CAA News Today
Affiliated Society News for September 2014
posted by CAA — Sep 09, 2014
The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) has announced the results of its recent election. Serving for the term September 1, 2014 to August 31, 2018: Deepali Dewan, president; Alka Patel, vice president; John Henry Rice, treasurer; Yael Rice, officer; Melodi Rod-ari, Bulletin editor (reappointed); and Emma Natalya Stein, graduate-student representative (term September 1, 2014–August 31, 2016; via lottery). They will join continuing board members, whose terms run through August 31, 2016: Catherine Becker, secretary; Molly Aitken, officer; Lisa Owen, officer; and Cathleen Cummings, webmaster. Many thanks to the outgoing board members: Stephen Markel, president; Deborah Hutton, treasurer; John Cort, officer; and Rashmi Viswanathan, graduate-student representative.
Arts Council of the African Studies Association
The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) held its sixteenth triennial symposium on African art, chaired by Kevin Dumouchelle and Gary van Wyk, at the Brooklyn Museum in New York from March 19 to 22, 2014. This was the largest ACASA gathering to date, with over 450 attendees from four continents. The South African artist and activist Kim Berman delivered a dynamic keynote address. Amidst the success of this year’s symposium, planning is underway for the next triennial, which will take place at the University of Ghana in Legon in August 2017. ACASA is also generating a sustained presence at international scholarly events, including the European Conference on African Studies (ECAS).
Several ACASA board members completed their terms this spring, with special thanks to John Peffer, Steven Nelson, and Kinsey Katchka for their dedicated service. ACASA welcomes four new board members: Silvia Forni, Eric Appau Asante, Boureima Diamitani, and Sidney Kasfir, and an incoming president, Dominique Malaquais.
Congratulations to: Jean Borgatti and Henry Drewal, recipients of the ACASA Leadership Award; the Roy Sieber Dissertation Award winner Amanda Rogers; and Arnold Rubin Book Award winners Allen Roberts (single author) and Marla Berns, Richard Fardon, and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (multiauthored volume). The honorable mentions are: Peter Probst, Gitti Salami, and Monica Blackmun Visonà.
Community College Professors of Art and Art History
The Community College Professors of Art and Art History (CCPAAH) will host two sessions at conferences next year. “Foundations Flipped? Active Learning in Art History and the Studio” will be the topic of a 2015 session at the CAA Annual Conference in New York. Join CCPAAH for this session and its business meeting, which will be a “Project Exchange” that offers a chance to share best practices and ideas to use in your studio and art-history classes. The second session, “Beyond Good, Bad, and ‘I Like It’: A New Take on Critique,” will be presented at next year’s Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. The organization seeks additional presenters for the CAA session. Please email the group at ccpaah@gmail.com if you are interested in presenting or if you have questions. You can also like CCPAAH’s Facebook page.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) is pleased to announce Ashley Dimmig as its most recent Grabar Travel Grant recipient. Dimmig is a doctoral student in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her work focuses on Persian and Turkish early modern and modern visual culture, with an emphasis on textile arts.
Established in memory of Professor Oleg Grabar, the Grabar Travel Grant competition is open to doctoral candidates who have been invited or accepted as participants in a scholarly conference or other professional meeting. These grants are intended to encourage and further the professional development of graduate students in all areas of the history of Islamic art, architecture, and archaeology. For more information on the Grabar Travel Grants and the related Grabar Postdoctoral Fellowships, please visit the above link.
International Association of Art Critics
The International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) announced the results of the general membership election for board members at its annual meeting, held at Artists Space Books and Talks in New York on June 11, 2014. Three existing board members—Phong Bui, Christopher French, and Barbara MacAdam—had their terms renewed for three years, and two new board members, Alexandra Anderson and Jane Farver, were elected to serve three-year terms. The board chose its officers at a subsequent meeting: Barbara MacAdam is president; Norman Kleeblatt is vice president for membership; Jill Conner is treasurer; and Josephine Gear is secretary. All officers have two-year terms.
International Sculpture Center
The International Sculpture Center (ISC) returns ten years later to the culturally vibrant city of New Orleans for the twenty-fourth International Sculpture Conference: Sculpture, Culture, and Community, to be held October 1–4, 2014. This conference will feature panel discussions, keynote speakers Alice Aycock and Fairfax Dorn, ARTSlams, optional tours, networking events, and workshops. The event will also explore how sculpture and the arts can rejuvenate communities and economies. Registration is open now and includes admission to all panels, the keynote speakers, the opening reception at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, a gallery hop at the Art for Arts’ Sake street party, the littleSCULPTURE show, Friday Nights at NOMA, ARTSlams, and networking events, among other activities. Registrants may also sign up for optional tours and workshops, for which additional fees may apply. The conference is hosted in collaboration with the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Creative Alliance of New Orleans, New Orleans Arts District, New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Renaissance New Orleans Arts Hotel, and Sculpture for New Orleans.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The forty-second annual meeting of the National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) convenes September 24–26, 2014, in Nashville, Tennessee. The event will be hosted by Vanderbilt University. The world is the new studio. Artists are involved in ever-expanding production involving constituents beyond the art world and marketplace. As educational institutions, how do we respond to this massive shift in artistic attitude? Is there a balance between standard nineteenth- and twentieth-century production and new twenty-first-century practice centered on global and social interconnectedness? This conference investigates art’s expanding field by exploring influences of globalization, art education and integrated practice. Participants will consider their role as educators of creativity, how they influence their institutions, and their effect upon local and world communities. Speakers include: Pablo Helguera, author and director of adult and academic programs in the Education Department of the Museum of Modern Art; Richard Lloyd, author of Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Post Industrial City; David Owens, author of Creative People Must Be Stopped! Six Ways We Stop Innovation (without Even Trying); and Steven Tepper, author of Not Here, Not Now, Not That! Protest over Art and Culture in America. Visit http://www.vanderbilt.edu/arts/ncaa/ for more information.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) offers student member scholarships to offset the cost of attending the SPE national conference, taking place March 12–15, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Each award includes a $550 travel stipend, a conference fee waiver, and a complimentary one-year SPE membership. For more information, visit the SPE website. Application deadline is November 1, 2014, at 11:59 PM EST.
Society of Architectural Historians
The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) is accepting applications for the 2014 H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship. The prestigious fellowship of $50,000 will allow a recent graduate or emerging scholar to study by travel for one year. The fellowship is not for the purpose of doing research for an advanced degree. Instead, it is intended to allow the recipient to see and experience architecture and landscapes firsthand, to think about his or her profession deeply, and to acquire knowledge useful for his or her future work and contribution to society. The deadline is October 1, 2014. For details and to apply, visit the website.
Save the date for the 2014 SAH Awards Gala: Saturday, November 8, 6:00–9:00 PM at the Fortnightly of Chicago. The gala’s theme is “A Foundation for Preservation,” honoring those individuals who initiated early preservation work in Chicago and continue to support and encourage preservation. The winners and their award categories include: Ben Weese, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (Preservation Advocacy); Tim Samuelson (Stewardship of the Built Environment); Robert Furhoff (Architectural Conservation); Wilbert Hasbrouck, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and Marilyn Hasbrouck (Architectural Media); and Toni Preckwinkle (Conservation of the Natural Environment). The gala benefits SAH’s educational mission and restoration of the Charnley-Persky House.
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) is delighted to welcome the Art History Department of the European University at St. Petersburg as a new institutional member. The department’s special area of interest is the history of cultural contacts between Russia and Europe. SHERA’s officers look forward to working with Dean Ilia Doronchenkov on collaborative projects that will bring together scholars working on areas of mutual interest.
SHERA’s News Blog continues to be a source of information on events and opportunities for scholars working on art and architecture of any period from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Be sure to keep up with the news by going to SHERA’s website and clicking on News.
Institutional News
posted by CAA — Aug 17, 2014
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.
August 2014
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland has received a $69,556 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to build on previous efforts to catalogue the museum’s archive—which includes correspondence with artists, exhibition research, photography, and audio recordings of lectures and events—and to create finding aids for it.
The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has announced that its publication series Studies in the History of Art is now accessible on JSTOR.
The Fitchburg Art Museum in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, has been awarded a $140,000 grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund, facilitated by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, to update and modernize parts of the museum.
The Frick Collection in New York has announced plans to enhance and renovate its museum and library, which includes the construction of a new addition and the renovation and expansion of existing interior spaces.
The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has received a $240,000 grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to support an exhibition called Strange Currencies.
The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has received a $10 million gift to support the expansion of gallery and teaching spaces, as well as a new entrance.
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to enhance the study of art history through a focus on working with objects. The four-year effort, a collaboration among three Chicago-area institutions, is called the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Chicago Objects Study Initiative.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania has received a $300,000 grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to support the reinstallation of its eight galleries of South Asian art, titled South Asian Art: Experimentation, Interpretation, and Evaluation.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, has accepted a $5.4 million gift from David M. Rubenstein for the renovation of its Renwick Gallery. The donation completes the private fundraising goal for the museum’s capital renovation project.
St. Johns University in Jamaica, New York, will soon launch a master of arts degree program in museum administration, housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, in fall 2014.
The Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has received a $360,000 grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to support an installation called reFORM by the artist Pepón Osorio.
The University of Chicago in Illinois has received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to enhance the study of art history through a focus on working with objects. The four-year effort, a collaboration among three Chicago-area institutions, is called the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Chicago Objects Study Initiative.
The University of South Carolina in Columbia has replaced the Department of Art with the School of Visual Art and Design. In addition, the school received a $32,790 grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation to support ceramics and small metals.
The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has accepted a $71,880 grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to help fund an exhibition called Invisible City: Philadelphia and the Vernacular Avant-Garde.
New Conference Travel Grant for Speakers
posted by Emmanuel Lemakis — Aug 15, 2014
CAA is pleased to announce a new travel grant for emerging women scholars presenting as speakers at the Annual Conference. Established by Mary D. Edwards with the help of others, the CAA Travel Grant in Memory of Archibald Cason Edwards, Senior, and Sarah Stanley Gordon Edwards will support the costs of roundtrip travel (plane, train, and ground transportation) and accommodation for the CAA Annual Conference and for conference registration fees to women who are emerging scholars at either an advanced stage of pursuing a doctoral degree (ABD) or who have received their PhD within the two years prior to the submission of the application. The applicants must be presenting research papers at an art-history session at the conference, with a strong preference for papers on any topic pertaining to the art of ancient Greece and Rome, medieval Europe from 400 to 1400, or Europe and North America from 1400 to 1950.
Conference session chairs will identify and nominate appropriate candidates and facilitate the submission of the applications to CAA.
Art History Teaching Resources Seeks Lesson Plans
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 14, 2014
Do you have a great lesson plan you want to take some time to codify and share? Funded by a Samuel H. Kress Foundation grant for digital resources, Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR), a peer-populated platform for instructors and a collectively authored online repository of art-history teaching content, seeks contributors for specific subject areas in the art-history survey. This is the second call for participation (the first went out in early 2014).
AHTR is particularly interested the following sections in art and architecture for publication in early fall 2014:
- Jewish and Early Christian Art and Architecture
- Byzantine Art and Architecture
- Islamic Art and Architecture
- Chinese Art and Architecture (early/pre-1279)
- Chinese Art and Architecture (after 1279)
- Japanese Art and Architecture (early)
- Japanese Art and Architecture (modern)
- Korean Art (early)
- Korean Art and Architecture (modern)
- Art and Architecture of Africa
- Early Medieval Art in Europe
- Romanesque Art and Architecture
- Gothic Art and Architecture
- Art of Pacific Cultures
- Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Art in Europe and North America
- Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sculpture
- Twentieth-Century Sculpture
AHTR is also interested in receiving proposals for thematic art-history survey lesson plans. The editors have already received plans that engage with, for example, “Race and Identity” and “Transnationalism and Citizenship.” Please propose a thematic plan germane to the survey-level class.
For each content area, AHTR seeks lecture and lesson plans similar to those developed for its sections on the Americas (pre-1300) and Feminist Art. (Please see a great example here.) Full template guidelines will be given for the sections to be included in each plan; writers will be expected to review and amend their plan (if necessary), once edited by AHTR. These plans, which will be posted to the AHTR website in fall 2014, are supported by $250 writing grants made possible by the Kress award.
AHTR is looking for contributors who:
- Have strong experience teaching the art-history survey and strong interest in developing thoughtful, clear, and detailed lesson plans in particular subject areas
- Are committed to delivering lecture content (plan, PowerPoint, resources, activities) for one to two (a maximum of two) content areas in a timely manner. Each content area will be supported by a $250 Kress writing grant.
- Are able to make a September deadline for submission and an early October deadline for any edits.
- Want to engage with a community of peers in conversations about issues in teaching the art-history survey
AHTR’s intention is to offer monetary support for the often-unrewarded task of developing thoughtful lesson plans, to make this work freely accessible (and thus scalable), and to encourage feedback on them so that the website’s content can constantly evolve in tandem with the innovations and best practices in the field. In this way, AHTR wants to encourage new collaborators to the site—both emerging and experienced instructors in art history—who will enhance and expand teaching content. It also wishes to honor the production of pedagogical content at the university level by offering modest fellowships to support digital means of collaboration among art historians.
Please submit a short, teaching-centered CV and a brief statement of interest that describes which subject area(s) you wish to tackle to teachingarthistorysurvey@gmail.com. These initial texts should be delivered to AHTR in September 2014. Collaboration on content for further subject areas will be solicited throughout 2014.
NEA Selects Wendy Clark as Director of Museums, Visual Arts, and Indemnity
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 08, 2014
The National Endowment for the Arts is pleased to announce the appointment of Wendy Clark as director of Museums, Visual Arts, and Indemnity. Clark has served as acting director of Museums, Visual Arts, and Indemnity since November 2012 and will continue to manage the NEA’s grantmaking in this area, as well as the program’s special initiatives, such as Blue Star Museums.
NEA Deputy Chairman Patrice Walker Powell noted “Ms. Clark brings to this leadership position a wealth of knowledge and experience with the people and institutions that comprise the visual arts and museum field. She is an asset to our organization, an advocate for the field, and a long-term NEA leader.”
Clark has more than 20 years of experience managing various federal grant programs and special initiatives at the NEA in the fields of museums, visual arts, and design, including the Mayor’s Institute on City Design, Your Town, the American Masterpieces/Visual Arts Touring Program, the Rosa Parks Sculpture Competition for the Architect of the Capitol, and the Renna Scholarship Grants Program. Prior to her role as acting director, she was the museum specialist, working primarily on Art Works grants and special initiatives and advising hundreds of museums annually seeking funding for exhibitions, conservation, commissions, care of collections, educational outreach, and reinstallation projects. She has represented the agency annually at the American Alliance of Museums conference as both a presenter and exhibitor. Clark is a member of ArtTable, an organization dedicated to advancing women’s leadership in the visual arts field.
“I’m thrilled to help the nation’s museums and visual arts organizations—with their aligned missions and divergent needs—continue to present the work of excellent artists to the American people. To be part of this community is an honor,” said Clark. “Museums have a tall and challenging order, increasingly called upon to be civic anchor, community gathering place, and stewards of our most prized cultural heritage. I remain energized and fulfilled by public service.”
Prior to coming to the NEA, Clark held positions at the Illinois Arts Council in public affairs, visual arts, and design. There she worked on a traveling exhibition program initiative, and a cultural facilities planning and design grant program called Building by Design, which was awarded a Federal Design Achievement Award by the NEA’s Presidential Design Awards jury. She was an NEA Fellow in arts administration, and was the chairman of the Design Review Committee for the Civic Association of Hollin Hills, a mid-century modern residential development designed by architect Charles Goodman and landscape architect Dan Kiley.
Clark has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and studied Elizabethan history, art, and literature at New College, Oxford University. She is originally from Dayton, Ohio.
Jane Chu Confirmed as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — Jun 12, 2014
This afternoon, the United States Senate voted to confirm Jane Chu as the 11th chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. The White House is expected to make the official appointment in the coming days and Chu will begin her appointment shortly thereafter.
Senior Deputy Chairman Joan Shigekawa has served as the agency’s acting chairman and executive since Rocco Landesman left the NEA in December 2012.
Jane Chu said, “I’m honored to receive the Senate’s vote of confirmation, and I look forward to serving our nation as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Together, we have the opportunity to show the value of connecting the arts to all Americans, and the importance of the arts in bringing communities together.”
United States Senator Claire McCaskill (Mo.) said, “I have no doubt that Jane will make Missouri proud. She’s spent years enriching the culture and strengthening the business community in Kansas City, and I’m looking forward to seeing her bring that same leadership to the national stage.”
“I’m glad the Senate confirmed Dr. Chu’s nomination as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts today,” said United States Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.). “I was impressed by her successful oversight of the more than $400 million Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts project and I enjoyed visiting with her in Kansas City several weeks ago. I have no doubt Dr. Chu will serve as a valuable asset to the NEA.”
Jane Chu will be available for media interviews following her appointment and arrival at the NEA. Those interested in scheduling an interview should send an email to publicaffairs@arts.gov or call 202-682-5570.
Please join the conversation and offer your congratulations to Jane Chu with #NEAJaneChu.
About Jane Chu
Since 2006, Jane Chu served as the president and CEO of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, overseeing a $413-million campaign to build the center. As the performance home of the Kansas City Ballet, Kansas City Symphony, and Lyric Opera of Kansas City, the Kauffman Center has hosted more than one million people from all 50 states and countries throughout the world since its grand opening in September 2011.
She was a fund executive at the Kauffman Fund for Kansas City from 2004 to 2006, and vice president of external relations for Union Station Kansas City from 2002 to 2004. Previously, she was vice president of community investment for the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation from 1997 to 2002. Chu also served as a trustee at William Jewell College and on the board of directors of the Ewing Marion Kauffman School and the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.
Chu was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, but was raised in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She studied music growing up, eventually receiving bachelor’s degrees in piano performance and music education from Ouachita Baptist University and master’s degrees in music and piano pedagogy from Southern Methodist University. Additionally, Chu holds a master’s degree in business administration from Rockhurst University and a PhD in philanthropic studies from Indiana University, as well as an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for June 2014
posted by CAA — Jun 10, 2014
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
June 2014
Swoon: Submerged Motherlands
Brooklyn Museum
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, Fifth Floor, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
April 11–August 24, 2014
Submerged Motherlands, a solo exhibition by the Brooklyn-based artist Swoon, is a collaborative inhabitable shelter that explores social and environmental issues. Born in Florida in 1977 as Caledonia Dance Curry, Swoon is best known for her large, intricate linocut prints that are wheat pasted onto industrial buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan. In this occasion Swoon leaves the streets to appropriate the Brooklyn Museum as a temporary home for transforming the rotunda gallery into a “submerged motherland,” an inhabitable installation that includes previous traveling boats and rafts, figurative prints, drawings, and painting, dyed fabrics, and cut-paper foliage that grew around a monumental sculptural tree.
Swoon’s practice is rooted in collaboration, community, experimentation, and discovery. From conceptualization through production, her practice means an immersive, provocative, and transformative experience for both participants and visitors. She has translated her projects to both galleries and museums, but also to socially rooted arts activism in places such as Konbit Shelter Project in Haiti and Transformazium in Braddock, Pennsylvania, among others.
A meditation on humanity, climate change, and the artist’s own mother passing away during the ideation stage for the installation, Submerged Motherlands reflects on the notion of home—and the loss of it. In the artists’ words, the creative process of this inhabitable installation follows an “impulse to build a safe space in the world for herself and her community; some place to be a little bit different from the norm.” Swoon’s fantastic installation transformed the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Rotunda Gallery in a temporary and yet memorable shelter for many.
Judith Shea
Kent Fine Art
210 Eleventh Avenue, Second Floor, New York, NY 10001
May 9–June 28, 2014
Judith Shea’s solo exhibition is a sculptural homage to the role of women in the arts. For decades, Shea studied the representation of the human figure through a constant observation of people and the exploration of materials. In absence or presence of the body, from her late 1970s clothes-based series to the present sculptures that honors the role of women in the arts, powerful human emotions are evident in Shea’s work.
Shea reflects on the origin of her sculptural approach to the human form to different and yet meaningful experiences of her educational upbringing. Being raised as a Catholic, she was a constant witness of the representation of religious statues in church. While being trained as a ballet dancer as a child, she grew connected with her own body.
Graduated with a fashion-design degree from Parsons in 1969, Shea continues pursuing her interests in visual art, earning her BFA at Parsons in 1975. Based on “her own style”—as titled the successful exhibition she curated on women self-portraits at National Academy Museum in 2012—“the artist who makes clothes” was invited to collaborate with Trisha Brown and the Eye and Ear Theater Company—working with artists such as Red Grooms and Elizabeth Murray.
At Kent Fine Arts, Shea presents seven new sculptures that pay tribute to the role of women in the arts. Through these sculptural portraits, Shea demonstrates her unique sense of observation and virtuosity with materials. A fully illustrated monograph documenting Shea’s work from 1976 to the present accompanies the exhibition.
Nalini Malani: Transgressions
Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021
February 19–August 3, 2014
Transgressions is a solo exhibition by Nalini Malani. Born in Karachi in 1946, Malani is considered one of the foremost artists from India today. Her work is influenced by her experiences as a refugee of the Partition of India in 1947. Trained as a painter at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in Mumbai, Malani has created work gradually evolved toward new media and international collaboration, expanding the pictorial surface into the surrounding environment, such as ephemeral wall drawing, installation, shadow play, and theater. In the 1980s, she became a pioneer in India for her attention to feminist issues. In the early 1990s, her innovative theater, installations, and multimedia projects featured recurring themes on gender, memory, race, and transnational politics, especially in reference to India’s postcolonial history after independence and partition.
Her current exhibition at the Asia Society and Museum includes Trangressions II (2009), a video that draws from the museum’s collection, exploring the nuances of Western postcolonial dominance in India, integrating the folk sensibility of traditional shadow plays with new technology. Using projections through transparent Lexan cylinders, painted by the artist in a fashion that references the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Bengal Kalighat style and inspired by the genre of reverse glass painting, brought to the subcontinent in the eighteenth century by the Chinese, Malani examines the power dynamics of transnational commerce in our increasingly globalized world. Through a mesmerizing projection of colors and imagery inspired by Edward Said’s book Orientalism, an ever-shifting tableau including wrathful female deity, boxers, and animals is accompanied by a recording of a poem written by the artist. The exhibition includes a selection of artist’s books that highlight the relevance of drawing and painting in Malani’s practice.
Zilia Sánchez: Heróicas Eróticas en Nueva York
Galerie Lelong
528 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
May 3–June 21, 2014
Heróicas Eróticas en Nueva York, Zilia Sánchez’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Lelong, offers a delightful opportunity to experience masterpieces of sensuous and haptic minimalism, while timely questioning the canonic premises of Minimalism as being reconstituted at the Jewish Museum. Spanning fifty years of her production, including recent works such as the monumental diptych Conversation (from the Eros and Communication series), the exhibition brings together “paintings” rarely seen outside Puerto Rico, made in the artist’s signature technique of stretching canvas over hand-molded wooden armatures—often in modular configurations or reworked as parts of ongoing series—that was developed during the period she lived in New York (1964–72). Heroically erotic, Sánchez’s curvy and soft minimalist hybrid objects “queer” hard-edge minimalism differently evoking the body in a manner that does not adhere to fixed categories of gender.
Born in Cuba in 1926, Sánchez studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro and became associated with the group Sociedad Cultural Nuestro Tiempo. Under the influence of Victor Manuel, she developed her own modernist approach to formal abstraction through paintings and drawings, while also designing furniture and theater sets (especially for the anti-Batista guerilla theater group Los Yesistas). Several grants allowed her to travel in Europe, and in 1964 she settled in New York, where she first begun experimenting with shaped canvases. In 1972, Sánchez moved to Puerto Rico, where she became inspirational through her teaching at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico. From 1972 to 1975 she designed the influential experimental literary journal Zona de Carga y Descarga, while in the 1980s she renewed her signature style by including line drawing or drawing transfer of semaphores and sign language on her canvases.
Sharon Lockhart: Milena, Milena
Bonniers Konsthall
Torsgatan 19
SE-11390, Stockholm, Sweden
April 16–June 29, 2014
Bonniers Konsthall hosts the second iteration of the exhibition trilogy Sharon Lockhart: Milena Milena that begun in Warsaw in 2013 at the Center for Contemporary Art and will be concluded in Switzerland in 2015 at the Kunstmuseum Luzern. This exhibition is the first large-scale survey of the work of the renowned American photographer and filmmaker in Scandinavia, where Lockhart has been particularly influential. Drawing inspiration from filmmaking and documentary photography, as well as from ethnography and anthropology, she has distinguished herself since the 1990s for her fascinating portrayals of individuals and communities, and a minimalist attention to the everyday, the subjective, and the human.
As a cross-sectional presentation of both her photographic and filmic work in the past twenty years, the exhibition explores the middle ground between the filmic and the photographic that is inhabited by her meticulously staged photographs and almost still films, emphasizing the relationship they both maintain to time and space, while also claiming the biographical dimension of her work. As such, the exhibition opens with the cinematic Double Tide (2009)—filmed in Maine, where Lockhart spent her childhood—and concludes with the rarely exhibited series Untitled Studies (1993–ongoing), Lockhart’s photographic diary, composed of rephotographed snapshots found in her own family album.
At the center of the exhibition’s narrative is Milena, an enigmatic figure who remains disquietly absent, distilling different threads of identification in her very nonpresence. Lockhart first met Milena when nine years old in 2009 in Łódź, Poland, while filming Podwórka, also a centerpiece of the exhibition. Literally translated as “courtyard” from Polish, Podwórka displays six different courtyards in Łódź and the children that live and play there. Lockhart and Milena developed a friendship through the act of play. Upon the rekindling of their friendship when staging the show for Warsaw, Lockhart discovered Milena’s desire to write an autobiography about her life, which provided the impetus through which the two have explored artistic expression together. The exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall features a specially commissioned, monumental stained-glass portrait of the Polish master glass painter Piotr Ostrowski as a personal and culturally specific tribute.
Kalliopi Lemos: I Am I Between Worlds and Between Shadows
Ioakimion School for Girls
Fener, Istanbul
September 11, 2013–December 14, 2014
Curated by Beral Madra as a parallel event of the thirteenth Istanbul Biennale but now extended to December 2014, I Am I Between Worlds and Between Shadows is a major site-specific installation of new work by the London-based Greek artist Kalliopi Lemos. A painter, sculptor, and installation artist, Lemos has become internationally known for a series of public installations that make poignant commentaries about the hopes and tragedies that underpin illegal migration by using the abandoned relics of successful or failed illegal migration typical of the Aegean coasts—small wooden boats (such as Crossing, Eleusis, Greece [2006/9]; Round Voyage, Istanbul [2007]; At Crossroads, Brandenburg Gate, Berlin [2009]; and Pledges for a Safe Passage, Canakkale, Turkey [2012]). Complementing Lemos’s concern with the dispossessed from a transnational feminist perspective that links the injustices against the racial, classed, and religious underdogs of global capital—best represented by the illegal migrant—with those against the gendered others of patriarchal societies—women—I Am I Between Worlds and Between Shadows tackles the issue of violence against women in a poetic, multidisciplinary, and site-specific way.
I Am I Between Worlds and Between Shadows consists of a series of seven sculptures depicting variously violated hybrid creatures, a sound installation, and a constantly renewed archive of women’s abuse, comprised of world news print outs, all evocatively installed in the abandoned yet intact rooms of the Ioakimion Greek High School for Girls. A gem of the once booming Greek Orthodox minority in Fener, the latter was founded in nineteenth century but closed in the 1980s when its attendance dropped to six students. The sound collage of joyful schoolchildren playing and singing affectively evokes the lively atmosphere of the past of the school as a breeding ground of dreams for the girls who attended it. Yet the injustices awaiting women, even in Western societies, are hinted by the evocations of gendered violation and sacrifice embedded in the Greek folk songs and international fairy tales narrated by children (also part of the sound installation), echoing the monstrosity of contemporary actuality that marks the news’ readings of the absent schoolgirls with transcultural staples of patriarchal myth. Hung from a butcher’s hook, on crutches or on gigantic prosthetic devices or confined by rails—and more often than not mutilated, amputated, and violently dismembered—these sculptural bodies most poignantly hint at various kinds of bodily, psychic, and gendered abuse, both through their imaginative bodily articulations and their manner of installation. Masterfully cast in stonelike steel with embedded resin, these half-animal, half-human creatures evoke familiar mythological and Surrealist creatures that suggestively cut across a wide spectrum of cultural and artistic references. Melancholically posed in the place of the teacher, the beheaded mermaid, the multibreasted hung rabbit, and the decapitated hen with the splayed vulva hovering on crutches, for instance, become protagonists of a tale from a children’s book that keeps going wrong in the world of the adults, raising awareness of all kinds of abuse that, whether explicitly or implicitly, threatens not only the egalitarian realization of women in various societies, but also their unencumbered expression of difference, and above all their human dignity. A two-faced chicken, clumsily balancing on two bases—itself a metaphor of unstable youth, according to the artist—looms also as an evocative stand-in for liminal creatures of exile. With its gaze fixed here and there, it aids the artist by bringing in full circle her concerns by perhaps planting a metaphor for the modern transnational, subject—forced migrant or cosmopolitan—and its vulnerability in the heart of a charged site of convoluted transcultural and imperial histories—an abandoned stronghold of Greek and Christian culture in Istanbul in the era of globalization and yet renewed and bloody nationalisms and religious fundamentalisms that, like all kinds of violence, make children and women their primary victims.
Kara Walker: A Subtlety
Domino Sugar Factory
316 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11249
May 10–July 6, 2014
Commissioned by Creative Time as a public-art farewell to a loaded site—the Domino Sugar Factory—where American industrial capitalism, consumerism, and racism have variously intersected and will be perhaps redefined through its upcoming neoliberal gentrification, Kara Walker’s A Subtlety is a both moving and canning, sugar-coated, monumental memorial to chief confectioners of the American Dream, black slaves and laborers, as well as the artist’s first large scale sculptural public work. The subtitle of the work tellingly summarizes its poignant agenda: Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plan.
A Subtlety comprises a gigantic sphinx whose hybrid body combines cliché apparitions of the black woman as domestic slave and sex object and a series of black boys cast in molasses. The latter are cast after contemporary giftware made in China but reference the original “subtleties”: sugar-made, edible sculptures and dinner emblems of power and wealth that decorated the tables of Middle Eastern sultans and European nobility.
“In Greek mythology the sphinx is a guardian of the city, a devourer of heroes and the possessor of a riddle that maybe can’t be answered,” says the artist, explaining its conception: “the factory is a modern-day ruin, and I think the sphinx contains the various readings of history that the place represents.” Exchanging her signature black for the site-specific whiteness of sugar, a material central to the slave trade and in effect of the American way, Walker has thus unsubtly “refined” the black body of her mighty benign monster, mixing references to the labor of sugar production and trade and white’s classical and sanctifying purity, in effect both honoring black bodies’ unsung contribution to Western pleasures while foregrounding the lasting whiteness of power in America. Moreover half a century after Niki de Saint Phalle’s Hon in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the temporary gigantic Nana that exorcised the riddles surrounding the female body, Sugar Baby toys with them yet also from the radical, even though controversial, perspective of a woman of color: “she’s a woman, a bootylicious figure with something paradoxical about her pose. She’s both a supplicant and an emblem of power. From the front, she seems to hold her ground. But what you see from behind is what happens when a nude woman bends over, raising a question of whether it’s a gesture of sexual passivity or not.”
As put by the project’s curator, Nato Thompson, A Subtlety speaks “of power, race, bodies, women, sexuality, slavery, sugar refining, sugar consumption, wealth inequity, and industrial might that uses the human body to get what it needs no matter the cost to life and limb. Looming over a plant whose entire history was one of sweetening tastes and aggregating wealth, of refining sweetness from dark to white, she stands mute, a riddle so wrapped up in the history of power and its sensual appeal that one can only stare stupefied, unable to answer.”
CAA Professional-Development Fellowships Suspended
posted by Michael Fahlund — May 20, 2014
At its May 4, 2014, meeting, the Board of Directors agreed to suspend the Professional-Development Fellowships in Art History and Visual Arts until a thorough analysis of the program and an exploration into other professional-development opportunities take place. When CAA’s newly approved Strategic Plan 2015–2020 begins on July 1, 2014, the board will, among the plan’s priorities, investigate the full range of possibilities that might best serve the professional-development needs of CAA’s membership.
CAA’s fellowship program began in 1993 and, with the exception of 2009, when it was suspended for a year due to the global financial crisis, has provided grants to worthy graduate students about to receive their terminal PhD or MFA degrees. The program has benefitted 51 graduate students in the last seven years and 154 since 1993.
The board hopes to reinstate the fellowships by May 2015 or to design another program to help professionals in the visual arts and art history.
Affiliated Society News for May 2014
posted by CAA — May 09, 2014
American Council for Southern Asian Art
The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) invites you to visit its newly updated website, where you can browse calls for papers, job and fellowship listings, and, for members, recent and past issues of the ACSAA Bulletin. Please send news and postings for the website to ACSAA’s webmaster, Cathleen Cummings.
Please also watch the ACSAA website and listserv for news about upcoming elections. ACSAA will be voting on new board members, changes to membership fees, and several other initiatives. You must be a member in good standing to be eligible to cast your vote. Help shape the future of ACSAA.
Association of Art Historians
The Association of Art Historians (AAH) has announced that Christine Riding is the new AAH chair, serving a three-year post. She takes over from Alison Yarrington. Riding is senior curator and head of art at the Royal Museums Greenwich in London. Previously she was curator of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art at Tate Britain and held curatorial positions at the Palace of Westminster, Museum of London, and the Wallace Collection. Riding has lectured and published widely on the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art and has organized a number of international exhibitions at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Her current projects include curating Turner and the Sea, a major exhibition that opened at Greenwich in November 2013. She also served as an AAH trustee between 2004 and 2007 and was deputy editor of Art History between 2007 and 2012. Riding has participated on the Clore Leadership Programme and was recently appointed as an impact assessor for REF2014.
Community College Professors of Art and Art History
The Community College Professors of Art and Art History (CCPAAH) had a successful session at this year’s CAA Annual Conference in Chicago. “Starting the Conversation: Engaging Students in the Studio and Art History,”chaired by Susan Altman of Middlesex County College, featured: Tyrus Clutter, College of Central Florida, “Flipping the Classroom with Digital Demonstrations”; Monica Anke Hahn, Community College of Philadelphia, “Virtual Engagement: Conversations in Online and Hybrid Classes”; and Julianne Parse Sandlin, Portland Community College, “Low-Tech Engagement: Art History and the Class Discussion.” The prospectus for next year’s conference session will be posted later this spring on CCPAAH’s Facebook page. To become more involved in the organization, please email ccpaah@gmail.com.
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education
The next biennial conference of Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE), called “Tectonic Shifts” and hosted by the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, will be held March 25–28, 2015. The event will take place in the heart of downtown Indianapolis at the Westin Hotel Indianapolis, which just completed a $14 million renovation. You can access hotel registration information via the FATE website.
FATE’s Programming Committee is now reviewing the call for session proposals. While the call for sessions is now closed, a call for papers was sent in April 2014. Approximately one hundred sessions will run during the three-day conference. Papers will be accepted from all who contribute to the foundation experience. The “Tectonic Shifts” FATE members exhibition will take place in one of Indianapolis’s most respected exhibition venues, the Herron School Art and Design Galleries. A call for exhibition entries will go out in mid-May. The conference keynote speaker is Wayne White, an American artist, art director, illustrator, puppeteer, and much, much more.White has traveled the country delivering an incredibly entertaining hour-long talk in which he discusses his life and work, while making time for banjo and harmonica playing.
Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture
The Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture (HGCEA) has elected a new board of directors for a three-year term, 2014–17. They are: Marsha Morton, president; Jay Clarke, secretary; Jim Van Dyke, treasurer; Elizabeth Cronin, web manager; and Keith Holz, Karla Huebner, Juliet Koss, and Elizabeth Otto, at-large members.
Historians of Netherlandish Art
The Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) will hold its next conference June 5–7, 2014, in Boston, Massachusetts. The event will be held in cooperation with the American Association for Netherlandic Studies and involve sessions and workshops with focus on Netherlandish art from 1350 to 1750. Please see the HNA website for more information.
The next formal deadline for submitting manuscripts to the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, HNA’s peer-reviewed, open-access ejournal, is August 1, 2014. In addition to longer articles, the journal welcomes shorter notes on archival discoveries, iconographical issues, technical studies, and rediscovered works. For submission guidelines, see the journal’s website or contact Alison Kettering, senior editor, at aketteri@carleton.edu or aketteri@jhna.org for more information.
International Association of Art Critics
The United States chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) will hold its awards ceremony and dinner to honor the best exhibitions that opened between January and December 2013 at the studio of Izhar Patkin in New York on Monday, May 12, 2014, 6:00–9:00 PM.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) invites scholars in Italy this spring to attend the fifth annual IAS/Kress Lecture in Italy by Jean K. Cadogan, professor of fine arts at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, whose paper is titled “‘Maravigliose istorie’: The Mural Decoration of the Camposanto in Pisa.” Cadogan will share her intriguing work on the multiphase, comprehensive program of painting on the walls of the Camposanto in a presentation on May 27, 2014, at the Gipsoteca of the Università di Pisa. See the IAS website for details.
In addition, the IAS website publishes information about the organization’s activities at the upcoming forty-ninth International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, taking place May 8–11, 2014. IAS will hold a business meeting at 5:30 PM on Thursday, May 8 (in Valley II, Garneau Lounge), plus three IAS-sponsored sessions (all in Bernhard 209) and an IAS reception (in the second floor lobby of Bernhard) at 5:30 PM on Friday, May 9. All members and prospective members are welcome!
National Art Education Association
The National Art Education Association (NAEA) is accepting proposals for presentations for the 2015 NAEA national convention, to be held March 26–28 in New Orleans, Louisiana. You must be an NAEA member to submit a proposal. The deadline is May 15, 2014.
NAEA also announces two new publications: Practice Theory: Seeing the Power of Art Teacher Researchers and Purposes, Principles, and Standards for School Art Programs.
Studies in Art Education, the NAEA’s professional refereed journal, is a quarterly publication that reports quantitative, qualitative, historical, and philosophical research in art education. View a sample digital issue. The cost for a one-year subscription is $20 for NAEA members, $30 for nonmembers, and $45 for Canadian/foreign subscriptions.
NAEA announces SummerVision DC: Hands-On Learning in Art Museums. Choose from two sessions: July 8–11, 2014, or July 22–25, 2014. Now in its fifth year, NAEA SummerVision DC is an annual event offered by NAEA in partnership with Washington, DC–area art museums. Upon completion of the program, participants will receive a certificate of participation with thirty clock hours of professional development. The cost is $495 (NAEA members) and $549 (nonmembers). Each session is limited to twenty-five participants.
New Media Caucus
The New Media Caucus (NMC) has announced the results of its recent board and officer elections. The NMC board of directors voted to add two new officer positions to its Executive Committee: chair of the Communications Committee and chair of the Events and Exhibitions Committee. A. Bill Miller, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater, joins the board and begins a one-year term as the chair of the Communications Committee. Joyce Rudinsky, associate professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, was voted as the chair of Exhibitions and Events Committee. NMC also welcomes new and reelected board members: Barbara Rauch, Kevin Hamilton, Joshua Selman, A. Bill Miller, Rachel Clarke, and Mat Rappaport. Rappaport was reelected as secretary, and Vagner Whitehead, associate professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, begins his term as the fourth NMC president.
The NMC board would like to thank its former president, Paul Catanese, for his leadership over the past six years. Under his tenure NMC has grown into an organization of over nine hundred members and developed annual programming that highlights the practice and scholarship of new-media art and theory. He now sits on the Executive Committee as immediate past president. NMC also wants to thank board members whose terms have ended for all the work they have done in the past years: Mike Salmond, Dima Strakovsky, Leslie Raymond, and Gwyan Rhabyt (president emeritus). Finally, NMC thanks the members of the Nominations Committee who oversaw the election: Mina Cheon, Meredith Hoy, and Mat Rappaport.
Pacific Arts Association
The conference of the European chapter of Pacific Arts Association (PAA) was held April 24–26, 2014, at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum-Cultures of the World in Cologne, Germany. The conference coincided with the exhibition Made in Oceania: Tapa – Art and Social Landscapes. Learn more about conference registration, programs, accommodations, and special events on the PAA website.
Public Art Dialogue
At CAA’s 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago, Jack Becker received the 2014 Public Art Dialogue Award for Achievement in the Field of Public Art. In honoring his thirty-five years of service to the profession, Harriet F. Senie, cochair of Public Art Dialogue (PAD), observed, “I don’t think there is anyone in the field who has done more to legitimize the field of public art than Jack Becker. I can’t begin to imagine where we would all be without the Public Art Review and its ongoing response to and expansion of our enterprise.”
A CAA session on “Public Art and Its Role in Placemaking from an International Perspective” featured the speakers Marisa D. Lerer, Norie Sato, and Jack Becker. Chaired by Erika Doss, another session, “Vandalism, Removal, Relocation, Destruction: The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence,” featured the following presentations: “Yankees, Automobiles, and Other Hazards: Shattered Monuments and the Problem of Confederate Memory,” by Sarah Beetham; “Marking Memory: Ambiguity and Amnesia in the Monument to Soviet Tank Crews in Prague,” by Jenelle Davis; “Maintaining Problematic Public Art,” by Christine Young-Kyung Hahn; “Distant Stars, Black Holes, and Burned Out Sculptures: Media Obsolescence and the Trouble with Public Art,” by Julia E. Marsh; and “The Sordid Pasts of Public Art and How We Go About Protecting Them,” by Michele Bogart.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) is accepting proposals for its 2015 conference, “Atmospheres: Climate, Equity, and Community in Photography.” Topics may include but are not limited to: image-making, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. SPE membership is required to submit; proposals are peer reviewed. Proposals are due by June 1, 2014. Visit the SPE website for full proposal guidelines.
SPE is pleased to announce these award opportunities:
- Future Focus Project Support Grant: Established to recognize exceptional photographic work, this $5,000 grant is partially funded by the SPE Future Focus Campaign. The recipient also receives a complimentary one-year SPE membership and two years of conference registration
- Honored Educator Award: Bestowed upon a career educator recognizing significant contribution to the field of photographic education. The recipient receives a lifetime SPE membership and a $1,000 honorarium
- Insight Award: Given to up to five members annually who demonstrate excellence in innovative teaching, sustained mentoring of colleagues or students, broad contribution to technical, critical, pedagogical, or visual aspects of the field, breadth or depth of exhibition or publication, and/or sustained presence in the field
Applications and nominations are due by July 1, 2014. Visit the SPE website for more information about these awards.
Society of Architectural Historians
The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) is accepting applications for its 2014 SAH/Mellon Author Awards, designed to support emerging authors publishing monographs on the history of the built environment who are responsible for paying for rights and permissions for images in their publications. The deadline is June 1, 2014.
SAH is also accepting abstracts for papers for its sixty-eighth annual conference, taking place April 15–19, 2015, in Chicago, Illinois. Abstracts may be submitted for one of the thirty-two thematic sessions or for an open session. The deadline to submit is June 6, 2014. Visit the SAH website for details.
Carolyn Garrett has been named SAH development director. She has over twelve years of experience in resource development and previously held positions at Changing Worlds and Chicago Foundation for Women.
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) seeks proposals of papers for its sponsored session, “Reconsidering Art and Politics: Toward New Narratives of Russian and Eastern European Art” at CAA’s 2015 Annual Conference in New York. The session aims to move beyond conventional binary narratives of art and power by inviting papers that challenge these interpretations and highlight the complexity of artistic responses produced at the nexus of aesthetics and politics. The chairs seek historically grounded case studies of Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian art from the Byzantine era to modern times that productively explore these issues. Interested contributors should see CAA’s 2015 Call for Participation and send proposals with other required materials to the session’s cochairs, Galina Mardilovich and Maria Taroutina. The deadline for proposals is May 9, 2014.
SHERA is delighted to welcome two new institutional members: the Russian American Cultural Center, an organization that sponsors exhibitions, arts events, and scholarly symposia in the greater New York area; and Centro Studi sulle Arti della Russia in Venice, Italy, a center for the research and study of Russia’s rich cultural heritage.
Southeastern College Art Conference
The Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) has announced the newly elected members of its board of directors: Sandra Reed, Savannah College of Art and Design; Reni Gower, Virginia Commonwealth University; and Ria O’Foghludha, Whittier College were reelected to a three-year term. In addition, Heather Stark of Marshall University and Ute Wachsmann-Linnan of Columbia College were elected to a three-year term.
The new issue of the Southeastern College Art Conference Review has been published. It is volume 17, number 3, 2013.
Visual Resources Association
The 2014 Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management (SEI) will be held June 10–13 at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. This intensive workshop features a curriculum addressing the latest requirements of today’s visual-resources and image-management professionals. Expert instructors will cover: intellectual-property rights; digital imaging and digital preservation; metadata and cataloging; project management; and professional development. SEI is open to all individuals interested in visual resources and image management. Past participants have included: current graduate students and recent graduates; visual-resources professionals; information, library, and museum professionals; art historians; and digital-collection managers.
Founded over ten years ago, SEI is a joint project of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF). SEI provides information professionals with the information and experience needed to stay current in a rapidly changing field, and significant networking opportunities. Registration for members of VRA or ARLIS/NA and University of Illinois staff and students is $595; registration for nonmembers is $675. For more information or to register, visit the SEI website.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — May 07, 2014
Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Michelangelo’s David Sculpture at Risk of Collapse
Michelangelo’s famous statue of the biblical figure David is at risk of collapse due to the weakening of the artwork’s legs and ankles, according to a report recently published by art experts. The findings, which were made public by Italy’s National Research Council, show microfractures in the ankle and leg areas. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times).
The False Promise of the Digital Humanities
The humanities are in crisis again, or still. But there is one big exception: digital humanities. In 2009, the nascent field was the talk of the Modern Language Association convention: “among all the contending subfields,” a reporter wrote about that year’s gathering, “the digital humanities seem like the first ‘next big thing’ in a long time.” Even earlier, the National Endowment for the Humanities created its Office of Digital Humanities to help fund projects. And digital humanities continues to go from strength to strength, thanks in part to the Mellon Foundation, which has seeded programs at a number of universities with large grants. (Read more from the New Republic).
The Adjunct Revolt: How Poor Professors Are Fighting Back
Mary-Faith Cerasoli has been reduced to “sleeping in her car, showering at college athletic centers and applying for food stamps,” the New York Times recently reported. Is she unemployed? No, in fact, she is a college professor—but an adjunct one, meaning she is hired on a short-term contract with no possibility of tenure. (Read more from the Atlantic).
Art and the Internet of Things: A Turning Point in Creative Education
In the art world’s internal sense of time, the degree show is in many ways the equivalent of New Year’s Eve: a point at which to collectively celebrate the birth of the future, while taking stock of the events of the past year. Reflecting on the 2013–14 academic year, it is clear that one of the most pressing issues is that of value, and the need continually to defend the arts in this respect. It is interesting to note the difference between making art for yourself—which holds value for you as an individual—and pursuing a career as an artist by studying for a degree in fine art or a related field. By doing the latter, you are implicitly deciding that your creativity also holds value for others. (Read more from the Guardian).
To Bind and to Liberate: Printing Out the Internet
“Printing the internet is not creative nor art. It is a waste of time and resources. Please, find something more creative to do.” So reads a comment on a petition on change.org. Directed at Kenneth Goldsmith, the petition was published in 2013 in response to a project the poet organized at LABOR gallery in Mexico City, where Goldsmith invited people from all over the world to print out the internet and send the pages to the gallery. (Read more from Rhizome).
Five Tips for Grant Research
It’s easy to get excited about the prospect of funding via grants, which carry a certain amount of prestige and the assurance that your work is (at least somewhat) funded, not to mention the fact that, if a funder is willing to give you a grant, they respect your work. But as the saying goes, only fools rush in. (Read more from Fractured Atlas).
Pat Badani at CAA: In Conversation with the Editor of Media-N Journal
At CAA’s 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago, Joshua Selmanand Pat Badanilaunched a discussion that examined what was happening at CAA this year as it applied to the New Media Caucus, to Media-N Journal, and to CAA members. (Read more from Artist Organized Art).