CAA News Today
Individual Membership Made Simple at CAA and More Benefits
posted by CAA — Sep 19, 2017
Back in 2014, CAA set aside our old income-based membership system, replacing it with a new system based on the amount of benefits members wanted.
The program was a success, but we discovered that some of the language caused confusion. Starting this fall, we are launching the final refinement of the membership program that will eliminate confusion about the membership levels.
In addition, we will begin rolling out new membership benefits for our 10,000 individual and institutional members.
Understanding that many members face shrinking departmental budgets, for the fourth consecutive year, membership rates will not increase (in fact, we are reducing the student rate). We do this while at the same time planning for one of the largest Annual Conferences ever.
In February 2018 in Los Angeles (February 21-24), we have already scheduled more than 300 sessions and meetings, involving over 1,400 CAA members who will serve as discussants, presenters, and chairs. Additionally, we have secured a seemingly endless schedule of events for CAA members at LA-based cultural and educational institutions, including The Getty Center, The Broad, LACMA, The Skirball Cultural Center, Norton Simon Museum, The Huntington, UCLA, USC, Otis College of Art and Design, Santa Monica College, 18th Street Arts Center, and many, many others.
Registration for the 2018 CAA Annual Conference will open in early October.
New Membership Levels
Starting on October 1, 2017 you will see three individual membership levels on the CAA website membership page and in our membership materials. You can choose a membership level based on where you are in your career and whether you expect to go to the Annual Conference.
Tier One Membership
$195 annually/$380 two years (formerly Premium Membership)
This level is designed for working professionals in the myriad visual arts fields that support the association and expect to attend CAA’s Annual Conference. You will receive a 55% discount on your early Annual Conference registration. You will still receive one of the two flagship CAA publications (Art Journal or The Art Bulletin), along with all other benefits.
Tier Two Membership
$125 annually/$245 two years (formerly Basic Membership)
This level is designed for professionals for whom the Annual Conference is not a priority. Tier Two members get a 20% discount to the Annual Conference and receive one of the two flagship CAA publications (Art Journal or The Art Bulletin), along with all other benefits.
Tier Three Membership
$80 annually/$155 two years (formerly part-time, independent, retired)
Tier Three Student
$50 students annually/$95 students two years
Both Tier Three levels are designed for independent artists, student, designers, scholars, art historians, part time faculty, retired and others working independently, without full-time employment. It has all the same benefits of Tier One Membership, including the 55% early Annual Conference discount. Students will be charged only $50.
You don’t need to do anything right now! Upon joining or renewing you will be asked to choose one of the new levels. All of the Donor Circle membership levels (Sustaining, Patron, and Life) will remain the same.
New Benefits
In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve tried every way we can to discover what you need from your professional association. We know you want to advance your career, access to exceptional scholarship, networking opportunities and advocacy. Without a doubt, finances remain an issue for many members.
We are happy to announce that starting October 1, 2017 we are able to offer CAA members the following new benefits. Sign into your CAA member account after October 1 to make purchases or view discount codes.
- Lynda.com – The largest online learning network with more than 3,000 courses in design, photography, web development, marketing, and business is now available to CAA members at a significant discount. Members will have access to the full online premium program for $99 annually (regularly $360 annually).
- Legal Services – We have secured the services of a major Maryland/DC law firm, Whiteford, Taylor, and Preston, which works with other Learned Societies, to assist CAA members at a reduced rate ($275/hour). Whether you need help reviewing a book contract, employment agreement, gallery agreement, or fair use legal opinion, as a CAA member, you can now call on a law firm that knows the field.
- Making Fair Use Real – CAA is a leader in the field of fair use of visual images in education and visual arts publishing. We have worked to educate the field and publishers about the permissions that may not be needed for copy written images to support your academic writing. Teaming up with the Whiteford, Taylor, and Preston law firm, we have secured a New York-based insurance agency, C & S Int’l Insurance Brokers Inc., to issue Errors and Omissions insurance policies to protect you and your publisher. It can save you thousands of dollars in permissions for your academic publications.
- Humanities Commons – More than a year ago, we partnered with the MLA (Modern Language Association) to create web-based discussion and resource hubs known as Humanities Commons (public) and CAA Commons (CAA members only). The platforms offer our members the chance to easily share research and resources with scholars in their field and in other fields.
- More Publisher Discounts –It seems we just can’t get away from owning books. We have heard from members that they would like more book discounts. Several publishers/distributers have come forward to offer discounts to CAA members. University of Chicago Press is now offering 20%, Artbook|D.A.P. is offering 25% off online sales, and MIT Press will offer 25% off to members. Sign into your CAA member account on October 1 to view discount codes. More publishers will be announced soon.
- CAA’s Cultural and Academic Network – We know that you rely on the Annual Conference to promote your programs, network in the field, and attract new faculty and program participants. Starting this year at the Los Angeles Annual Conference (February 21–24, 2018), we will completely revamp CAA’s Candidate Center and offer your college or university a better opportunity to promote programs, connect with alumni and colleagues, and to interview prospective faculty members, all at a very affordable price. Say goodbye to the “hotel room” interview!
- An Office in New York City – Many members have told us that when they travel to NYC on business, either to see exhibitions or to conduct interviews, they would like a place to conduct an interview, catch up on email or make a few phones calls. We now have an office for out-of-town members to use at the CAA offices at 50 Broadway.
We are also presently working to secure affordable dental, vision, and health care for our members who presently do not have coverage. We see how difficult the healthcare market is for employees, for employers, and for just about anyone, and we want to do our share to help our members with this challenge. In addition, we are talking to other professional organizations about joint memberships at reduced prices. We hope to have more information to announce later this fall.
All of the other CAA membership benefits remain intact. You will continue to have access to our insightful scholarly publications, such as The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, Art Journal Open, and caareviews. You will still get access to JSTOR, CAA’s online jobs portal, and additional Taylor & Francis publications. Your discounts to art fairs and art magazines and your corporate discounts (car rental, convention hotels, and airfare) will all continue without change. In a new agreement, the International Fine Print Dealers Association will offer our members half-off admission tickets to their Fine Art Print Fair every year. Shortly, newsletter subscribers will also find a new Monday newsletter dropping into their inbox that focuses more on advocacy, jobs, and opportunities. CAA Conversations, our video interview series, will soon grow to include podcasts focusing on issues in the field of visual arts and teaching. Outside of member benefits, the CAA/Getty International Program thrives, as do our Distinguished Awards, publishing grants, and the Professional-Development Fellowship Program. We are, as is often the case, grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the continued support of RAAMP – the program to provide resources to academic art museums. Additionally, we continue to bring the Code of Fair Use in the Visual Arts to academic communities throughout the US and abroad.
We will continue to advocate for the field on the local, national, and international level, never afraid to take a stand on tough issues. We see the budget battle for federal funding for the NEA, NEH, IMLS, and all agencies that support the arts and humanities as a critical to our members. The content in the Annual Conference and in our publications remains exceptionally high. We are at the beginning stages of a rebranding process, which we plan to unveil at the 2018 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. We are working on new standards and guidelines which aid art historians, artists, and designers. We have been doing all of this while we have worked to streamline the administrative staff and keep the association as nimble as possible to meet the needs of the members.
It goes without saying: Your input is important—Keep it coming!
Sincerely,
Hunter O’Hanian,
Executive Director
Artist Mimi Gross in Conversation with Hunter O’Hanian
posted by CAA — Sep 14, 2017
Artist Mimi Gross is the daughter of sculptor Chaim Gross and serves as the president of the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, based in Greenwich Village in New York City. Mimi Gross’s work has been part of many international exhibitions, including work at the Salander O’ Reilly Galleries, and the Ruth Siegel Gallery, New York City, the Inax Gallery, in Ginza, Tokyo, and Galerie Lara Vincey, in Paris. She has also shown work at the Municipal Art Society and at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Her anatomically-themed art-work is on permanent display, courtesy the New York City Parks Department, at the Robert Venable Park in East New York.
The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation houses an extensive collection of over 10,000 objects that includes Gross’s sculptures, drawings, and prints; a photographic archive; and Gross’s large personal collection of African, Oceanic, Pre-Columbian, American, and European art that remains installed in the townhouse as Gross had it during his lifetime. The Foundation is open to the public and tours are available through the website.
—Mimi Gross
Hunter O’Hanian: | Hi. I’m Hunter O’Hanian. I’m the director of the College Art Association, and I’m very fortunate to be here today with Mimi Gross. Hello, Mimi. | |
Mimi Gross: | Hi. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Thank you. | |
Mimi Gross: | Glad to be together. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Thank you, yes. And it’s been nice to catch up about our time in Provincetown together. | |
Mimi Gross: | Yeah. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | We have spent a lot of time there. | |
Mimi Gross: | We do. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | But thank you very much for inviting us into the home of the Foundation, the foundation that was set up by your parents. And it’s really amazing, and we’re going to get to talk about lots of that stuff. | |
Mimi Gross: | Right. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | But so our viewers actually see what’s going on, can we talk a little bit about the pieces of artwork over my head here? | |
Mimi Gross: | Oh, of course. Very happily. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Yep. | |
Mimi Gross: | So we start, this is by Mane-Katz. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Yep. | |
Mimi Gross: | Who was a great, shall we say, French-Israeli-American painter, and it’s a Purim Boy. It’s a Milton Avery above it, Woman in Blue. Next to it, this is by Orozco, Mexican master. This is by Louise Nevelson when she was very young, and she was my father’s student. This is by Marsden Hartley. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | You said I could take this one home, right? | |
Mimi Gross: | Well, you might try. We might catch you at the door. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | I saw you had good security here, so … | |
Mimi Gross: | Yeah, we do.
