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Finalists for the 2017 Morey and Barr Awards

posted by Christopher Howard — Nov 22, 2016

CAA is pleased to announce the 2017 finalists for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and two Alfred H. Barr Jr. Awards. The winners of the three prizes, along with the recipients of nine other Awards for Distinction, will be announced in late January and presented during Convocation in conjunction with CAA’s 105th Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 15–18, 2017.

atkinsonnoisyCharles Rufus Morey Book Award

The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in any language between September 1, 2015, and August 31, 2016. The three finalists for 2017 are:

LaGama KongoAlfred H. Barr Jr. Award

The Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for museum scholarship is presented to the author(s) of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published between September 1, 2015, and August 31, 2016, under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. The five finalists for 2017 are:

Padilla and Anderson A Red Like No OtherAlfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions

In 2009, CAA established a second Barr award for the author(s) of catalogues produced by smaller museums, libraries, and collections with an annual operating budget of less than $10 million. The five finalists for the second Barr award for 2017 are:

The presentation of the 2017 Awards for Distinction will take place on Wednesday evening, February 15, 5:30–7:00 PM, at the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan. The event is free and open to the public. For more information about CAA’s Awards for Distinction, please contact Katie Apsey, CAA manager of programs.

Filed under: Awards, Books, Uncategorized

News from the Art and Academic Worlds

posted by Christopher Howard — Nov 16, 2016

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.

Donald Trump, Taste, and the Cultural Elite

It’s said that taste defines us. The music I like lets you know, to some degree, what kind of person I am. Yet though this year’s presidential election has raised issues of racism, sexism, and classism, not much has been said about taste, and the role it may or may not have played in getting Donald Trump to the White House. (Read more from the Washington Post.) 

Now, More Than Ever, Designers Must Transform America

Thoughtful design, whether it’s a logo, an object, or a well-organized protest, has always had the ability to effect political change. And yet, in days following the election, the power of design felt—at least momentarily—diminished. Graphic design didn’t affect the outcome. (Read more from Wired.)

The Obligation to Explain

One of the striking aspects of the controversy around Kelley Walker’s exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis is how many important issues it raises: the perilous state of race relations; the dilemmas that arise when one person’s freedom of speech is perceived as hate speech; whether white artists can tackle the subject of black experience without engaging in cultural appropriation; and the extent to which social media pressures museums to bring more transparency to their curatorial process. (Read more from Artcritical.)

Iconic Ancient Sites Ravaged in ISIS’s Last Stand in Iraq

Recently released satellite imagery of archaeological sites around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul has revealed extensive destruction at two capital cities of ancient Mesopotamia, according to researchers with the American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives. (Read more from National Geographic.)

The Future of the Tiny Liberal-Arts College

At first glance, it sounds like a grim affair: a group of fifteen presidents from the country’s tiniest liberal-arts institutions met in New York in June, even amid experts’ predictions of small-college mergers and closings. Attendees who were at the meeting report the mood was far from somber, though. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Crash and Burn

Your course plan looked great on paper. It passed departmental faculty review. Perhaps it even integrated some progressive pedagogical experimentations. In sum, the class held real promise. But when it got to the classroom, your first-run of the course was received with far less enthusiasm than you anticipated. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)

Auditioning for the Role of Colleague

Far too many graduate students earnestly prepare for their job talk as if the talk itself is what matters most. It was not until a casual meeting with a member of my dissertation committee in her cozy office that I learned the secret to delivering a great job talk: nothing matters more than how you manage the Q&A portion. (Read more from Vitae.)

Makeover Mania: Inside the Twenty-First-Century Craze for Redesigning Everything

In theory, the redesign begins with a problem. The problem might be specific or systemic or subjective. A logo makes a company’s image feel out of date. A familiar household object has been overtaken by new technology. A service has become too confusing for new users. The world is, after all, full of problems. (Read more from the New York Times Magazine.)

Filed under: CAA News, Uncategorized

Affiliated Society News for November 2016

posted by CAA — Nov 15, 2016

 

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) asks for your support in reaching 3,800 listserv members! Join the most active academic museum and gallery discussion board on the web and get answers to your questions about student engagement, faculty partnerships, and more. Visit us online.

Association of Print Scholars

The Association of Print Scholars (APS) recently celebrated its second anniversary, and the organization continues to grow through the dedicated work of its officers and members. According to its by-laws, APS must elect two officers biannually. In the coming weeks, online voting will take place for the positions of vice president and treasurer. Officers will also appoint a website coordinator.

The International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) and APS collaboratively presented a panel discussion on the market for contemporary prints. The event marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the IFPDA Print Fair, the largest and most celebrated art fair dedicated to fine prints. “Publishing the Contemporary: The State of Printmaking Today” took place on Saturday, November 5, 2016, in the Board of Officers Room at the Park Avenue Armory. The print specialist and critic Sarah Kirk Hanley moderated the conversation.

APS will host its affiliated-society panel at CAA’s 2017 Annual Conference in New York. “Collaborative Printmaking” is scheduled for Friday, February 17 at 3:30 PM in the Petit Trianon, 3rd Floor. Chaired by Jasper van Putten from Harvard University, the panel brings together a diverse group of print scholars and artists to explore the wide-ranging impact of collaboration in printmaking across cultures and times—from the European Middle Ages and colonial Peru to contemporary Johannesburg and Chicago. Speakers include: Suzanne Boorsch, Yale University Art Gallery; Emily C. Floyd, Tulane University; Kim Berman, University of Johannesburg; and Kate McQuillen, Independent Visual Artist. Please stay tuned for further updates on APS’s session, reception, and print-related activities.

APS members might enjoy reading the recent issue of Art in Print, which includes the National Gallery of Art curator Peter Parshall’s APS Inaugural Lecture, as well as responses from scholars and APS members.

