CAA News Today

CAA is pleased to announce the 2016 recipients of travel support through the CAA-Getty International Program. In an effort to promote greater interaction and exchange among art historians internationally, CAA will bring scholars from around the world to participate in the program, to be held during CAA’s 104th Annual Conference in Washington, DC, from February 3 to 6, 2016. This is the fifth year of the program, which has been generously funded by the Getty Foundation since its inception. The participants—professors of art history, curators, and artists who teach art history—were selected by a jury of CAA members from a highly competitive group of applicants. In addition to covering travel expenses, hotel accommodations, and per diems, the CAA-Getty International Program includes support for a preconference on international issues in art history, conference registration, and a one-year CAA membership.

Activities for participants in the CAA-Getty International Program will begin with a one-day preconference colloquium on international issues in art history, during which they will meet with North-American–based CAA members to discuss common interests and challenges. Participants will also be assisted throughout the conference by CAA member hosts, who will recommend relevant panel sessions and introduce them to colleagues who share their interests. Members of CAA’s International Committee have agreed to serve as hosts, along with representatives from several affiliated societies of CAA, including the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, the Association for Latin American Art, and the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasia, and Russian Art and Architecture.

This program has increased international participation in CAA’s activities and expanded international networking and the exchange of ideas during and after the conference. The CAA-Getty International Program supplements CAA’s regular program of Annual Conference Travel Grants for graduate students and international artists and scholars. CAA looks forward to welcoming the 2016 recipients at the upcoming Annual Conference in Washington, DC, this February.

2016 CAA-Getty International Program Participants

Sarena Abdullah is a senior lecturer in the School of the Arts at the Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang, where she teaches art history to undergraduate and graduate students. She received an MA in art history from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and a PhD in art history from the University of Sydney in Australia. Specializing in contemporary Malaysian and Southeast Asian art, Abdullah is widely published locally and abroad and has presented papers at conferences in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and the United States. She is a field leader for Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, a research project led by the Power Institute Foundation for Art and Culture at the University of Sydney and funded by the Getty Foundation. With two research grants from the Universiti Sains Malaysia,  Abdullah is working on a project called “Theorizing Early Modernism and Cosmopolitanism in Early Twentieth Century Penang by Examining Modern Artistic Works and Print Medium Pertaining to Penang (1826–1942).”

Abiodun Akande studied fine arts at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife, Nigeria, and received an MA and PhD from the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan, also in Nigeria. His dissertation on “Yoruba Traditional Religious Wood-Carvings in Oyo, Sabe, and Ife” reflects his broader interest in the diffusion history of Yoruba peoples and their material culture across national boundaries. Akande is also interested in recording the effects of diffusion on sociocultural and artistic productivity and the resultant identities and iconologies of this culture group. Akande teaches art history, museology, art education, and painting at the Emmanuel Alayande College of Education in Oyo. In 2013, he participated in the first Basel Summer School in African Studies at the University of Basel in Switzerland; he also attended a graduate symposium hosted by the School of Arts at Peking University in Beijing, China.

María Isabel Baldasarre holds a PhD in art history from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina, having earned an undergraduate degree in art history from the same university and a National Professor of Sculpture degree from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón. Baldasarre is currently a researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), an associate professor and coordinator of the master’s degree program in Argentinean and Latin American art history at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín, and a member of the board of the Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte. Baldasarre has received scholarships and grants from CONICET, the Antorchas Foundation, the Latin American Studies Association, the Getty Foundation, the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. A specialist in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European and Argentinean art, art collecting, and the art market, Baldasarre is the author of Los dueños del arte. Coleccionismo y consumo cultural en Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2006).

Danielle Becker is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts at Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, South Africa, and the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. She was previously the head of visual studies at the Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography. Her PhD research, in progress at the University of Cape Town, examines how South African art history is framed in art-historical curricula at tertiary institutions, in art-historical writing, and in museum displays. Becker’s interests include art historiography, postcolonial theory, and the framing of African art. Before beginning her doctoral research, she completed a fine-arts degree at Cape Town, worked as the arts coordinator for a nonprofit called South African Education and Environment Project, and completed a master’s degree in art history at the University of Manchester in England. Her forthcoming publications include a book chapter on Instagram in Africa’s Media Image in the Twenty-First Century: From the Heart of Darkness to Africa Rising (forthcoming from Routledge) and an essay, “Locating the Label on the Luggage: Towards a Continued Decolonization of South African Visual Culture.” (forthcoming from Third Text: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture.)

