CAA News Today
AAMD Provenance Workshops
posted by CAA — Feb 25, 2014
The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) will cosponsor two provenance workshops this spring: one in Seattle, Washington, and another in Washington, DC.
Seattle
This workshop will be held on May 18, 2014, in conjunction with the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries’s annual conference in Seattle. The workshop will review best practices for conducting provenance research in art museums, with a focus on Nazi-era provenance, as well as issues pertaining to antiquities and cultural property. The session is geared to all levels of experience and can serve as a how-to and a refresher. The workshop leaders will discuss due diligence and the acquisition process, online research tools, and the handling of restitution claims. The workshop is limited to fifty participants; ample time will be allotted for Q&A.
Victoria Reed, curator for provenance at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Nancy H. Yeide, head of the Department of Curatorial Records at the National Gallery of Art, will conduct the half-day workshop, which will be held at the Hotel Deca in Seattle. Each participant will receive a copy of Yeide’s book Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection (2009), which is the first biography to focus on Hermann Goering’s personal collection and provides the first opportunity since the war to look at the collection as a whole and evaluate its place within art collecting and politics. This carefully documented volume is critical to the clarification of provenances of the objects featured and brings to light pictures whose histories and whereabouts have been hidden for decades.
Registration is available at www.aamg-us.org/registration; scroll down to “Sunday Morning Workshops.”
Washington, DC
In cooperation with the National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, and the American Alliance of Museums, AAMD will sponsor a workshop for advanced researchers following the success of a two-day, Nazi-era provenance seminar that was held in 2011. Taking place at the National Archives on June 17, 2014, this workshop is limited to thirty participants who are experienced researchers working in museums. The event will provide a hands-on workshop on using new and updated online provenance research resources. Registration will include a copy of Holocaust-Era Assets, a Finding Aid to Records at the National Archives at College Park.
Nancy H. Yeide, head of the Department of Curatorial Records at the National Gallery of Art, and Chris Naylor, director of textual records for the National Archives, will lead the one-day workshop, which will be accompanied by an introduction to new materials at the Archives of American Art led by Marisa Bourgoin, chief of reference services for the Archives of American Art, and Laurie Stein, senior provenance advisor for the Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative.
The cosponsors for the DC seminar express grateful appreciation to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for support to defray expenses for workshop participants.
To apply for registration go and to learn more about Kress grants, visit the AAMD website.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for February 2014
posted by CAA — Feb 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.
February 2014
The CWA Picks for February 2014 are dedicated to the memory of Wanda D. Ewing (January 4, 1970–December 8, 2013), an artist and educator who lived and worked in Omaha, Nebraska, by her friends and fellow members of the Committee on Women in the Arts.
Jillian Mayer: Salt 9
Utah Museum of Fine Arts
University of Utah, Marcia and John Price Museum Building, Salt Lake City, UT 84112
January 17–August 17, 2014
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts presents the first museum exhibition of Jillian Mayer (American, b. 1984). Engaging the ubiquitous self, duping Google Image, or subverting facial-recognition software, Mayer’s newest body of work tosses aside the physical body to investigate modern identity formation. Identity, online and IRL, is a fluid performance of multiple selves in constant construction, but online there is no place, need, or value for the real body.
The mind, untethered by physical limits, can be free in its construction of identity. While presenting tools to maintain online identities, Mayer exposes moments when the virtual world defines the physical world, creating an alternate reality. In salt 9 she sets up scenarios, often using her own image, that call attention to how Web 2.0’s architecture of participation is changing perceptions of truth, privacy, authorship, and authenticity. By accepting the web’s uncontrollable context and by being open to malleable meaning, Mayer enlists an ever-expanding audience of collaborators and challenges the traditional relationship between artist and viewer, in which the latter becomes a participant, a collaborator, and even an active creator of content and meaning.
Doris Salcedo
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611
February 21–May 31, 2015
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, presents the first survey of the work of the renowned sculptor Doris Salcedo (Colombian, b. 1958). Salcedo, who lives and works in Bogotá, gained prominence in the 1990s for her fusion of Postminimalist forms with sociopolitical concerns. The exhibition features all major bodies of work from the artist’s twenty-five-year career—most of which have never been shown together before—as well as the American debut of her recent major work Plegaria Muda (Silent prayer) (2008–10) and a site-specific public project.