Feminist Art Project

The Feminist Art Project has announced a call for submissions for “Bodies, Borders, Homes.” We live in a world of migratory population flows, resurgent nationalisms, and state-sanctioned violence. The next issue of Rejoinder web journal will explore the theme of bodies and borders in the context of these geopolitical phenomena. We invite submissions that focus on how the relationship between borders and bodies shapes our understandings of selfhood, exile, and home. Writing (including essays, commentary, criticism, fiction, and poetry) and artwork should address these relationships from feminist, queer, and social justice–inspired perspectives. We particularly welcome contributions at the intersection of scholarship and activism. For manuscript preparation details, please see our website. Rejoinder is published by the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University, in partnership with the Feminist Art Project, Rutgers University. Please send completed written work (2,000–2,500 words max), JPEGs of artwork, and short bios to the editor, Sarah Tobias, by December 9, 2016.

Italian Art Society

Next year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Italian Art Society (IAS). To celebrate this milestone, the organization has initiated both membership and fundraising campaigns that will run through the end of 2016. Please encourage colleagues, students, friends, and aficionados working on or appreciative of Italian art, architecture, and visual culture to join IAS. We are encouraging our members to offer gift memberships to emerging scholars, contingent faculty, and independent scholars. Membership options begin at $20 for graduate students and include three other membership levels ($30 regular; $60 patron, and $100 institution/benefactor). New or newly renewed lapsed memberships paid by December 31, 2016, are valid until January 1, 2018.

IAS has also launched an anniversary-specific campaign to celebrate the growth and longevity of the organization. We ask members and others to consider donations in permutations of three and/or thirty ($3, $30, $300, 2 x $30, 30 x $2) to support IAS’s mission, programs, grants, charitable activities, and publications. Thus far we have raised nearly $2,000 in this fall’s fundraising campaign. During CAA’s annual meeting next February, IAS will host a gala reception to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary at the beautiful New York restaurant Il Gattopardo (13–15 West 54th Street, New York, NY 10019, less than a block from CAA’s conference headquarters, the New York Hilton Midtown). At the event we will honor several early presidents of IAS. The early history of the society may be found on our website.

Next year’s IAS/Kress Lecture will take place in Bologna in the Aula Magna of the former monastery of Santa Cristina, which now houses the Arts Department of the University of Bologna. Proposals to present the eighth annual IAS/Kress Lecture, on a topic related to Bologna or its environs, will be due in early January.

Japan Art History Forum

The Japan Art History Forum (JAHP) has announced two recent developments. First, the Japanese Art Society of America (JASA) will provide funding in support of the Chino Kaori Memorial Essay Prize. JASA will award $1,000 to the 2016 prize winner and has committed to provide a $1,000 award for the prize winner in each of the next four years, for a total of $5,000. Established in 2003 in memory of the distinguished art historian Chino Kaori, the Chino Kaori Memorial Essay Prize is awarded annually to a graduate student who has written an outstanding essay on a topic in the study of Japanese art history or visual culture. The award recognizes excellence in scholarship, with several past prize-winning essays later published in peer-reviewed journals. More information, including a list of past winners, can be found on the JAHF website. The prize continues to be supported by the University of Hawai‘i Press, which provides $400 in books from the press’s catalogue.

Second, former curatorial interns at the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford, California, have created the Clark Center Graduate Travel Grant, which will award $500 annually to a graduate student of Japanese art wishing to visit a public or private collection of Japanese art for the purpose of in-person, hands-on research. The grant was created in commemoration of the closing of the Clark Center and in recognition of and heartfelt gratitude for the experience the Clarks and the center provided to the former interns and to many more young and emerging scholars in the field.

In June 2015, the Clark Center closed its doors after twenty years of offering exceptional exhibitions and programs for visitors from the local community in California’s Central Valley as well as Japanese art specialists from across the country and around the world. From its inception, the Clark Center also hosted an unparalleled curatorial internship program, which graduated a total of nineteen interns with valuable hands-on experience handling and caring for artworks, planning exhibitions, and working with the public. Bill and Libby Clark, founders of the center, not only created this rare opportunity for young scholars in the field; they also opened their home to us and welcomed us as part of their family. Seed money for this fund has been donated by the past interns of the Clark Center, and additional contributions to the fund are welcome on an ongoing basis. Donations to the Clark Center Graduate Travel Grant program can be made by visiting the JAHF website.

National Council of Arts Administrators

The forty-fourth annual conference of the National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) convened September 28–October 1, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The organization is indebted to Hester Stinnett of Tyler School of Art at Temple University for organizing a truly exceptional conference. Featured speakers included Sean Kelley, senior vice president and director of public programming at Eastern State Penitentiary; Pepon Osorio, artist and Tyler professor; Greg Anderson, sociologist and dean of Temple University’s College of Education; and Blake Bradford, director of the Lincoln University-Barnes Foundation Museum.

The membership elected three new board members: Joe Poshek (Irvine Valley College); Jeni Mokren (State University of New York, New Paltz); and Peter Chametzky (University of South Carolina). They join returning directors Leslie Bellavance (Kendall College of Art and Design, Secretary), Lynne Allen (Boston University), Elissa Armstrong (Virginia Commonwealth University, President), Cathy Pagani (University of Alabama, Treasurer), Tom Berding (Michigan State University), Nan Goggin (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), A. Blake Pearce (Valdosta State University), David LaPolombara (Ohio University), Michael Fels (Elon University), Andrea Eis (Oakland University, Past Treasurer) and Amy Hauft (University of Texas at Austin, Past President). Special thanks to Steve Bliss (Savannah College of Art and Design), Cora Lynn Deibler (University of Connecticut) and Jim Hopfensperger (Western Michigan University) for their excellent service and who rotated off the board this year.