Above it is Francis Crisp. He was a great painter. The two dark men, that surreal painting is by Federico Castellón, a Spanish American painter. Below it is by John Metzinger, a great friend of Leger and strangely, post-modern today. Above is by Raphael Sawyer. I don’t know how far you go, but next to it is Louis Guglielmi. He was a Great Depression painter. |
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Hunter O’Hanian: | Where in the house did your parents … Your dad worked, right? | |
Mimi Gross: | Yes. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Tell us a little bit about your father’s career. | |
Mimi Gross: | His career? | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Yeah. | |
Mimi Gross: | He was a carver. That was his prime interest in his artwork. He came to America as a teenager at age 17 and went to the Education Alliance and studied there and then taught there. He studied with Elie Nadelman. He studied with Robert Laurent. Before that, he started as a painter and John Sloan was his teacher and saw his drawings were very dimensional and said, “Why don’t you try studying sculpture?” He took to it immediately, and that was his love … | |
Mimi Gross: | Which continued throughout his life. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | The building that we’re in now on La Guardia Place, how long did your parents have this building? | |
Mimi Gross: | They got it in ‘62, ‘63 when they moved in, and they were looking for a place that would be a permanent home for his work and for his collection. I grew up in Harlem at my home had all these things in it, but not this building. He always had a studio in the village. That was his territory. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Was your mom a maker as well, too? | |
Mimi Gross: | She took care of everyone. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Did she? Good for her. She was probably one of the busiest people in the household. | |
Mimi Gross: | She was very busy. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | You said you grew up in Harlem. Tell us a little bit about your education. | |
Mimi Gross: | School of hard knocks. I went to high school music and art and then to Bard College. After two years I went to Europe and spent several years there. That was a major part of my education. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | What was that like growing up with an artist family? Who was coming around the house in those days? Who were your parents chumming around with? | |
Mimi Gross: | My other father was Raphael Sawyer, and I posed for him a lot and got to know him very close. Milton Avery who also came to Provincetown and knew him in the summertime. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Right. You spent summers in Provincetown? | |
Mimi Gross: | Since I was a little girl. | |
Mimi Gross: | And still do. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | One of the reasons why we’re here is to talk about this Spring/Summer issue of the Art Journal, which really talks about artist legacies. You have a great piece in here on page 129, which really talks about the legacy of your parents and the Gross Foundation here, and so we’ll get into some of that, but what brought your family to Provincetown? | |
Mimi Gross: | That’s actually a sensitive subject. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Oh. | |
Mimi Gross: | First of all, it’s a artist colony as it’s known, they had spent several summers in Rockport on Cape Ann, which also is an artist colony. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | In Massachusetts? | |
Mimi Gross: | In Massachusetts came that period before World War II started. World War II started and anti-Semitism was very wide-spread in New England. They heard that Provincetown was liberal, which it still is, or it’s maybe not as liberal as it once was. It was a Portuguese fishing village. It was unlike general New England, so they migrated there and loved it, stayed. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Your family ended up having a house there, and that’s how you ended up being able to go every summer? | |
Mimi Gross: | Yep. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | You were trained as an artist yourself. There’s the lovely picture of you at the beach making a painting. Tell us a little bit about your artistic career. | |
Mimi Gross: | My career itself? | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). | |
Mimi Gross: | It’s what we’d call the bumpy road to somewhere. I’ve had several, you could call it emerging moments, where there was a notoriety of a sort, but I’ve been working since I’m a teenager very seriously as a painter. I’ve worked with many materials, mainly to paint them. That’s been my quest in life. I’m a figurative painter, but I’ve tried many different things. I’ve done a lot of costumes and sets for dance, in particular, Douglas Dunn. When I was married, we did a lot of movies with animation. That was a lot of artwork as well. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | You were married- | |
Mimi Gross: | My career in terms of gallery life, I showed with several different galleries which closed, so right now I don’t have any gallery, though I had two shows very recently, this spring. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Right, and you were married to Red Grooms, as you said? | |
Mimi Gross: | Yes. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Yes, and you had several children with Red? | |
Mimi Gross: | One daughter, Saskia. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Yeah, wonderful. Great. | |
Mimi Gross: | And two granddaughters. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | You and Red made films together? | |
Mimi Gross: | We did. Many films. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | You collaborated on other projects, too? | |
Mimi Gross: | Yes, we collaborated on very large, walk-through installations that he called pictosculptoramas. They were gigantically room-sized. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Right. Your parents over the year…. Certainly your father was incredibly prolific, and you have been very prolific as an artist. Through your relationships you’ve gathered a lot of work, traded it with other artists. I read that there was possibly 10,000 objects that you have at this point. | |
Mimi Gross: | In this house. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | In this house. | |
Mimi Gross: | I don’t have that many objects. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | No, no, but I mean in- | |
Mimi Gross: | But my parents were, they were serious collectors. The African art collection is, in itself, multiple objects. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | The question always comes up then about, for people who are art makers or collectors, what happens to that work? And what is- | |
Mimi Gross: | Good luck. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Yeah. Good luck, right, an artist’s legacy going forward. What do you say about that? | |
Mimi Gross: | When I was asked to write this article, at first I said, “Oh, sure,” thinking that it was not a difficult answer, knowing that we made this foundation, but when I really thought about it, I realized that my own life and work was something that I had not particularly addressed, as well as the works I did with Red when we collaborated and we both own. It was complicated and difficult to actually freely write it.
I would say that in terms of how an artist who has objects, how they deal with it, it has a lot to do with their own reputation, their own finances and their own ambitions, and their support. All of these things make it work or not work. My father would say things like, “Oh, I have a daughter that will take care of it,” so I think my granddaughters, maybe they’ll help. There’s no way of knowing, but the finances are gigantic issue, and even here where we have all of this work and a fantastic building, it still is the main issue is fundraising. |
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Hunter O’Hanian: | Right. Again, we’re here at La Guardia Place in The Village in New York. People can actually come and see the work. | |
Mimi Gross: | Oh, yes. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | They can contact the foundation to make an appointment and have a docent led tour. | |
Mimi Gross: | It’s open to the public. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Which is great.
When I was asked to write this article, at first I said, “Oh, sure,” thinking that it was not a difficult answer, knowing that we made this foundation, but when I really thought about it, I realized that my own life and work was something that I had not particularly addressed…. It was complicated and difficult to actually freely write it.
—Mimi Gross |
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Mimi Gross: | We were well-situated here. I say “we” because I helped my parents get this together. Well-situated when Soho was extremely active as an art center, so people were visiting galleries, and then they knew my father or they heard about him and they would drop by and visit. That evolved that way, but today it’s not an art center, though there are several pockets of places here. There is a consortium with the various places that are still in the neighborhood, but because it’s still easily located near Washington Square and near the subways, people come by.
We have about 5,000 people come here a year. Then we’ve been part of Open House New York and in one weekend have over 1,000 people come. We’re part of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, so all of that’s part of this particular foundation. |
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Hunter O’Hanian: | The foundation was set up by your father. | |
Mimi Gross: | No, by his friends. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | By his friends? So- | |
Mimi Gross: | They did it as a birthday present at one point. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | While he was still alive they set up the foundation? | |
Mimi Gross: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Did he set the original mission for the foundation when they set it up or … | |
Mimi Gross: | No, he actually … He was modest. It was done around him. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Yeah. Yeah, so it was done around, it was his friends, basically, who got together who decided that … | |
Mimi Gross: | Yeah. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | I think I read that he thought, oh, maybe it might last 10 years or so, or 20 years. | |
Mimi Gross: | He went like this. Yeah.