Salcedo’s work is deeply rooted in her country’s social and political landscape, including its long history of civil wars, yet her sculptures and installations subtly address these fraught circumstances with elegance and a poetic sensibility that balances the gravitas of her subjects. She grounds her art in intense research and fieldwork, which involves extensive interviews with people who have experienced loss and trauma in their everyday lives due to political violence. In more recent years, Salcedo has become increasingly interested in the universal nature of these experiences and continues to pursue research in different locations, including Turkey, Italy, Great Britain, and the United States. Rather than making literal representations of violence or trauma, however, her artworks convey the idea of corporeal fragility and evoke a collective sense of loss. The resulting pieces engage with multiple dualities at once—strength and fragility, ephemeral and enduring—and bear elements of healing and reparation in the careful, laborious process of their making.
Güler Ates: Whispers of Colour
Kubik Gallery
Rua da Restauração, 2, 4050-499 Porto, Portugal
January 25–March 1, 2014
The central themes of gender, identity, and cultural hybridity are driving forces in Güler Ates’s practice, which examines how various settings can challenge and disrupt a person’s assumptions on these topics. The lone veiled woman is the central motif of her work, an ambiguous figure whose identity is consistently kept from the viewer.
While the veiled female figure is a recurring motif, it is the setting that informs her practice. Each series is site-specific in that Ates’s captures through photography the ways in which her figure interacts with each environment. Thus, by responding to her surroundings, her work explores the nuanced ways in which locale and context affect our interpretation of figures. This aspect works in tandem with the concept of performativity. An essential element to Ates’s work, this theme stems form Judith Butler’s seminal theory that such supposedly fixed concepts, such as gender, ethnicity, or nationality, are in no way fixed but are rather merely roles that we perform. Thus, while the repetition of our actions reinforces the identity to which those actions are associated, when the cultural context in which this performance takes place changes, so too does the identity. In her use of a veil, Ates interrogates what it means for a woman to be covered. She reclaims the female body by respecting the autonomy of the figure. In doing so, the artist is able to reclaim not simply the female body but also Orientalist imagery, thus creating highly charged images that are alluring yet defiant.
Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
January 24–May 14, 2014
Organized by Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, where it first opened in 2012, Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video—the first major museum retrospective of the work of Carrie Mae Weems—finally comes to New York. Featuring more than 120 works—primarily photographs but also texts, videos, and an audio recording—and a range of related educational programs, the exhibition thoroughly traces the evolution of the artist’s career over the last thirty years, from her early documentary and autobiographical photographic series to later conceptual and philosophically complex works of global concerns. As such Carrie Mae Weems offers a great opportunity to explore the breadth of her practice and marvel at the visual poetics of her politics.
Having opened influential paths for younger generations of photographers with sociopolitical and gender concerns over the past forty years, Weems has sharply, movingly and beautifully contemplated issues surrounding race, gender, and class inequality. It is by positioning herself “as history’s ghost,” as put by Nancy Princenthal, that her work brings to light the ignored or erased experiences of marginalized people, even though the artist strives to propose a multidimensional picture of history and humanity, intended to raise greater cultural awareness and compassion. While Weems’s subjects are often African American, “Her work speaks to human experience and of the multiple aspects of individual identity, arriving at a deeper understanding of humanity,” as said by Mary Jane Jacobs.
Organized in a loose chronology throughout two of the museum’s Annex Levels, Carrie Mae Weems begins with the breakthrough series Family Pictures and Stories (1978–84) and brings together most landmark series of the artist’s photographic work. Also included, of course, is the celebrated Kitchen Table Series (1990), which employs text and photography and explores the range of women’s roles within a community, pointedly situating the photographs’ subject within a domestic setting and foregrounding the artist’s gendered concerns. The exhibition also looks at the role of video as a natural extension of Weems’s narrative photographic practice and as an opportunity to include music in her work. Along with a selection of videos such as Italian Dreams (2006), Afro Chic (2009), and Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment (2008) placed near related photographic series, Weems’s first major endeavor in film, Coming Up for Air (2003–4), a work comprised of series of poetic vignettes, will be screened in the New Media Theater in the Guggenheim’s Sackler Center for Arts Education.
Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art
Phillips Museum of Art
Franklin and Marshall College, Colonel J. Hall Steinman College Center, College Avenue, Lancaster, PA
17603
February 7–April 12, 2014
This exhibition features work from the American artist Theresa Bernstein (1890–2002), one of the few—if not the only—artist to display work in every decade of the twentieth century. Although Bernstein found great success early in her career as an art student, she struggled with fluctuations in popularity as various art movements came and went, resulting in her work falling into obscurity for most historians and art critics. Despite this neglect, Bernstein has recently begun to receive recognition, and her work is being touted as noteworthy, even in comparison to her contemporaries such as Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, and John Sloan. Through her realist technique, Bernstein captured many iconic American themes from the twentieth century, such as women’s suffrage, World War I, the struggles of immigrants, jazz, and even Hassidic life. Therefore her work is not only skilled and aesthetic, but it also offers another perspective on American history. Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art was curated by Gail Levin, Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies, and Women’s Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
December 21, 2013–April 21, 2014
Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New is an homage to one of the most foresighted art dealers of the late twentieth century. Organized by Ann Temkin with the assistance of Claire Lehmann, the exhibition is accompanied by an extensive publication with the same title and celebrates the donation of Robert Rauschenberg’s combine Canyon (1959) to the Museum of Modern Art by Ileana Sonnabend’s Estate. Bringing together works of over forty major artists—from Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol to Mario Merz and Vito Acconci—who either debuted at her gallery in Paris (1959–1968) or New York (1968– ) or entered into her personal collection early, the exhibition captures Sonnabend’s instrumental role in introducing American Pop and Minimalism to Europe and Arte Povera to the United States, while exploring her legendary eye and championship of new artists.
Despite frustrating limitations, including the politics of the exhibition, the donation of Canyon, and an unsurprising selection of masterpieces that self-congratulatorily reinforces mainstream narratives of American and European art of the late twentieth century housed in modern art temples such as MoMA (as justly implied by Holland Cotter in his New York Times review), Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New is a great reminder that the often-catalytic contribution of several female agents’ of postwar art in shaping its course in North America and Europe remains unexplored, if not unsung. Instead of just marveling at iconic landmarks of postwar, especially American, art as known, this exhibition should trigger further interest in Sonnabend’s story and raise questions that will pressure the histories of postwar art as we know them by illuminating the impact of the stories Sonnabend fashioned from the art of her time with her choices or the difference of her staging of her finds in Europe and in the United States.
Joseph Anthony “Joe” Gatto: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Jan 17, 2014
Joseph Anthony “Joe” Gatto, a noted jewelry artist and the founding visual-art dean of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, died on November 13, 2013. He was 78 years old.
Born on December 22, 1934, in Pueblo, Colorado, Gatto was the son of immigrants. His father was a shoveler in the steel industry, and his mother was a garment worker. The family moved west, and Gatto attended Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, California, where he aspired to attend college. He worked bagging groceries, studied, and lettered in four sports. After military service at Fort Lewis, Washington, he attended California State University, Los Angeles, and Pepperdine University in Malibu, where he earned a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art and education. Gatto was the first in his family to graduate from college and earn advanced degrees.
An award-winning jewelry artist, painter, photographer, and author of several books on teaching art, Gatto cofounded the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA), where he was visual-arts dean from 1985 to 2002. He was a recipient of the California “Bravo” Teacher of the Year Award and was honored at the White House by both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Always active in his church and community, Gatto supported the parish and school at Our Mother of Good Counsel Church and participated in local politics. In 2004 he fulfilled a lifelong dream, serving as delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
Joe Gatto, Nesting Bird 3, gold, coral, pearl, and found objects (artwork © Joe Gatto)
After retiring from LACHSA, Gatto continued to teach figure drawing and art-education courses at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He exhibited and gained national acclaim for his finely crafted art jewelry shown under his brand Wear Art Now. A dedicated father and grandfather, avid gardener, collector, and world traveler, Gatto lived life to its fullest while he nurtured the creative lives of others.
Gatto is survived by brothers Don and Frank, his daughter Nicole and her husband Mark, his son Mike and his wife Danielle, his daughter Mariann and her fiancé Eric, his grandchildren Damian, Elliana, and Evangelina, and his former wife Isolde, plus countless cousins, admiring students, and loving friends.
Memorial services were held on November 22, 2013, in Los Angeles, with hundreds in attendance. The Los Angeles Police Department is continuing its investigation into Gatto’s untimely death. Donations in his memory can be made to one of his favorite charities: (1) Historic Italian Hall Foundation, 125 Paseo De la Plaza, Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90012; (2) Los Angeles Community Garden Council, 4470 West Sunset Boulevard, No. 381, Los Angeles, CA 90027; or (3) Tuition Magician, Joe Gatto Arts Scholarship, 4470 West Sunset Boulevard, PMB 378, Los Angeles, CA 90027.
Affiliated Society News for January 2014
posted by CAA — Jan 09, 2014
American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works
The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) has recently published Ethics and Critical Thinking in Conservation, a collection of essays that brings into focus a moment in the evolution of the complex decision-making processes required when conservators consider the treatment of cultural-heritage materials. The papers presented are drawn from two consecutive years of presentations during general sessions at the AIC annual meeting. These were “Ethos Logos Pathos: Ethical Principles and Critical Thinking in Conservation” (2011) and “The Conservation Continuum: Examining the Past, Envisioning the Future” (2010). The book is available in two formats: a full-color hardcover for $30 and a black-and-white paperback for $15. The hardcover features nearly fifty full-color figures and illustrations throughout the text. Copies can be ordered at www.conservation-us.org/shop.