Bùi Thị Thanh Mai is a lecturer in art history, theory, and criticism at the Vietnam University of Fine Arts in Hanoi. She is also head of the university’s Department of Academic Research Management and International Relations and a member of the editorial board for the university’s journal, Art Research Magazine. Bùi specializes in the history of Vietnamese art, with a focus on modern and contemporary art; she is also interested in art theory, art education, and curatorial theory and practice. Bùi is working on three concurrent projects: “Optimistic Characterization in Painting in Hanoi in 1945–1990” within the framework of the Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art program; “Art Theory and Criticism in Vietnam: Actual Situations and Solutions of the Effect on the Artistic Life”; and a textbook on Vietnamese art history for the Vietnam University of Fine Arts.

Heloisa Espada received a PhD in art history and art criticism from the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo in Brazil in 2011. She studies Brazilian art after World War II, with a special focus on geometric abstraction and photography. In 2014 Espada began postdoctoral studies at her university’s Museum of Contemporary Art, where she is researching the origins of Concrete art in the city, supported by a grant from the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, a Brazilian government agency. Espada wrote Hércules Barsotti (São Paulo: Folha de São Paulo, 2013), Geraldo de Barros e a fotografia (São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles and Edições SESC, 2014), and Monumentalidade e sombra: o centro cívico de Brasília por Marcel Gautherot (forthcoming from Annablume). Since 2008, she has been the head of visual arts at the Instituto Moreira Salles, where she is also researcher and curator.

Ildikó Gericsné Fehér received an MA and PhD in art history from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. As associate professor in the Department of Art History of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, she lectures and leads seminars on Renaissance and Baroque art. She is also a consultant to the university’s Conservation Department. Fehér’s research interests include detached wall paintings from medieval and Renaissance Italy in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest; Florentine art dealers at the end of the nineteenth century; Károly Pulszky’s purchases of paintings in Italy for the museum circa 1890; wall paintings in Umbria from the fourteenth to sixteenth century; self-portraits by Hungarian artists in the Uffizi Gallery; and the works of Jacopo Palma il Giovane.

Peyvand Firouzeh specializes in the art and architecture of the Islamic world, with a focus on Iran, Central Asia, and India in the medieval period. She is particularly interested in interconnections between architecture and power, patronage of art and architecture, cross-cultural exchanges between Iran and India, and museum studies. Firouzeh obtained her BA (2004) and MA (2007) in architecture from the Tehran University of Art in Iran and her MPhil (2011) and PhD (2015) in the history of art and architecture and Asian and Middle Eastern studies from the University of Cambridge in England. She was the acting curator of Islamic collections from Iran, Central Asia, and India at the British Museum in London in 2014–15. Firouzeh is currently a fellow of art histories and aesthetic practices (2015–16) at the Forum Transregionale Studien and Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, where she is working on a new project, “Depicted Legitimacy: Sufi-Sultan Encounters in the Visual and Textual Cultures of South Asia.”

Lev Maciel graduated from the Medieval Studies Department at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia in 1998, with an M.A. thesis on fifteenth-century Spanish history. His dissertation on eighteenth-century Siberian architecture earned him a PhD in 2004 from the State Institute for Art History in Moscow. Currently Maciel is an associate professor in the Faculty of Humanities of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, where he supervises the recently created program in art history. He is also a part-time research associate professor at the Institute for Theory and History of Architecture and Town Planning in Moscow. Maciel’s research interests include a wide range of subjects within the history of architecture, including the late Renaissance and Baroque (Russia, southern Italy, Brittany, Spain, and Latin America), late antiquity and Byzantium, the Islamic world, Mongolia and Tibet, and nonmodernist movements in the twentieth century.

Emmanuel Moutafov is a Byzantinist, art historian, and epigrapher who holds a PhD in world history of the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries from the Institute for Balkan Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia. He has been a visiting research fellow at the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University; a Mellon Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin; a Mellon Foundation fellow at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem; and a Getty Foundation research fellow in the summer research group Visions of Byzantium in Istanbul, Turkey. In 2013 he became a supervisor of research at the board of directors of the Institute for Art Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and last year was appointed a director of the same institute.

Ceren Özpınar is a lecturer and a scholar of art historiography and the history of art whose research covers feminist temporalities in art historiography and contemporary art in Turkey. She is currently a British Academy Newton International Fellow in the Department of Art History at the University of Sussex (2015-17). Özpınar received a PhD in the history of art from Istanbul Technical University in 2015, with a thesis on the historiography of contemporary art in Turkey. In 2013, she held a one-year position of visiting research fellow at the University of Leeds, for which she was awarded a doctoral research grant by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. She is among the authors of National Art Histories in an Unfinished World (forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s University Press). Özpınar teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in art history, art management, and visual culture.