We tried to make a gift to, of course, NYU, since they’re neighbors. They own the building next door, for example. We went to City College and Pace College, to the new school, to Yale University. There was quite a few genuine almosts, but he offered the building with everything in it, but without the millions of dollars that are needed to keep it going, and so in the end a friend said, “Why don’t you just make your own place?” In Europe, it’s very, very common for a home and a studio to be that artist’s resting place for people to visit, so it was based on that. |
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Hunter O’Hanian: | We don’t see so much of that in the United States. | |
Mimi Gross: | Famously, the Delacriox home and studio that people come to visit in Paris. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Sure, sure. Some of the conversations that your family had with the institutions in the area, they were hopeful in the beginning, but then it didn’t resolve? | |
Mimi Gross: | Exactly. It took a lot of time. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | What do you envision will happen to all this work 50 years or 100 years from now? | |
Mimi Gross: | I don’t. It’s way beyond my envisioning. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Really? Yeah. | |
Mimi Gross: | I do believe some of it will remain. It’s just there’s no way of knowing what will happen to any of us in 50 or 100 years. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Of course, of course. | |
Mimi Gross: | It’s a very big question mark. First of all, we might be underwater. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | In this part of New York. | |
Mimi Gross: | I hope not. Our future director, hopefully, will be a fundraising person. Hopefully, that will … He does believe in the sustainability. He does believe that we will continue, and with that in mind, hopefully, we’ll have classes, more visitation, and more of a educational outreach. I think that will help sustain here. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | If you were to give advice, now that you’ve spent so much time doing this, but if you were to give advice to artists in their 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s who are thinking about their legacy and what will happen to all that work, what kind of advice would you give them? | |
Mimi Gross: | I think again it has a lot to do with their reputation in public, their finances, their affiliation with a professional gallery or whatever that way. When you think about it, there is an amazing consortium now of artists’ foundations, artist/family foundations. That is a source of continuity. It’s great. Charles Duncan from the Archives of American Art is the head of it. There has been several meetings. The Aspen Papers have been published on bylaws for a foundation. It’s not a totally easy thing to do, but it’s also not impossible. If you have the work and you want to preserve it, it’s one way to do that. Another is to make gifts to the many, many university museums, small museums all over the country that are eager to increase their collections. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Do you work to try to place some of your father’s work in those museums and] collections? | |
Mimi Gross: | I’ve started to. Yes. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Yeah. Do you find that to be valuable? | |
Mimi Gross: | Beyond valuable. There’s now a sculpture that I gave to the Metropolitan Museum that’s on display … | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Fabulous. | |
Mimi Gross: | Between the Edward Hopper and Charles Demieux. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Oh, my god. How wonderful is that? | |
Mimi Gross: | Yeah, it was thrilling. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Also, we were talking earlier, you have three staff people. | |
Mimi Gross: | Correct. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Or you will with your new director here, but just the idea of keeping track of all of this work and where it is, particularly with a prolific artist like your father, it must be a mind-boggling task. | |
Mimi Gross: | Fortunately, we’ve had really great interns, really great work. Then we’re also, we’re pioneers if you compare us to other foundations that are much younger. Basically, everything here has been inventoried, although new things are always being found. Last week my granddaughter found a whole bunch of new things that were not discovered before. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | Wow. You would have thought by this time you would have opened up all the drawers in the … | |
Mimi Gross: | Yeah, you’d think. | |
Hunter O’Hanian: | That’s great. I hope we get to see you at a college art association conference. Maybe we can even bring some people who come to the conference here. | |
Mimi Gross: | I would really urge you to bring guests here and be part of your organization. |
Taking Down Statues and Public Art? Here’s What our Members Think
posted by CAA — Sep 12, 2017
Public art, statues, and monuments have seldom been in the news more than in the past few weeks. Figures from Christopher Columbus to Robert E. Lee, from Peter Stuyvesant to Stonewall Jackson have been topics for debate. Regardless of one’s political or cultural point of view, nearly everyone seems to have an opinion.
We asked our members what they think about preserving or removing statues and public works of art. This is what they said:
“I do not believe these monuments should be destroyed, though finding appropriate housing and creating proper and instructional context for them will pose many challenges. Erasing history and art history is not the answer to this situation. I believe each monument’s fate should be determined at the local level in a case-by-case basis and only with the help of art historians. This is not something we should leave to politicians or the general public without our help since it is only our training that can help situate these artworks within a broader context. Some of these monuments are indeed closely tied to the actions of the historical figures they represent, but this is not always the case. There is no “”one size fits all”” solution to this problem and this problem is not limited to monuments showcasing figures from the Confederacy.” — Tiffany Elena Washington
“This premise seems to take for granted assumptions about what criteria is for evaluating public art, especially monuments or statues in public settings. They were not created apart from a very specific political structure and embedded with social and cultural codes about what kinds of historical narratives are valued, erased, or repressed. Naming them works of art, a term already loaded with hierarchies and judgments, does not mean they should be treated as apart from these same issues today. In fact, if anything, we should be even more willing to challenge the inclination. It would be a privilege to do otherwise, and not understand or be aware of the particular ways this privilege of separating art from the maker, its history, and its employment of these very terms from the real impact that systemic oppression enforces. Steven Lubar has an interesting proposal for what to do with removed statues (please see his most recent Medium post on the subject), as well as Aleia Brown, who discusses in an article in Slate Magazine why simply moving such objects into museum settings (keeping in mind the ritual- or treasured-like tone of exhibitionary spaces) is actually very far from simple.” — Anni Pullagura
“Confederate monuments need to be removed. I think it’s a stretch to consider them “art” and if there is a desire to study them it can be done in another venue other than public space.” — Lynn Clement
“I believe all historical art should be saved, not destroyed. But they must be placed in the context of their time by installing in an art gallery or a park dedicated to such monuments with accompanying didactic material that offers the complex and sometimes nuanced meaning the work has to different constituents. Southerners who retain an allegiance to the Confederacy might be quoted alongside with those opposed to it. Curators, however, must feel free to insert the work within the larger historical context down to our own days.” — Anita Moskowitz
“I read with interest the Daily News article written by my Stony Brook colleague Michele Bogart.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/defense-racist-monuments-article-1.3436672
Although I agree that one need not be “pro-Trump, pro-Confederacy or insensitive to the horrors of slavery and its legacy” in advocating against the removal of confederate statues, I disagree with her conflation of “removal and destruction” in the discussion of these monuments.”
It is my impression that most scholars and thinking individuals advocate displacing (not destroying) the monuments to a museum or designated park with contextual didactic information (difficult and often impossible to place at their present sites). On a recent spring break my husband and I took our California grandson, a freshman at Davidson college in North Carolina, on a trip to South Carolina and visited a slave holder’s mansion in Charleston, a former plantation, and the Confederate Relic Museum in Columbia, all of which had insightful and fair didactic information about living quarters, the treatment of slaves, and the meaning of various symbols. It was a truly educational experience for all of us, but especially for our 19-year old grandson.
In the public spheres that Confederate monuments now occupy, it is not possible to offer context; this can be done only in a more neutral and accessible location. General Lee himself was opposed to the erection of such statues precisely because of the divisive impact they would have on the country. Indeed, most of the confederate statues were installed beginning in the 1890s, considerably after the end of the Civil War. Their message would seem to have been to reaffirm Jim Crow and intimidate its opponents; and that is not acceptable.
On the other hand, each statue or symbol should be given serious review by a committee of art historians, historians, and (in the case of NYC) the Public Design Commission (formerly the City Arts Commission) or other civic body, and/or other informed spokespeople, and in no case should a statue be destroyed. Photographs of the original site and other didactic material should be displayed alongside each work, and controversial and diverse opinions should be included. We must respect the artistic and historical value of the monuments and, at the same time, recognize the pain such images inflicted and continue to inflict on the people who were not part of those “regional civic groups” that worked for their installation.
Most people, including art historians and museum personnel, are used to seeing works of art out of context (think Parthenon Museum, Pergamon Altar, Nike in the Louvre, etc., etc., not to mention sacred images and relics in museums). It is the job of art historians and museum curators to contextualize and analyze the original function and meaning of the monuments and symbols both for scholars and the public at large.” — Anita Moskowitz
“Public works of art should not be destroyed, but they should be removed from places where no critical discourse surrounds their presence. Unless critical discourse is put in place around them, such monuments should be removed and re-situated in places and in exhibitions where they can be critiqued and contextualized. In this way, the public will be engaged and will produce questions of their own about histories and their construction.” — Anonymous
“I believe these monuments are works of art that are part of an important moment and particular community in American culture. They are not representative of all of American culture. Their significance has changed over time. I agree that they should be removed from the public squares and parks, but should not be destroyed or defaced. They were created by late 19th- and early 20th-c sculptors working in the academic tradition, many of whom are little known today. We have few large-scale works by these artists. Destroying these works is destroying part of our nation’s artistic heritage. Still, because of the ideology that the sculptures represent, I believe they should not be out in public squares. They should be moved to local art museums, history museums, or park preserves that can do a better job of contextualizing them for visitors. Public places should be maintained for monuments that speak to the entire community, not just a small segment of it.” — New York City Art Historian
“Many art historians see important statues while people of color see perpetrators of continuing oppression and white supremacy. And at the end of the day I’m not sure how much it matters what art historians think about it. I’ve seen the argument from art historians that we need to take this process slowly, and my question is: why are art historians just thinking about this now, when they’ve had the opportunity to determine this process for over 100 years? Again, it demonstrates the overwhelming whiteness of a field that has allowed itself to be complicit in the continuing oppression of Black people *through these monuments* (and in 100 other ways but you’re only asking about the monuments.) Art historians should consider whether their opinions really matter here, because they all seem to think they do, and they almost entirely counter the experiences of Black people on a daily basis in the US. Black people are saying these monuments represent the persistence of slavery, Jim Crow, and mass genocide. For Black Americans these monuments do not represent an intellectual exercise; they are not objects to discuss dispassionately. It depresses me how many art historians and other academics want to act as if the monuments exist in a vacuum, rather than in the context of mass incarceration, violent policing, voter suppression, and generalized, violent discrimination that Black people face on a daily basis. Well-known art historians, such as Michelle Bogart, argue that moving these monuments destroys their context. I wish that simply moving monuments could destroy the context of white supremacy and systemic oppression of Black people in the United States. I doubt that will be the case.” — Renee McGarry
“These outrageous acts of cultural iconoclasm in 2017: targeting monuments that mark the our civic memory are nothing less than censorship and vandalism perpetrated by hysterical mobs who display the very fascistic mentality they claim to oppose. Significantly this type of violence is a form of public terror without any due process or rational discussion and is also typical of radical Islam that seeks to obliterate everything that opposes its narrow ideology. Conflating every vestige and symbol of the Confederate States with an endorsement of slavery is idiotic and historically inaccurate.” — Professor James Langley, SCAD
“They should be removed, and ideally placed in a separate park or museum designed to PROPERLY contextualize them. That means an unflinching look both at the cruelty of the institutions these figures supported, AND at the actual circumstances in which the statues were raised (and their intended impact on people of color).” — Eva
“I believe public works of art that inspire negativity or harmful attitudes, should be removed. The fact that confederate monuments are still standing today promotes the idea that it is okay to support the antiquated and prejudiced views of these historical figures. If these monuments promote views that exclude systematically oppressed groups, then they should be taken down. Public art is wonderful, and it is important to remember history, and not erase it; however, there is a difference between remembering history and celebrating it.” — Maylen
“These works (except for Stone Mountain’s bas-relief, which is too large) need to be removed and preserved in museums that contextualize their role in Jim Crow America, anti-semitism, and the history of slavery and white supremacy movements. As someone born and raised in the South, who grew up in the Civil Rights era, I know from experience that these monuments give off the wrong message for our contemporary multi-cultural society.” — Gail Levin
“Iconoclasm is deeply problematic in so many ways, but if the objects are conserved, then they do not get erased. I think the monuments should be kept in museums as a way to preserve them as historical objects. While I disagree with pretty much everything the president has to say, I worry, like him, that public monuments of all kinds will become the targets of such destruction and erasure. If we do not have reminders to teach us not to repeat history, then we will continue to do things all over again, as we are seeing presently.