Art Historians of Southern California
The Art Historians of Southern California (AHSC) will host a roundtable on “The Coalition of the Art Association: California Public Education and the Promise of the Humanities,” chaired by Jane Chin Davidson of California State University, San Bernardino, at CAA’s Annual Conference in Chicago. The event will take place on Thursday, February 13, 2014, 12:30–2:00 PM in Boulevard C, 2nd Floor, Hilton Chicago. The discussion will include professors of art history, visual studies, and the humanities who have represented the California system—California Community Colleges, the California State Universities (CSUs), and the Universities of California (UCs)—such as Amelia Jones, Catherine Cole, Jennifer Doyle, Jennifer Gonzalez, and Sandra Esslinger. This roundtable will address issues of legislation, labor, and class within the academy while finding ways to acknowledge the value of the humanities in university education. Through their membership in CAA, visual art and humanities professors have long been the organizing principle of our potential solidarity. The perpetual decline of art history and visual studies has recently led to public scrutiny of CAA’s centralized leadership (see “An Open Letter to Victoria H. F. Scott Regarding the CAA,” February 8, 2013). In light of the continuing need for political advocacy, the leadership of CAA could provide a means for organizing coalition and for affecting the status of the humanities by bringing greater representation and awareness to both academic and public spheres.
Art Libraries Society of North America
The Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) is pleased to announce the election of new executive board members: Kristen Regina of the Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Gardens is vice president and president elect; Mark Pompelia of the Rhode Island School of Design is treasurer; Sylvia Roberts of Simon Fraser University in Canadian member-at-large; and Holly Hatheway of Yale University is communications and publications liaison.
ARLIS/NA recently created the post of Multimedia and Technology Reviews. The first reviews will be posted on the ARLIS website in early 2014.
Save the date for the ARLIS/NA 2014 annual conference, which will be held May 1–5, 2014, in Washington, DC. For more information, please visit the conference website.
Community College Professors of Arts and Art History
The Community College Professors of Arts and Art History (CCPAAH) will hold two events at this year’s CAA Annual Conference: a business meeting on Friday, February 14, from 7:30 to 9:00 AM in the Williford C Room on the 3rd Floor of the Hilton Chicago; and the session “Starting the Conversation: Engaging Students in the Studio and Art History” at 12:30 PM in the same space. Interested in participating or any questions? Contact Susan Altman.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) is pleased to announce the election of two new members to its executive board. Sussan Babaie has been elected president-elect, and Abigail Balbale is secretary. Each will serve a three-year term beginning in January 2014; both will be officially welcomed to the board at its 2014 members and business meeting on February 14, 2014, in conjunction with the CAA Annual Conference in Chicago. At that time, Sheila Canby will succeed Marianna Shreve Simpson as president. Preparations also continue for HIAA’s fourth biennial symposium, which will be hosted by the new Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Ontario, in October 2014.
Historians of Netherlandish Art
The Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) will hold its quadrennial conference in Boston, Massachusetts, from June 5 to 7, 2014, in cooperation with the American Association for Netherlandic Studies. Please refer to the HNA website for further information. Additionally, HNA is pleased to announce the publication of the Summer 2013 issue of the open-access, refereed ejournal Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (JHNA). This special issue of the journal is dedicated to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann. In addition to excerpts from an interview with Begemann discussing his life as a scholar, curator, and teacher, the issue includes essays by his former students. The next formal deadline for submissions to JHNA is March 1, 2014; please send correspondence to the editor in chief, Alison Kettering.
International Sculpture Center
Each year the International Sculpture Center (ISC) presents an award competition to its member colleges and universities as a means of supporting, encouraging, and recognizing the work of young sculptors and their supporting schools’ faculty and art program. The Student Award winners participate in an exhibition at Grounds for Sculpture, as well as a traveling exhibition hosted by arts organizations across the country. Winners’ work is also featured in Sculpture magazine. Each winner receives a one-year ISC membership; all winners are eligible to apply for a fully sponsored residency to study in Switzerland. To nominate students for this competition, the nominees’ university must first be an ISC university-level member. University membership costs $200 for universities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico ($220 for international universities) and includes a number of benefits. Students who are interested should talk to their professors about getting involved. To find out more about the program, please visit www.sculpture.org/StudentAwards/2014 or email studentawards@sculpture.org. Nominations open: January 1, 2014; University membership registration: March 17, 2014; online student nomination form: March 24, 2014; online student submission form: April 14, 2014.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) invites members attending the CAA Annual Conference in Chicago to its first session “Periodization Anxiety in Italian Art: Renaissance, Baroque, or Early Modern” at 9:30 AM on February 13, 2014; IAS’s business meeting at 7:30 AM on February 14; and its second session “‘Futuro Anteriore’: Cultural Self-Appropriation as Catalyst in the Art of Italy” at 12:30 PM on February 14.