Activities at the 2017 CAA Annual Conference include the annual NCAA reception (Thursday, February 16, 7:00–9:00 PM) and an NCAA-CAA affiliate session, “Entrepreneurship as Research, Teaching, Learning, or Service,” a fast-paced series of presentations on leadership (Thursday, February 16, 5:30–7:00 PM). NCAA welcomes new and current members, and all interested parties.

Public Art Dialogue

Public Art Dialogue (PAD) has announced the 2017 winner of its annual award for lifetime achievement in the field of public art. The artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles will be honored with an award reception during the CAA Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 15–18, 2017. PAD’s awards ceremony will take place at the Queens Museum. For more information, please see http://publicartdialogue.org/news

Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture

The Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has welcomed several new members, including three institutions: St. Petersburg Arts Project, the Getty Research Institute, and ARTMargins. The organization has also received its first donation to establish the Maya Semina Graduate Student Travel Grant. Several SHERA members are participating in the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies convention, taking place November 17–20, 2016, in Washington, DC. The SHERA membership meeting will take place on Friday, November 18, 6:15–7:45 PM at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park.

At the CAA Annual Conference in February 2017, SHERA will host two emerging-scholar sessions and a membership meeting. “Emerging Scholars: Politics and the Collective in East European and Russian Art, Part I” will take place on Wednesday, February 15, 10:30 AM–NOON, and “Emerging Scholars: Russian Artists and International Communities, Part II” will transpire on Friday, February 17, 8:30–10:00 AM. The SHERA membership meeting will happen on Friday, February 17, 5:30–7:00 PM. All events will take place in the conference hotel.

Visual Resources Association

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) expresses gratitude to CAA and its membership for the distribution of the VRA Professional Status survey in fall 2015. VRA is pleased to announce the completion and availability of the VRA 2015-16 Professional Status Task Force Report on Professional Status. This report provides extremely valuable information about the landscape of the profession and the needs of colleagues working within a variety of visual-resource and related environments. Almost half of the 446 survey respondents identified themselves as non-VRA members, which is a good indication of how support from an organization like CAA increased the survey’s reach and our understanding of the professional status and needs of our colleagues working across related fields. Thanks again to all affiliated-society members who assisted in this important work. Please do not hesitate to contact the VRA board with questions about the report by sending a message to board@vraweb.org.

VRA has once again been included in the important Cross-Pollinator collaboration with Digital Library Federation/Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (DLF-GLAM). Through the cross-pollinator grant last year, Andrea Schuler from Tufts University attended the DLF meeting; Meagan Duever of the University of Georgia attended the VRA-ARLIS/NA joint conference in Seattle. Since this year’s grant was funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the grant can support eight new travel awards to foster collaboration among museum and digital library communities. Four $1,000 fellowships will be offered to non-DLF-affiliated GLAM professionals to attend the 2016 DLF Forum, and four DLF-affiliated practitioners will receive a $1,000 award plus free registration to attend one of the upcoming conferences of the following partnering organizations: the American Institute for Conservation; the Art Libraries Society of North America; the Museum Computer Network; and VRA.

Women’s Caucus for Art

The Women’s Caucus for Art will present its 2017 Lifetime Achievement Awards to Mary Schmidt Campbell, Audrey Flack, Martha Rosler, and Charlene Teters on Saturday, February 18, 2017, at the New York Institute of Technology in midtown Manhattan. CAA members are invited to attend the ticketed VIP Awards celebration from 6:00 to 7:30 PM that precedes the public awards presentation at 8:00 PM. The WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards were first presented in 1979 to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Like those women, this year’s awardees have made significant contributions to the visual arts. The art historian Mary Schmidt Campbell is president of Spellman College. The work of the photorealist painter and sculptor Audrey Flack is in major museum collections. Martha Rosler is a nationally known video, text, and performance artist, as well as a frequent contributor to Artforum. Charlene Teters is academic dean at the Institute of American Indian Arts as well as an artist, writer, and activist. The 2017 President’s Award for Art and Activism will be presented to the feminist curator and educator Kat Griefen.

The Lifetime Achievement Awards are the culminating event at WCA’s annual conference (held during CAA, February 16–18) that includes a Thursday evening reception for the exhibition Wage On! Women, Art, and Money at Ceres Gallery in Chelsea, professional workshops, caucus sessions, and other opportunities for networking. WCA’s affiliated-society panel on “Maternal Art and Activism” with cochairs Rachel Buller and Margo Hobbs will take place on Friday, February 17 at 10:30 AM in the Rendezvous Ballroom. Be sure to visit WCA in the CAA Book and Trade Fair, too. Early bird tickets are available for the awards VIP reception until January 7, 2017.

 

Filed under: Affiliated Societies

2017 CAA-Getty International Program Reunion

posted by CAA — Nov 10, 2016

CAA Names Recipients for
2017 CAA-Getty International Program Reunion

Celebrating five successful years of the CAA-Getty International Program, the College Art Association (CAA) is pleased to announce the selection of twenty alumni to participate in a reunion program during the 2017 CAA Annual Conference, taking place in New York City from February 15-18. Funded by a generous grant from the Getty Foundation, the alumni will join distinguished scholars from the United States for a series of four conference sessions on international topics in art history.

The twenty alumni chosen for the reunion program will travel to the Annual Conference from home countries as varied as Malaysia, Cameroon, and Argentina, to name a few. As scholars, their work encompasses an equally wide spectrum, including topics such as international modernism, Islamic architecture in Southeast Asia, and contemporary aesthetics and art. Connecting the diverse mix of cultural, environmental, and scholarly backgrounds is central to the mission of CAA.