The Tretyakov Gallery and other locales in the former Soviet Union have done it correctly, in so many ways. The toppled statues of Lenin and Stalin have been turned into broken statues encased in the sculpture garden. This, I believe, is a very effective way to undo their power, but also to say that Russia has a history that cannot be forgotten. Similarly, the many collections of fascist and socialist realism have not been destroyed as it is important to be able to study the paintings and sculptures, but they have been relegated to store rooms and special galleries so that they do not become places of pilgrimage.” — Anonymous
“I think we need to ask first if the monuments are meant to honor someone for an activity which we would not honor today, if someone was honored especially for his actions in the slave trade for example. In this case it seems clear, that we could not let this continue. But for the majority of monuments the persons will be honored for something else, for livelong actions that are correct etc. In this case we need to ask if we will find someone without false. Does we need to ban everyone who did not work for women emancipation? From the beginning of history until the 19th century we would need to remove lots of monuments. This could not be the solution. And do we want to erase this part of our history? Wouldn’t it be better to add an information or a second monument to explain the context? We need to have more monuments for our multicultural history. But it would not be a good beginning to remove everything else…. and when would we stop to remove…. What is about fortresses and castles as monuments of monarchy etc…. Lets give a context to history and not erase it.” — Philippa Sissis
“Public art should be balanced with community identity. When a community no longer feels that the art represents its values, that community is justified in removing the art, preferably to a new space that allows visibility to those who still seek the object. History is tied to all objects, and while there is always danger in forgetting history, there is no shame when a community decides that it does not want to be publicly associated with a particular chapter in history. In regards to statues of war figures, those are fundamentally about the figures’ actions of war and personal traits that led the figures to participate in one side of a war. Again, if a community does not support the actions, values, and traits as represented in a war figure, then that community should not feel obligated to support art that commemorates that figure. Public art that does not align with the current profile of the community should be removed as a community identifier–though not destroyed.” — Loretta Ramirez
“I honestly think that most commemorative statuary is uninspired, and, in general, the persons being commemorated are exemplary of colonialism, Anglo-European hegemony, and serve to reify ideas about dominance and conquest that have proven detrimental to a better social vision. I wouldn’t mind seeing them all come down. They could take photographs of them to archive, melt them down, and make something more useful (or more artful, if that’s what’s desired) out of the materials. These kinds of monuments commemorate more ways of thinking than actual individuals. It’s not like the person depicted will know the difference, so it’s obviously a symbol more than a portrait. This is why works like Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial carry more power, since they involve the viewer, and do not reproduce relations of domination and oppression.” — Laura Crary
“Watching the statue of the Confederate soldier taken down with ropes in front of the Court House in Durham, North Carolina one cannot help remembering the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein and the removal of the Lenin statues in Soviet bloc states. These gestures may seem violent, unplanned acts of vandalism, but they are in fact just the opposite. They are expressions of consensus that these monuments have outlived their usefulness as public monuments. Their dismantling marks a shift or turn in a nation’s history, a rupture with the past, and a new understanding of what now shapes the civic realm. The idea of using the public sphere as a metaphor of rejuvenation is a practice that started in the Roman Forums. As Gregor Kalas argued in his book, The Restoration of the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity, the Romans of Late Antiquity used, reused and sometimes removed statues as a physical strategy to form a consensus over whom should be remembered and thus whom should continue to have influence. This attitude toward civic memorials is at work today and when the call for the removal or destruction of Confederate leaders comes forward it should be read not as wanting to erase history but of making space in the civic sphere for all to inhabit it without fear of history reviving itself.
Monuments like that of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee in New Orleans and Charlottesville or the statue of the armed Confederate soldier in Durham North Carolina, when seen as involved in creating a civic consensus about who we are as Americans, are not just markers of historical facts, but also exist in the present moment shaping and ordering our nation’s social space. This strategic function of such physical monuments needs to be part of the larger public discourse on monuments and how making and breaking them are acts that guarantee or remove the sense of shared public space. From this perspective the monuments to the leaders and soldiers of the Confederacy can be seen as damaging symbols that have continued to haunt public space and the consciousness of African American citizens, leading many to feel a sense of estrangement rather than enfranchisement.
Therefore, when local governments working with the blessings of white citizens choose to clear the public sphere of these ghosts of history they should be seen as gesturing toward making this space open to all. These acts of removal, whether sanctioned by city hall or a sudden reaction to the violence of white supremacy, must be judged as a show of a concern and care for giving African-American citizens, a willingness to make space and come to a common consensus of what it means to live free and be an American.” — Santhi Kavuri-Bauer
“It would be good to know how the monument came to be erected in the first place. Who advocated for them? What were their justifications. Who paid for them? Monuments have a history and an intention. Yale university made a good decision to rename Calhoun college (Calhoun an advocate of slavery…) Students do not need to be reminded of dark history in their daily living environment. Public works of art that promote racism, sexism, agism, homophobia, etc. should be removed. Hate crimes are too prevalent today; monuments that are complicit in hate of any kind are not the values we should promote with public art.” — Martha Gorzycki
“I was present at the tearing down of the Durham statue. I was proud to have taken part, even in my limited role as a member of the crowd, and I would do it again and take an even more active role if welcomed by the organizers to do so. We know there are more than enough of these monuments that if we wish to preserve some in a historically appropriate way (as in, drawing sharper or total focus to their role as racist fearmongering), that we have more than enough to fill that capacity and still destroy the bulk of them. I also like the idea of marking them as destroyed monuments–for example, tearing them down but leaving the torn down parts at the site, or constructing a new anti-racist monument from the parts and putting it at the site. A friend suggested creating one museum that was just a large airplane hangar with all of them in it, with the historical framing done by some of our many great POC museum and historical experts. After what I’ve seen in this country and in North Carolina over the last 20 years, I feel strongly that keeping the statues as is, even with a new plaque, is white supremacy and delusion in action.” — Kirstin Ringelberg
“We should proceed with extreme caution when removing public artworks. There are circumstances when no other solution proves adequate, but often providing a new context for an existing work may meet everyone’s needs better than removal. I clearly understand that a society cannot continue to honor unambiguously in bronze people whose actions have caused their reputations to alter. Monuments to Confederate leaders, for example, must change. But removing monuments entirely further erodes our sense of history, which already is in short supply. If as historians we believe that understanding the past helps us to make sense of the present, then surely we do not want to encourage deliberate erasure of reminders of that past. I would prefer monuments remain in place as stimulants to discussion. That discussion can take many forms, for example commissioning other artworks that challenge existing monuments and/or problematize their honorific function. Recent events in Charlottesville suggest the discourse sometimes may require enforced moderation. Perhaps artworks that become too controversial could be removed to semi-public spaces. But in general, our nation does not suffer from a surfeit of public art or an excess of historical self-understanding. What monuments we do have should be brought into a relevant dialogue to stimulate public awareness of our difficult national story.” — William Ambler
“This is an important and timely subject and one that CAA should make space for in the 2018 annual meeting. I discussed the importance of public monuments in my recent book, American Faces: A Cultural History of Portraiture and Identity [ http://www.upne.com/1611688924.html] and strongly urge the program committee to make space for it in the upcoming meeting. It is a wonderful example of why art and history matter.” — Richard Saunders, Director, Middlebury College Museum of Art; Professor, History of Art and Architecture
“Many monuments belong in museums, not on public squares. The actions that a person undertook (or committed) during their lifetimes should be considered, as well as the major thing(s) for which s/he is known. Robert E. Lee wouldn’t be remembered today if he hadn’t led the Confederate army. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did hold slaves, but they are also remembered for helping establish the US as a country: there is an actual contribution that we can discuss and weigh against questions of whether they fully supported what we now think of as American ideals.” — E. Evans
“I think the works should not be destroyed but moved to historical museums where they can be studied in historical context. As a society it is important to continue to learn from our history. Many monuments were erected 40-60 years after the war to ease tension. These artifacts can teach society much like the Egyptian and Greek statues.” — Sabre Esler
“Put civil war monuments in a historical museum or park dedicated to history.” — Margaret Herke
“They should not be destroyed. Removing them from view will not change the past or current social injustices that they celebrate and reinforce, but will further create the mistaken impression that racism, misogyny and bigotry are dead. History, the history of he people who erected the monuments in the not so distant past and who embraced the hatred that they embody, needs to be remembered. However, we need to creatively subvert the power of the monuments to empower their hateful messages. This might be through artistic and/or explanatory additions, or removal to museum settings.” — Rachel Zimmerman
“This is a very difficult and complicated issue. Generally, I favor providing context where possible for monuments that were commissioned works (not mass-produced by foundries and ordered from a catalogue). The context should address how and why the work was commissioned. In many instances, white women, particularly members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, organized memorial or monument associations, raised funds for the monument, selected the artist, and organized the dedication ceremony—-all at a time when women were discouraged from participating in the civic sphere. Those organizational skills extended beyond monument-making to advocacy for better working conditions, suffrage, and education. White women were the primary proponents of the myth of the Lost Cause, but veterans, north and south, also bought into the romantic notion of a “band of brothers.”
