VRA’s CAA Affiliate Representative at moaburns@gmail.com or 310-489-3792.
SECAC
SECAC 2020. Following a survey of members and a subsequent affirmative vote of the full Board, SECAC 2020 will be moving online, hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University with Carly Phinizy, Assistant Chair and Assistant Professor of Art History, as Conference Director. To volunteer to assist in this endeavor and to thank the VCU team for the immense work that they have done so far – and that lies ahead – in order to sustain professional development opportunities for so many members this year, Carly can be reached at secac2020@vcu.edu.
Equity and Inclusion. The recent killings of countless unarmed Black people have brought renewed attention to systemic racial inequity in the United States. With support from the Executive Committee, members of the Board are conducting a review of SECAC practices from the perspective of racial justice, equity, and inclusion. The intent is to gain an empirical view of SECAC’s record as a baseline for identifying areas for improvement and an action plan, which will be developed collaboratively with our members. As a preliminary step, SECAC will waive institutional membership dues for HBCUs.
SECAC Member Opportunities Deadline: August 31, 2020
- Submission for the William R. Levin Awards for Research in the History of Art (minimum amount of $5000 each). https://secacart.org/page/LevinAwards
- Submission for the SECAC Artist’s Fellowship ($5000) and Artist’s Fellowship Honorable Mention ($1000). https://secacart.org/page/ArtistsFellowship
- Nominations for the SECAC Awards. https://secacart.org/page/Awards
- Outstanding Artistic Achievement
- Outstanding Professional Achievement in Graphic Design
- Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of Contemporary Materials
- Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of Historical Materials
- Excellence in Teaching
- Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication
- Nominations for SECAC Board seats in Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, West Virginia, and At-Large #2. Submit nominations, with nominee’s CV, to lawrence.jenken@umassd.edu.
Please consider nominating colleagues and peers for SECAC Awards and Board Seats, particularly those individuals who have been underrepresented historically.
Association of Print Scholars
The Association of Print Scholars (APS) has awarded the 2020 Schulman and Bullard Article Prize to Dr. Elizabeth Savage, Senior Lecturer in Book History and Communications, Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Now in its sixth year, the award is given to an article published by an early-career scholar that features compelling and innovative research on prints or printmaking. Dr. Savage’s article, “Identifying Hans Baldung Grien’s Colour Printer, c. 1511-12” was published in Burlington Magazine, Volume 161 (October 2019): 830-839.
Additionally, Honorable Mentions have been awarded to Tomasz Grusiecki, Assistant Professor of Art History, Department of Art, Design & Visual Studies, Boise State University, and Erin Sullivan Maynes, Assistant Curator, Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, for their articles, “Michal Boym, the Sum Xu, and the Reappearing Image” in Journal of Early Modern History, Volume 23, issue 2-3 (May 2019): 296-324 and “Making Money: Notgelt and the Material Experience of Inflation in Weimar Germany” in Art History, volume 42, number 4 (September 2019): 678-701, respectively. APS is now accepting submissions until January 31, 2021 for the 2021 Schulman and Bullard Article Prize, which carries a $2,000 prize and is generously sponsored by Susan Schulman and Carolyn Bullard, both private print dealers. Further submission information can be found on the APS website.
The Association of Print Scholars is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a major grant in the amount of $120,000 from the Getty Foundation to fund a series of two hands-on intensive printmaking workshops for emerging scholars and curators in the field. The grant is funded through The Paper Project, an initiative focused on training and professional development for early- to mid-career curators of prints and drawings. This grant will go toward two intensive four- and five-day long workshops in 2021 and 2022, respectively, that will invite participants to learn about a specific technical area from talented printmakers, master printers, and curators from around the country. The first workshop is dedicated to intaglio techniques (etching, engraving, and drypoint) and will be hosted at the esteemed Highpoint Center for Printmaking and the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota from June 21-26, 2021. The second workshop, dedicated to lithography and monotype, will be hosted at the renowned Tamarind Institute and the University of New Mexico Art Museum in Albuquerque, and 10 Grand Press in Santa Fe, New Mexico in May 2022. A formal call for applications for the first workshop will be sent out in Fall 2020.
Women’s Caucus for Art
Board members of the Women’s Caucus for Art gathered in early June via videoconference. Their work included welcoming Laura Morrison as incoming President of the WCA. Past President Margo Hobbs is now in the process of forming an Art Writers Committee as part of the WCA. Anyone interested in joining should contact Margo at margohobbs@muhlenberg.edu.