2017 CAA-Getty International Program Reunion participants

Since 2012, the Getty Foundation has supported CAA in bringing between fifteen and twenty scholars from countries around the world to its Annual Conference. Open to professors of art history, curators, and artists who teach art history, the program boasts ninety alumni from forty-one countries. Many scholarly collaborations and exchanges have ensued, both between these international scholars and North American members of CAA, and among the international scholars themselves. The 2017 reunion will celebrate these accomplishments and deepen ties with these international scholars.

“It is a pleasure to work with CAA on the international program, which has brought so many interesting scholars from all over the world to the United States for the Annual Conference,” said Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation. “We have learned so much from the scholars’ participation and are delighted to support the upcoming reunion program. Congratulations to CAA and these remarkable alumni.”

This past summer, alumni helped to shape the reunion plans, working with members of CAA’s International Committee. Using CAA Connect, CAA’s new digital discussion platform, committee members Elisa Mandell (California State University, Fullerton), Judy Peter (University of Johannesburg, South Africa), and Miriam Paeslack (University of Buffalo), in consultation with committee chair Rosemary O’Neill (Parsons The New School for Design), moderated an online discussion about a wide range of international issues, looking for ideas that would make particularly good topics for the four conference sessions to be held in February. Linked under the heading “Global Conversations,” the daily sessions will address the following topics: “Decolonizing the Curriculum, “Dominant Ideologies and Political Trauma,” “The Trouble with (the Term) Art,” and “Transnational Collaborations and Interdisciplinarity.”

Joining the alumni at these sessions will be four members (or former members) of the National Committee for the History of Art (NCHA). Since it began, the CAA-Getty International Program has benefitted from the participation of NCHA members, both as speakers and hosts to the international colleagues. This year, Frederick Asher (University of Minnesota), Michael Ann Holly (Research and Academic Program, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute), Mary Miller (Yale University), and David Roxburgh (Harvard University) are each moderating one of the Global Conversations, adding their expertise to the discussions.

CAA is grateful to the Getty Foundation for its ongoing support of this program, and to the members of CAA’s International Committee and NCHA who have contributed their time and expertise to making the program a success.

About CAA

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

About the J. Paul Getty trust and the Getty Foundation

The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts that includes the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations:  the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades.

The Getty Foundation fulfills the philanthropic mission of the Getty Trust by supporting individuals and institutions committed to advancing the greater understanding and preservation of the visual arts in Los Angeles and throughout the world. Through strategic grant initiatives, the Foundation strengthens art history as a global discipline, promotes the interdisciplinary practice of conservation, increases access to museum and archival collections, and develops current and future leaders in the visual arts. It carries out its work in collaboration with the other Getty Programs to ensure that they individually and collectively achieve maximum effect. Additional information is available at www.getty.edu/foundation.

For more information about the CAA-Getty International Program contact Janet LandayProject Director.

Filed under: International, Uncategorized

News from the Art and Academic Worlds

posted by Christopher Howard — Nov 09, 2016

Why Do Colleges Have So Much Art?

Public or private, rural or urban, college museums are tackling ambitious projects like never before, promoting academic curators—who were once part of a sleepier, insular art world—to be lead actors on the cultural stage. But not everyone agrees that school museums should compete with their mainstream counterparts or that students necessarily benefit more from having art of such magnitude as opposed to more modest collections. (Read more from the Atlantic.)

When Will We Learn?

“Twice as good” is the standard set for generations of black and brown children across America, a warning consistently administered in stern but loving tones from parental figures as dissimilar as the fictional Rowan Pope and first lady Michelle Obama. Yet in academia, all too often “twice as good” still isn’t good enough. (Read more from the Root.)

How a Sculptor Adapted to Today’s Economy

Matt Langford is a formally trained sculptor who now does finishing work in a prototype lab at GE’s additive-manufacturing facility in Cincinnati. The Atlantic spoke with him about his training as a sculptor, how he’s transitioned those skills as technology advances, and how American industries treat older workers. (Read more from the Atlantic.)

Reading Your Application File

If you’re on the academic job market, you’re in the process of assembling and sending out application packages. There’s a lot of great advice out there on crafting CVs, cover letters, and other job documents. Here I want to do something different: give you a mental image of what is happening on the other side of the hiring table, so you can put yourself in the shoes of a search-committee member. (Read more from Vitae.)

Making Office Hours Matter

If you are like me, you spend the majority of your office hours staring at the door, willing your students to walk in and use the time you set aside for their benefit. Why is it that so few of them take advantage of this time, and how can we get more of them to do so? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

What’s Driving the Surge in Art Books?

Art books are niche products. Hardly anyone reads them, you can’t make money with them, and anyway, there’s the internet. And yet an increasing number galleries have begun producing books. Why? (Read more from Artnet News.)

Revisiting: Why Publishers’ Brands Matter

Brands matter because authors think they do. The best brands attract the best authors—a virtuous circle in which good authors strengthen brands and brands confer their aura on authors. Brands also matter to readers in direct and indirect ways, and the indirect importance has the most influence on the individuals who purchase books. (Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.)

New Research Reveals Startling Stats on Student Stress

Between tough classes, on-campus involvement, and trying to have a social life, your college years are likely to be the most stressful time of your life so far. Maybe that’s what you went in expecting, but the statistics surrounding college students and stress are still pretty shocking. (Read more from Course Hero.)

Filed under: CAA News, Uncategorized

News from the Art and Academic Worlds

posted by Christopher Howard — Nov 02, 2016

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.

Net Art Anthology Launches

Net Art Anthology, Rhizome’s two-year online exhibition presenting one hundred works of restored and reperformed net art, has launched. The project will be divided into five chapters: early network cultures and early web; Flash and blogs; surf clubs, early postinternet art, and social-media platforms; and mobile apps and social-media saturation. (Read more from Rhizome.)