Further, commissioned works represent a significant output by American sculptors who operated within a tradition of heroic sculptural works. Further, the context should provide, wherever possible, the voices of dissent that were raised when the monuments were being commissioned and installed to reinforce that dissent and debate are always present. That would lead, hopefully, to a civil discussion about the concept of power, who wields it, etc.” — Barbara C. Batson
“Though often ignored, public monuments are, like all works of art, living and evolving objects, yet they are embedded in the matrix of urban life, politics, historiography, and morality in a way that few other artworks are. We should not be surprised that opinions about them should change and at times violently erupt into public consciousness, nor that those opinions should be contested. I do not, therefore, believe that public monuments are permanent immovable objects. Their removal can be, and historically has been, a powerful symbolic action that condenses and represents otherwise amorphous public sentiment. Yet even in cases when removal seems to be collective catharsis, there are opposing parties, and that should not come as a surprise to anyone. Removal should not be taken lightly, it should be fully debated and precisely justified in each community that undertakes it (as actually seems to have been the case in Charlottesville). That said, there are few historical figures whose opinions, personal lives, and actions would stand up to contemporary values, even if the contributions to society for which their monuments were raised in the first place continue to be considered valuable decades or centuries later—something that is not the case with leaders of the Confederacy. In more ambiguous cases, like Christopher Columbus, historical contextualization is key and possibly an alternative to removal. I believe that acknowledging the hypocrisy and violence of history in a text or counter monument can be just as powerful as toppling the offending object. It can, moreover, bring the complexity and cost of history to light rather than erasing it’s offending aspects altogether.” — Marina Kliger
“I believe that the Confederate statues depicting military leaders should be removed from places of honor and put in other locations, museums, etc. where they can be interpreted revealing the historical context of their making. I think ones that simply honor the Confederate dead should remain in place. As a fervent objector to the Vietnam War, I was unable to reconcile myself average soldiers until the Vietnam Memorial was put up. That memorial made it possible for me to honor the war dead without honoring the war or its leaders. Seeing this monument was very important for me and my attitudes to my country and the military. Plaques that explain that many of the monuments honoring the Civil War dead were put up in the 20th-century could explain the previous use of these monuments as a means of strengthening Jim Crow could be attached to these monuments, but they do still have meaning as marking the deaths of the average soldier. I realize that there are a lot of monuments that will need to be moved. I suggest that duplicates could be destroyed. Since a lot of these are in bronze, I’m assuming that there were multiple casts. A panel of art historians could decide, which is the finest cast among the many and save those. I think these monuments represent a teachable moment for our nation, plus many of them do have artistic merit. Thus I do not think they should be destroyed.” — Julie R. Meyers, Ph.D
“After careful review by the community, offending monuments should be removed from places of prominence, where they take on a social imprimatur, and preserved and contextualized elsewhere.” — Christine Filippone
“I’m Jewish and I’d have trouble living in the shadow of monuments and commemorations to the people and ideas that wanted to kill me, enslave me, and terrorize me. That’d be perpetually traumatizing. Jewish education on the Holocaust focuses on the premise to never forget. We can and should continue to fulfill the mission of remembrance and vigilance while removing public declarations of racism, hate, and violence to locations more conducive to pedagogical methods for social betterment.” — Sara Picard
“The destruction of a work of art should never be taken lightly. Yet the preservation of art should never take precedence over the preservation of life. These monuments are not only artifacts of the past; they speak strongly to – indeed, provide ammunition for – the economic, social, psychological and indeed bodily violence that so many Americans of color are subject to every day. For that reason, their status as works of art is not a good enough reason for them to remain public monuments, which are symbols of America’s most deeply-held values. If to remove a public statue from its original site is to destroy it, I think that destruction is warranted in this case.
That said, these monuments are not all the same. Some of them are copies, and can be destroyed without significant artistic loss. Some of them are great works of art, or historically significant ones, which should be moved to a less public site: perhaps a sculpture park reserved for this purpose. Some of these works are even by minority artists. Those monuments, particularly those by black artists and architects, seem to me the best candidates for the compromise of “contextualization”: leaving the original in place, while significantly changing its meaning. A flat bronze plaque on the horrors of slavery is insufficient for this; new works, new stories, will have to be added, so that the original cannot function in its original messaging. History is not simple. Why should our public sculpture be?
As an art historian speaking to other art historians, I am sure I do not even need to state that I am dedicated to the preservation of art and cultural heritage. But it seems to me hypocritical to worry more about injustice against art than against human beings.” — Julia Pelta Feldman
“There’s no “one size fits all” solution in the matter. Confederate monuments must be evaluated on a case by case basis, and in many cases, they should be removed and relocated to less prominent positions within their communities or to specially designated parks or museums that can properly contextualize them. Should every single Confederate memorial plaque and monument come down? Not necessarily. Questions that should be asked about each memorial relate to location (cemetery or front lawn of the town hall?), date of the commission and dedication, and role in the community. While many are ignored and forgotten, some monuments evolve to play new roles in their communities, perhaps in some cases even among the ancestors of those whom they were originally intended to oppress. Has new signage already been added? Do locals find the new interpretation of the monument useful in teaching the history of racism or needless fuel for the white supremacist fire? Can contemporary artists reinterpret the monuments? Once removed, can the pedestals be used for rotating public art exhibits? Other sculptures of historic figures may be different. Dr. Marion Sims was honored by a sculpture on 5th Avenue for his role in the development of modern gynecology. Perhaps the sculpture should stay in place but new signs and didactics should be added that explain how he performed experimental surgery on slaves without anesthesia. Most of our heroes from earlier eras would not deserve pedestals today. We can’t remove them all just as we can’t repatriate every piece of art in the Met and the Getty that was removed from its place of origin due to imperialism and colonialism. History can not be fixed by removing monuments, instead the problematic histories embodied by the statues should be confronted and questioned and taught in local curricula.” — Anonymous
“Public art takes a range of forms and finds its way into the public through a variety of processes. I believe that communities should have the right to a discussion of the value and function of a work of art and that such discussions should be informed by evidence about how and why a work came to be erected and, if important, the subsequent use of that work to promote or oppose a political position. These discussions should also include information about what other communities have done to move, alter, contextualize and/or destroy controversial works of public art. Ideally, art historians and historians will be involved in contributing to and helping to shape these discussions. If communities choose to move or destroy works rather than contextualize them, I would endorse the replacement of the work with a small plaque that offers some information about the work and why it was removed; it is essential that we keep history in view, especially historical political positions grounded in the unequal distribution of power and rights, to help ensure our progress toward a more-democratic society.” — Elizabeth Hutchinson
“Removal, not destruction, is important. Ideally, a museum repository would house these offensive past historical figures. A museum setting would provide the context for each of the works. Art history should be contextualized, not erased. What were the circumstances surrounding these commissions? Who paid for the monument? What was the public’s reception of the unveiling? Were there protests? How many people attended? Who were they? Where did they come from? How were the artists chosen? Who were the artists? Did their viewpoints clash with those of their subjects? etc., etc. Statues and public monuments have gone up and been pulled down or defaced or destroyed for millennia. Each work reveals so much information about the time in which it was created and erected or placed in a public square, park, or building. A single work examined from its commission to today (or until the day it was destroyed) reveals a great deal about changing ideals.” — Dr. Leanne Zalewski
“I favor “re-contextualizing” confederate monuments in a different setting, such as a museum, historical society, or sculpture garden. Leaving them in a public place keeps the confederate leaders “on a pedestal.” This isn’t a one-size-fits-all recommendation, however. Gettysburg, for example, isn’t going to take every confederate monument down – nor should they. Some common sense must be used, and each community needs to discuss this together.” — Anonymous
“I’m skeptical that art professionals have some sort of different or special stake in this debate by dint of their disciplinary sensitivity to a statue’s status as art. It sounds like the urge to preserve these statues as ~art~ means affording them a dubious sense of aesthetic autonomy, one that allows them to stand outside their social/political/historical function. I don’t think a statue’s existence as art ever separates it from the fact it is designed and erected to instil a particular historical/political/ideological order, a function that goes well beyond the object’s institutional/cultural/disciplinary boundaries. The aesthetic and political questions are one in the same. I’m very much in favour of devaluing the legitimacy of racist figures by undoing their canonization as statue-worthy. I think their removal demonstrates a necessary intervention in the construction of public and social space, affirming art’s agency in doing so. I think there’s a big difference between removing statues and erasing them: rather than wipe away historical artefacts which testify to a troubling history (to put it vulgarly, “censoring” them), the visible removal of a statue can exhibit that intervention in effective ways.” — Edward B.