Association for Latin American Art (ALAA)
ALAA COVID Relief Fund
The Association for Latin American Art (ALAA) is pleased to announce that over the course of this summer we will be launching an emergency relief grant program in support of our colleagues who are suffering financial hardships as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. There is no doubt that the current public health crisis has rippled and negatively impacted those of us working in museums and higher education. Many of our colleagues are facing furloughs, non-renewed/terminated contracts, decreased pay, or the dire consequences of hiring freezes.
ALAA plans to offer micro-grants of up to $500 to contingent professionals, graduate students, and independent scholars of Latin American and/or Latinx art who are most vulnerable to economic precarity.
Given our organization’s very modest budget, we will need to finance this program through voluntary donations. For more information please visit our website: https://associationlatinamericanart.org/alaa-covid-19-relief-fund/. Also, you can direct any inquiries to our Secretary-Treasurer, Lesley Wolff at Lesley.Wolff@ttu.edu
IAWIS
The next IAWIS conference in Luxembourg, due to take place in early July has been postponed due to the corona virus pandemic.
The conference will now take place from the 12th to the 16th of July 2021.
Here is the link to the new website https://waterandsea2021.uni.lu/
Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association (CRSA)
https://www.catalogueraisonne.org/
CRSA is embarking on a new initiative to strengthen its connections with other Affiliated Societies. We hope to increase the visibility and value of catalogues raisonnés to educators, art historians, and artists by engaging in conversations with our CAA colleagues about how catalogues raisonnés can respond and contribute to evolving methodologies of art history research and analysis that can be applied to broad cultural studies as well as monographic subjects. We look forward to reaching out directly to our fellow Affiliated Societies–and welcome inquiries–as we work to develop future programs that encourage greater exchange among our membership and the larger CAA community.
The CRSA website is also hosting a new online feature that offers reflections from the community of scholars on the inevitable gaps in documentation faced within the field of art research as well as the common experience of pause during the pandemic: “The Catalogue Raisonné and the Ellipsis” https://www.catalogueraisonne.org/ellipsis
RAAMP Coffee Gathering: Gender Equity in the Museum (and Arts) Workplace
posted by CAA — Jun 30, 2020
Coffee Gathering: Gender Equity in the Museum (and Arts) Workplace
On Thursday, July 2 at 2:00 PM (EST) we will speak with Anne Ackerson and Joan Baldwin on gender equity in museums and workplaces.
To RSVP to this Coffee Gathering, please fill out this form.
A former museum director, Joan H. Baldwin is the Curator of Special Collections at The Hotchkiss School. She is the principal writer for the Leadership Matters blog which had 55,000 views in 2018. Her work has also appeared in The Museum Blog Book, “History News,” and “Museum” Magazine, Museopunks, and “The Guardian.” She is a co-founder of the Gender Equity in Museums Movement, and teaches in the Johns Hopkins University museum studies program. With Anne Ackerson, she is the co-author of Leadership Matters (2013) and Women in the Museum: Lessons from the Field (2017). She and Ackerson published a revision of Leadership Matters: Leading Museums in an Age of Discord in August 2019.
Anne W. Ackerson is a former history museum director, director of the Museum Association of New York, and director of the national Council of State Archivists. She is currently an independent consultant to cultural and educational nonprofits, specializing in leadership, governance, and management issues. With Joan H. Baldwin, she is the co-author of Leadership Matters, a book examining history museum leadership for the 21st century, and Women in the Museum: Lessons from the Workplace. She is a co-founder of the Gender Equity in Museums Movement (GEMM), which is focusing its recent efforts on education, advocacy, and policy development around pay equity, salary transparency, and sexual harassment in the museum workplace. In 2018, she and Baldwin spearheaded research, revealing that 62% of the museum workforce are affected by some form of gender discrimination. In addition to research and writing about gender inequity, she and Baldwin have presented their findings to the Texas and Pennsylvania Associations of Museums as conference keynoters and via their blog, Leadership Matters.
RAAMP Coffee Gatherings are monthly virtual chats aimed at giving participants an opportunity to informally discuss a topic that relates to their work as academic art museum professionals. Learn more here.
Submit to RAAMP
RAAMP (Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals) aims to strengthen the educational mission of academic art museums by providing a publicly accessible repository of resources, online forums, and relevant news and information. Visit RAAMP to discover the newest resources and contribute.
RAAMP is a project of CAA with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.