CAA News Today
People in the News
posted by CAA — Oct 17, 2015
People in the News lists new hires, positions, and promotions in three sections: Academe, Museums and Galleries, and Organizations and Publications.
The section is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
October 2015
Academe
Jeffrey Abt has been appointed fellow and visiting professor in the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for the 2015–16 academic year.
Nicole Awai has joined the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin as assistant professor in painting and drawing.
Douglas Brine, assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, has received tenure.
Anne Helmreich, formerly senior program officer for the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, California, has been named dean of the College of Fine Arts at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.
Adrian Randolph, Leon E. Williams Professor of Art History and associate dean of the faculty for the arts and humanities at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has been appointed dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Marissa Vigneault has left the University of Nebraska in Lincoln to become assistant professor of art history at Utah State University in Logan.
Greg Watts, formerly professor and chair of the Art Department and executive director of the Center for Visual Art at Metropolitan State University in Denver, Colorado, has become dean of the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas in Denton.
Catherine Zuromskis has become assistant professor of photographic arts and sciences in the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology in Henrietta, New York.
Museums and Galleries
Leslie Anderson-Perkins has joined the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City as curator of European, American, and regional art. Previously she was curatorial assistant for European and American painting, sculpture, and works on paper at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indiana.
Seb Chan, director of digital and emerging media at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, has become the inaugural chief experience officer at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne.
Shawnya L. Harris has become the first Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art for the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens. Previously Harris taught at the Elizabeth City State University in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
Claire Henry, senior curatorial assistant of the Andy Warhol Film Project at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, has been promoted to assistant curator at the museum.
Maureen Warren has been appointed curator of European and American art at the University of Illinois’s Krannert Art Museum in Champaign. She was previously Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Research Fellow in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 14, 2015
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.
Guardian of the Humanities
William “Bro” Adams is the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency that awards grants to researchers and cultural institutions to preserve America’s heritage. In an interview with Tom Fox, he discussed his mission at the NEH and his views on leading this federal organization. (Read more from the Washington Post.)
The NEA at 50 and the Death of the Public Good
Fifty years after the National Endowment for the Arts was founded, the agency struggles, doing great work despite being the victim of an unrelenting and highly successful conservative assault on the public sector that began with the election of Ronald Reagan and continues to this day. The NEA’s 2015 budget allocation clocked in at a mere $146 million, which accounts for 0.012 percent of total federal discretionary spending. (Read more from Culturebot.)
How an Art-History Class Became More Engaging with Twitter
When I was a college student, art-history courses revolved around a 1960s-era carousel slide projector. Its monotonous humming and clicking in the darkened lecture hall often put my classmates to sleep. As I prepared to teach my own art-history course last year, I wanted to implement new technologies to make the lectures more interactive and relatable to a twenty-first-century audience. (Read more from the Conversation.)
Can I Reuse a Past Show’s Title?
I’m a painter and had an exhibition in another state two months ago that comprised many of the pieces in the one I’m installing at a new gallery in a few weeks. Can or should I give the show the same title? Or should I come up with something new, since I’m showing some new work too? (Read more from Burnaway.)
Art Forgers Beware: DNA Could Thwart Fakes
Eric Fischl remembers the time a friend waved a catalogue at him to alert him that one of his paintings was up for auction for six figures. In reality, the work was a fake, but so convincing, the artist said, “I thought I was losing my mind.” Brushes with forgery like that one two decades ago, and concerns about his legacy and estate, prompted Fischl to appear in London to vouch for a new authentication system that would let artists sign their works with specks of synthetic DNA. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Copyright Registration Strategies
Copyright registration is something most artists can experiment without legal assistance and great cost, outside of more complex registration questions. However, this does not really help individual artists or small businesses who produce a lot of content. So let’s break it down and then you can make your own conclusions about how cheap and easy it is, depending on what type of content you are registering. (Read more from Clancco.)
On the Case: The Law on Augmented Reality and Museums
A few of our more tech-savvy museum clients have been exploring whether and how to make some of their exhibits come alive by using exciting new “augmented reality” technology. At the same time, they have been grappling with cutting-edge legal issues involved in this new technology—which is where we come in. (Read more from Artnet News.)
The Error of Margins: Vernacular Artists and the Mainstream Art World
Though the art world may not yet have a satisfactory way of referring to artists like Marlon Mullen, who are variously described by such leaky terms as self-taught, outsider, and vernacular, it has, over the past few years, shown more interest in them and is gradually growing the existing market for their work. (Read more from ARTnews.)
Candidates for CAA’s 2016 Board of Directors Election
posted by Vanessa Jalet — Oct 13, 2015
The 2015–16 Nominating Committee has announced a slate of six candidates for the annual election of four new CAA members to serve on the Board of Directors for a four-year term (2016–20). Voting will begin in January 2016. The webpages for the election, which will include the candidates’ statements, biographies, endorsements, and video presentations, will be published in late December 2015.
The six candidates are:
- Dina Bangdel, Associate Professor, Director, Art History Program, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, Doha, Qatar
- Carma Gorman, Associate Professor and Assistant Chair, Design Division, Department of Art and Art History, The University of Texas at Austin
- N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University of Richmond Museums, Richmond, Virginia
- Andrew Schulz, Associate Dean for Research and Associate Professor of Art History, College of Arts and Architecture, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
- Roberto Tejada, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor, Departments of English and Art History, University of Houston, Texas
- Anuradha Vikram, Lecturer, Graduate Public Practice, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California
If you have questions about the Nominating Committee, the candidates, or the voting process, please contact Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison.