“As a student of German art history, the Germans have, after a generation following World War II, dealt admirably with their difficult history. Following both the defeat of the Nazi regime and the fall of the GDR (communist East Germany), street names were changes, statues dedicated to problematic leaders were generally relegated to museums, though some were destroyed. The monuments of the Nazi past were dealt with more harshly, and rightfully so, than monuments dedicated to Marx, Engels, and Honecker. The Germans prohibit the publication of Mein Kampf (though an authorized and heavily annotated edition was published by historians recently). Monuments to the Holocaust have replaced Nazi monuments and they serve a didactic purpose as well as an aesthetic one. Obviously, the destruction of monuments does not prevent racist and anti-semitic violence and ideologies from emerging. And putting discredited leaders’ statues in museums for context (like the Monuments Park in Budapest) can serve as a good teaching tool.” — Marion Deshmukh
“I feel that removing the Confederate monuments is the right thing to do, no matter how divisive the far right might consider removal. In consideration of the fact that most of the monuments were put up in the 20th century, rather than in the immediate aftermath of the war, and that Lee himself didn’t want to be memorialized thus, I believe that it’s clear that these monuments were an expression of WASP hegemony during the Jim Crow era. I think that it’s important to continually remind our public of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephen’s remarks that secession was indeed about preserving slavery. We should encourage the use of real facts in studying the war and its aftermath, rather than allowing the perspective to be clouded by spin minimizing the culpability of the Confederacy and their apologists. I look to Germany as setting the example of the right thing to do, both in terms of monuments and educating their citizens.” — Bethanie Weber Rayburn
“I’m definitely conflicted here. I certainly see how some of the statues are offensive to certain groups of people. On the other hand, we cannot erase or ignore or rewrite history. Where do we stop when removing them? Some statues, such as those along Monument Ave. in Richmond are an integral part of an urban plan. Emotions are so rame now that I think we need to back off and take time to reflect. Knee-jerk responses seldom result in the best solutions . Furthermore the real problem isn’t the statues themselves but ideology for which they stand. If we can make headway on the more productive issues of overcoming hatred, bigotry, misogyny, and racism those statues wouldn’t have as much emotional charge.” — Sara James
“Are any of these statues works of art? The intention of these statues is clearly to honor the person represented. A work of art, such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in WDC, can present a more complex history. Replace statues with works of art.” — Janna Eggebeen
“I immediately think of the actions of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Isis in Syria. Were their actions justified?” — Richard Woodfield
“These statues were all erected before civil rights. They are the works of an oppressive government that insisted on telling their hegemonic version of history. There is a possibility of having some input from our diverse population and we need to respect all our races, not just the European — especially since the white population is going to be a minority soon.” — J. Quick-to-See Smith
“1. It seems crucial for Art historians to help tease out which of these public cultural objects are “art” and which are not. While originality is not determinate of “art”, the fact that many of these objects are identical, “factory-produced” suggests that they really ought to be viewed as a set rather than in isolation. That is, to challenge your prompt: many of the objects at stake right now are not related to specific historical figures and make no substantial claims for their depiction of specific people (only of generic ideas, like, problematically, “heroism”).
2. It seems crucial for Art historians to more firmly establish the context in which so many of these objects were commissioned, made, erected, and celebrated – so often these truths do not match public perceptions. That so many Confederate monuments post-date the war by SO many decades, and that they coincide with a cultural campaign to recuperate the “lost cause” of the Confederacy and reassert white supremacy in the Jim Crow era, should be more clearly articulated. Not teaching about the history of these kitsch objects (on grounds that they lack aesthetic value, perhaps?) has allowed for mythologies of their historical value to circulate amongst white publics.
3. These objects often APPEAR to be monuments to individuals (or groups of individuals), but so many of these are actually more like flags – generic symbols of collective hate. They may wear the white costumes of a Beaux-Arts aesthetic, but these statues form a perpetual and stationary KKK march through our public lands. It is a particular cruelty that they are in state-sponsored spaces. The state, in a rather patronizing interpretation of First Amendment “freedom”, thus sanctions these hate-objects (in the same way that hate-speech is sanctioned); because that which appears to be “speech” or “expression” (even if it is instead violence, and regardless of the context of its speech-power) is protected from government censoring, those who are within the public space of that speech or expression are forcibly compelled by the state to hear or see (or leave the space of the public, removing themselves from the public).
4. It is IMPERATIVE that we all listen when people of color say that they are harmed by the presence of these objects in public spaces. What imagination of “public” do we have for the 21st century if it excludes the feelings of so many Americans? Not listening to people of color is how white people perpetuate white supremacy (even if unknowingly). Those of us who wish to disavow white supremacy must TAKE ACTION to stop it. Whenever possible, we must follow POC-led movements in THEIR proposed solutions for dismantling white supremacy.
5. Given the manner of the production (and attendant aesthetic value) of these cultural objects AND the circumstances of their commissions or original reception as “commemorative monuments” AND the present performativity of these monuments (as ongoing glorification of white supremacy), many of the Confederate monuments should come down. Most (if not all) of these marble and bronze white supremacist flags should be destroyed. History is, we know, not lost by the destruction of any single object (and that destruction would itself be an historical event anyway!). Our public spaces and the objects we place therein must strive to help us reconcile with our violent and hateful past. We need to do this urgently. We need to do it with some speed (not overnight, but certainly not in a slow, gradual way). Our capacity to give this nation over to our young people as a thing they can possess, rather than an institution that reminds them constantly of their oppression, is at stake. To that end, I am in favor of some manner of truth and reconciliation commission with wide-reaching jurisdiction to reevaluate all of the monuments (and so-called monuments) in our public spaces, beginning with those related to the Confederacy and any other public cultural objects commemorating colonization, subjugation, and the violence of oppressors.” — Jessica Santone
“The monuments should not be destroyed, nor should they necessarily be removed from view. Their historical specificity and frequently painful meanings will come to light and perform important educational work if a process of re-signage, re-contextualization and if possible in certain cases a move to a new location is engaged. The collection of relocated problematic monuments in Budapest is an impressive model. As colleagues have noted, it was dispiriting to see very few art historians consulted on this topic by the major media during the immediate post-Charlottesville emergency period.” — S. Hollis Clayson
“The scholarly community has long recognized the fraught politics of these monuments, but it is divided over their fate. Some of the monuments have garnered copious academic analysis, others only recently attracted attention, and yet others are entirely absent from scholarly literature. Some of these statues bear aesthetic value and facilitate our understanding of the trajectory of the American monumental landscape; they also often represent significant moments in an artist’s career. The art historical community might be surprised at the broad participation of northern artists and sculptors, particularly in the 20th century, who served as jurors in these monumental competitions, or who submitted designs for Confederate monuments. Well-known artists in the 20th century, such as Paul Manship, and lesser known-ones, among them women, such as Laura Fraser, participated actively and enthusiastically in the creation of the monumental landscape of the Confederacy, although they did not necessarily share in their ideological implications. For some artists and the architects who created the pedestals upon which the monuments stand, these were professional opportunities that allowed them to showcase their artistic skills. Having researched and published on the monuments, I appreciate their value in allowing us insights into the time and the setting for which they were created and their political utility at the time of their creation. A blanket agenda has been thrown over their creation, although in reality the motivations for individual monuments was quite complex. Some of the monuments were decades in the making, but they were eliminated from public view overnight. Detailed photographic records of most of these monuments, that are instrumental in discussing their iconography are often lacking. Art historians have not been invited to the decision-making processes, to archiving recent debates, or to recording the removal of the monuments. Their removal compromises our ability to continue to engage with their discursive function on the sites for which they were created and to tell the complete story of their impact throughout their existence. Once, removed from public, their fate lies with bureaucratic agencies who are not committed to their preservation or their contextualization, although again there are some who have suggested that neither their preservation, nor their contextualization is necessary . Getting information about their ultimate fate is now impossible. Their relocation is equally problematic as their eventual accommodation in cemeteries, federal battlefields, and museums is yet to be decided. These monuments present serious financial challenges to their prospective recipients as to their proper display, and raise serious ideological concerns for museum curators and boards who will have to negotiate their contextualization. As art historians we have capitalized on the experiential value of visiting these monuments in situ prompting meaningful, transformative conversations among our students. Their removal addresses our most urgent social concerns but does not rectify them; these are only signifiers of deeper social and racial divisions that we are called to address at the local and national level. And herein lies the problem of their displacement; their presence became a thorn on the side of the body politic; let’s hope that its removal is not going to give us a false sense of gratification that we have successfully denounced the divisive ideals that occasioned their establishment.” — Evie Terrono
“My wish would be for every community that has one of these to organize a ‘truth and reconciliation’ style grappling with its past and present, in order to build buy-in for a de-polarized future. Removing oppressive expression has never managed to change hearts, minds, and realities. Only MORE (much) better speech can do that.” — Amy Werbel
“Public monuments show pride for a historical figure’s accomplishments. Therefore, no figure that is not honorable to the general public should have this prestige. However, destroying any historical documentation, whether literature or art, is doing humanity a large disservice by censoring history.” — Alyssa Hardy
“Confederate monuments are artworks created to appear as beautiful war memorials while doing more treacherous work: interjecting an ideology of white supremacy into the public sphere. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and others commissioned artists to make their monuments look beautiful and somber to sugar-coat the terrifying ideology of white supremacy and the reality of a racist social order. That so many of these monuments resemble memorials to Union soldiers further obfuscates the ideology they represent with a cloak of national unity. Therefore, it is important that we recognize Confederate monuments for the propaganda they are. We take pride in public art that represents our ideals, whether by celebrating great achievements, mourning our losses, or reckoning with our mistakes. Confederate monuments celebrate the victory of white supremacy over the black citizens of the South whom it disenfranchised. Confederate monuments mourn the soldiers who fought a war to defend slavery, a cause most Americans have long recognized was wrong. Confederate monuments obscure our mistakes by refusing to acknowledge that slavery, the terrorism of lynching and the Klan, unconstitutional Jim Crow laws and practices that disenfranchised black citizens are wrong. It is therefore right that we remove them from public spaces. Perhaps they should be housed in museums so that we can study the use of art for propaganda. Repurpose the bases and spaces freed up by their removal for art that more accurately and honestly represents us.” — John P. Bowles
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — Aug 25, 2017
Pascale Rihouet discusses A Feast for the Eyes: Art, Performance, and the Late Medieval Banquet by Christina Normore. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Morgan Thomas visits Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, which was on view at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, from February 5–September 18, 2016. Read the full review at caa.reviews. Image credit: Tommy Watson, Wipu Rockhole, 2004. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. © Tommy Watson/Courtesy of Yanda Aboriginal Art.