Horacio Ramos is a Peruvian art historian who specializes in Latin American vanguardism and neovanguardism. He teaches at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima and also works as researcher at Museo de Arte de Lima. Ramos holds a BA in philosophy and an MA in art history from the Universidad Católica. In previous research, he explored the reform of Lima’s main square (or Plaza de Armas) during the first half of the twentieth century, a complex process that involved debates about nationalism, architectural heritage, and modernism. Currently he is focusing on how invasiones (precarious urban settlements at the periphery of Peruvian cities) have been represented in documentary photography and neovanguardist art of the later twentieth century. Since invasiones and abandoned archeological ruins share the deserted landscape of the coast, his investigation seeks to trace the complex interconnections between art, archeology, landscape, and social exclusion.

Olaya Sanfuentes Echeverría earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, a master of arts from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and a PhD in art history from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain. She is a professor at the Institute of History, a part of the Department of History, Geography, and Political Science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Sanfuentes’s current research focuses on devotional practices involving art, especially religious statues used in festivals and rites in honor of the saints and virgins in Andean communities, as well as similar practices related to nativity cribs. More generally, Sanfuentes is interested in practices surrounding visual representations, history, and material culture, and how communities deal with cultural heritage.

Paulo Silveira holds bachelor’s degrees in fine arts (with qualifications in drawing and painting) and in communication studies from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He earned an MA and PhD in visual arts, with an emphasis in art history, theory, and criticism, from the same university. His graduate studies included doctoral research in France at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Silveira is a professor of art history at the Instituto de Artes at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. His research interests include visual arts, with a focus on the formal and contextual study of the artistic process, the intellectual and artistic foundations of contemporary art, intermedia, perception of works of art, aesthetics, rhetoric of artist’s publications, and methodology. Silveira is a member of the Brazilian Committee of Art History and the National Association of Researchers in Fine Arts (serving on its committee for history, theory, and criticism).

Sandra Uskoković is an assistant professor in the Department of Arts and Restoration at the University of Dubrovnik in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Her primary areas of research include architectural theory, modern architecture, urban culture, performance art, and cultural studies and heritage. She received an MA in architectural history and heritage preservation from George Washington University in Washington, DC, and a PhD in historic preservation and architectural history from the University of Zagreb. During 2002–3 Uskoković served as an intern at the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property in Rome, Italy, and at the International Committee on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) in Washington, DC. She is a member of the ICOMOS Scientific Committee on Twentieth-Century Heritage and has participated in conferences on international preservation. Uskoković is the author of three books: Modern Architectural Heritage of Dubrovnik (Zagreb: Antibarbarus, 2010), Contemporary Design in Historic Settings (Zagreb: Antibarbarus, 2013), and Architect Lovro Perković: Sensibility of Space Design (Zagreb: Ex Libris, 2015). She also has published numerous articles in academic and artistic journals. Since 2015 she has coordinated a regional interdisciplinary forum for research in urban culture in the Balkans, called Urban Hum.

For more information about the CAA-Getty International Program, please contact project director Janet Landay at jlanday@collegeart.org or 212-392-4420.

Failure as Art and Art History as Failure

posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — Nov 13, 2015

The following article is by Susana S. Martins, a 2014 CAA-Getty International Program participant from Portugal, in which she uses a session at the 2014 Annual Conference as the starting point for a consideration of failure: “In particular, the stance that artistic failure may not configure just an impossible obstacle, but can equally offer an ideal standpoint for open experimentation and for raising constant questions, has proven to be quite popular among creators, particularly post the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century.”

http://www.thirdtext.org/Failure-As-Art

 

Filed under: International —

Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for November 2015

posted by CAA — Nov 10, 2015

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.

November 2015

Jumana Manna
Chisenhale Gallery
64 Chisenhale Road, London E3 5QZ UK
September 18–December 13, 2015 

Chisenhale Gallery presents the first UK solo exhibition by the Berlin and Jerusalem–based artist Jumana Manna. The exhibition includes A magical substance flows into me (2015), a newly commissioned, seventy-minute feature-length film presented alongside an installation of sculptures.

Manna (b. 1987) works primarily with film and sculpture, addressing the historical and political resonance of materials and the physical relationships between objects and bodies. For the Chisenhale exhibition, the film was installed alongside a series of hollow plaster sculptures that carry an anthropomorphic charge. Installed in combination with plastic chairs and waste bins, these sculptures articulate a set of contradictions also evident in the film, where the audience seated bodies and sculptures extend the concepts explored in screen into a physical and tangible atmosphere.

A magical substance flows into me explores the different musical traditions of myriad communities living in and around Jerusalem. Inspired by her research on the German-Jewish ethnomusicologist Robert Lachmann (who fled to Israel at the beginning of WWII), the artist revisits different diaspora groups—such as Kurds, Moroccans, Yemenite Jews, Samaritans, Palestinians, Bedouins, and Coptic Christians—whose traditional music Lachmann studied and recorded for the 1930s radio series Oriental Music. This recording was developed for the Palestine Broadcasting Service, established under the British Mandate (1920–1948).