Artificial Intelligence as a Bridge for Art and Reality

How to get people interested in art? How to engage millennials? How to expose permanent-collection works that sit in storage? These are questions art museums constantly ponder. Recently, Tate Britain asked another one: How can artificial intelligence help? (Read more from the New York Times.)

MIT Task Force Releases Preliminary “Future of Libraries” Report

An MIT task force has released a preliminary report featuring proposals to help the school’s library system become an “open global platform” enabling the discovery, use, and stewardship of information and knowledge for future generations. The report contains recommendations to develop a global library for a global university while strengthening the library’s relationship with local academic and public communities. (Read more from MIT News.)

Help Desk: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Simple in theory, painful in practice—but the way to break up a collaborative partnership is the same as for a romantic one: with as much honesty and compassion as you can muster. If you’re splitting up to pursue solo projects, then you have to say so; if you’ve found a new collaborator, you’ll need to announce it. (Read more from Daily Serving.)

Why Are Some Artists Remembered More Than Others?

Every year, thousands of art-school graduates across the globe embark on their careers in the hopes of becoming professional artists. With the influx of new talent, older generations inevitably make way. But why are some artists remembered and revered, while others remain forgotten? (Read more from Artnet News.)

How Important Is Art History in Today’s Market?

“Rembrandt weeps.” “The humanities are under assault.” “An educational disaster.” These were just a few of the howls of online dismay that followed the announcement that AQA, the last examining board offering History of Art as an A-level test to 16- to 18-year-olds in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, would be dropping the subject. The small number of students taking the subject and its wide range of topics had made it difficult to compare exam performance, the board explained. (Read more from the New York Times.)

The Remix Wars: Originality in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Is there nothing new under the sun? In the first of a series of articles, New Atlas will examine how twenty-first-century digital technology has given artists a set of tools that has dismantled traditional definitions of originality and is challenging the notions of copyright that dominated much of the twentieth century. (Read more from New Atlas.)

MoMA Curator Laura Hoptman on How to Tell a Good Painting from a “Bogus” Painting

A veteran organizer of cutting-edge exhibitions, Laura Hoptman built her career in part through her insistence on championing the medium, even—or perhaps especially—through its perennial periods of unpopularity and critical disdain. This has earned her both accolades and scorn, but her track record of introducing vital contemporary painters to American audiences largely speaks for itself. (Read more from Artspace.)

Filed under: CAA News, Uncategorized

South African Diary

posted by Janet Landay, Project Director, CAA-Getty International Program — Oct 18, 2016

rhodes-must-fall-photo-from-facebook-3

Rhodes Must Fall, downloaded from https://www.facebook.com/RhodesMustFall/photos

Posted by Janet Landay, Project Director, CAA-Getty International Program (for CAA News and the International Desk)

This summer I was invited by two alumni of the CAA-Getty International Program—Karen von Veh and Federico Freschi, both from the University of Johannesburg—to attend the 31st Annual Conference of the South African Visual Arts Historians (SAVAH). In the first five years of the CAA-Getty program, seven art historians from South Africa have participated—the most from any single country. Their strong presence at CAA’s Annual Conferences suggests a robust community of scholars, and I was eager to witness it firsthand.

In late July I flew to Johannesburg, where I met up with Rosemary O’Neill, associate professor of art history at Parsons the New School of Design and chair of CAA’s International Committee, who was also participating in the conference. On the day we arrived there was an intense thunderstorm followed by large hail. Our hosts, Karen von Veh and her husband Bengt, assured us that this was not normal for a Johannesburg winter. By the next day the sun had come out, and it remained sunny and pleasantly cool for the rest of our stay.

The weather may well serve as a metaphor for the abnormal state of affairs in South Africa: unusually stormy one day, seemingly calm the next. Twenty-two years after the end of apartheid, the country, and especially its university system, is in an enormous state of flux. Since March 2015, students have militated against South Africa’s twenty-three government-funded universities in two related protests. The first was Rhodes Must Fall, which demanded the removal of a sculpture of Cecil Rhodes, the embodiment of British racist colonial imperialism, from the University of Cape Town (UCT), and included the broader demand for decolonizing the university system, including curricula, language of instruction, and workers’ rights.

In October 2015 came Fees Must Fall, prompted by the announcement of a steep increase in fees at the University of Witwatersrand. Both movements have had successes: the UCT sculpture of Rhodes was removed, and many other public symbols of colonial rule have been taken down or defaced; students at Rhodes University persuaded authorities to consider renaming the school; and the government announced there would be no tuition increase for 2016. (This issue is being debated again, as increases for 2017 have elicited renewed protests.) These events are taking place at the same time that the government is reducing financial support for the universities.

Art, Design and Architecture Building at the University of Johannesburg, downloaded from university website, https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/fada/Pages/Facilities.aspx

This was the context for SAVAH’s Annual Conference, as approximately sixty professors of art history, visual culture, and studio art gathered at the University of Johannesburg for three days of papers and discussion. Organized by Federico Freschi (executive dean), Brenda Schmahmann (research professor), and Karen von Veh (associate professor), all from the Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg, the conference was titled “Rethinking Art History and Visual Culture in a Contemporary Context.” The ongoing crisis in higher education charged the sessions and discussions with particular intensity. The subjects addressed, whether historical, pedagogical, or political, were not chosen solely for theoretical considerations; speakers were seeking practical solutions to the immediate challenges they face as scholars and teachers in post-apartheid South Africa.

An underlying theme of the conference—how can art history be relevant and useful to scholars and students at this charged moment in time?—was a subtext in Steven Nelson’s eloquent keynote address. In a discussion of works by Houston Conwill, Moshekwa Langa, and Julie Mehretu, Nelson—a professor of African and African American art and director of the Center for African Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles—considered how the use of mapping and geography by these artists has reshaped our understanding of African ancestry, notions of diaspora, and urban spaces. The weaving of past and present, continental Africa and the African diaspora, and art-historical analyses of traditional forms and new media exemplified the ongoing relevance of the art-historical discipline to understanding contemporary art and culture.