The society’s website details the five IAS sessions at the Renaissance Society of America meeting (New York, March 27–29, 2014) and includes a call for submissions to IAS-sponsored sessions at the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (New Orleans, October 2014; deadline to IAS: March 1, 2014).
Launched in July 2013, the IAS-initiated IASblog offers news and notes on Italian art and architecture as a complement to its main website. IASblog, edited by the IAS webmaster, Anne Leader, now has over nine hundred followers and two thousand unique visitors. IASblog welcomes submissions from members via the Submit button or by email.
National Art Education Association
Register now for the national convention of the National Art Education Association (NAEA), taking place March 29–31, 2014, in San Diego, California. We are visual arts educators. We are artists. We are creative leaders. Lead your professional learning experience at the 2014 NAEA national convention. Choose from more than one thousand sessions, workshops, tours, and events. Fuse creative thinking with art knowledge, skills, emerging technology, and new research to create powerful opportunities for your classroom, career, and beyond. Connect with thousands of colleagues from around the globe for the largest gathering of visual arts education in the world. Join a professional learning community and spend four art-filled days in Washington, DC, exploring permanent collections, current exhibitions, and the museum itself as a work of art.
NAEA SummerVision DC, now in its fifth year, is an annual NAEA event that partners with Washington, DC–area art museums to showcase best practices in critical response to art while enhancing creativity through visual journaling and by using a balanced, interdisciplinary “Form + Theme + Context (FTC) Palette for Museums and Works of Art” to enhance visual learning. Participating museums include the National Gallery of Art and Sculpture Garden, the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the National Museum of African Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Phillips Collection, the National Building Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery. Registration is limited to twenty-five participants per session. Choose from two sessions: July 8–11 or July 22–25, 2014.
New NAEA publications include Michelle Kraft and Karen Keifer-Boyd’s Including Difference: A Communitarian Approach to Art Education in the Least Restrictive Environment(no. 322); and The Learner-Directed Classroom: Developing Creative Thinking Skills through Art (no. 326), edited by Diane B. Jaquith and Nan E. Hathaway.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA), a community of current and future arts administrators in higher education, announces two events for CAA’s 2014 Annual Conference in Chicago: NCAA MIXER—You’re all invited, administrators or not, grab a friend and bring ‘em along; Thursday, February 13, 5:00–8:00 PM, Hilton Chicago (room TBA); and the session “Hot Problems/Cool Solutions in Arts Leadership,” which is a fast-paced series of five-minute presentations on leadership occurring on Friday, February 14, 5:30–7:00 PM in Williford C, 3rd Floor, Hilton Chicago. NCAA members hope to see you at both events in which attendees will share conviviality and ideas.
Public Art Dialogue
Jack Becker, the 2014 recipient of Public Art Dialogue’s annual award, will make a presentation at the CAA Annual Conference in Chicago on Friday, February 14, 5:30–7:00 PM. A conference on “Monument/Anti-Monument” will be held in St. Louis in April. Stay tuned for details. There have been several changes in PAD personnel. Sarah Schrank has stepped down as cochair, and Kelly Pajek will complete her term. Sierra Rooney is now both PAD secretary and treasurer. The Fall 2013 issue of Public Art Dialogue, edited by Eli Robb, considers “Perspectives on Relational Art.” Six articles explore practices based on human interactions: Caroline Peters and Ben Bloch, “To the Quick with Paul Crik: The World’s First E-Motivator Kills It with Public Art Dialogue; Cara Jordan, “The Evolution of Social Sculpture in the United States: Joseph Beuys and the Work of Suzanne Lacy and Rick Lowe”; John Tain, “Peace Tower as Commonplace: Relational Aesthetics’ Lieux de mémoire”; Lauren Rotenberg, “The Prospects of “Freed” Time: Pierre Huyghe and L’Association des Temps Libérés”; Gediminas Gasparavičius, “How the East Saw East in 1992: NSK Embassy Moscow and Relationality in Eastern Europe”; and Dee Hibbert-Jones, “A New Band-Aid for Social Ailments? Raising Questions on Social Practice and Social Responsibilities.”
Society for Photographic Education
Registration is open for the fifty-first annual national conference of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), titled “Collaborative Exchanges: Photography in Dialogue.” In an age of interconnectedness, photographers are no longer solitary practitioners peering at the world through the singular eye of the viewfinder. Rather, photography is positioned at the heart of the discourse on contemporary art, establishing relationships with a broad array of ideas and media. This conference illuminates this new paradigm and celebrates the spirit of cooperation and social linkages. Join 1,600 artists, educators, and photographic professionals from March 6 to 9, 2014, for programming and dialogue in Baltimore, Maryland, that will fuel your creativity. The event will be a celebration of the power of community and social exchange to propel new thinking in photographic practice. Explore SPE’s exhibits fair showing the latest equipment, processes, publications, and schools with photo-related programs. Participate in one-on-one portfolio critiques and informal portfolio sharing and take advantage of student volunteer opportunities for reduced admission. Other conference highlights include a print raffle, silent auction, photo scavenger hunt, film screenings, exhibitions, tours, receptions, a dance party and more! Keynote Speakers: Joan Fontcuberta, Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, Taryn Simon, and Catherine Lord. Preview the conference schedule and register online.
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) will sponsor a session at the 2014 CAA annual conference in Chicago titled “Decentering Art of the Former East,” chaired by Kristen Romberg and Masha Chlenova. SHERA will also hold a business meeting that is open to both current and prospective members. In addition, the organization is pleased to welcome CAA International Travel Grant recipients from Eastern Europe and Russia to its events at the conference. Please visit the News section of the SHERA website for details as the conference approaches.
The annual conference of the Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), held in Boston, Massachusetts, in November 2013, showed a surge in activity from SHERA members, who presented their work on fourteen panels and in roundtable discussions ranging from the imperial era to the present day. The SHERA business meeting attracted over forty people, including many new members. Ballot proposals for electronic voting in January 2014 would amend SHERA’s bylaws to include the listserv administrator on the list of officers and would also replace the position of webmaster with a web news editor. Balloting will also elect a new slate of members-at-large. SHERA members will receive voting information by email in early January.
Art History Teaching Resources Seeks Lesson Plans
posted by Christopher Howard — Jan 08, 2014
Do you have a great lesson plan you want to take some time to codify and share? Following a recently awarded Kress grant for digital resources, Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR), a peer-populated platform for instructors that is home to a constantly evolving, collectively authored online repository of art-history teaching content, seeks contributors for specific subject areas in the art-history survey.
AHTR is particularly interested the following sections in art and architecture for publication in early spring 2014:
- Ancient Egyptian
- Ancient Aegean
- Ancient Greek
- Ancient Etruscan and Roman
- Proto-Renaissance and Fourteenth Century Italian Renaissance
- Fifteenth-Century Italian Renaissance
- Fifteenth-Century Northern Renaissance
For each content area, AHTR seeks lecture and lesson plans similar to those developed for its sections on Prehistory and Prehistoric Art in Europe and Art of the Ancient Near East. These plans, which will be posted to the AHTR website in early 2014, are supported by $250 writing grants made possible by the Kress award.
All parts in the art-history survey, however, will eventually need to be populated. If your area of interest is not listed above, AHTR is still interested in hearing from you. Let us know which area(s) you’d like to cover: a full list can be found under Survey 1: Prehistory to Gothic and Survey 2: Renaissance to Modern and Contemporary. In addition, we welcome suggestions on how to fill the gaps in these chronologies.
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
- 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 February 2014. Collaboration on content for further subject areas will be solicited throughout 2014.
Meiss Grant Winners for Fall 2013
posted by Christopher Howard — Jan 06, 2014
This fall, CAA awarded grants to the publishers of eight books in art history and visual culture through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund. Thanks to the generous bequest of the late Prof. Millard Meiss, CAA gives these grants to support the publication of scholarly books in art history and related fields.
The grantees for fall 2013 are:
- Claudia Brittenham, The Cacaxtla Paintings, University of Texas Press
- Georges Didi-Huberman and Harvey Mendelsohn, trans., The Surviving Image: Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms: Aby Warburg’s History of Art, Pennsylvania State University Press
- Cécile Fromont, The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo, University of North Carolina Press
- Kristina Kleutghen, Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in Eighteenth-Century China, University of Washington Press
- Wei-Cheng Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai, University of Washington Press
- Maria Loh, Still Lives: Death, Desire, and the Portraits of the Old Masters, Princeton University Press
- T’ai Smith, Writing on Weaving: A Bauhaus Craft, a Bauhaus Medium, University of Minnesota Press
- Laura Weigert, Late Medieval Visual Culture and the Making of Theater in France, Cambridge University Press
Books eligible for Meiss grants must already be under contract with a publisher and on a subject in the visual arts or art history. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information.
Wanda Ewing: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Dec 20, 2013
Maria Elena Buszek is associate professor of art history in the College of Arts and Media at the University of Colorado Denver.
Wanda Ewing (photograph by Dana Damewood)
The artist and educator Wanda Ewing died in Omaha, Nebraska, on December 8, 2013, of complications from chemotherapy. She was 43 years old.
Born on January 4, 1970, Ewing received her BFA in printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute, and later both an MA and MFA in printmaking from the University of Iowa. She was an associate professor of art at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, where she began teaching in 2005, leading courses in foundations and senior capstones for studio majors. She was a longtime member of the College Art Association, on whose Committee on Women in the Arts she served at the time of her death, as well as the Southern Graphics Council, where she was the International Board of Directors’ secretary.
Ewing’s work ranged from traditional print media to sculpture and, most recently, fiber arts. She was influenced by folk-art aesthetics and the depiction—and lack thereof—of African American women in popular culture, often with a biting, comical edge. Ewing’s best-known series included her pin-ups Black as Pitch, Hot as Hell, voluptuous clothing from The Summer I Wore Dresses,and faux magazine covers entitled Bougie. Her work has been included in exhibitions and purchased for collections throughout the world, and was reproduced in such publications as the Paris Review.
At the time of her passing, her series of brand-new, latch-hook works, Little Deaths, was on display at the RNG Gallery in Council Bluffs, Iowa—which will remain on exhibit, with additional works, through January 2014 as a memorial. She was, perhaps, proudest of her inclusion in the 2010 exhibition A Greater Spectrum: One Hundred Years of African American Artists in Nebraska at the Museum of Nebraska Arts, where her work was included alongside that of luminaries such as Aaron Douglas. Ewing was the recipient of grants and honors from the Women’s Caucus for Art, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Nebraska Arts Council, among other accolades.
Wanda Ewing, Girl #9, from the series Black as Pitch, Hot As Hell, 2006, acrylic and latex paint on carved plywood, 48 x 48 in. (artwork © Wanda Ewing)
Ewing was also an excellent educator, beloved and respected by both colleagues and students at the University of Nebraska for her rigorous curricula, her no-nonsense critiques, and her outreach to the regional arts community. Her legacy at the school will live on in the form of the Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.
Wanda Ewing will be remembered by all who knew her for her larger-than-life personality, tremendous warmth, and indomitable spirit. She is survived by her mother Elouise Ewing; her siblings Mona Yaeger, Clarence Ewing III, and Annette Ewing McCann; and her nephew and niece Devlin and Kayleigh McCann.
2013 Wyeth Grant Recipients
posted by Christopher Howard — Dec 16, 2013
CAA is pleased to announce the five recipients of the annual Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, established in 2005. Thanks to a generous grant from the Wyeth Foundation, these awards are given annually to publishers to support the publication of one or more book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, visual studies, and related subjects. For this grant program, “American art” is defined as art created in the United States, Canada, and Mexico through 1970.
Receiving 2013 grants are:
- Ross Barrett, Rendering Violence: Riots, Strikes, and Upheavals in Nineteenth-Century American Art, University of California Press
- Craig Burnett, Philip Guston: The Studio, Afterall Books
- Sarah Hamill, David Smith in Two Dimensions: Photography and the Matter of Sculpture, University of California Press
- Sascha T. Scott, A Strange Mixture: The Art and Politics of Painting Pueblo Indians, University of Oklahoma Press
- Karen Stanworth, Visibly Canadian: Imaging Collective Identity in the Canadas, 1820–1910, McGill-Queens University Press
Eligible for the grant are book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, visual studies, and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher on their merits but cannot be published in the most desirable form without a subsidy. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Dec 04, 2013
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.
Detroit Bankruptcy Creditors Ask Judge to Take Steps toward Sale of DIA Treasures
A coalition of the largest creditors in Detroit’s bankruptcy is taking the first legal step toward pressuring the city to sell art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Three bond insurers, the city’s largest employee union, and several European banks filed a motion in federal court last week asking Judge Steven Rhodes to appoint a committee to oversee an independent evaluation of the market value of the multibillion-dollar city-owned collection at the DIA. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
Debating an MFA? The Lowdown on Art School Risks and Returns
For aspiring artists, December is the cruelest month, when thoughts of pursuing an MFA must turn to action or be cast to the winds. It’s grad-school application time—and what a time it is to undertake such a commitment! Given the skyrocketing cost of tuition, mounting student debt, high interest rates on loans, and a tough job market, you’d be crazy not to measure your education’s value against the risk involved in paying for it, especially if you are considering a master’s degree in art or design. (Read more from Modern Painters.)
When Do Great Artists Hit Peak Creativity?
The question of when highly accomplished people reach their peak level of creativity has long fascinated researchers. Some make huge breakthroughs relatively early in life: think of Igor Stravinsky, who composed the groundbreaking ballet The Rite of Spring at age 31. Others go through an extensive period of trial and error before finding their unique voice. A 2011 study found modern-day physicists make their most innovative discoveries at age 48. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
Are Arts Donors Also Arts Leaders?
If a wealthy person writes a large check to a worthy cultural organization, does that constitute an act of leadership? It’s an interesting question. You’d think it must, since that increasingly has become the descriptive word of choice, along with “vision,” in the speeches of thanks from grateful recipients, preferably coupled with adjectives on the level of “extraordinary” or “stunning.” (Read more from the Chicago Tribune.)
Wrapping Up: Asking Students to Reflect and Evaluate
We’re nearly at the end of the semester, and I’m currently writing the latest iteration of my students’ final (nontest) assignment for the semester, the portfolio and self-evaluation. The instructions for the assignment are fairly straightforward: to create their portfolio, students are asked to gather all of their work completed during the semester and then, based on provided questions or prompts, write two to three pages reflecting on their work for the semester. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
The Art of Art Dealing
Do you want to know how to sell art? Do you have one foot in the past? Do you have your other foot in the future? Do you consider yourself someone with a point of view and something to say? If you answered yes to these questions, then this article is for you. (Read more from the Gallerist.)
Employed, but…
A new study looking at large cohorts of PhD recipients in history is quick to point out that the doctorate in the field almost always seems to result in employment—and not of the barista variety. Further, the study finds that many new doctorates are finding their way to the tenure track—and that such positions still exist for those starting their careers. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
California Using $2 Million Arts Grant Windfall for New Programs
The California Arts Council, the agency behind state government’s arts grants, is putting down most of its chips from a one-time, $2 million funding windfall on several new bets involving arts education and community improvement through the arts. Arts council leaders are hoping that quick payoffs in the form of early success stories from the new programs will improve the long-neglected agency’s chances of replenishing its depleted funding. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
DeWitt Godfrey Elected CAA President for 2014–16.
posted by Nia Page — Nov 05, 2013
DeWitt Godfrey, associate professor of sculpture in the Department of Art and Art History at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, has been elected president of the CAA Board of Directors for a two-year term, beginning May 2014. A member of the board since 2009, Godfrey has served on the board’s Executive Committee as secretary (2010–12) and vice president for committees (2012–14). He succeeds Anne Collins Goodyear, codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Bowdoin, Maine, who has led the board since May 2012.
Godfrey writes, “During my tenure on the board, CAA has evolved into an organization that can look to the future with greater confidence than in the past. The next president must provide continuity and leadership that builds on our already realized strategic plans and advance the remainder of our unfinished, unmet goals. We must be mindful that our current and future strategic initiatives should be part of a coherent strategy for the growth and improvement of CAA, that individual initiatives contribute to both short- and long-term success, that we recognize the extent of our resources in relation to our ambitions, and finally that the strategic plan is seen as dynamic and of a whole.”
Godfrey did his undergraduate work at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, was a member of the inaugural group of fellows in the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and received his MFA from Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. He is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Japan Foundation, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Godfrey’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. His commissioned work includes Concordia for LexArts in Lexington, Kentucky; Blanchard Road for the Cambridge Arts Council in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Greenwich South, a visioning exercise for the Downtown Alliance in New York. His installations can be seen at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan; the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts; Lehman College in New York; and the Kennedy Museum of Art at Ohio University in Athens. Godfrey currently serves on CAA’s Task Force for Fair Use and on its 2015–2020 Strategic Plan Task Force.
Godfrey continues, “As CAA begins its second one hundred years, we look forward to the imminent roll-out of the 2015–2020 Strategic Plan and to the completion and dissemination of the findings of the Task Force on Fair Use. I hope to continue the work of our great predecessors to maintain CAA as the preeminent professional arts organization worldwide, to serve and grow membership, and to ready the association to respond effectively to future challenges, both known and unknown.”
The CAA board chooses its next president from among the elected directors in the fall of the current president’s final year of service, providing a period in which the next president can learn the responsibilities of the office and prepare for his or her term. For more information on CAA and on the Board of Directors, please contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive assistant.