Tracing links between physically, culturally, and linguistically separated communities, while allowing for ideas of the representation of authenticity and heritage to emerge through the possibilities of sound and listening, Manna creates a beautifully poignant film that explores how musical customs create identity and overcome cultural suppression. Waving together fragments Jerusalem’s story, the artist includes her parents as well as herself to reflect a personal connection to the subject within the historical narratives she portrays, a narrative in which the power of music truly transcends politics.

Firelei Báez: Patterns of Resistance
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
20 S. West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
September 25, 2015–January 16, 2016

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art presents Patterns of Resistance, the first solo exhibition of the Dominican artist Firelei Báez, on the occasion of the artist being awarded the prestigious Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. This prize is given by the museum and the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation “to an emerging or mid-career painter whose work expresses a great range of talent and forward thinking within a contemporary idiom.”

Born in 1981 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, Báez is best known for her large-scale intrincate works on paper. Her laborious studio practice draws together her interest in anthropology, science fiction, black female subjectivity, and women’s work. Throughout her work, Báez explores the humor and fantasy involved in self-making within diasporic societies, a process that implies an individual and creative capability to coexist with cultural ambiguities.

Inspired by lineages of black resistance, Báez’s work traces the history of social movements in the United States and the Caribbean. Throughout Patterns of Resistance, the artist interweaves the lives of eighteenth-century black women in Louisiana and the Cuban roots of the Latin American azabache with symbols used in the US during the tumultuous 1960s. Her paintings and drawings depict textiles, hair designs, and body ornaments linking traditionally loaded symbols with individual human gestures. Primarily focusing on female figures and their subjectivities, Báez has a labor-intensive process that reveals new emblems of power and invokes disparate patterns of resistance within the African diaspora while proposing the illumination of obscured narratives of identity.

Oliver Pickle and Ruth West: She Is Sitting in the Night: Re-visioning Thea’s Tarot
Book, available from Metonymy Press

Described as “a contemporary queer re-visioning of a beautiful feminist tarot deck,” She Is Sitting in the Night by the author and tarot reader Oliver Pickle, with the artist Ruth West, re-presents West’s original feminist drawings from Thea’s Tarot and rejects the “normative readings of the figures and imagery on the decks they discuss.”

The 192-page book features copies of the original seventy-eight drawings by West along with new interpretations celebrating both queer and feminist cultural production. Thea’s Tarot, originally released in 1984, features black and white cut-paper silhouettes, replacing the figures with all women, including child, daughter, mother, and amazon.

Pickle, through their interpretations of West’s work, challenges the heteronormative relationships to figure and body. This intergenerational conversation draws on the relationships between radical feminism of the 1970s and the evolving relationships to gender identity. Where West’s drawings replace male figures, such as the Emperor, with a woman, and the card for Lovers is a paper cut of two females, Pickle uses the absence of commentary by West to reframe the relationship between image/text and gender identity.

The book and drawings are designed to fit a specific need within the tarot community, but they also function as an example of artistic production shifting the binary representation of figure to a more fluid role. In an interview Pickle describes their interpretations of West’s drawings by not “imagining a sexual or gender identity for the person I am speaking to, so they can do interpretations of themselves.”

Nancy Cohen: Hackensack Dreaming
Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
8480 Hagy’s Mill Road, Philadelphia, PA
November 5–December 19, 2015

Nancy Cohen’s Hackensack Dreaming, at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, fuses the artistic process with environmental education. The large-scale installation of handmade paper, glass, and rubber is the culmination of more than two years of Cohen’s work and time spent in a section of the Mill Creek Marsh tucked behind strip malls and a wastewater treatment plant along the New Jersey Meadowlands.

Exploring Cohen’s installation is to enter a world constructed by the human hand through manipulation of raw materials, a parallel not unlike the reality of marsh. In a subtle self-referential manner, the organic ingredients that constitute the hand-made paper and glass are documents of the natural world.

The installation serves as a document to the soul of the marsh and its own constructed reality. Hackensack Dreaming is rife with referential essence: translucent glass objects hint at cedar forest poking up through the water on an icy New Jersey day, and liquid rubber poured on the paper suggests, interchangeably, a wet or toxic surface.

“I want the viewer to move through Hackensack Dreaming discovering and finding connections—compelled by the beauty and strangeness,” says Cohen, who lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey. Discovering, likewise, the fragility and strength found in both the installation and natural world by means of physical experience. Through conscious levels of manipulation of materials, Cohen “makes literal the delicate, ephemeral balance” of the marsh. The audience is invited to walk among the work, either by the narrow path at the center of the installation or by delicately placing one’s feet among the glass sculptures and maneuvering one’s body through the realities of Hackensack Dreaming.