Session topics during the two-day conference ranged from “International Curatorial Practices” to “The Politics of Display in South Africa” and “Decolonizing Education (Parts I and II)” to “Postcolonialism beyond South Africa.” Alison Kearney, a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, delivered a paper titled “Art history is dead—long live art history!” in which she explored the deeper meaning of decolonizing the university, beyond the tokenistic call for more black authors and artists. This decolonization will lead to “the inevitable end of art history” and a return to the work of art and an interdisciplinary approach as a “deliberate means of destabilizing a single disciplinary gaze.” Fiona Siegenthaler, a senior lecturer at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Universität Basel, compared the call for decolonization in South Africa to the one in Uganda. Because the population in Uganda is overwhelmingly black, the call for decolonization has little to do with the racial profile of its teachers or students. Rather, the country is focused on rewriting curricula to be more relevant to their students’ lives. Both countries, she stated, are skeptical about the hegemony of neoliberalism as a form of neocolonialism, on the one hand, and the need for access to international contemporary art, art institutions, art markets and funding organizations, on the other.

Several speakers explored alternative approaches to current studies in South African art history. Lize van Robbroeck, from the University of Stellenbosch, spoke about “settler colonial studies” and a multinational research project she is part of that examines settler life in five former British dominions: New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and the United States. The cultural, economic, and political circumstances in each of these colonies, in spite of particular dynamics in each, created comparable artistic products in the early to mid-twentieth century. The group’s research suggests that the demands to establish national art canons in each of these locations led to a corresponding art-historical neglect of the striking cross-national similarities in the art produced by artists in each place.

A paper by Jackson Davidow, from the Department of Architecture at MIT, called on the discipline of art history to enlarge its approach to “traverse geographies, temporalities, environments, and communities.” He made the case by discussing a global history of AIDS activist art, which must still be historically contextualized within local landscapes. His paper posed a crucial question to contemporary scholars: “How can global art histories work to decolonize and deconstruct the practices of our discipline rather than perpetuate its oppressive structuring?”

The conference ended with two papers from other humanities disciplines. The first one, by Brett Pyper from the University of the Witwatersrand, was about curating indigenous musical performances at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. Leana van der Merwe, of the University of Pretoria, delivered the second, which was about an “African” feminist philosophy of art. Many of the conference papers will be published in an upcoming issue of De Arte, a peer-reviewed South African journal on visual arts, art history, and art criticism.

The SAVAH conference was not the only significant art event taking place in Johannesburg during my visit. The meetings coincided with a historic exhibition held downtown at the Standard Bank Gallery: the first-ever presentation on the African continent of paintings and works on paper by Henri Matisse.

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Henri Matisse, The Horse, the Rider and the Clown,1947, fifth plate of the book Jazz, Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis

Juxtaposed against the topic of the conference—rethinking art history in a contemporary context—this major exhibition provided another bellwether of the state of art history in South Africa. The absence of Matisse exhibitions in the entire continent until now can partially be explained by practical reasons related to insufficient resources (shipping and insurance costs, museum-quality exhibition spaces, etc.), but it is also likely due, in part, to a reluctance or lack of interest on the part of European and American collections and African-based organizers to bring the artist’s work to African audiences, in spite of Matisse’s great interest in African art. During my visit to South Africa, I was struck by the lack of Western art displayed in the museums, with the exception of a small collection on view at the National Museum in Cape Town. Little access to this art is yet another challenge for professors of art history, and it must relate to the absence of Matisse exhibitions as well. Why should South Africans be interested in his work if, for many, he is an unknown, dead white European artist? There is an audience for Matisse in South Africa, including the well-educated professional class and an active, sophisticated group of collectors who support a growing number of commercial galleries. There is also a vibrant community of artists in South Africa whose work characteristically draws on indigenous artistic traditions as well as global art. In spite of the limited audience—or perhaps because of it—a Matisse exhibition in Johannesburg is an important event, a major step toward broadening an appreciation of global art and its history.

In Johannesburg, the Matisse exhibition was the fourth in a series of presentations at the Standard Bank Gallery of works by twentieth-century modern European masters. Previous projects focused on Mark Chagall, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. Through the curatorial efforts of Federico Freschi and Patrice Deparpe, director of the Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, the exhibition Henri Matisse: Rhythm and Meaning was on view at the Standard Bank Gallery from July 13 to September 17, 2016. It included significant paintings, drawings, collages, and prints covering all the dominant themes in the artist’s oeuvre, from his early Fauvist years to the paper cut-outs produced in the last years of his life. As Freschi noted in introductory remarks, “Of particular interest to South African audiences is the inspiration Matisse took from African and other non-Western art forms during the early 1900s while struggling to find a new visual language to express the particular experience of the new, modern age.”

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Patrice Deparpe, Director of the Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, in the exhibition Henri Matisse: Rhythm and Meaning, downloaded from website of the Embassy of France in South Africa.

To open the SAVAH conference, a lecture, gallery talk and reception for the exhibition was held the evening before the conference proceedings began. Rosemary O’Neill presented a thought-provoking lecture titled, “Henri Matisse: Fluid Memory, Embodied Signs.” Her paper considered aspects of Matisse’s work in relation to the construct of memory, time, and intuitive expression, as well as the influence of the ideas of philosopher Henri Bergson. In discussing Jazz, O’Neill identified ways in which his Tahitian memories from 1930, as well as his own cultural context and artistic trajectory, resulted in the realization of the innovative process and expression soon evident in Matisse’s late cut-outs; their importance in relation to a revival of the decorative impulse in postwar France; and their analogous relationship to poetic and musical phrasing—that is, a system of ensemble signs—as articulated in the writings of the poet Louis Aragon. Freschi’s subsequent gallery talk elaborated on Matisse’s exploration of African modes of representation in his early works; then, calling special attention to the series of prints that comprise the artist’s book, Jazz, he emphasized the influence of his travel to Tahiti and the archipelago islands that appear in his use of patterns and rhythms, ephemeral materials, and a conceptual rather than perceptual approach to image making.