2016 Annual Conference Website Is Live
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 08, 2015
The website for the 104th Annual Conference in Washington, DC, to be held from Wednesday, February 3 to Saturday, February 6, 2016, at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, is live today. Get a taste of conference highlights and discover the benefits of registration, including access to all program sessions and admission to the Book and Trade Fair.
The dynamic energy of Washington, DC—known for its world-class museums and as an international destination for American history and culture—provides the backdrop for our annual gathering of more than four thousand artists, art historians, museum directors and curators, arts administrators, scholars, and educators. Look forward to the best in new scholarship, innovative art, and in-depth discussion of issues in the visual arts today.
Highlights of this year’s conference include the presentation of CAA’s 2016 Awards for Distinction, an opening reception at the Katzen Arts Center at American University, and the sixteenth annual Distinguished Scholar Session honoring Richard J. Powell of Duke University. The two Distinguished Artists’ Interviews will feature the sculptor Joyce Scott, speaking to the curator George Ciscle.
Among the highly anticipated sessions are: “South to North: Latin American Artists in the United States, 1820s–1890s,” chaired by Katherine E. Manthorne; “Transforming Japonisme: International Japonisme in an Age of Industrialization and Visual Commerce,” led by Gabriel P. Weisberg; and the two-part “Formalism before Clement Greenberg,” chaired by Katherine M. Kuenzli and Marnin Young. Other exciting session topics range from art as adventure to the Hudson River School, from digital cultural heritage to algorithms and data in contemporary art, and from diversity in curatorial work to staging design in museums.
Online registration for individuals and institutions is now open. In addition, you can book your hotel reservations and make your travel arrangements—don’t forget to use the exclusive CAA discount codes to save money! Register before the early deadline, December 21, 2015, to get the lowest rate and to ensure your place in the Directory of Attendees. You may also purchase tickets for special events and for a place in one of eleven professional-development workshops on a variety of topics for artists and scholars.
CAA will regularly update the conference website in the months leading up to the four-day event, so please be sure to check back often. Averaging more than 40,000 unique visitors per month, the conference website is the essential source for up-to-the-minute updates regarding registration, session listings, and hotel and travel discounts. Visit the Advertising section to learn more about reaching CAA membership and conference attendees.
We look forward to seeing you in Washington, DC!
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Sep 16, 2015
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.
President Obama Awards 2014 National Humanities Medal
The White House has awarded ten distinguished recipients the 2014 National Humanities Medal. The awardees include historians, writers, a philosopher, scholar, preservationist, food activist, and an education course. President Barack Obama conferred the medal in a September 10, 2015, ceremony in the East Room. (Read more from the National Endowment for the Humanities.)
Bookish: On the Art World’s Publishing Boom
Depending on how you look at it, the art-book industry is either in precarious straits or the midst of a golden age. Brick-and-mortar bookstores specializing in art books continue to close, giving way to online purveyors like Amazon, which don’t do so well with pricy art tomes. And traditional trade publishers have cut back on funding art titles. Meanwhile, blue-chip galleries, flush with cash in a booming art market, have picked up the slack with increasingly ambitious publishing programs. At the world’s wealthier galleries, an in-house imprint has become an essential part of business, as common as a front desk, PR team, and exhibition checklist. (Read more from ARTnews.)
How Art Reveals the Limits of Neuroscience
These days neural approaches to art are all the rage. We find it somehow compelling to think that the brain holds the answers to the questions about, well, everything that matters to us, including art. It’s hard not to be impressed by the excitement scientists feel as they try to hunt down aesthetic experience in the brain using the advanced methods and technologies of cognitive science. But art is an elusive quarry, and it leaves its clumsy predator flailing in the dust. (Read more from the Chronicle Review.)
The Brave New Museum Sputters into Life
With so many visitors—particularly the young—obsessively attached to digital devices as instruments of learning and sharing, even the most traditional art museum officials can no longer deny the imperative for technological interventions in what used to be a relatively unmediated relationship between viewer and object. First there were audio guides and websites. Now art museums are embracing everything from apps to robots to interactive pens, hoping to discern how best to enhance the gallery experience for savvy digerati, without ruining it for die-hard technophobes. (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)
Why Art School Can Be a Smart Career Move
Art-school grads aren’t the highest earners overall, but neither are they doomed to become starving artists. “There’s a ton of evidence that prospects for graduates from art schools today are better than they’ve ever been before in terms of income, their ability to survive economic turbulence, and their preparedness for the job market of the 2020s,” says Jennifer Lena, a Columbia University professor who is senior research scholar for the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project. (Read more from Forbes.)
The International Fight over Marcel Duchamp’s Chess Set
In the process of researching Marcel Duchamp’s chess life for a commissioned art project, Scott Kildall found old pictures of the artist’s own hand-carved chess set, created around 1917. He loved the aesthetic and wanted to recreate the beautiful objects. So Kildall turned to another digital-fabrication artist, Bryan Cera, to work out how to model 3D-printable versions derived from the archival pictures. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
The Google Art Heist
The more playful Google gets, the more paranoid I get. So when I heard that, building on its plan to digitize all books, Google had opened a Cultural Institute in Paris to digitally replicate and curate all art and culture on earth, I wanted to check it out. From the most famous paintings of the Uffizi to an archive of South Korean film to virtual galleries of the pyramids, the institute has already amassed an impressive collection. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Peer Review, Preprints, and the Speed of Science
A few weeks ago my collaborators and I submitted our latest paper to a scientific journal. We have been investigating how noroviruses subvert the molecular machinery of infected cells and have some interesting results. If it passes peer review, our paper could be published in three or four months’ time. If it’s rejected, we may have to rework the manuscript before trying our luck with another journal. That will delay publication even further—it’s not unheard of for papers to take a year or more to get out of the lab and into the world, even in the digital age. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Affiliated Society News for September 2015
posted by CAA — Sep 09, 2015
Community College Professors of Arts and Art History
After successful sessions at last year’s CAA and FATE Conferences, the Community College Professors of Arts and Art History (CCPAAH) will hold two events at this year’s CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC. Our business meeting will be held on Friday, February 5, from 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM. Please bring a project idea to share with your colleagues. Our session “In and out of the Studio: New ideas for Art Appreciation” will be held at 12:30 PM on Thursday, February 4. We are looking for additional presenters who are doing interesting things in Art Appreciation. If you are interested in presenting or have any questions, please contact Susan Altman. We look forward to seeing you at the conference!
Japan Art History Forum
Yurika Wakamatsu, PhD candidate at Harvard University, was selected as the winner of the 2015 Chino Kaori Memorial Essay Prize for an essay titled “Feminizing Art in Modern Japan: Noguchi Shōhin (1847-1917) and the Changing Conceptions of Art and Womanhood.” The prize was established by the Japan Art History Forum in 2003 in memory of distinguished colleague Chino Kaori, and is awarded annually to the best research paper written in English on a Japanese art history topic.
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome (AAR) invites applications for the 2016 Rome Prize competition. Up to thirty fellowships (from six months to two years) are awarded to emerging and established artists and scholars working in a variety of disciplines, including a stipend, room & board, and individual workspace at our eleven-acre center in Rome. Please visit aarome.org/apply for submission guidelines. Applications are due November 1.
AAR presents Bodies of Knowledge, the 2015 – 2016 series of lectures, exhibitions and events. Programming features artists and scholars offering multiple readings across disciplinary and geographical boundaries — questioning assumptions about the ways in which we structure knowledge and how these categories define our understanding of history, identity and culture. Fall events in Rome include a conversation with artist Isaac Julien and curator Mark Nash on filmmaking inspired by architect Lina Bo Bardi, and an exhibition of Cy Twombly photographs, accompanied by a talk with photographer Sally Mann. In New York, the Academy presents an evening on poetry and language with Edward Hirsch and Robert Polito, and a panel discussion on cultural patrimony and collective responsibility with scholar C. Brian Rose, antiquities expert Deborah Lehr and art historian James Cuno. Visit aarome.org for details.
Women’s Caucus for Art
The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) is pleased to announce Susan M. King (previously Susan King Obarski), Ph.D., as the incoming president of the organization. An art historian and artist, she teaches at the Laguna College of Art and Design and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. Her doctorate in Visual Studies at UC, Irvine, “Surrealism: A Marxist Enterprise in 1930s London,” included a chapter on artist Eileen Agar. She recently reviewed the J.M.W. Turner exhibitions and catalogue for caa.reviews (in press). Susan is a long time board member of WCA and past chair of the Lifetime Achievement Awards. Her two-year term as president begins in February 2016 after the CAA and WCA conferences. One of her key goals is to cross the generational divide of feminist artists, writers, and scholars to engage an open and fruitful dialogue on a range of feminist and activist issues. To that end, she is curating WATER: AN ESSENTIAL CONVERSATION, featuring historical posters from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics and contemporary graphic and video art. Founded in 1972, the WCA is an affiliate society of CAA and a founding member of The Feminist Art Project. More at nationalwca.org.
Renaissance Society of America
The Renaissance Society of America will hold its 62nd annual meeting in Boston, 31 March–2 April 2016. The program will include nearly 700 sessions, with more than 200 in Renaissance and early modern art history. The full, searchable program and schedule can be viewed on our website.
The Renaissance Society of America annually awards short-term grants supporting research projects and publications that aim to advance scholarly knowledge about the Renaissance. Many grants in art history are funded by the generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, through the Kress Mid-Career Research and Publication Fellowships in Renaissance Art History and the Kress Short-Term Research Library Fellowships for Art Historians programs. Please see our website for more information. Applicants must be members of RSA. Application deadline is 1 December 2015.
Public Art Dialogue
The newest issue of Public Art Dialogue (Volume 5, Issue Number 1) has been published. Edited by John Craig Freeman and Mimi Sheller, it is devoted to the theme of Hybrid Space and Digital Public Art. Articles include “Down the Rabbit Hole” by Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum; “Networked Monumental: Site, Production, and Distributed Publics—Online, and in Everyday Life,” by Dylan Gauthier; “Future Museums Now—Augmented Reality Musings” by Geoffrey Alan Rhodes; “#sQavengeRhunt: LoVid” by Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus; and “The Digital: A False Division?” by Patrick Lichty. Two interviews by Dorothy Santos are included: Kate Durban and Jim Dessicino. Finally, there are two book reviews: one on Vladimir Geroimenko’s Augmented Reality Art: From an Emerging Technology to a Novel Creative Medium by Lenore Metrick-Chen; and a second on Ricciarda Belgiosojoso’s Constructing Urban Space with Sounds and Music by Shawn Greenlee. More information is available on the journal’s website.
Association of Academic Museums & Galleries
AAMG/Kellogg 2016 Leadership Seminar: Join colleagues from throughout the U.S. and beyond for AAMG’s flagship professional development program at the prestigious Kellogg School Center for Nonprofit Management, Northwestern University. Now accepting applications online. APPLICATION DEADLINE JANUARY 15, 2016.
WHO: Faculty drawn from the Kellogg School of Management Center for Nonprofit Management and seasoned professionals in the academic museum field. Up to 40 Seminar Fellows selected from a national and international application pool by the Application Review Team.
WHAT: A Certificate Program. Intensive, week-long, highly interactive learning and sharing experience with top faculty in the field of leadership and management and academic museum and gallery colleagues from across the U.S. and abroad.
WHEN: June 19 – June 24, 2016
WHERE: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois (metro-Chicago)
TUITION: $4,500. Limited scholarship funds may be available.
Association for Latin American Art
ALAA has launched a redesigned website aimed at providing current news and events on Latin American art to the public. The website features updated information on the ALAA bylaws, officers, book and dissertation awards, a newsletter archive, and a list of academic programs that offer graduate degrees in art history with a focus on Latin America. A Members Portal allows registered ALAA members to access a membership directory, discover fellow members’ research interests, and contribute to the public Events Calendar.
Triennial Conference: ALAA is pleased to invite proposals for papers to be presented at its Fourth Triennial Conference “Art at Large: Public and Monumental Arts in the Americas.” Hosted by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, the conference will be held the weekend of March 18–20, 2016 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Deadline September 15, 2015.
Book Award: ALAA announces its Fourteenth Annual Book Award for the best scholarly book published on the art of Latin America from the Pre-Columbian era to the present. Deadline November 15, 2015.
Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey
AMCA is currently accepting submissions for the 2016 Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art. Established in 2010, the award aims to recognize and promote excellence in the field of modern and contemporary Arab art. The prize honors our respected colleague and dear friend, Rhonda (1979-2010), who was, at the time of her tragic passing, in the process of researching a doctoral dissertation on modern Palestinian art in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University. Over the last five years, the prize has recognized excellence in graduate work completed on a variety of subjects in a number of disciplines at universities in the U.S. and abroad. This year, we are opening the competition to graduate students as well as to recent post-doctoral students who earned a PhD no earlier than 2013.
The prize is offered to a graduate student or recent PhDs working in any discipline whose paper is judged to provide the most significant contribution to the disciplines of Art History and Middle East Studies. Submissions must have been produced between June 2014 and December 2015, must not exceed 35 pages (excluding notes and bibliography), and must not have been previously published or be currently under consideration for publication.
Submissions are due to info@amcainternational.org by December 1, 2015. The winner will be announced during the AMCA Members Meeting, held this year at the College Art Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, in February 2016. The author of the winning paper will be awarded $500USD and the winning paper will be considered for publication in the Arab Studies Journal, pending the standard review process.
In October 2015, the School of Art, Design, and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore brought together designers, artists, architects, and academics for a multi-disciplinary conference on contemporary Islamic art, design, and architecture. Although each discipline has its own practice and methodology, when collectively grouped under an Islamic identity, we are forced to redefine the term “Islamic.” While new forms, spaces, images, typographies, symbols, colors, and materials of contemporary Islamic art, design, and architecture share distinct cultural narratives from individual geographies, it remains essential to address how comparative and connective perspectives reorient our understanding of contemporary Islamic visual communication. This three-day conference took place October 7-9 and was an unprecedented forum dedicated to convening professionals and scholars from throughout Asia, Europe, and America who share an investment in contemporary Islamic art, design, and architecture. For more information, visit http://www.ciada2015.com/. Organization Committee: Gül İnanç, Peer Sathikh, Nada Shabout, Sarah Rogers and Dina B.
Association of Art Museum Curators and American Academy in Rome
The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) and the American Academy in Rome (AAR) are pleased to announce the third year of The Samuel H. Kress Foundation AAMC Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. The program is intended to honor exceptional curatorial vision and help curators advance deserving projects. The purpose of the award is to provide essential funding for curators to develop projects that require research in Italy.
The Affiliated Fellowship is a 4-week appointment at the AAR, which includes housing, six lunches and five dinners a week, and access to residence hall kitchens; $1,500 in airfare; and $2,000 stipend. Affiliated Fellows have access to all the AAR facilities (including 24-hour a day access to the library and overall grounds) and all activities that occur at the Academy, such as concerts, exhibitions, conferences, lectures, and tours, etc. If desired, the Fellow can also schedule to give a talk about their project at the AAR during the Fellowship. For more information, visit http://www.artcurators.org/?KressAARFellowship or email aamc@artcurators.org.
Save the date: The 2016 AAMC Annual Conference & Meeting will be May 7 – 10 in Houston, Texas.
Society for Photographic Education
Society for Photographic Education (SPE) offers student member scholarships to offset the cost of attending SPE’s 2016 National Conference in Las Vegas, NV, March 10-13. Each award includes a $550 travel stipend, conference fee waiver, and complimentary one-year membership in SPE. For more information, visit www.spenational.org or contact info@spenational.org. Application deadline is October 15, 2015, at 11:59 PM EST.
Southeastern College Art Conference
Kevin Cates, Associate Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has been appointed to the SECAC Board of Directors.
Committee on Diversity Practices highlights for September/October 2015
posted by CAA — Sep 09, 2015
The CAA Committee on Diversity Practices highlights exhibitions, events, and activities that support the development of global perspectives on art and visual culture and deepen our appreciation of political and cultural heterogeneity as educational and professional values. Current highlights are listed below; browse past highlights through links at the bottom of this page.
September/October 2015
Doris Salcedo
Guggenheim Museum
New York, New York
June 26–October 12, 2015
“This major retrospective will survey the searing, deeply poetic work of Doris Salcedo (b. 1958, Bogotá, Colombia). Over the past three decades, Salcedo’s practice has addressed the traumatic history of modern-day Colombia, as well as wider legacies of suffering stemming from colonialism, racism, and other forms of social injustice. Originating in lengthy research processes during which the artist solicits testimonies from the victims of violent oppression, her sculptures and installations eschew the direct representation of atrocities in favor of open-ended confluences of forms that are fashioned from evocative materials and intensely laborious techniques. Many of her works transmute intimate domestic objects into subtly charged vessels freighted with memories and narratives, paradoxically conjuring that which is tragically absent. The Guggenheim’s presentation of Doris Salcedo will occupy four levels of the museum’s Tower galleries. It will feature the artist’s most significant series from the late 1980s to the present, as well as a video documenting her remarkable site-specific public projects and architectural interventions.”
Flawlessly Feminine: Women Who Graced the Cover of JET Magazine and Works by Willie Cole
Golden Lady: Works by Mario Moore
Diggs Gallery, Winston-Salem State University
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
July 9–December 2, 2015
“The pairing of two innovative exhibitions honoring women who graced the cover of JET Magazine, and drawings of young women with their favorite literature, is on display at Winston-Salem State University’s Diggs Gallery through December 2. The exhibits feature works by renowned artist Willie Cole and emerging artist Mario Moore.”
Black Like Who?
Birmingham Museum of Art
Birmingham, Alabama
July 11–November 1, 2015
“Issues regarding visual depictions of blackness in American art have been such highly scrutinized topics in both artistic production and museum exhibitions that one could ask what else is there to examine that has not already been sufficiently analyzed? Black Like Who? answers that inquiry with a question that considers who renders imagery of blackness and contemplates the various reasons why.
Drawing on the Museum’s collection and select loans from Birmingham private collectors, the exhibition surveys a variety of historical and contemporary works, and explores how various representations of blacks in American art have been influenced at particular historical moments by specific political, cultural, and aesthetic interests, as well as the motives and beliefs of the artists. Comprising work by both white and black artists, the diverse works examined in Black Like Who? range from romanticized Civil War depictions painted in the early 20th century by Gilbert Gaul (1855–1919) to a contemporary print by Iona Rozeal Brown (born 1966) that blends hip-hop culture with late 19th-century Japanese art.”
Deana Lawson: Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
September 5, 2015–January 10, 2016
“The first installment of the biennial Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series features the work of New York–based photographer Deana Lawson. For nearly a decade, Lawson has been investigating the visual expression of global black culture and how individuals claim their identities within it. Her staged portraits, carefully composed scenes, and found images speak to the ways in which personal and social histories, familial legacies, sexuality, social status, and religious-spiritual ideas may be drawn upon the body.
Lawson began her work in and around her Brooklyn neighborhood but has recently branched out nationally and internationally to places such as Louisiana, Haiti, Jamaica, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While her themes have remained consistent, her landscapes have shifted and broadened—the global scope of the pictures, in her words, “concern and affirm the sacred black body” and speak to a collective psychic memory of shared experiences.
Lawson starts her process by researching communities she has chosen for their cultural histories. Once on site, strangers met through chance encounters become her subjects, selected for a particular expression, mannerism, style of dress, or cultural or religious affiliation. The resulting images are often inspired by multiple trips or planned well in advance. They draw upon Western and African diasporic conventions of self-presentation, popular culture, mythology, and religious rituals and beliefs—emphasizing dialogues among the past, present, and future of black culture.”
Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980
Museum of Modern Art
New York, New York
September 5, 2015–January 3, 2016
“Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980 focuses on the parallels and connections among an international scene of artists working in—and in reference to—Latin America and Eastern Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. The radical experimentation, expansion, and dissemination of ideas that marked the cultural production of these decades (which flanked the widespread student protests of 1968) challenge established art-historical narratives in the West. Artists from Prague to Mexico City developed alternative and ever-expanding networks of distribution and organization, via Paris, Vienna, and Venice, to circumvent the borders established after World War II, local forms of state and military repression, and Western accounts of artistic mastery and individualism. One major transformation across Latin American and Eastern European art scenes was the embrace of institutional critique and an emphasis on the creation of art outside a market context.
The exhibition brings together landmark works from MoMA’s collection by Eastern European artists including Geta Brặtescu, Tomislav Gotovac, Ion Grigorescu, Sanja Iveković, Dóra Maurer, and the anti-art collectives Gorgona, OHO, Aktual, and Fluxus East, as well as Latin American artists such as Beatriz González, Antonio Dias, Lea Lublin, and Ana Mendieta. Particular attention is paid to the group of Argentine artists clustered around the influential Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, including Oscar Bony, David Lamelas, and Marta Minujín, who confronted the aesthetic and political implications of mass media communication—including film, television, and the telex—during a vibrant, experimental period of technological innovation and political tension.
Featuring series of works and major installations, several of which are on view for the first time, Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980 highlights multiple points of contact, often initiated and sustained through collective actions and personal exchanges between artists. The exhibition suggests possible counter-geographies, realignments, alternative models of solidarity, and new ways of thinking about art produced internationally in relation to the frameworks dictated by the Cold War.”
Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms
The Asia Society
New York, New York
September 11, 2015–January 3, 2016
“This exhibition of more than 100 gold objects focuses on the wealth of the golden age of Butuan (pronounced boot’ wan), a polity on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao that rose to commercial prominence in the tenth century and declined in the thirteenth century. Works from ancient polities beyond Butuan, such as those on the islands of the Visayas and Luzon, bear witness to the early use of gold throughout the Philippines. A selection of the most extraordinary objects from a 1981 discovery—now in the collection of the Ayala Museum in Makati City and on view in the United States for the first time—forms the core of “Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms.” The exhibition also includes a few important loans from public and private collections including the Central Bank of the Philippines. Featuring spectacular gold necklaces, chains, waistbands, bangles, ritual bowls, implements, and ceremonial weapons, the exhibition showcases the rich artistry and material wealth of Butuan and related island polities.”
Gates of the Lord: The Tradition of Krishna Paintings
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
September 13, 2015–January 3, 2016
“This fall, the Art Institute of Chicago offers a glimpse into one of the world’s most intimate religious traditions. Bringing together over 100 artworks from private and public collections in India and the United States, Gates of the Lord: The Tradition of Krishna Paintings is the first major U.S. exhibition to explore the unique visual culture of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu denomination from Western India.
Founded in the 16th century by the saint and philosopher Shri Vallabhacharya (1479–1531), the Pushtimarg is a religious community dedicated to the devotion of Shrinathji, a divine image of the Hindu god Krishna as a seven-year-old child. The religious and artistic center of the sect is based in the temple town of Nathdwara (literally, “The Gates of the Lord”), near Udaipur in the state of Rajasthan, India. Scholars and artists have long been fascinated by the distinctive and highly aestheticized manner in which members of this group venerate Shrinathji, as well as by the legacy of miniature paintings created as a record of such worship. This exhibition showcases centuries of pichvais (textile hangings) and miniature paintings that have been created by and for the Pushtimarg in devotion of Shrinathji.
The exhibition takes visitors through a year in Nathdwara, where the daily worship of Shrinathji is characterized by the changing seasons and a bustling festival calendar. Gallery by gallery, visitors are introduced to the pichvais used as backdrops for Shrinathji in his shrine, each uniquely suited to a particular season or festival. The accompanying miniature paintings offer further insight into the Pushtimarg sect: its mode of veneration, history, and important priests and patron families. Enhancing the experience of the sect’s rich culture are festival and devotional music, a shrine reconstruction, and touchscreen kiosks that allow visitors to page through religious manuscripts, an artist’s sketchbook, and a historic photo album. The exhibition concludes with an exploration of the works, sketches, and observations of prominent 20th- and 21st-century Nathdwara artists who have kept the painting tradition flourishing through the present day.
Gates of the Lord comprises drawings, pichvais, paintings, and historic photographs borrowed chiefly from two major private collections in India, the Amit Ambalal Collection (Ahmedabad, India) and the TAPI Collection (Surat, India). These rare loans are augmented by important objects from a number of public and private collections within the United States, including the Art Institute’s own permanent collection, in order to present the richest possible story of Pushtimarg art and tradition.”
Kongo: Power and Majesty
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
September 18, 2015–January 3, 2016
“Central Africa’s Kongo civilization is responsible for one of the world’s greatest artistic traditions. This international loan exhibition will explore the region’s history and culture through 134 of the most inspired creations of Kongo masters from the sixteenth through the early twentieth century.
The earliest of these creations were diplomatic missives sent by Kongo sovereigns to their European counterparts during the Age of Exploration; they took the form of delicately carved ivories and finely woven raffia cloths embellished with abstract geometric patterns. Admired as marvels of human ingenuity, such Kongo works were preserved in princely European Kunstkammer, or cabinets of curiosities, alongside other precious and exotic creations from across the globe.
Kongo luxury arts from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century—many of which have never been exhibited before—will give an unprecedented historical backdrop to the outstanding work produced by master sculptors active in the same region during the nineteenth century. The array of figurative representations they produced range from miniature ivory finials for the staffs of office of Kongo leaders to the carved-wood commemorative shrine figures positioned above their burial sites.
The presentation will culminate with a gathering of fifteen monumental Mangaaka power figures produced in the Chiloango River region during the second half of the nineteenth century; these will include the celebrated example acquired by the Met in 2008, the original catalyst for the exhibition. For the first time, this electrifying form of expression will be understood as a defensive measure conceived by Kongo leaders to deflect Western incursions into this region of Central Africa.
With works drawn from sixty institutional and private lenders across Europe and the United States, Kongo: Power and Majesty will relate the objects on view to specific historical developments and will challenge misconceptions of Africa’s relationship with the West. In doing so, it will offer a radical, new understanding of Kongo art over the last five hundred years.”
Impressionism and the Caribbean: Francisco Oller and His Transatlantic World
Brooklyn Museum of Art
Brooklyn, New York
October 2, 2015–January 3, 2016
“The painter Francisco Oller contributed greatly to the development of modern art in both Europe and the Caribbean and revolutionized the school of painting in his native Puerto Rico.
Oller emerged from the small art world of San Juan in the 1840s, spending twenty years in Madrid and Paris, where he was inspired by the art of Gustave Courbet and joined the avant-garde circles of such artists as Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, and Claude Monet. While European Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism formed a critical jumping-off point for Oller’s aesthetic, his most important source of inspiration was Puerto Rico, where he painted tropical landscapes, still lifes with indigenous fruits and vegetables, and portraits of distinguished artists and intellectuals.
This is the first U.S. exhibition to present Oller’s work within both its New and Old World contexts.”
Walid Raad
Museum of Modern Art
New York, New York
October 12, 2015–January 31, 2016
“MoMA presents the first comprehensive American survey of the leading contemporary artist Walid Raad (b. 1967, Lebanon), featuring his work in photography, video, sculpture, and performance from the last 25 years. Dedicated to exploring the veracity of photographic and video documents in the public realm, the role of memory and narrative within discourses of conflict, and the construction of histories of art in the Arab world, Raad’s work is informed by his upbringing in Lebanon during the civil war (1975–90), and by the socioeconomic and military policies that have shaped the Middle East in the past few decades.
The exhibition focuses on two of the artist’s long-term projects: The Atlas Group (1989–2004) and Scratching on things I could disavow (2007–ongoing). Under the rubric of The Atlas Group, a 15-year project exploring the contemporary history of Lebanon, Raad produced fictionalized photographs, videotapes, notebooks, and lectures that related to real events and authentic research in audio, film, and photographic archives in Lebanon and elsewhere. Raad’s recent work has expanded to address the Middle East region at large. His current ongoing project, Scratching on things I could disavow, examines the recent emergence in the Arab world of new infrastructure for the visual arts—art fairs, biennials, museums, and galleries—alongside the geopolitical, economic, and military conflicts that have consumed the region. The exhibition emphasizes the importance of performance, narrative, and storytelling in Raad’s oeuvre. The artist will give lecture-performances in MoMA’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium multiple times a week for the duration of the exhibition.”
Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern
Museum of Modern Art
New York, New York
October 25, 2015–February 15, 2016
“This major retrospective of Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguayan, 1874–1949) features works ranging from the late 19th century to the 1940s, including drawings, paintings, objects, sculptures, and original artist notebooks and rare publications. The exhibition combines a chronological display with a thematic approach, structured in a series of major chapters in the artist’s career, with emphasis on two key moments: the period from 1923 to 1933, when Torres-García participated in various European early modern avant-garde movements while establishing his own signature pictographic/Constructivist style; and 1935 to 1943, when, having returned to Uruguay, he produced one of the most striking repertoires of synthetic abstraction.
Torres-García is one of the most complex and important artists of the first half of the 20th century, and his work opened up transformational paths for modern art on both sides of the Atlantic. His personal involvement with a significant number of early avant-garde movements—from Catalan Noucentismo to Cubism, Ultraism-Vibrationism, and Neo-Plasticism—makes him an unparalleled figure whose work is ripe for a fresh critical reappraisal in the U.S.”
Welcome to CAA’s International Desk!
posted by Rosemary O’Neill — Sep 09, 2015
With this new initiative, CAA applauds and supports the growing internationalization of our organization. Whether in the fields of art history, visual arts, design, visual culture, or museums, CAA members are increasingly working as scholars, artists, or curators beyond borders and across the globe. This new page on the CAA website, launched by the CAA International Committee, is in recognition of the growing number of international scholars who have joined our organization as a result of the CAA-Getty International Program and in recognition of CAA members’ participation in the arts, design, and museum fields globally.
The International Desk’s editorial goal is to provide a site for all CAA members to access news on global topics such as recent scholarship (summaries or descriptions), current issues in teaching and research, scholarly- and practice-based collaborations across borders, and international exhibition reviews of interest. Our goal is to expand content sources with news from our membership-at-large as this page develops.
We hope you find our inaugural stories of interest and look forward to future submissions from throughout CAA’s membership. The only criterion is that the topic be international in scope. Please send proposals for articles to Janet Landay at jlanday@collegeart.org.
Rosemary O’Neill, Chair
CAA International Committee
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Sep 02, 2015
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.
Director at Uzbekistan Museum Is Dismissed and Accused of Crimes
A significant trove of modern Russian art, preserved not least by its obscure location, was engulfed in controversy last week after its longstanding director was summarily dismissed on accusations of forgery and theft. Marinika M. Babanazarova, director of the Savitsky Collection in Nukus, Karakalpakstan, said she learned that she was being forced out after running the museum since 1984. (Read more at the New York Times.)
Tips for New Teaching Assistants
This time each year, at universities like mine, hundreds of new teaching assistants prepare to teach undergraduates for the first time. Here are three principles that underscored my presentation to the graduate students this year, in hopes that they will be helpful to new teachers elsewhere. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)
Will Artist Royalty Rights Go Global?
A delegation of art world, copyright, and government experts from eight countries, plus European Union representatives, have called for an international review of royalty rights for artists following a conference at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva. The issue was officially added to the organization’s agenda on July 3, and the topic is due to be debated in December. (Read more at the Art Newspaper.)
How Standup Comedy Became the New Performance Art
Why is the art world suddenly taking comedy so seriously? Artist and “concrete comedian” Sean Patrick Carney, who has led seminars on and written about the intersection of art and comedy, identifies art’s recent comedic turn with a renewed sense of political urgency: “People are frustrated and pissed off, justifiably so, about multiple social issues around race, economics, misogyny—you name it.” (Read more at Artspace Magazine.)
Will the Candidate Stay?
I am from a large city in the Northeast and received two on-campus interviews at small, teaching-centered public institutions in the Midwest and the West. Both jobs ultimately went to candidates who were from the area where the schools were located—they received their PhDs from a university in the area and/or adjuncted at a school in the region. What can candidates do to overcome a hiring committee’s concerns over whether they will stay in a position once hired? (Read more at Vitae.)
We Took a Tour of the Abandoned College Campuses of Second Life
Once upon a time, in the year 2007, people were really excited about Second Life. Businessweek ran a cover story with the headline “Virtual World, Real Money.” Brands opened stores in Second Life malls. Many universities set up their own private islands to engage students; some even held classes there. Most of these virtual universities are gone—it costs almost $300 per month to host your own island—but it turns out a handful remain as ghost towns. (Read more at Fusion.)
See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me: Museums Need Tech Entrepreneurs
According to the NEA, overall museum attendance fell from 2002 to 2012. More alarming still, museumgoers 75 and older were the only demographic to increase over that same period. Clearly, the museum world has a millennial challenge—namely, how can the world’s great institutions engage a twenty-first century, screen-addicted generation? How do you integrate new technology into something as classic and physical as the museum-going experience? (Read more at Entrepreneur.)
Developing Adjuncts
Non-tenure-track faculty members are the majority of the teaching force, so how are colleges and universities helping them to develop as teachers? As for many issues related to adjuncts, there’s a significant data gap on the topic, in part because adjuncts are diverse and decentralized, making them hard to study. But a new survey seeks to close the gap, and early responses provide insight into how colleges and universities’ teaching and learning centers are supporting their part-time faculty members—or not. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 26, 2015
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.
Black Arts: The $800 Million Family Selling Art Degrees and False Hopes
Behind the shiny façade at Academy of Art University in San Francisco is a less than lustrous business: luring starry-eyed art students into taking on massive amounts of debt based on the “revolutionary principle” that anyone can make a career as a professional artist. No observable talent is required to gain admission: the school will accept anyone who has a high school diploma and is willing to pay the $22,000 annual tuition (excluding room and board), no art portfolio required. (Read more from Forbes.)
Authors, Keep Your Copyrights. You Earned Them
Most trade publishers do not ask for an outright assignment of all exclusive rights under copyright; their contracts usually call for copyright to be in the author’s name. But it’s another story in the world of university presses. Most scholarly publishers routinely present their authors with the single most draconian, unfair clause we routinely encounter—taking all the exclusive rights to an author’s work as if the press itself authored the work. (Read more from the Authors Guild.)
How to Spot a Fake: Art Forgery’s Secrets Revealed
Can you tell if someone’s lying? There are scientifically proven traits that most people exhibit when they’re cooking up a lie. Sweaty palms. Dry throat. Tight collar. Fidgety movements. But can you tell if an object is lying? You sure can. Studying how forgers have successfully pulled the wool over our eyes offers some revealing clues as to how to avoid being fooled in the future. (Read more from Salon.)
Open Letter on Precariat Fees
A large and growing portion of the academy is unemployed or underemployed, and we all must consider how we can address the situation. We are writing to ask that you move to a graduated pay scale to provide steeply discounted rates for graduate students, unemployed, and non-tenure-track faculty for both membership in your organization and attendance at conferences that you sponsor. (Read more from Material Collective.)
Soaring Art Market Attracts a New Breed of Advisers for Collectors
For decades, art advisers were a small club of professionals who personally helped build collections for clients, using their scholarship and connoisseurship. Their role was to consult and offer expertise, rarely to make deals. But the rapidly changing art market—characterized by soaring prices, high fees, and a host of wealthy new buyers—has prompted scores of new players to jump into the pool, from young art-world arrivistes to former auction-house executives with an abundance of expertise and connections. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Inertia vs. Freedom in Faculty Life
It happens like clockwork each semester. Two weeks after a course begins, I brace myself for a wave of student complaints about the daily workload of questions, reading quizzes, and recurring tasks. I never cave to their demands, for I know just as surely that the flood of protests will begin to wither and, by the fourth week of the term, will have disappeared entirely. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
New Study Argues Mellon Program Has No Effect on Minority PhD Degrees
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program—an initiative of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that works to boost the diversity of faculty at US colleges and universities—has “no significant effect” on PhD completion rates, according to a study by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. (Read more from Philanthropy News Digest.)
Italy’s Museums Honor Archaeologist Murdered by ISIL
Flags were flying at half-mast outside all museums and cultural institutions in Italy last week, and the archaeological museum of Milan, housed in a former Benedictine monastery, will change its name to commemorate Khaled Al-Asaad, the Syrian archaeologist murdered at Palmyra by ISIL on August 18. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)