Patricia Johanson: Environmental Remedies: Restoring Soil and Water
Winter Visual and Performing Arts Center
60 West Cottage Avenue, Millersville, PA
October 22–December 11, 2015

Related programming:
Conrad Nelson Fellow: Patricia Johanson, Artist Lecture
Ware Center, Millersville University
42 North Prince Street, Lancaster, PA
November 3, 2015, 7:30 PM

Panel discussion:
Ecological Art: Reconstructing Humanity’s Relationship with the Environment
Betsy Damon, Patricia Johanson, and Sue Spaid
Ware Center, Millersville University
42 North Prince Street, Lancaster, PA
November 4, 2015, 7:00 PM

Gallery Talk:
November 4, 2015, 3:00 PM

The Winter Visual and Performing Arts Center at Millersville University will feature work by the artist Patricia Johanson. As the 2015–16 Conrad Nelson Fellow, Johanson has combined sculptural projects, art, ecology, landscaping, and functional infrastructure to remedy environmental degradation and restore ecosystems. Trained as an artist and architect, she has transformed landfills into parks, restored lagoons, conserved land polluted by acid mine drainage and built water gardens that function as treatment plants.

In her 1969 commission by House & Garden, Johanson produced 150 drawings with essays and explanatory notes departing from traditional garden design. “Her images, drawn from precise botanical and biological sources, loop, uncoil, and crawl elegantly across the land, evoking evolution, life, and movement.”

One of Johanson’s early ecological artworks, Fair Park Lagoon in Dallas (1981), transformed the eroding shoreline and water contaminated with algal blooms into a thriving ecosystem. The park was fitted with gigantic, terra-cotta-colored Gunite sculptures that doubled as pathways as well as perches for birds and turtles as the work snaked its way through the park land and water. Fair Park Lagoon in Dallas continues to serve as a place of education and recreation.

In conjunction with her exhibition and the Conrad fellowship, Johanson will present an artist lecture at the Ware Center on November 3, 2015. Additionally, Johanson, along with the ecoartist Betsy Damon and the curator Sue Spaid, will participate in a panel discussion, “Ecological Art: Reconstructiong Humanity’s Relationship with the Environment,” on November 4, 2015. The panelists will discuss their outdoor sculptural projects designed to remedy environmental degradation and strengthen the planet’s weakened defenses.

Our Mother’s House: a multi-component program dedicated to empowering female artists and safeguarding cultural heritage in southern Saudi Arabia
United Nations Headquarters
New York, NY
November 16–27, 2015

Art Jameel, Edge of Arabia, and the Permanent Mission of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations present Our Mother’s House, a program that aims to draw attention to the urgent need of cultural-heritage protection and the equal representation of women in the Middle East.

The launch of this program will include an art exhibition of specially commissioned mural painting that celebrates the centuries-old tradition of (Majli) house-painting by skilled female artisans from the village of Rijal Alma, located in the southwestern region of Saudi Arabia. Highlighting the crucial role that Asiri female artists have played in the composition and archiving of their local history, Our Mother’s House means a celebration the creativity and determination of women artists who play an extraordinary role in preserving the cultural identity of their communities.

Project advisors include the artist Arwa Alnaemi, whose work explores the relationship of women to larger Saudi Society, and Asiri house painter Fatimah Jaber, who is also founder of Fatimah Museum in Abha.

For more information or to request a private tour of the exhibition, please email Mohammed Shaker.

Filed under: CWA Picks, Uncategorized — Tags: CWA Picks —

Affiliated Society News for November 2015

posted by CAA — Nov 09, 2015

Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH)

The Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH) is very pleased to announce the establishment of a new program that will strengthen intellectual connections among art history disciplines in different regions of the world. With generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Getty Foundation, and the Terra Foundation for American Art, ARIAH’s East Asia Fellowship program will enable twelve scholars from countries in East Asia to conduct research at ARIAH member institutes on any topic in the visual arts. The project is funded for a three-year period, beginning in 2016, with four fellowships offered each year.

The East Asia Fellowship program is open to art history scholars from Japan, Mongolia, the People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong and Macau), the Republic of China (Taiwan), and South Korea. Each East Asia Fellow will be hosted by an ARIAH member institute, and will also have the opportunity to travel to other research centers during the fellowship period, which will last three to four months. Fellowships will be awarded through an open, competitive application process. The deadline for the first of three rounds of fellowships is December 31, 2015. Candidates can find more information about the program, including application instructions, at www.ariah.info/east_asia_fellowship.html.

More information about ARIAH, including a complete list of member institutes, can be found at www.ariah.info.

Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) Annual Conference: Call for Proposals

Communities in Dialog: Models of Best Practices for Academic Museums, Galleries, and Collections

When: Tuesday and Wednesday, May 24-25, 2016
Where: Katzen Arts Center, American University, Washington DC
Deadline for Submissions: Monday, November 30th, 2015

The AAMG conference committee requests proposals on topics that address and can help establish guidelines, benchmarks, and best practices in all areas of academic museum and galleries, including, but not limited to: collections care and registration, governance, assessment, community engagement, teaching and museum education, exhibitions, public programming, fundraising, and professional development. Topics may address systemic challenges and present model programs that could become “templates” for the field.

AAMG seeks proposals that are representative of a cross-section of the academic field, including anthropology, art, history, science, and natural history museums, galleries, and collections. AAMG particularly encourages students and faculty to submit.

Submission Guidelines:  A one-page outline of presentation proposal plus a contact list and CVs of each participant should be sent electronically to Vice President of Programs Leonie Bradbury, vp-programs@aamg-us.org  If multiple presenters please add a one paragraph abstract for each paper or subtopic.

More details online at AAMG Annual Conferences.

The Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture (HGCEA)

The Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture (HGCEA) recently changed its name to Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art and Architecture (HGSCEA).

Northern California Art Historians

Call for Papers: “Zones of Representation: Photographing Contested Landscapes, Contemporary West Coast Perspectives on Photography and Photograph-Based Media,” symposium organized by Makeda Best (California College of the Arts), Bridget Gilman (Santa Clara University), and Kathy Zarur (California College of the Arts), at SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA, on Saturday, April 23, 2016.

Contemporary global events and phenomena continue to shape visual interpretations of economic, social, environmental, and political geographies, and to disrupt conceptions of region, nation, citizenship, and community. “Zones of Representation” will consider how photographers and time-based media artists have responded to transformations in the global landscape through new ideas about the function of photographic media, and the shifting roles of makers and audiences. We want to know: how can novel visual practices disrupt traditional narratives of spatial representation?; in what unique ways do artists in time-based media acknowledge and respond to the historical contribution of their medium in defining, producing, and perpetuating these same narratives?; what new connections do these practices demonstrate and reveal?; and, in what ways do contemporary technologies, modes of distribution, and access impact interactions with the land?

We invite papers that address the expanded role of photography and time-based media in global landscape discourses and social fabrics. Proposals on contemporary topics or new perspectives on historic materials are encouraged. Proposals from image makers are also welcome. Please send a 300-word proposal, a one-paragraph biographical statement, and full contact information to zonesofrepresentation@gmail.com by January 8, 2015.

“Zones of Representation” aims to connect artists, historians, curators and arts professionals, and students in Northern California, facilitating a regional network for the latest art historical scholarship. The symposium is presented in collaboration with SF Camerawork and is co-sponsored by the Northern California Art Historians (NCAH), a College Art Association affiliated society.

American Society of Appraisers

The American Society of Appraisers will offer Signs and Symbols in the Visual Arts, a 2-day course, on January 15-16, 2016, at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA.

Since the beginning of history, human beings have used visual images to signify concepts, beliefs, and ideas. This class will explore visual vocabularies and how they are used in material culture. We will look at images of the cosmos, the earth, geometric forms, animals, plants and the human body and how they are used in art, architecture and design. The focus will be on imagery of the European tradition, though examples from India, China, Japan and indigenous American cultures will also be considered. Because painting, sculpture, books, furniture, decorative arts, buildings, coins, and other objects will be used as sources, the course will be quite useful for those interested in visual studies and anyone wishing to deepen their appreciation of the rich vocabulary of art, architecture and design.

For more information, visit http://www.appraisers.org/Education/View-Course?CourseID=528

Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and Visual Resources Association (VRA)

Join the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association (VRA) March 8-12, 2016 in Seattle, Washington for the third joint conference of the two organizations. The beautiful and technology-driven city of Seattle was proposed by a coalition of members from the VRA Pacific Rim Chapter and the Northwest Chapter of ARLIS/NA. Both chapters have proposed a theme of “Natural Connections” to highlight both the shared values of ARLIS and VRA as well as the close relationship in the Puget Sound area between its people and nature.

In addition to inspirational speakers, information-packed sessions, a preconference THATcamp, marquis events at the city’s hallmark art and library institutions, and many terrific opportunities for making “Natural Connections” with colleagues and friends old and new, the conference schedule allows a free weekend at either end. Come early, stay late, and check out what Seattle has to offer:  stunning natural landscapes, unique architecture, fabulous food & drink, and a huge variety of cultural activities. There is no other place like Seattle to visit in March when it offers cherry blossoms as a cure to your late-winter doldrums.