For an American visitor, the conference and exhibition provided much food for thought. It was impossible to ignore similarities in the dissatisfactions of university students in both countries. Like their South African counterparts, U.S. students are demanding a greater diversity of voices in the curriculum, on the faculty, and in the administrations of colleges and universities. In both countries, growing complaints about racial inequality and ties to apartheid or slavery have resulted in important, if mostly symbolic, changes. At about the same time that South African authorities were removing sculptures of Cecil Rhodes and suspending tuition hikes, leaders at Georgetown University announced efforts to make amends for its complicity in the nation’s slave trade, including preferential admissions for descendents of slaves sold in 1838 by Maryland Jesuits to stave off the college’s bankruptcy. Other schools, such as Brown University, Harvard University, Emory University, and the University of Virginia, have made their historical ties to slavery public and announced plans such as renaming buildings, creating racial justice programs, and erecting memorials acknowledging their ties to the transatlantic slave trade.

[Just last week in New York City, as part of an anti-Columbus Day protest, a diverse group of protesters, united under the banner “Decolonize This Place,” demanded the removal of an equestrian sculpture of Theodore Roosevelt (flanked on either side by a Native American and an African American) at the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History. The crowd included activists from the Black Lives Matter, Indigenous rights, and other labor and social justice movements. Calling it “the most visible symbol of white supremacy in New York,” the group also called for “decolonizing of the museum,” citing specific exhibits within the museum that highlight its history of white supremacy and colonialism. The demonstration was one of many across the country protesting the continued observance of Columbus Day, demanding that it be replaced by Indigenous People Day.]

From my vantage point as a participant at the SAVAH conference, the most striking similarity between the two countries was the paucity of people of color among art history professors and students. This was the great unspoken problem at the conference, evidenced by the prevalence of white faculty and students at a gathering focused on decolonization, art and activism, and keeping art history relevant. There were a small number of people of color at the conference among both speakers and attendees, but much like at a CAA Annual Conference, the dominant color was white. The answer is not, as some radical South African students demand, to rid the curriculum of all European content, or to replace all white professors with black ones; rather, it lies both in a multiplicity of voices and a questioning of assumptions rooted in the foundational texts of the field. Solving this problem may be the greatest challenge to art history’s relevance, even as progress is made alongside the slow path to racial equality.

South Africa is sometimes called a Petri dish for studying race relations. Only twenty-two years away from government-enforced racism, the country’s efforts in building a democratic, racially equal society offer many lessons about effective and less effective ways to accomplish radical change. The art historians I met in Johannesburg have created a vital community in which to study and struggle with these lessons. They are keeping the discipline of art history alive and relevant to the cultural and political challenges they face. But how they do it may provide important guidelines for scholars in the United States. In spite of numerous differences between the two countries—especially in scale, resources, and history—both South African and U.S. art historians are grounded in the same antecedents. How to retain the strengths of a discipline born in nineteenth-century Germany while stretching its geographic parameters to include all cultures is a challenge we all face.

Comment on this article in the Diversity in the Arts community on CAA Connect.

Filed under: International, Uncategorized

A CAA Road Trip

posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — Oct 18, 2016

memberreceptionatmassartBowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine (photograph by Janet Landay)

In late September, Hunter O’Hanian and I had the pleasure of spending a weekend at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, to attend two CAA events hosted by Anne Goodyear, codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and a former CAA president. We arrived at the picturesque New England campus on a beautiful fall day. The college’s art museum, one of the oldest in the country, anchors the western edge of the quad, its neoclassical façade presiding gracefully over green lawns and majestic trees where students played Frisbee, read, or walked across campus. It was a perfect weekend to welcome CAA members to campus.

The first group arrived that Saturday afternoon to attend a CAA member reception, the first of several Hunter has planned around the country to provide an opportunity for him to meet with members in a relaxed setting and talk about CAA. The event began with a tour of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art given by Anne and her husband, the museum’s codirector, Frank Goodyear. Immediately following, we all walked a block away to Anne and Frank’s house to enjoy some wine and cheese on their back patio. The fifteen or so participants hailed from several schools and museums in addition to Bowdoin—Colby College, Bates College, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Farnsworth Art Museum—and included art historians, artists, librarians, and independent scholars.

Members spoke in turn about their most memorable CAA experiences: attending a first conference, interviewing and getting a job, meeting old friends, or networking with scholars in their fields. Hunter then shared thoughts about his goals for CAA based on what he has learned from members since he became executive director in July. He observed the importance of connectivity—how to keep CAA members in touch with issues in the field, but especially how to keep them in touch with each other. And he described many of the changes members will experience at the next Annual Conference, including a focus on personal experience, captured by a new theme for the meetings, myCAA.

On Sunday morning, several of the same CAA members returned, joined by others from around the state, for a half-day workshop about copyright and fair use. Peter Jaszi, a co–lead investigator on CAA’s Fair Use Initiative, came from Washington, DC, to Bowdoin to lead the program, which focused on how visual-arts professionals can use CAA’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts in their work. Following an introduction to copyright and fair use, the workshop began with a look at how museum professionals can use the Code when employing copyrighted materials in their work.

Participants had been asked to bring real-life questions with them. Thus, a museum director wanted to know whether his museum could allow photography in the galleries of works still protected by copyright. A curator described a challenge she had in getting an image for a catalogue from a museum in central China. When she received no reply from the museum, she resorted to scanning the image from another book. Is that fair use? Other questions involved loan forms, credit lines, and online projects.