Heather Madar reviews Daughter of Venice: Caterina Corner, Queen of Cyprus and Woman of the Renaissance by Holly S Hurlburt. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Institutional News
posted by CAA — Aug 22, 2017
Read about the latest news from CAA’s institutional members.
Institutional News is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
August 2017
The Archives of American Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, has launched a new online guide to archival collections in the Chicago area that are related to American art. A $413,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art supported a comprehensive survey of art-related archives in more than seventy-five Chicago-area institutions.
Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, New York, has received a 2017 Artistic Production Grant from the VIA Art Fund for Heather Hart’s The Oracle of Lacuna.
The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has received a 2017 Artistic Production Grant from the VIA Art Fund for Daniel Buren’s Viole/Toile – Toile/Viole.
The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art have won a gold-level MUSE Award from the American Alliance of Museums for their jointly published, open-access digital journal. Part of the MUSE Open Culture category, the award recognizes British Art Studies for its high standards of excellence in the use of media and technology for Gallery, Library, Archive, and Museum programs.
People in the News
posted by CAA — Aug 17, 2017
People in the News lists new hires, positions, and promotions in three sections: Academe, Museums and Galleries, and Organizations and Publications.
The section is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
August 2017
Academe
Nika Elder has become assistant professor in the Department of Art at American University in Washington, DC.
Amy Freund has received tenure and been promoted to associate professor in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
Paul B. Jaskot, formerly professor of the history of art and architecture and director of Studio χ at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, has been appointed professor of art history and director of Wired! Lab at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Jenni Sorkin has received tenure in the History of Art and Architecture Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She became associate professor on July 1, 2017.
May Sun, an artist and former lecturer at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California, has become a 2017–18 artist in residence at the Rinehart School of Sculpture at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
Rebecca Uchill has left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge for a position at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.
Lisa Young has resigned from her position in the College of Art and Design at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Museums and Galleries
William J. Chiego has become director emeritus for the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, to acknowledge his twenty-five years of service.
Elizabeth Chodos, formerly executive and creative director of Oxbow in Saugatuck, Michigan, has been appointed director of the Regina Gouger Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Erin B. Coe, director of the Hyde Collection in Glen Falls, New York, has accepted the directorship of the Palmer Museum of Art at Pennsylvania State University in State College.
William L. Coleman, formerly NEH Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Library Company of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, has been named associate curator of American art at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey.
Alexa Greist, previously at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, has been named assistant curator of prints and drawings for the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
Tarah Hogue, formerly curator at Grunt Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, has become the first senior curatorial fellow at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Wanda Nanibush has been named assistant curator of Canadian and indigenous art for the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
Christina Olsen, previously director of the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has been appointed director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor.
Sylvie Patry has joined the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France, as deputy director for curatorial affairs and collections. Previously she was deputy director for collections and exhibitions and Gund Family Chief Curator for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
H. Alexander Rich, assistant professor of art history and director of the Melvin and Burks Galleries at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, has also been named curator and director of galleries and exhibitions for the Polk Museum of Art at his school.
Tina Rivers Ryan, formerly curatorial assistant in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has become assistant curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.
Stephanie Sparling Williams, previously John Walsh Fellow at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, has joined the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, as assistant curator and visiting scholar.
Daniel H. Weiss, president and chief operating officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has been chosen to lead his institution as chief executive officer.
Cole Woodcox has been appointed director of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges, a consortium of thirty North American universities based in Asheville, North Carolina.
Organizations and Publications
Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, previously director of the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington, has been appointed director and chief executive officer of the Biennale of Sydney in Australia.
Gilberto Cárdenas, executive director of the Notre Dame Center for Arts and Culture in South Bend, Indiana, has joined the board of trustees for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, based in Washington, DC.
John Davis, previously Alice Pratt Brown Professor of Art at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and executive director of the Terra Foundation for American Art’s Global Academic Programs and Terra Foundation Europe, has been appointed under secretary for museums and research/provost at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Thomas W. Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, has decided to retire in spring 2018.
CAA Receives NEA Grant for ARTspace
posted by michaelh — Aug 11, 2017
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CAA has been awarded a $25,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the next installment of ARTspace, taking place during the 2018 Annual Conference in Los Angeles. Spearheaded by CAA’s Services to Artists Committee, ARTspace is a forum for programming designed by artists for artists that is among the most vital and exciting aspects of the conference. Held at each Annual Conference since 2001, ARTspace is intended to reflect the current state of the visual arts and arts education. The grant is the NEA’s ninth consecutive award to CAA for this event.
ARTspace offers free program sessions and includes diverse activities such as the annual Distinguished Artist Interviews—most recently with Coco Fusco and Katherine Bradford at the Annual Conference in New York last February—and screenings of film, video, and multimedia works in the Media Lounge. Also hosted in ARTspace are live performances and panel discussions that facilitate a conversational yet professional exchange of ideas and practices designed to engage CAA’s artist members as well as the general public.
ARTspace programming for 2017 included sessions on economic fairness and internet activism, artists who collaborate with their families, alternative career paths for artists outside the studio and academia, and a roundtable on artist-run institutions. CAA’s 106th Annual Conference will take place February 21–24, 2018, at the Los Angeles Convention Center and at schools, museums, and other institutions throughout Southern California.
Jane Chu, chairman of the NEA since 2014, has approved over $84 million to fund nearly 1,200 projects and partnerships in all fifty US states in the NEA’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2017. The Art Works category focuses on funding the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with art, lifelong learning in the arts, and strengthening of communities through the arts. Through grants to thousands of nonprofits each year, the NEA promotes opportunities for people in communities across America to experience the arts and exercise their creativity.
For the full list of 2017 Art Works grants visit the NEA website.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 09, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Professors as Targets of Internet Outrage
Many professors who have expressed their views about race and politics this year have found themselves targets of both the left and right. Nothing is too abstrusely academic, it seems, to seed an attack campaign fueled by websites that surveil social media to find gotcha-worthy gems. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Demands to Cancel Dana Schutz’s ICA Exhibit Don’t Help the Cause for Social Justice
A small group of Boston activists demand as much in their passionate opposition to the current Dana Schutz exhibition at ICA Boston. Should an artist be blacklisted and blocked from showing their work at museums around the nation because one of their recent paintings tackled the painful topic of the history of racial violence? (Read more from the National Coalition against Censorship.)
Upstart Co-Lab Wants Businesses to Hire More Artists
We’re used to the common narrative of the artist as someone so inspired that they simply can’t stomach a drab office job, preferring to ditch the cubicle for the white cube. And yet research has found that employers almost universally report creativity is of increasing importance in the “traditional” workplace. (Read more from Artsy.)
The Letters of Picasso’s Dealer and a Century’s Worth of Impressionist Archives Are Going Online
Art historians and dealers researching works of art will soon have a new trove of materials to work with, courtesy of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute. A century’s worth of documentation—stock books from galleries, artists’ correspondence, annotated sale catalogues—will be digitized to develop online catalogues raisonnés for Manet, Morisot, Monet, and more. (Read more from Artnet News.)
The Multifarious Book
A few years ago the director of a university press told me that her goal was “to save the monograph.” “Which one?” I responded. It was an impolitic remark, but it helped to make the point that books perform all kinds of tasks, and when we say we want to “save” the book, it is reasonable to ask if some of those tasks could usefully be performed in better, faster, and cheaper ways. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)
Cindy Sherman Takes Selfies (as Only She Could) on Instagram
For the most part artists use Instagram like the rest of us: as a document of everyday fascinations, a bit scrubbed up for public consumption. But Cindy Sherman—who knows more than most about the deceptions of selfies—has quietly been exploring Instagram’s potential for something more than self-promotion. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Performance Piece Featuring Witches Raises Questions at Seattle Art Fair
On Thursday evening, at the end of the first day of the Seattle Art Fair, I went on a witch hunt. Ten women wearing black hooded cloaks were wandering the aisles. Amid booths housing galleries from around the world, the dark figures walked, carrying battle axes, reading poetry, playing music, and taking pictures on their phones. (Read more from the Observer.)
