CAA News Today
Krista Svalbonas and Greta Pratt
posted by CAA — Oct 21, 2019
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
CAA podcasts are on iTunes. Click here to subscribe.
This week, Krista Svalbonas and Greta Pratt discuss the challenges of teaching photography today.
Krista Svalbonas (b. 1977, USA) holds a BFA Photography (Syracuse University) and an MFA Interdisciplinary(SUNY New Paltz). Her work has been exhibited in a number of exhibitions including at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, Klompching Gallery, and ISE Cultural Foundation in New York. Her work has been collected in a number of private collections, as well as the Cesis Art Museum in Latvia. Recent awards include the Rhonda Wilson Award (2017), Puffin Foundation Grant (2016), and a Bemis Fellowship (2015), among others. In 2015 Svalbonas exhibited a solo installation at the Spartanburg Art Museum in South Carolina. She is an assistant professor of photography at St. Joseph’s University. She lives and works in Philadelphia.
Greta Pratt is a photographer concerned with issues of national identity and American myth. Pratt is the author of three monographs, The Wavers (Blue Sky Books, 2014), Using History (Steidl, 2005), and In Search of the Corn Queen (National Museum of American Art, 1994). Pratt’s work is included in major public and private collections and has been shown in Art in America, New York Times Sunday Magazine and The New Yorker, along with numerous books and catalogs nationally as well as internationally. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and is a recipient of a New Jersey State Arts Council Grant. Pratt is a professor of photography at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia where she heads the photography department.
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — Oct 18, 2019
Marian Bleeke reviews Mariah Proctor-Tiffany’s book Medieval Art in Motion: The Inventory and Gift Giving of Queen Clémence de Hongrie. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Amy Golahny writes about the exhibition De Wind Is Op! Climate, Culture and Innovation in Dutch Maritime Painting, currently on view at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Caroline Boyle-Turner discusses Gauguin’s Challenge: New Perspectives after Postmodernism, edited by Norma Broude. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
RAAMP Coffee Gathering: Designing a Collection Plan
posted by CAA — Oct 16, 2019
RAAMP (Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals) Coffee Gatherings are monthly virtual chats aimed at giving participants an opportunity to informally discuss a topic that relates to their work as academic art museum professionals.
Coffee Gathering: Designing a Collection Plan
On Tuesday, October 22 at 3 PM (EST), RAAMP’s online Coffee Gathering will focus on the process of creating collection plans in academic art museums. Through a series of questions, we will explore who should be involved in creating a collection plan, what information it should provide, and who it should serve. In discussing these topics, we hope to have related conversations about the challenges and opportunities creating a collection plan can provide staff and institutions.
This topic has emerged from the curious lack of publicly available collection plan examples. We hope to provide colleagues in academic art museums the opportunity to connect and share their experiences with writing collection plans.
Questions we will discuss include:
- What sections should be included?
- How does the collection plan integrate others, such as the university’s strategic plan, interpretive plan, and/or collections management policy?
- Who should be involved in creating the document?
- How might an academic art museum include their various communities in the process?
- With colleagues in your museums, how do you successfully have conversations on how to limit or focus a collection, especially at an encyclopedic museum?
- How might this document be helpful for donors?
- Do you share your collection plan publicly?
- How often do you revisit and revise your collection plan?
To RSVP to this online coffee gathering, please email Olivia Knauss at oknauss@collegeart.org
Submit to RAAMP
The Albertine Monroe-Brow study-storage gallery at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
RAAMP (Resources for Academic Art Museum Professionals) aims to strengthen the educational mission of academic art museums by providing a publicly accessible repository of resources, online forums, and relevant news and information. Visit RAAMP to discover the newest resources and contribute.
RAAMP is a project of CAA with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Sign Up for Childcare at the 2020 Annual Conference
posted by CAA — Oct 16, 2019
Please note: Due to low enrollment, onsite childcare for the 2020 Annual Conference has been canceled. To better meet members’ childcare needs, we are now offering Childcare Grants of up to $250 per family. Learn more and apply here.
For the second year in a row, we’re pleased to partner with Kiddie Corp to offer onsite childcare at the Annual Conference.
Care will be available for ages 6 months to 12 years of age, at a rate of $12 an hour, on Thursday, February 12 and Friday, February 13, 2020, from 8 AM – 8 PM.
Kiddie Corp programs feature arts and crafts, group games, music and movement, board games, story time, dramatic play, and many more engaging activities. Kiddie Corp is in its 33rd year of providing childcare services at conferences and trade shows and has a longstanding partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Conference attendees in need of childcare during the conference should pre-register for care. A minimum number of children must register for the service by December 3rd in order to allow CAA to offer onsite childcare in the Hilton Chicago. Please note: If we do not have enough enrollment, onsite childcare will be canceled.
Sign up deadline: December 3, 2019
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by CAA — Oct 16, 2019
Screenshot from Native Land, a mapping resource for teaching and acknowledgement at public events.
A Team of Curators Designs a System for Indigenous Artists to Thrive In
The term ‘decolonization’ has been used frequently to describe the exhibition yəhaw̓. But you won’t hear its curators call it a decolonial project. (Hyperallergic)
This App Can Tell You the Indigenous History of the Land You Live On
Part of a growing movement to honor native land, this app provides a resource for teaching and acknowledgement at public events. (Native Land)
International Review: Community-Led Engagement with Contemporary Craft, Design, and Architecture in Aotearoa
In the late 1990s, a group of craft practitioners spearheaded an initiative to develop the Objectspace gallery for Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand). (CAA News)
This Library Takes an Indigenous Approach to Categorizing Books
Xwi7xwa library in British Columbia is decolonizing the way information is sorted, cataloged, and shared. (Yes Magazine)
Decolonizing and Diversifying Are Two Different Things: A Workshop Case Study
A helpful explainer focused on decolonial pedagogical tools, adapted from a CAA 2019 workshop. (AHTR)
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CWA Picks for October 2019
posted by CAA — Oct 15, 2019
CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship to share with CAA members on a monthly basis. See the picks for October below.
JUDY CHICAGO: THE END: A MEDITATION ON DEATH AND EXTINCTION
National Museum of Women in the Arts
September 19, 2019 – January 20, 2020
Judy Chicago (a feminist artist renowned for the 1970s mixed media installation, The Dinner Party), takes on her own demise in this exhibition, which includes 40 works of painted porcelain and glass and two large bronze sculptures in her hallmark bold, graphic style. Other themes captured in this exhibit are the five stages of grief and species endangered by the action or inaction of humans. Chicago’s ever-present feminist content challenges the culture that prizes youth and beauty, often over the suffering of other creatures. The Price of Love (after Kollwitz) (kiln-fired glass paint on black glass, 2015) shows two figures in a tight kneeling embrace, hands covering their faces, with the script: “Grief / DESOLATION / Sorrow / LOSS” all painted with white on black, evoking the depth of sorrow. The imagery remarkably reflecting the style of Käthe Kollwitz’s prints depicting the sorrows of those left behind after World War I, notably in people tightly embracing. This tribute by Chicago to an artist who came before her exudes the layers of meanings in her work and refreshingly acknowledges the myth of the individual artist. Beyond content, her continued commitment to feminism is also echoed through her choice of media historically associated with women’s artistic endeavors, thus exposing the socially constructed ideals of high versus decorative art, as famously done in The Dinner Party.
CALL FOR WORK: UNDEFEATED: CANVAS(S)ING THE POLITICS OF VOTER SUPPRESSION
West Virginia University Libraries
Deadline: December 31, 2019
West Virginia University takes on a contentious topic on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment to the US Constitution (granting women the right to vote), and the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (enforcing voting rights for racial minorities) by looking at the efforts to suppress the votes of women and minorities since 1920. The WVU Libraries are calling for artwork using the template of a round button design (digital or otherwise; the Library has round canvases to disperse should artists need) around the major themes: Information/Disinformation, Access/Intimidation, Legislation/Legal Questions, Voter Fraud, and Advocacy/Action. Selected works will be on display at the University’s main campus Library from August 2020 through June 2021, and selected designs from the exhibit will be made into buttons/stickers. Located in Morgantown, artists have a great opportunity to make an impact in a local hub of arts activity in an otherwise underserved region of Appalachia.
MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ
THE CLEANER
Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia
September 21, 2019 – January 20, 2020
This is the first major European retrospective of Marina Abramović, a female artist renowned for her radical performances developed since 1970s. The location of the exhibition, the final on its tour (it was first shown in 2017 at the Moderna Museet (Stockholm, Sweden), and then traveled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk, Denmark), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo, Norway), Bundeskunsthalle (Bonn, Germany), Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi (Florence, Italy) and the Centre of Contemporary Art ‘Znaki Czasu’ (Toruń, Poland)) is significant, as Belgrade is Abramović’s place of birth. It is also where her artistic career began.
The artist has experimented with performance art and used her body as a method and a medium, relentlessly testing its boundaries and limits and challenging social and cultural stereotypes. The exhibition reviews Abramović’s over fifty-year long career, focusing on chronological phases in her artistic practice and emphasizing her solo career from 1991 until 2017. It is a rich display of over 120 works including a range of objects, photographs, paintings, drawings, video installations, films, and archival materials. There is also a live segment presented through re-performances by local and international performers.
MONA HATOUM
REMAINS TO BE SEEN
White Cube Bermondsey, London
September 12 – November 3, 2019
White Cube’s exhibition captures Mona Hatoum’s new and recent installation, sculpture and work on paper. Hatoum, a Palestinian multimedia and installation artist, throughout her career has created a rich aesthetic vocabulary that often references the grid and geometry as references to systems of social control. In the exhibition the artist reflects on surveillance systems and mobilizes issues concerned with mobility, conflict, and power. Once again working with the grid, Hatoum uses industrial materials such as steel, brick, concrete, rubble, and glass—but also human hair—and collapses them into light, a suspended cube. Her visual poetics tests spatial and spherical limits and explores possibilities for formal but perhaps also social and political collapse. The theme of the grid and its negotiation overarches the works presented at the exhibition, the new installation Remains to be Seen (2019), Orbital I (2018), A Pile of Bricks (2019), Hair Mesh (2013), or Cells (2014), among others. Hatoum tests different confinements while exploring the basic form of the globe and questions the different and multiple boundaries that are imposed on society.
Bahar Behbahani, All water has a perfect memory. (Octagon), 2019, hard-carved pinewood panels, Lapis Lazuli pigment, mosaic, tile, plastic barrel, lashing strap, sandbag, 12 x 12 x 3 feet, Wave Hill, Bronx, NY. On view at Wave Hill through December 1st. Photo: Stefan Hagan
Bahar Behbahani, All water has a perfect memory.
Wave Hill, Bronx, New York
September 15 – December 1, 2019
Bahar Behbahani’s (b. 1973, Tehran, Iran) site-specific installation titled All water has a perfect memory. [the period is intentional] is settled somewhat precariously along the eight-acre wooded expanse at Wave Hill, the Bronx public garden and cultural center known for supporting dynamic contemporary art projects and exhibitions. The installation’s primary feature is the large presence of a land-bound raft constructed in the shape of an octagon, ornamented with inlaid mosaic and tile, and supported on plastic barrels. Behbahani’s structure fosters multiple discussions about the garden’s surrounding woodlands and ecosystems and engages in prescient ecological debates. At the same time, the artist’s centerpiece addresses the historical flux of migration and the restriction of geographical borders. The title aptly recalls a poetic line from writer Toni Morrison’s essay, “The Site of Memory”: “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” In her research-based practice, Behbahani heavily layers and builds upon her cultural and aesthetic references, and water plays a central biographical and performative role in her videos and paintings. Likewise, water functions as a primary visual and spiritual element in the Persian Gardens of Iran, the majestic walled paradises and civilian sanctuaries dating back to the sixth-century BC. Water was a foremost compositional cornerstone of these historic gardens that were organized on a fourfold plan around central pools or fountains from which flowed four channels. At Wave Hill, the manifestation of the octagonal pool, raft or “fountain,” accessorized with botanical panel designs, forges further connections to eight of the world’s contested rivers: the Euphrates, Ganges, Hudson, Karun, Mississippi, Rio Grande, and Wouri. Moreover, the octagon appears as both a sheltering and perilous object. As a stationary structure, it conjures the urgent political narratives on mobility and circulation that underline the fraught experiences of migrants and refugees. In the accompanying pamphlet, the artist explained these multifold references, stating that “the project made her think about the ‘complexity’ of building a ‘worthy raft,’ one that would be able to ‘move people, food, belongings as well as culture and memories to safety…” The project also questions broader horticultural concerns about what determines “native” flora and species. Additional technological components activate river sounds, a meditative element arranged by musician Maciek Schejbal. In the near future, the octagon will hopefully find a way to reach water, holding with it a bounty of new and old memories.
Marking Indigenous Peoples’ Day with Art Journal
posted by CAA — Oct 14, 2019
In celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day we have brought out from behind the paywall two issues of Art Journal in their entirety: our Summer 2017 issue on Indigenous Futures, (featuring Postcommodity’s Repellent Fence on the cover) and our Fall 1992 issue on Recent Native American Art. Articles from each will be open access until the end of October.
Shana Kaplow and Kenneth Steinbach
posted by CAA — Oct 14, 2019
The weekly CAA Conversations Podcast continues the vibrant discussions initiated at our Annual Conference. Listen in each week as educators explore arts and pedagogy, tackling everything from the day-to-day grind to the big, universal questions of the field.
CAA podcasts are on iTunes. Click here to subscribe.
This week, Shana Kaplow and Kenneth Steinbach discuss creative process research.
Shana Kaplow is a Twin Cities artist and professor in the Art Department at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota.
Kenneth Steinbach is an artist, writer, and Professor of Art at Bethel University in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
New in caa.reviews
posted by CAA — Oct 11, 2019
Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen writes about Looking at Men: Art, Anatomy and the Modern Male Body by Anthea Callen. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Dina Ramadan reviews Art, Awakening, and Modernity in the Middle East: The Arab Nude, edited by Octavian Esanu. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Hannah Slater covers Asato Ikeda’s book The Politics of Painting: Fascism and Japanese Art during the Second World War. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Explore the 2018 Dissertation List
posted by CAA — Oct 10, 2019
Once a year, each institution granting the PhD in art history and/or visual studies submits dissertation titles to CAA for publication. caa.reviews has now published the authors and titles of doctoral dissertations in art history and visual studies—both completed and in progress—from American and Canadian institutions for calendar year 2018.
You can browse by listing date or by subject matter. Each entry identifies the student’s name, dissertation title, school, and advisor. Click here to explore.
Dissertations Completed on Visual Studies, 2018: Partridge, Joy, “Visualizing Knowledge in the Illuminated Manuscripts of the Breviari d’amor” (Graduate Center, CUNY, C. Hahn) Image: Breviari d’Amour, 14th century (Wikimedia Commons)