As the day continued, the program moved on to address questions from professionals in other areas: librarians and archivists, professors and teachers, artists and independent scholars. Can a faculty member use images in class that she got from a flash drive she had received from a foreign museum? What kind of credit information is necessary for a blog about films? Is Shepard Fairey’s image of Obama a good case study for students learning about fair use? How should the institutional repository on a college campus view the copyright protection of yearbook photographs? By the end of the afternoon, a remarkable range of questions had been discussed, and the forty participants came away with a much greater understanding of fair use and how to rely on it in their work.

peterjasziandkylecourtneyPeter Jaszi and Kyle Courtney at CAA’s fair-use town hall at Harvard University (photograph by Janet Landay)

On Monday, Hunter, Peter, and I were in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to join Kyle Courtney, a copyright specialist in Harvard’s Office for Scholarly Communication, for a fair-use town hall on the campus of Harvard University. As in Maine, Peter began the program with an introduction to fair use, and I followed with a description of CAA’s Fair Use Initiative. Kyle spoke about a program he directs at Harvard that trains librarians to be “first responders” to users’ questions about fair use. Although relatively new, the program has proven to be an effective way to support and teach visual-arts professionals about fair use. It is now being replicated on other university campuses. The event was then opened to questions from the sixty-five members of the audience, which Peter and Kyle discussed in depth.

Many of the topics were similar to those that had been addressed at the Bowdoin workshop, but a new subject emerged as well: advocacy. Does a professor who has had a manuscript accepted have any recourse when her publisher requires signed author agreements stating that all images had been cleared for publication and all fees paid? The answer is yes; she can ask her publisher to read CAA’s Code and explain that many, if not all, of her uses of images comply with the doctrine of fair use. While the effort may not succeed (though CAA has several success stories on file), over time it will familiarize publishers with the principles outlined in the Code. Changes have already taken place, in large part due to this kind of challenge from users. Yale University Press now accepts fair-use defenses from its authors who are publishing monographs; the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation embraced a fair use policy for that artist’s work; and CAA not only encourages its authors to consider whether or not their uses are fair, but it also indemnifies authors against lawsuits about works used under fair use.

The program concluded with a reminder that CAA is happy to answer questions about fair use; please don’t hesitate to contact us at nyoffice@collegeart.org.

memberreceptionatmassartThe CAA member reception at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (photograph by Janet Landay)

Later on Monday, Hunter and I joined another group of CAA members at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design for a wine-and-cheese reception at the school’s President’s Gallery and Bakalar and Paine Galleries. Attendees included a wide range of members, from professors who have belonged to the association for thirty years to new members just graduating from MFA programs. Lisa Tung, the gallery’s director and curator, kicked off the event with a tour of two exhibitions currently on view, Encircling the World: Contemporary Art, Science, and the Sublime and Women’s Rights Are Human Rights: International Posters on Gender-Based Inequality, Violence, and Discrimination. Hunter, who is a former vice president for development at MassArt, then invited participants to speak about how CAA is valuable to them. He emphasized the importance of hearing from members so that CAA can support them as fully as possible in this rapidly changing world.

CAA’s road trip continued in early October with another member’s reception in Portland, Oregon. Later this month we will convene a fair-use workshop in Seattle, Washington. More events are planned for early next year in Georgia and Virginia. Stay tuned!

The Bowdoin College fair-use event was organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and CAA, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Harvard University fair-use event was organized by Harvard’s Office for Scholarly Communication, thanks to the generous support of the Arcadia Fund, and by CAA, with funds provided by the Mellon Foundation.

People in the News

posted by CAA — Oct 15, 2016

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.

October 2016

Academe

Celeste-Marie Bernier, formerly of the University of Nottingham in England, has taken up a position as professor of black studies at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

John Hatch has been appointed chair of the Department of Visual Arts at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

Mary Healy, formerly research fellow and guest lecturer in the history of art and visual culture at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, has become lecturer at University College Cork, also in Ireland.

Sheila Pepe has become a faculty member in the MFA Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Museums and Galleries

Alan Chong, formerly director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum in Singapore, has been named director and chief executive officer of the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Amanda Gilvin, formerly visiting assistant professor of African art at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, has been appointed assistant curator of collections for the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Michael Goodson, formerly director of exhibitions at the Beeler Gallery at Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio, has been appointed senior curator of exhibitions for Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts, also in Columbus.

Jens Hoffmann, deputy director of exhibitions and programs at the Jewish Museum in New York, has a new position at his institution: director of special exhibitions and public programs.

Kristin Holder, print room manager for the Blanton Museum of Art’s Julia Matthews Wilkinson Center for Prints and Drawings at the University of Texas at Austin, is now curator emerita at her institution.

Sarah Newman, previously consulting curator of modern art for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has been named James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, also in Washington, DC.

Stephanie E. Rozman has joined the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, as assistant curator for Asian art.

Khristaan D. Villela, formerly professor of art history and scholar in residence at Santa Fe University of Art and Design in New Mexico, has been named director of the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe.

Jonathan Frederick Walz, formerly curator of American art for the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, has been appointed director of curatorial affairs and curator of American art at the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia.

 

Institutional News

posted by CAA — Oct 15, 2016

Read about the latest news from 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.

October 2016

Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have been awarded a $325,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support their fall 2018 exhibition, Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings.

Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have unveiled a new online resource dedicated to the Bauhaus, one of the most influential schools of art and design in the twentieth century.

Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore has been awarded a $142,604 grant from the Maryland Governor’s Office on Service and Volunteerism, in partnership with the Corporation for National and Community Service, to support the school’s Community Art Collaborative AmeriCorps service program.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond has accepted a $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the in-depth technical examination, conversation, and art-historical study of the museum’s African art collection.