Philippe de Montebello on How the Metropolitan Museum Can Reclaim Its Glory
Philippe de Montebello is an institution in his own right—as venerable and encyclopedic as would befit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which he led for three decades. Recently, Artnet News’s editor-in-chief sat down with de Montebello to discuss the changes and opportunities at the Met, and his new role in the gallery world. (Read more from Artnet News.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 02, 2017
Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
How Do Artists Get Gallery Representation?
While it’s possible to go it alone, it’s hard to understate the importance of a supportive, dedicated gallery to your career. The right gallerist doubles as a sounding board while you develop your work, a public platform for your practice, and a source of income. (Read more from Artsy.)
Seven Residencies That Can Help Emerging Artists
For young artists fresh from art school or an MFA program, studio space may be prohibitively expensive, and leaving the nurturing bubble of school is daunting. Residencies can fill that gap—if these up-and-coming artists know which ones to apply for. (Read more from Artnet News.)
The Distracted Classroom: Transparency, Autonomy, and Pedagogy
If we want to make a dent in the problem of digital distractions in class, we must begin by clarifying the policies we have created and the reasons behind them. Those reasons might look different from teacher to teacher. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Another Year on the Academic Job Market
Perhaps the summer months can provide you some time for concentrated focus on your next—and hopefully last—round on the market. Here is one person’s perspective on what you might do between now and the next academic hiring season. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Your Syllabus Doesn’t Have to Look Like a Contract
Zac Wendler was tired of the same routine at the beginning of every semester. He would hand out his syllabus—five or so pages of text—and students would glance at it and wait for him to walk them through it. Then for the rest of the semester, they would ask him questions that could be easily answered if they had read the syllabus. (Read more from Vitae.)
Protesters Call on ICA Boston to Cancel Dana Schutz Show
An exhibition of Dana Schutz’s recent work opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and it won’t be without controversy. Protestors released an open letter expressing their disappointment that the museum is honoring an artist they believe should instead be held accountable for her portrait of Emmett Till, Open Casket. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
Why We Shouldn’t Punish Small Museums for Deaccessioning
AAM and AAMD contend that their member institutions should only deaccession artworks in their holdings for the express purpose of either acquiring new works or, in the AAM’s case, caring for existing works. It’s an ideologically pure, dependably crowd-pleasing position to take. (Read more from Artnet News.)
Look Up, See a Masterpiece
You’re strolling around an art museum, and one painting catches your eye. Intrigued and mesmerized, you think to yourself, “Now that’s a masterpiece!” Many intangibles go into that judgment, but new research suggests it is partially inspired by one easily measured variable: the painting’s placement on the wall. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
August 2017 Picks from CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts
posted by CAA — Aug 01, 2017
Hương Ngô: To Name It is to See It
Firelei Báez: Vessels of Genealogies
DePaul Art Museum
935 W Fullerton, Chicago, IL
April 27–August 6, 2017
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Hương Ngô, study for the video Hidden from Plain Sight, 2017 (artwork © Hương Ngô)
In concurrent exhibitions, the DePaul Art Museum presents Firelei Báez, Vessels of Genealogies, and Hương Ngô, To Name It is to See It. Báez, a Miami-based Dominican-American artist, is known for her use of textiles, patterns, and bright colors. She often depicts identity through the use of hairstyles and tattoos in her large-scale paintings, evoking both beauty and political implications “for those whose cultural identities have remained traditionally absent from dominant culture.” While Báez migrated to the United States, her work also addresses identity formation experienced by those who grew up in Latin, Caribbean, and African regions. She “challenges the basic idea of how race is experienced in the US—a condition defined as binary and black or white. In her work, one can appreciate that she is many cultures. She expresses the consciousness of a new generation eager to embrace their cultural prowess in terms of hybridity.”
In To Name It is to See It, Ngô, focuses on Vietnamese anticolonial organizer Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai. Ngô draws connections between language and seeing. The artist said, “‘To Name It Is To See It’ evokes the promise of a discursive practice, identifying an injustice by name is the first step to understanding it and working towards change. At the same time, there is deception to the title because identification was a preoccupation of the colonial authorities….” The exhibition by Ngô features more than twenty-five individual pieces of art ranging from photos to video and fabrics.
SaveArtSpace: The Future is Female
Through Summer 2017
Various locations throughout New York City
In this all-woman gallery and public art exhibition, The Future Is Female by SaveArtSpact features female artists on advertising spaces and billboards throughout the New York City area during summer 2017. The exhibit aims to expand upon the mainstream definition of “the female gaze” through works that reflect the multifaceted reality of womanhood in the twenty-first century and that expand upon society’s traditional ideals of femininity.
“One such woman is artist Elise Peterson,” writes Priscilla Frank in a HuffPost review, “whose piece Grace Meets Matisse injects a photographic image of Grace Jones into Henri Matisse’s 1910 Dance, placing her in the center of a ring of naked dancers. The image puts Jones’ black body into an image previously filled with white bodies, juxtaposing the flesh of the painted figures with the three-dimensional glow of Jones’ self-actualized body, mid-performance.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/feminist-art-new-york-billboards_us_594abba7e4b0312cfb60fb92)
The work was curated by Meryl Meisler, Marie Tomanova, Alyse Archer-Coité, Sandra Hong, and Brittany Natale. In addition to Peterson, artists include Allie Kelley, Beth Brown, Fanny Allié, Jess Whittam, Julie Orlick, Lissa Rivera, Mónica Félix, Nina Summer, and Sara Meadows. Peterson’s work can be viewed in various locations throughout New York City, including Grand Street and Ludlow Street (343 Grand Street).
Jeanine Oleson
Commonwealth & Council
3006 W 7th St. Suite 220, Los Angeles, CA
July 8–August 19, 2017
The amplification of sound and image is at the center of Jeanine Oleson’s powerful exhibition at Commonwealth & Council. Using natural materials such as shell and glass within a performance-based lexicon, Oleson examines the effects of production under late capitalism, the meanings of community, and bodily experience. Three-dimensional imaging technology is employed to render visible what we already see but which we might not value; and elsewhere a transducer speaker made of shell expertly turns an object of childlike wonder into a proxy for political speech. Although not specifically positioned as a pendant to Oleson’s Hammer exhibition, concurrently on view, many of the interests in the two shows are similar, and benefit from a close read. At issue in both is how one might become a conductor—realizing the longing for a political elsewhere—using materials of the body and the world?
CUNT
Venus Over Los Angeles
601 S Anderson St, Los Angeles, CA
July 15–September 2
Although more iconographic than strictly historical, this group exhibition brings together six feminist artists who address the visuality of female bodies and their attendant sexualities. Betty Thompkins, Carolee Schneemann, VALIE EXPORT, Judith Bernstein, Dorothy Iannone, and Marilyn Minter may each depict the vulvic, but their similarities end there. Iannone’s confessional work, I Was Thinking of You (1975/2006), displays a video of artist’s face while she masturbates, housed in a lovingly decorated cabinet which recounts an old story of love and abuse (the text on the cabinet’s exterior begins: “You walk into my quarters 2000 years ago which are outside the city gates….”) The exhibition features new work by some of the artists—most notably a large black-light mural by Bernstein, in which a giant limp phallus covered in swastikas comes to stand for the “Trumpery” of America’s current political hierarchy. Nearby, a vagina dentata seems to be growing out of the official seal of the United States. It is a caustic and damning work—one filled with heaps of rage and anger—revealing why explicitness in our lives, politics, and art are as necessary as ever.
As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings
225 South Street
Williamstown, MA 01267
July 1–October 9, 2017
As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings presents twelve of this major Abstract Expressionist artist’s large-scale paintings. Made over the course of her long career, these works explore the tension between abstraction and representation and demonstrate her engagement with the landscape painting tradition. In particular, she found inspiration in the idyllic, wooded landscapes of the northeastern United States, home of the Clark Art Institute. Spanning the full range of styles, techniques, and formal preoccupations that Frankenthaler explored over five decades of work, these paintings are primarily abstract, yet reveal recognizable elements from the landscape that function, paradoxically, to reinforce their abstraction: as in nature, but not as in nature. As she said of one of her most iconic paintings, Mountain and Sea (1952), “The landscapes were in my arms as I did it. I didn’t realize all that I was doing. I was trying to get at something—I didn’t know what until it was manifest.”
A publication, authored by guest curator Alexandra Schwartz, with contributions by Christina Kee, accompanies this exhibition.
Marina Abramović: The Cleaner
Gammel Strandvej 13
DK 3050 Humlebaek, Denmark, Copenhagen
June 17–October 22, 2017
This summer, the Louisiana Museum of Art presents Marina Abramović: The Cleaner, the first major European retrospective presentation of this pioneering body and performance artist. The exhibition at Louisiana comprises more than one hundred works and spans more than five decades—from early concept sketches, paintings, and sound works to presentations of the artist’s performances—including her collaboration with former partner Ulay. Reperformances of an early work form part of the exhibition as well. The exhibition is structured chronologically, beginning with her Sound Corridor (War) of 1971, where the spectator is inundated with the sounds of gunfire, and ending with her quieter and more transformative works.
Marina Abramović: The Cleaner has been developed in a dialogue with the artist and is organized by Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in collaboration with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, and Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn.