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The National Humanities Alliance sent the following email on October 30, 2013.

Oppose Devastating Cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities!

Now that the government shutdown is over and Congress is beginning new budget negotiations, the proposed 49 percent cut to the National Endowment for the Humanities is back on the table. Just last week, one of the budget negotiators invoked the cut as he questioned the appropriateness of NEH grants. You can make sure that his are not the last words that our elected officials hear on the value of NEH by sending a message today.

We need you, your friends, and your colleagues to send messages in support of renewed investments in the humanities. Thousands of messages from advocates helped to put the proposed cuts on hold this summer, and by sending this new message, you can oppose the cuts and help restore NEH’s critical support for the humanities.

Lend your name to the effort by sending a message to your elected representatives.

Click here to send a message.Help us reach more advocates by sharing this message with your friends.

Background

In its FY 2014 budget resolution, the House of Representatives Budget Committee called for the complete elimination of funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities, writing that the programs funded by NEH “…go beyond the core mission of the federal government, and they are generally enjoyed by people of higher-income levels, making them a wealth transfer from poorer to wealthier citizens.” The House subcommittee that oversees the NEH’s appropriation has followed through on the spirit of this resolution by approving a 49 percent cut to the agency’s budget.

Funding for NEH is already at just 29 percent of its peak and 62 percent of its average.

After years of deep cuts, the Obama Administration has proposed restoring some of NEH’s capacity with a 12 percent increase in funding.

Click here to send a message.

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Furthermore and Joan K. Davidson, the grants in publishing program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund is pleased to present the inaugural Alice award to the Brooklyn Museum for Youth and Beauty Art of the American Twenties, edited by Teresa A. Carbone and published by Skira Rizzoli Publishing. Awarded in honor of Alice M. Kaplan, the prize recognizes this book’s fresh approach to and keen analysis of its subject and for its general excellence. The Alice was presented to the Brooklyn Museum on October 29, 2013, at the Morgan Library and Museum.

The jury comprised: Paula Cooper of Paula Cooper Gallery; William M. Griswold, director of the Morgan Library and Museum; Gianfranco Monacelli, publisher of Monacelli Press; Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery; and Massimo Vignelli of Vignelli Associates.

The Alice was established in 2013 by Joan K. Davidson, president of Furthermore, to honor her mother, Alice Manheim Kaplan. Alice loved and collected the illustrated book as a work of art in itself and an essential document of a civilized society. This new award is intended to buttress the kind of slow reading movement that recognizes and cherishes the lasting values of the well-made illustrated book, and the special sense of intimacy it affords. In the fast-changing publishing universe, with its ever rising costs, the continuing life of high-quality printed books will depend upon the determined commitment of writers, editors, designers, and publishers, and their friends. The Alice is dedicated to that heroic commitment and the accomplished books that result from it.

The launching of the award also marks Furthermore’s record so far of financial assistance to some one thousand publications, for a total of $5 million. The Alice carries an award of $25,000. Each year a jury of leaders in publishing and the arts will select the Alice book from the hundreds of eligible titles that have been honored with a grant from Furthermore.

Furthermore grants in publishing is a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund that supports the publication of significant visual books—and will help to keep them coming in the years ahead. For information on the Alice, please contact Elizabeth Howard at 917-692-8588.

News from the Art and Academic Worlds

posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 30, 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.

Government Shutdown Cost Smithsonian Nearly $3 Million

The sixteen-day federal government shutdown cost the Smithsonian an estimated $2.8 million in lost sales and around 800,000 visitors, according to a statement from the institution. The bipartisan Senate agreement that ended the shutdown will provide back pay for all furloughed federal workers, including 3,512 Smithsonian employees. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

Can Yelp Change the Way We Think about Art?

Yelp gives us a quasi-empirical way to pinpoint the best slice of pizza in half-mile radius. In the process, though, the service has done something else: it’s democratized food criticism, giving anyone with an internet connection a mandate to opine on cuisine, decor, ambiance, and the overall aptitude of a restaurant’s staff. No matter how little you know about Thai food, on Yelp, your voice is heard. For the last few years, Brian Droitcour has been turning over an interesting question: why can’t it do the same for art? (Read more from Wired.)

Welcoming Art Lovers with Disabilities

On a recent Friday night, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York held its first public exhibition of original art made in its “Seeing through Drawing” classes. Participants—all blind or partly sighted—created works inspired by objects in the museum’s collection that were described to them by sighted instructors and that they were also allowed to touch. In another gallery, a tour in American Sign Language was followed by a reception for deaf visitors. (Read more from the New York Times.)

The Enduring Value of Enduring Questions

In an October 22 letter to Carole Watson, acting chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, questioned grants the agency has issued to consider questions like “What is the good life and how do I live it?” Sessions affirmed “the value of the humanities” but insisted that “care and discipline must be exercised by any government agency that decides to favor some projects over others.” (Read more from Commentary.)

Intro to Résumés for CV-Minded Academics

In academia, your curriculum vitae (CV) is the master list of all your professional accomplishments and a requirement when looking for jobs in academia. The modern academic CV is usually a multipage document that covers everything of note you have accomplished during your graduate education. Outside academia, the traditional format for job applications is the résumé, which is easy to forget when all the people around you are obsessed with growing their CVs. (Read more from Grad Hacker.)

From Welfare to the Tenure Track

Last summer, as her forty-fifth birthday approached, Melissa Bruninga-Matteau made a promise to “end part of her life.” She had earned a PhD in medieval history from the University of California, Irvine, back in 2011 and hoped to glide into a solid faculty position. Instead, the previous two years had been marked by disappointment, depression, and rejection. Though she had applied for more than one hundred teaching openings, nothing much had panned out. (Read more from Chronicle Vitae.)

Staying Relevant

If basic market forces are reshaping higher education, common knowledge dictates that incumbents will lose market share to newcomers. But based on discussions at a conference on sustainable scholarship hosted by Ithaka, which promotes innovative forms of teaching and scholarly communication, no one—from faculty members to librarians—intends to play the role of the incumbent. Disaggregation, unbundling, and public-private partnerships were recurring themes during a daylong brainstorming session on innovative forms of teaching and learning—themes that the almost two hundred attendees suggested could prevent their fields from becoming obsolete. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

Slave of the Internet, Unite!

Not long ago, I received, in a single week, three invitations to write an original piece for publication or give a prepared speech in exchange for no money. As with stinkbugs, it’s not any one instance of this request but their sheer number and relentlessness that make them so tiresome. It also makes composing a polite response a heroic exercise in restraint. People who would consider it a bizarre breach of conduct to expect anyone to give them a haircut or a can of soda at no cost will ask you, with a straight face and a clear conscience, whether you wouldn’t be willing to write an essay or draw an illustration for them for nothing. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Filed under: CAA News

Institutional News

posted by CAA — Oct 17, 2013

Read about the latest news from institutional members.

Institutional News is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.

October 2013

The Archives of American Art, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution based in New York and Washington, DC, has received a $37,500 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support its first symposium on digital humanities and American art, scheduled for November 2013.

The Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has received a $125,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support an exhibition called Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine, which will open in November 2013.

The Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has received a $100,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support the development and implementation of “American Sources: Using Visual Art in the Humanities Curriculum,” a yearlong professional-development program that will explore the use of American artworks as primary documents and guide participants in the development of related curriculum for middle and high school students in the region.

Artspace, a nonprofit art organization in New Haven, Connecticut, has received a 2013 grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

The Association of Research Institutes in Art History, an organization based in Miami Beach, Florida, has accepted a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support three research fellowships in American art.

The Bard Graduate Center in New York has recieved a 2013 grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The school will use the funds for the exhibition Artek: Design, Domesticity, and the Public Sphere.

The Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, Quebec, has received a 2013 grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The institution will use the funds for a publication, Chandigarh and Casablanca: Modern Urbanism, New Geographies.

Columbia College Chicago in Illinois has applied a $40,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art toward a professional-development program for teachers in twenty-five public schools in Chicago for the 2012–13 academic year.

DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, has received a $12,560 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support an exhibition called For and against Modernity: The Armory Show + 100, which took place at the DePaul Art Museum earlier this year.

Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois, has spent a $18,870 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art on a public symposium that explored the role of humor in American art of the 1960s through the 1980s. The event took place on April 27, 2013, in partnership with the DePaul Art Museum.

The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California, has acquired the archive of the photographer Lewis Baltz, which includes his negatives, prints and proofs, ephemera, photographs, and publications.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York has accepted a $200,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support its forthcoming exhibition, Robert Motherwell: The Early Collages.

The Herron Art Library at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis has become the only American library housing a permanent art collection honoring the literary history of Iraq. The library signed an agreement with an international coalition of artists and writers to preserve and showcase a collection of more than three hundred printed materials remembering the destruction of al-Mutanabbi Street, the centuries-old literary center of Baghdad.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and the National Museum of Korea in Seoul have collaborated on an exhibition project called America: Painting a Nation, which received $849,968 in funds from the Terra Foundation of American Art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has accepted a $300,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support American West in Bronze, 1850–1925, an exhibition that will open in December 2013 and later travel to Denver, Colorado, and to China.

Montana State University in Bozeman has accepted a $30,140 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support an international scholarly conference, “Dialect[ic]s of Diplomacy: American and French Political Portraits during the Revolutionary and Federal Areas, circa 1776–1815.” The event will take place at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, in September 2014.

The Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has created a new website. The school invites students, faculty, alumni, and others to visit the site and return often for updates.

New York University has received a $20,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support an international graduate-student symposium, “Mapping the Landscape: Geography, Power, and the Imagination in the Art of the Americas,” which was held March 7–8, 2013.

Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago has accepted a $40,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art on behalf of the Chicago Teachers’ Center. The funds support the second year of a three-year initiative for public-school teachers called “Studio Thinking and American Art.”

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia has established a new endowment for the purchase of contemporary works of art. The school’s goal is to greatly increase an aspect of the acquisitions program that has long been critical to building the renowned collection of the academy’s museum.

San Francisco State University in California has received a $95,165 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support an exhibition in its Fine Arts Gallery called The Moment for Ink, which took place earlier in 2013.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has applied a 2013 grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for a public lecture “Toyo Ito: Architecture after 3.11,” taking place on October 15, 2013.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, has acquired one hundred photographs from the Irving Penn Foundation. The gift includes rare street photographs from the late 1930s and 1940s, many of which are unpublished; images of postwar Europe; iconic portraits of figures such as Agnes de Mille, Langston Hughes, and Truman Capote; color photographs made for magazine editorials and commercial advertising; self-portraits; and some of Penn’s most recognizable fashion and still-life photographs. An exhibition is planned for 2015.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, both in Washington, DC, have received a $25,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support travel by a to-be-appointed international member of the American Art editorial board to strengthen the journal’s global ties and networks.

Tate, a family of four museums in England, has accepted a $435,546 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support the appointment of a three-year Terra Research Fellow in American Art (2014–17) as part of the “American Art Initiative.”

The Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago, Illinois, has awarded itself a $733,210 grant to support a three-year initiative, “American Art at the Core of Learning,” which helps cultural organizations in Chicago to address the new Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts.

The Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago, Illinois, has applied a $117,000 grant toward supporting its international publication initiative, “Perspectives in American Art,” which explores fundamental ideas shaping American art and culture.

The Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago, Illinois, has earmarked a $79,000 grant to support the 2014 Terra Research Travel Grants, which have been awarded annually since 2003.

The Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago, Illinois, has awarded itself a $150,000 grant to support a scholarly peer-reviewed anthology to accompany the single-painting exhibition, Samuel F. B. Morse’s “Gallery of the Louvre” and the Art of Invention, during its upcoming tour of American museums.

The Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago, Illinois, has used a $39,000 grant to support planning for programming focused on Chicago’s art and design legacy. The funds support an advisory committee to assess program and content ideas for the initiative and to develop an initiative plan, including various kinds of public and K–12 programs, archival projects, publications, and more.

The University of Glasgow in Scotland has won a $100,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support an inventory of historical American art in public collections in the United Kingdom.

The University of Kentucky in Lexington has taken a $61,443 grant from the Terra Foundaiton for American Art to support an academic conference called “American Art in Exhibition: Presentations of American Art at Home and Abroad from the Nineteenth Century to the Present,” that will take place November 15–16, 2013, at Tsinghua University in China.

The University of Nottingham in Nottingham, England, has used a $17,450 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support a two-day symposium, “Art across the Black Diaspora: Visualizing Slavery in America,” which took place in May 2013 at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.

The University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, has received a 2013 grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to help produce an exhibition called The Uncertainty of Enclosure: Leo Saul Berk and Bruce Goff, to be held in summer 2014.

The Wolfsonian at Florida International University in Miami Beach, Florida, has received a 2013 grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The museum will use the funds to publish a special issue of the Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts on Turkey.

Recent Deaths in the Arts

posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 10, 2013

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, historians, curators, educators, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. Notable deaths this summer and fall include the artists Stephen Antonakos and Mark Gottsegen and the Renaissance art historian Mark Zucker.

  • Stephen Antonakos, an artist known for abstract sculpture that incorporates neon lighting, died on August 17, 2013, at age 86
  • Jack Beal, an American painter of nudes, still lifes, and murals whose representational aesthetic ushered in the New Realism of the 1960s and 1970s, died on August 29, 2013, at the age of 82
  • John Bellany, a Scottish figurative painter whose retrospective was held last year at the Scottish National Gallery, passed away on August 28, 2013. He was 71
  • Marion Bloch, an art collector and philanthropist, died on September 24, 2013, at age 83. The wife of the founder of H&R Block, she was a longtime supporter of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City
  • Michael K. Brown, a longtime curator of the Bayou Bend Collection, part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, passed away on September 8, 2013. He was 60 years old
  • Red Burns, an arts professor and chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, died on August 23, 2013. Known as the “godmother of Silicon Alley,” she was 88 years old
  • Anne Christopherson, an English painter renowned for her depictions of the Thames River, died on August 15, 2013. She was 91
  • Alvin Eisenman, the founding director of Yale University’s graduate program in graphic design, died on September 3, 2013. He was 92
  • Cecil Fergerson, a former curator for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a community activist, died on September 18, 2013, at age 82. Fergeson started working for the museum in 1948 as a janitor and became a preparator before joining the curatorial staff
  • Juan Garcia de Oteyza, an editor, publisher, and diplomat who served as director of Aperture Foundation from 2008 to 2010, died on August 26, 2013. He was 51
  • Mark Gottsegen, a painter and the founder of Art Materials Information and Education Network (AMIEN), passed away on September 24, 2013. He had been a professor at the University of North Carolina in Greenboro and was the author of The Painter’s Handbook
  • Alfred Rozelaar Green, a painter who spent the 1930s in Paris and who later founded the Anglo-French Art Centre in London, has died. He was 95 years old
  • Ellen Lanyon, a painter and printmaker based in New York whose work has been described as a “unique blend of realism and the surreal,” died on October 7, 2013. She was 86
  • Frank Martinez, an artist and muralist based in Los Angeles, died on August 17, 2013. He was 89
  • Michael McManus, former chief curator of the Laguna Art Museum in California, died on August 10, 2013, at age 60. He had taught at California State University, Fullerton, and the Laguna College of Art and Design
  • Mario Montez, a drag performer and film actor who was part of Andy Warhol’s entourage of superstars, died on September 26, 2013. He was 78
  • Steve Ross, a literary scholar and the director of the Office of Challenge Grants at the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1995 to 2013, died on August 21, 2013. He was 70
  • Sadegh Tirafkan, an Iranian artist who blended photography and other artistic media in innovative ways, passed away on May 9, 2013. He was 47
  • Arturo Vega, a Mexican artist who designed graphics for the Ramones, including the band’s famous circular logo, died on June 7, 2013. He was 65 years old
  • Gillian Wakely, associate director of education for the University of Pennsylvania Museum, died on August 14, 2013, age 67. She had worked for her institution for forty years
  • Kathleen Watkins, an English curator and secretary of the Penwith Society of Arts in St. Ives, Cornwall, for forty-six years, died on September 5, 2013. She was 80 years old
  • George Weissbort, a traditional painter of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes who was based in London for decades, died on July 9, 2013. He was age 85
  • John Wright, a British artist of many talents—he was a painter, professor, writer, designer, and filmmaker—died on July 9, 2013. He was 82 years old
  • Mark Zucker, a Renaissance art historian and a professor in the College of Art and Design at Louisiana State University for thirty-two years, died on August 3, 2013. He was 69

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.

Filed under: Obituaries, People in the News

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.

October 2013

Chiharu Shiota, performance of IN SILENCE at Centre PasquArt, Biel/Bienne, 2008, black wool, burnt grand piano, and burnt chairs (artwork © Chiharu Shiota; photograph by Sunhi Mang and provided by VG Bild Kunst)

Chiharu Shiota: Trace of Memory
Mattress Factory
505 Jacksonia Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15212
September 12, 2013–May 31, 2014

The Japanese-born, Berlin-based, yet largely nomadic installation artist Chiharu Shiota started using wool to draw in space when she studied painting in 1992. Ever since she has become worldwide known for her haunting environments of dense, convoluted networks of black or red wool that often shroud found objects of personal or social significance, such as shoes, hospital beds, charred chairs, monumental or miniature dresses, et cetera. Her work evokes the psychic interlacing of loss and memory, dream and reality, past and present, the complexity and fragility of human relationships, and the body itself, and Shiota’s networks universalize the personal with an antimonumental scale, despite the often large size of her installations. Exploring remembrance, a central theme of her poetics, for the Mattress Factory’s Trace of Memory, the artist responds site specifically to the storied past of a nineteenth-century row house—the building at 516 Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh—filling eight rooms with her work.

Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s “Selves”
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery
Columbia University, 826 Schermerhorn Hall, MC5517, 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027
September 4–December 7, 2013

Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s “Selves” is a homecoming survey of the fascinating variety of “selves” that this Southern Californian artist invented and embodied between 1972 and 1991. These persons make sharp commentaries on history, identity, and their own fictions, often from a feminist perspective, that resonate with contemporary interrogations of identity and archival slippage. Focusing on themselves as they unfold in videos, photographic series, drawings, and installations, the exhibition offers a unique opportunity not only to follow the tragic and humorous ways in which Antin’s fictional lives develop in time and across media and unveil the complexities of history, identity, and gender under a postmodernist light, but also to study the radical ways in which the artist intervened in the all-male club of Conceptual art and dilated its rigidity with combinations of performance, narrative, fantasy, and biography.

The exhibition features Antin’s best-known alter ego, the African American ballerina Eleanora Antinova from Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, who dreamed to play the classic roles of Giselle and Sylphide but was always relegated to more “exotic” types. Antinova helped Antin to interweave race into the feminist critique that underpins her impersonation of ballerinas. Multiple Occupancy also includes Antin’s Vietnam-era King of Solana Beach, a seventeenth-century-looking monarch who struggles to empower his disenfranchised subjects in their fight against the greed of wealthy landowners; a self-taught ballerina who has mastered poses but cannot dance in motion; the Nurse Eleanor Nightingale, who cares for soldiers at the front line of the Crimean War; and Little Nurse Eleanor, whose attempts to heal her patients fail due to their lust for her a century later. The exhibition ends with Yevgeny Antinov, an exiled Russian film director from the 1920s who disseminates his radical leftist politics through a silent film, The Man without a Word, that depicts Polish shtetl life. The work is an homage to Antin’s mother, who was an actress in Poland’s Yiddish theater.

n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal

Call for Contributions: Religion
n.paradoxa
November 1, 2013

The editorial board of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, published by KT press, seeks contributions on the topic of religion for volume 33, to be published in January 2014.
Women artists’ works that have provided a critical view of religious life, belief, doctrine, and representation will be the focus of this volume. How have women artists addressed, challenged, or critiqued representations of themselves in the major and minor religions around the world?

Religions are not only “opium for the masses”; they have also provided major rituals that mediate experiences of birth, marriage, and death in society. Explorations of female power, women goddesses, female spirituality, and sexuality have all been mediated by reconsidering or critiquing many aspects of religious ritual, belief systems, and representations of the role of women (such as Madonna/whore and veiled/unveiled). Women experience different religions and cults as both liberating and oppressive in their moral codes for how they should dress, behave, operate as sexual beings, have families, and live a “good” life.

Artworks that offer critical perspectives on the either liberating or oppressive views of religion for women will be considered here, as well as works that address multifaith (and tolerant) conceptions or readings analyzing the many different religions of the world today. In some parts of the world, artworks and exhibitions are still censored for their idolatry, offense to religious belief, or desecration of religious symbols. Case studies in which women artists have been central to different forms of censorship on religious grounds are welcome. Deadline for copy: November 1, 2013.

Şükran Moral, La Artista, 1994, silver print, 200 x 180 cm (artwork © Şükran Moral)

Despair and Metanoia
Galeri Zilberman
İstiklal Cad. Mısır, Apt. 163, K.3 D.10, Beyoğlu, Istanbul
September 12–October 26, 2013

Despair and Metanoia pairs the work of two pioneering performance artists, the Austrian VALIE EXPORT and the Turkish Şükran Moral, underlining the confluences between both artists’ artistic tropes, themes, gender politics, and provocation strategies. One of the two centerpieces that give the exhibition its title, Moral’s Despair, which features images of a boat of illegal immigrants in the middle of the sea. Another Moral work, Crucified, is a provocative response to the social exclusion and ridicule that her most controversial feminist performances (such as Hammam and Bordello) have triggered—though these contentious works best exemplify her subversive strategies and gender politics. The second part of the exhibition’s title reflects EXPORT’s centerpiece, an installation of twenty-nine videos of performances from the 1970s to today. While this video complements other photographs that showcase the artist’s use of the female body for various ends and her questioning of the construction of gender, it also offers an opportunity for audiences to reevaluate her moving-image work and contemplate its role in her oeuvre.

She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115
August 27, 2013–January 12, 2014

The first North American museum survey of female photographers from the Arab world, She Who Tells a Story brings together more than one hundred images and two videos from twelve leading Iranian and Arab photographers, celebrating the fact that some of the most groundbreaking work in photography from Iran and the Arab world is produced by women. Ranging from fine art to photojournalism, the works “tell stories” about their makers and their contexts, shattering stereotypes about the Orient and about Arab women and casting contemporary life in these countries—especially that of women—under a fresh and challenging light. The exhibition adeptly balances the individual artists, the cultural and sociopolitical specificities of their contexts, and the photographic genres under scrutiny through such themes as “Deconstructing Orientalism,” “Constructing Identities,” New Documentary.” The artists in the show are: Jananne Al-Ani, Boushra Almutawakel, Gohar Dashti, Rana El Nemr, Lalla Essaydi, Shadi Ghadirian, Tanya Habjouqa, Rula Halawani, Nermine Hammam, Rania Matar, Shirin Neshat, and Newsha Tavakolian.

Nalini Malani, installation view of In Search of Vanished Blood, 2012, 6-channel video and shadow play with 5 rotating reverse painted Mylar cylinders, with sound, 11 mins., dimensions variable (artwork © Nalini Malani)

Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood
Galerie Lelong
528 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
September 6–October 26, 2013

A leading video artist in India, Nalini Malani debuts in New York with a projection work called In Search of Vanished Blood that distinguished her participation in last year’s Documenta. Video projections filter across five suspended, rotating Mylar cylinders featuring reverse painted imagery of Hindu and Western icons. The effect creates an immersive shadow play that is complicated by the different speeds of the moving images and further enhanced by sound. Taking its title from the 1965 Urdu poem “Lahu Ka Surag,” In Search of Vanished Blood is also inspired by the 1984 novel Cassandra by Christa Wolf and the 1910 book The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke. The artist, however, draws from history and her own experience as a refugee of the Partition of India, colonialism, and decolonization as she does from literary culture. These investigations form a fleeting narrative that synthesizes the themes that have always preoccupied her—violence, the feminine, and national identity—from an idiosyncratically “internationalist” perspective. The exhibition also includes paintings related to the installation yet hung in a separate room.

The Beginning Is Always Today: Contemporary Feminist Art in Scandinavia
SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum
Skippergata 24 B, Kristiansand, Norway 4666
September 21, 2013–January 2004

Titled with a quote from the eighteenth-century British writer Mary Wollstonecraft and culminating SKMU’s centennial celebration of women’s suffrage in Norway, The Beginning Is Always Today is the first major museum survey of feminist art to be held in Scandinavia in twenty years. The exhibition brings together the work of forty artists from a region where, in spite of advances in sexual liberation and gender equality, feminism is often considered outdated and the feminist art scene remains little known. It also explores both the far-reaching social scope of contemporary feminism in the arts and the legacy of early feminist art’s strategies, while questioning the success of past battles for gender equality and equal rights. The exhibition is accompanied by a scholarly catalogue that promises to shed light on the recent developments of feminist art in Scandinavia, an illuminating sequel to the groundbreaking publication on Swedish art feminism, Konstfeminism (2005), and a recent exhibition on Norwegian art feminism held earlier this year, organized by artists included in this show.

The Beginning Is Always Today features the following artists: Lotta Antonsson, Elisabet Apelmo, Pia Arke, Bob Smith, Catti Brandelius, Peter Brandt, Nanna Debois Buhl, Kajsa Dahlberg, Ewa Einhorn, Åsa Elzén, Unn Fahlstrøm, Roxy Farhat, Fine Art Union, FRANK, Unni Gjertsen, Trine Mee Sook Gleerup, Jenny Grönvall, Annika von Hausswolff, High Heel Sisters, Leif Holmstrand, Maryam Jafri, Dorte Jelstrup, Jesper Just, Jane Jin Kaisen, Line Skywalker Karlström, Kvinder på Værtshus, Ane Lan (alias Eivind Reierstad), Lotte Konow Lund, Annika Lundgren, Jannicke Låker, Malmö Fria Kvinnouniversitet (MFK), Eline Mugaas, Ellen Nyman, Radikal pedagogik, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, Annica Karlsson Rixon, Joanna Rytel, Katya Sander, Mari Slaattelid, Lisa Strömbeck, Vibeke Tandberg, Lisa Vipola, and YES! Association/Föreningen JA!

Filed under: CWA Picks, Uncategorized — Tags:

The results of the September 4th survey to members identified the most critical concerns in the visual arts field as:  1) the availability of full-time positions in academia and professional careers outside of academia; 2) access to information on professional opportunities and grants; 3) copyright, image licensing costs and fair use; and 4) the need for networking (survey results: www.collegeart.org/pdf/2013CAAMembershipSurvey.pdf). These and other critical interests of the members will assist in shaping the future of CAA as it develops the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan.

The CAA Board of Directors will hold a planning retreat on October 26th to review the survey results along with information gathered from interviews with 20 leaders in related fields, discussions with artists and art historians held at the Clark Research Institute September 19 – 24, and ideas from the CAA standing committees. The Task Force on the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan (www.collegeart.org/about/plan) will prepare a draft of the plan before the February 2014 Annual Conference.

All members are invited to attend the Open Discussion on the Future of CAA at the Annual Members Business Meeting at the Annual Conference in Chicago on Friday, February 14th, 5:30 PM.

Some 670 members expressed interest in one or more of CAA’s 16 different committees, juries, or editorial boards.  If you would like to become more involved with CAA and wish to pursue your interest, please contact Vanessa Jalet (vjalet@collegeart.org); information about the various committees is also available on the CAA website (www.collegeart.org/committees/).

And, congratulations to Monta May and Mimi Whalen whose names were selected at random for a one-year, complimentary, individual membership with CAA!

Thank you for your time and ideas.

BREAKING: Govt Shuts Down the Arts

posted by CAA — Oct 01, 2013

Americans for the Arts sent the following email on October 1, 2013.

BREAKING: Govt Shuts Down the Arts

October is National Arts and Humanities Month and how does the federal government celebrate? By closing the doors of federally funded museums, parks, zoos and delaying the distribution of NEA grants that enrich our communities.

Today is only a snapshot of what the 49% cut to the NEA could mean for our communities. As arts advocates, we cannot stand by and let this happen! In response, the Arts Action Fund is extending our petition to deliver even more names to Congress. This means we need YOU to take a stand and tell Congress that these drastic cuts are unacceptable.

Will you add your name to our petition?

You have until October 31st to sign this petition and tell your friends to sign as well. The Arts Action Fund has a goal of adding 10,000 new signers by the end of this month to keep the pressure mounting on Congress to not only oppose the 49% cut, but make sure it gets the funding it deserves for 2014.

Please consider adding your name now. We need you!

Nina Ozlu Tunceli
Executive Director

In Less Than 24 Hours…

posted by CAA — Sep 10, 2013

Americans for the Arts sent the following email on September 10, 2013.

In Less Than 24 Hours…

Over 17,000 advocates signed our online petition for Congress to oppose the 49% cut to the NEA!

Now that Congress has returned from recess to resume debates over these budget cuts, we need to increase our number of petition signers to have an even bigger impact before the proposed cuts hit the House and Senate floors.

Will you lend your voice to the 15,000 who have already signed?

Today also kicks-off National Arts in Education Week. Did you know that over 18 million kids in every single state benefitted from the ripple effect of the NEA’s investment last year alone? These grants create a lasting impact by inspiring kids across the country, regardless of socio-economic status, to think of music and art as relevant to their own lives.

Please sign the petition and ensure all kids have access to arts education!

Nina Ozlu Tunceli
Executive Director

P.S. Have you had a chance to view the #BeTheARTbeat Crowd-Sourced video? See why others are inspired to be a part of the Arts Action Fund.

Affiliated Society News for September 2013

posted by CAA — Sep 09, 2013

American Council for Southern Asian Art

The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) will hold its sixteenth biennial meeting at the University of California, Los Angeles, from November 7 to 10, 2013. The conference program and registration information can be found on the ACSAA website or as a PDF.

American Institute for Conservation

The forty-second meeting of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) will take place May 28–31, 2014, in San Francisco, California. The event, whose theme is “Conscientious Conservation: Sustainable Choices in Collection Care,” will showcase current practice, projects, tools, and ideas in sustainable preventive conservation and collection care. Conservation and collection-care professionals routinely incorporate preventive measures into the guardianship of cultural heritage. Coupled with the awareness that this work takes place within the larger context of an increasingly interconnected and vulnerable global society, economy, and environment, conservators have become more dedicated to sustainability. The new AIC Collection Care Network and the AIC Sustainability Committee are combining forces to develop a program for 2014 that explores how these two concepts—preventative measures and sustainability—are changing the way conservation is practiced.

Association of Art Editors

The newly revised Association of Art Editors Style Guide is now available. The 2013 revision of the online-only style guide, first published by the Association of Art Editors (AAE) in 2006, was created with a dual aim: to bring the document into alignment with sixteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style; and to make it reflect changes in manuscript preparation, editing, and publishing that have occurred since 2006—mainly due to evolving technologies. There’s a new Electronic Media and Devices section, and the sections for Photographs and Artwork and for Manuscript Preparation contain much fresh material. The former Reference Books section has been renamed Reference Sources, because of its mix of print and online resources. Technology-related terms have been added to the Words and Terms list and woven into various other sections. The Bibliography section has been reorganized to display more clearly the two systems of citation (notes and bibliography, author-date), while the Notes section has been substantially updated. Other sections underwent less extensive but equally necessary updates. In tandem with the revision, an extensive chart, Handy Guide to Metric Conversions with Fractions, has been added to the AAE website (see Helpful Links).

Association of Art Historians

The Association of Art Historians (AAH) has announced that Christine Riding is the organization’s new chair-elect. She will start her three-year term in April 2014, when AAH will be celebrating its fortieth anniversary. Riding is senior curator and head of art at the Royal Museums Greenwich. She was previously curator of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art at Tate Britain and has held curatorial positions at the Palace of Westminster, the Museum of London, and the Wallace Collection, as well as being the former deputy editor of the association’s journal, Art History. AAH looks forward to working with Riding on its development as the United Kingdom–based organization responsible for promoting the professional practice and public understanding of art history.

Historians of British Art

The Historians of British Art (HBA) offers a travel grant to a graduate student who will be presenting a paper on British art or visual culture at an academic conference in 2014. The award of $750 is intended to offset travel costs. Applicants must be current members of HBA. To apply, send a letter of request, a copy of the letter of acceptance from the organizer of the conference session, an abstract of the paper to be presented, a budget of estimated expenses (noting what items may be covered by other resources), and a CV to Renate Dohmen, HBA Prize Committee Chair. Deadline: September 15, 2013.

Historians of Islamic Art Association

The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) will hold a majlis (meeting) with four presentations on October 10 in conjunction with the 2013 conference of the Middle East Studies Association in New Orleans, Louisiana. HIAA is also pleased to announce that its fourth biennial symposium will take place October 16–18, 2014, at the new Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Ontario. The call for papers and further symposium information are available on the HIAA website. The deadline for proposals is October 18, 2013.

International Association of Word and Image Studies

The Max Nänny Prize for the Best Article in Word and Image Studies (€500) is awarded every three years on the occasion of the triennial conference of the International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS/AIERTI). IAWIS membership is not required. Articles submitted must have been already published. The date of publication should not be earlier than three years before the submission deadline. Articles should be sent in triplicate to IAWIS/AIERTI’s secretary: Catriona MacLeod, Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania, 745 Williams Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305. The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2013.

International Sculpture Center

The International Sculpture Center (ISC) is accepting nominations for the 2014 Outstanding Educator Award, which recognizes individual artist-educators who have excelled at teaching sculpture in institutions of higher learning. Candidates for this award are masters of sculptural processes and techniques who have devoted their careers to the education of the next generation and to the advancement of the field of sculpture as a whole. Nominations for the Outstanding Educator Award will be accepted through October 25, 2013. Anyone can nominate a qualified educator: submissions are not limited to participants in the United States; international submissions are welcomed and encouraged. Award recipients receive benefits such as a featured article in Sculpture magazine, a lifetime ISC professional-level membership, and an award ceremony to be held at their academic institution. Educational institutions of awardees also receive benefits, including recognition in Sculpture and a one-year ISC university-level membership.

Italian Art Society

The Italian Art Society (IAS) seeks proposals for papers for the annual IAS-Kress Lecture Series in Italy, which will take place in Pisa on May 29 or June 16, 2014 (deadline: January 4, 2014). The distinguished scholar selected to present will speak on a topic related to the art of any period from Pisa or Tuscany and will receive an honorarium and supplementary lecture allowance. IAS is also pleased to provide travel grants to graduate students and recent PhD recipients presenting conference papers about the art and architecture of Italy (deadline: November 1, 2013). The second annual IAS research and publication grant will be offered to a scholar of Italian art seeking support for costs related to research and publication (deadline: November 1, 2013). It is more worthwhile than ever to join IAS. For details on the application requirements for the lecture series and for the travel and publication grants, please visit the IAS website. Members can contribute news items and articles for the IAS newsletter: please contact newsletter@italianartsociety.org. IAS has a new Italian art blog on Tumblr created by the IAS webmaster, Anne Leader. To stay current, visit the website, like IAS on Facebook, and follow IAS on Twitter.

New Media Caucus

Media-N, the journal of the New Media Caucus (NMC), has published its summer issue, “CAA Conference Edition 2013,” an annual publication showcasing NMC-sponsored conference proceedings. At CAA in New York, NMS held two panels and two events. The new edition includes essays by panel members Jenny Vogel, David Stout, David Schwartz, Nadar Assor, Clark Shaffer Stoecklet, Micha Maya Cárdenas, Zach Blas, Pinar Yoldas, Jacob Gaboury, and Alison Reed. It also includes artist statements from event participants Margaret Dolinsky, Belinda Haikes, Arthur Liou, James Morgan, Ed Osborn, Linda Post, Elia Vargas, Valentina Vella, Doo-Sung Yoo, Meredith Drum, Meredith Hoy, Paul Johson, Carolyn Kane, Leslie Raymond, Nicolas Ruley, and Ellen Wetmore.

Media-N publishes thematic editions in the fall and spring of each year in addition to the conference edition. As part of an ongoing commitment to examining new-media works and their present theoretical frameworks; the spring 2013 issue dealt with “Tracing/New/Media/Feminisms.” This provocative edition mapped the topic by way of twelve international contributors: Faith Wilding; Morehshin Allahyari and Jennifer Way; Annina Rüst; Kim Sawchuk (Studio XX) and Stéphanie Lagueux (Matricules) in conversation with Media-N; Meighan Ellis; Colleen Keough; Eleanor Dare; and Laura Gemini and Federica Timeto in conversation with Lynn Hershman Leeson.

National Art Education Association

The National Art Education Association (NAEA) is now publishing its academic journal, Studies in Art Education, in both print and digital format. The first digital issue (vol. 54, no. 4), posted on the organization’s website for free access, is a special issue on underserved populations. The forthcoming September issue of Studies in Art Education will focus on street art and include three visual essays by graffiti artists.

NAEA has just published a new research book, Teaching and Learning Emergent Research Methodologies in Art Education, edited by Candace Jesse Stout. The authors explore innovative ways to conceptualize what research in art, education, and human experience might be, what it might mean, and what it might do.

Public Art Dialogue

The spring 2013 issue of Public Art Dialogue, published by Taylor and Francis, has been edited by Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie. This special issue, called “Memorials 2: The Culture of Remembrance,” features seven articles: “L’Oiseau lunaire: Joan Miró’s to 45 rue Blomet” by Scott D. Juall; “Careless Talk Costs Lives: Beth Derbyshire’s Public Art in the London Underground” by Katherine Ingrey; “Competing for Memory: Argentina’s Parque de la memoria” by Marisa M. Lerer; “Commemorating the Oklahoma City Bombing: Reframing Tragedy as Triumph” by Harriet F. Senie; “Ground Floor Memorial” by Judith Shea; “Response: Louise Bourgeois’ The Touch of Jane Addams” by Mary Jane Jacob; and “Border Memorial: Frontera de los muertos” by John Craig Freeman. The journal also includes two book reviews: one by Cameron Cartiere of This One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context by Grant Kester; and a second by Janet Zweig of Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art, edited by Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty. Public Art Dialogue is a membership benefit of the organization.

Society for Photographic Education

The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) offers student scholarships to offset the cost of attending the next national conference, to be held March 6–9, 2014, in Baltimore, Maryland. Each award includes a $500 travel stipend, a conference fee waiver, and a one-year SPE membership. Deadline: November 1, 2013.

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

The Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has launched a new website featuring information about the organization, a news blog, member research, and a resources page with over one hundred listings and links to museums, online resources, and more. Prospective members may now join SHERA online through a secure PayPal system. Please contact SHERA’s officers to provide comments and suggestions about the website and to send contributions to the news blog and the resources page. The website was designed and built by Adam Snetman, founder of Starting Now, with input from SHERA’s officers. Special thanks are due to Kathleen Duff and Anna Sokolina for their outstanding contributions to the resources page. SHERA will continue to use its listserv for questions and discussion. You may subscribe to the listserv at http://lists.oakland.edu/mailman/listinfo/shera. Sending an email to shera@lists.oakland.edu will post your message to all list subscribers.

SHERA welcomes two new institutional members: the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, which houses over 750 works of Russian art, many of them from the collection of Thomas P. Whitney; and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in New York, one of the world’s leading academic institutions devoted to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies.

Southeastern College Art Conference

The Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) will hold its sixty-ninth annual meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, October 30–November 2, 2013, at the Sheraton Greensboro at Four Seasons and Koury Convention Center. The University of North Carolina, Greensboro, will host; Lawrence Jenkens is the conference director. The internationally renowned artist and North Carolina resident Mel Chin has agreed to deliver the conference’s keynote address. Art in Odd Places (AiOP), which presents visual and performance art in unexpected places, will host AiOP Greensboro 2013 during the conference. Approximately 140 sessions and panels and the SECAC 2013 Juried Exhibition will be conference highlights.

SECAC has announced the results of its board election. Elected to a first term: Laura Amrhein, University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Reelected to a second term: Amy Broderick, Florida International University; Vida Hull, East Tennessee State University; Benjamin Harvey, Mississippi State University; Kurt Pitluga, Slippery Rock University (at-large); and Beth Mulvaney, Meredith College (secretary/treasurer). Richard Doubleday of Louisiana State University has been appointed to fill the Louisiana seat.

The latest issue of Southeastern College Art Conference Review (vol. 45, no. 2) is now available.

Women’s Caucus for Art

The International Caucus of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has created a global opportunity for women in a project called Half the Sky: Intersections in Social Practice Art. WCA is fortunate to offer an unprecedented art-based cultural exchange for American women artists and essayists to exhibit and share their work with women artists in China at the LuXun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, China. The academy is interested in providing an opportunity for Chinese women artists to interact with artists from the United States, to learn more about feminist art history in the West, and to share their art with American artists. The exhibition will run from April 15 to 30, 2014, at the academy’s gallery; essays will be included in the exhibition catalogue. The submission deadline for art is October 6, 2013, and October 13, 2013 for essays. Calls for submission are open to all self-identified women in the US. A limited number of delegates may be selected from those whose works are accepted into Half the Sky. For more details and to apply, go to http://wcainternationalcaucus.weebly.com/half-the-sky-2014shenyang-china.html.

Filed under: Affiliated Societies