The Italian Art Society (IAS)

The Italian Art Society (IAS) is delighted to announce the success of its “Campaign for 500.” In early November we reached and surpassed our goal of 500 members, an historic high. Thanks to the generosity of one of our patron members, Mr. Peter Folgliano, next year we will be able to offer two new research and publication grants of up to $1000.00 each. One will be for graduate students, and the other for PhD holders, whose projects concern art and architecture in Italy between 1250 and 1600.

The next IAS/Kress lecture will take place at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, on Wednesday, June 1, 2016 in Florence, Italy. The speaker will be a senior or established scholar working on a topic related to Florence or its environs (application deadline January 8, 2015, please see our website, www.italianartsociety.org, for more information).

The IAS is pleased to announce the recipients of the extra research and publication grants we offered this summer: Dr. Allison Levy (Independent Scholar), for her book, Misfits, Monstrosities, and Madness at the Villa Ambrogiana and Dr. Johanna Heinrichs (Dominican University) for her book, Mobile Lives, Stable Homes: The Palladian Villa between City and Country.

Mid America College Art Association (MACAA)

Building on the success of the 2014 conference, the 2016 MACAA conference will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio and hosted by the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), with School of Art Director Kate Bonansinga and Kris Holland serving as Conference Co-Chairs. Numerous regional institutions and their faculty have been taking part in planning the conference including Ball State University, Miami University, Thomas Moore College, University of Dayton, University of Toledo, Wayne State University, and Western Michigan University. DAAP is also collaborating with FotoFocus 2016 on inviting and sponsoring keynote speakers.

The title of the conference, Studio Shift: MACAA2016 @ DAAP, was selected to underscore the constantly evolving character of art and design. During the last several decades there has been an escalating interest in socially engaged art and design. In this post-studio context, creative practitioners release control to the audience. While this conference will focus on past, present, and future kinds of creative research space for artists, designers, historians, curators, and critics, other presentation topics are also welcome. We welcome student participation in MACAA 2016 as well. The deadline for session proposals is December 1, 2015. The conference hotel is the Kingsgate Marriott on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.

MACAA continues to contract Eastern Illinois University continuing education for conference and membership support services. In 2014, MACAA was established as a non-profit registered in the State of Michigan and retained the services of a CPA to streamline its accounting and business practices. Since the last conference, we have elected Christopher Olszewski (Savannah College of Art and Design) as President of the organization, Barbara Giorgio (Ball State University) as Secretary, and welcome nine new board members. In addition to Kate Bonansinga (DAAP) and Kris Holland (DAAP), we are happy to welcome Mary Eisendrath (Virginia Commonwealth University), Heather Hertel (Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania), Jennifer Murray (Loyola University Chicago), Rod Northcutt (Miami University), Elizabeth Olton (University of New Mexico), and Scott Thorp (Georgia Regents University). Our new representative to Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) is Guen Montgomery (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

The 2014 MACAA conference, “Mash-Up: Navigating Art and Academia in This Millennium,” was held October 22-25, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas. The Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) was the conference host, with Dr. Scott A. Sherer serving as MACAA Conference Chair and Professor Greg Elliott serving as UTSA institutional coordinator. The city of San Antonio, with its well-known cultural history, provided a great foundation for camaraderie.

The conference featured 41 panels and presentations regarding diverse topics in studio disciplines, art history, and museum practices. Conference participants enjoyed a cabaret-style Hometown Artist’s Rodeo, organized by Ken Little (UTSA) and hosted by the Southwest School of Art; a keynote performance by The Art Guys hosted by the McNay Art Museum; and a keynote talk by Joseph Seipel (Virginia Commonwealth University) hosted by the San Antonio Museum of Art. Participants enjoyed presentations and extended discussions regarding research and creative endeavors.

The Members Meeting featured door prizes supplied by the University of Texas Press and Routledge/Taylor and Francis. The Green Bag Lady — Teresa VanHatten-Granath (Denver, CO) — contributed beautiful eco-friendly hand-made bags for all participants. Paula Owen, President of the Southwest School of Art, juried the Members’ Exhibition, held at the UTSA Art Gallery. Ellen Mueller (West Virginia Wesleyan College, Buckhannon, WV) won Best in Show and Rosemary Meza-DesPlas (El Centro College, Dallas, TX) was awarded Honorable Mention.

Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture, Inc. (SHERA)

The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture, Inc. (SHERA) is actively participating in the yearly convention of the Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), which took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 19-22, 2015.  SHERA members organized multiple sessions and roundtables on a wide range of topics covering history of art, theory of aesthetics, architecture, textile design, film, photography, and fashion among others.  A roundtable discussion devoted to the state of the discipline and new research in histories of art in Russia and the countries of East and Central Europe also took place at this convention.

SHERA has successfully launched its visiting scholar program to Russia by arranging visa invitations this summer for two British scholars, members of SHERA, as part of the visiting scholar program with the Russian State University of Humanities in Moscow (RGGU). The visiting scholar program enables scholars to conduct individual research while being involved in educational activities with a partner institution.  Apart from RGGU, SHERA has established working relationship with the Department of Art History of the European University in St. Petersburg.  Inquiries about the application process should be directed to: shera.artarchitecture@gmail.com.

Association of Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH)

Association of Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH) cosponsored with The Università of Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy an international conference on Arts and Politics, November 4-8, 2015.
Members of ATSAH who presented inlcude Profs. Maureen Pelta, Moore College of Arts and Design, PA; Tina Bizzarro, Rosemont College, PA; Sarah Lippert, University of Michigan-Flint; Emilie Passignat, University of Florence, Italy; Brian Steel, Texas Tech University; Debra Murphy, University of North Florida; Liesbeth Grotenhuis, Hanze University, Groningen, Netherlands; and Liana De Girolami Cheney, President of ATSAH.

Liana De Girolami Cheney, PhD, President of the Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH), recently published articles in the following publications:

“Lavinia Fontana’s Two Minervas,” Woman’s Art Journal (Fall/Winter 2015), 30-40.

“Sofonisba Anguissola’s Ponce Portrait of a Young Man,” SOURCE: Notes in the History of Art Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2015), 39-47.

“Giorgio Vasari’s Saint Michael: A Symbol of Neoplatonic Light,” Journal of Religious Studies, Davis Publishing Company, Vol. 3, No. 3 (May-June 2015), 152-66.

“Giorgio Vasari’s Saint Francis: Aretine Fervor,” Journal of Literature and Art Studies, David Publishing Company, Vol. 5, No. 8 (October 2015), 859-73.

“Giorgio Vasari’s “Sala degli Elementi” in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence: The Symbolism of Saturn as Heavenly Air,” in Heavenly Discourses, ed. Nicholas Campion (Bristol, UK: Sophia Centre Press, 2015), 14-24.

“Edward Burne-Jones’ Heavenly Conception: The Days of Creation,” in Brian Abbott, ed. City of Stars: New York: The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena (2015), 75-86.

Filed under: Affiliated Societies —

Committee on Diversity Practices highlights for November/December 2015

posted by CAA — Nov 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.

November/December 2015

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.”

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.”

Filed under: CDP Highlights —

Richard J. Powell Is 2016 Distinguished Scholar

posted by Christopher Howard — Nov 09, 2015

Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where he has taught since 1989, has been named CAA’s 2016 Distinguished Scholar. A specialist in American art, African American art, and theories of race and representation, Powell will be honored in February during a special session at CAA’s upcoming Annual Conference in Washington, DC.

Powell was chair of the school’s Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies from 1996 to 2001. He currently is dean of the humanities for the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke. In 2013, the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art bestowed the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence upon Powell for his contributions to the field of American art history.

Powell earned a PhD in art history at Yale University in 1988, after receiving an MA in Afro-American studies in 1982 from the same school. He was awarded Yale’s Wilbur Cross Medal for Distinguished Alumni in 2009; three years later he received the James A. Porter Award for Excellence in African American Art Scholarship from Howard University, where he earned an MFA in printmaking in 1977. Other notable grants, fellowships, and residencies came from the Voyager Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University.

Powell led CAA’s flagship journal, The Art Bulletin, as editor-in-chief from 2008 to 2010. Among his many editorial accomplishments were substantial multiauthor interventions on decentering modernism, organized around an essay by Partha Mitter; on Pablo Picasso during wartime, for which a play by Ariel Dorfman served as anchor; and on Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas in light of postcolonial and materialist discourses. In the latter, for example, lead author Byron Ellsworth Hamann explored the presence in the painting of materials from the Americas, including silver, clay, and the red dye cochineal.

Powell’s books include Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (2008); Black Art: A Cultural History (2002); Jacob Lawrence (1992); and Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (1991), which drew from his dissertation on this twentieth-century American artist. He was the primary or sole author of numerous exhibition catalogues, such as Circle Dance: The Art of John T. Scott (2005); Beauford Delaney: The Color Yellow (2002); To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (1999); and James Lesesne Wells: Sixty Years in Art (1986).

As a curator, Powell has organized and cocurated such exhibitions as Conjuring Bearden at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art (2006); Back to Black: Art, Cinema, and the Racial Imaginary at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London (2005); Rhapsodies in Black: The Art of the Harlem Renaissance for the Hayward Gallery in London and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (1997); and The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism for Washington Project for the Arts (1989). His first curated show, Impressions/Expressions: Black American Graphics, appeared at the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York and toured nationally.

The 2016 Distinguished Scholar Session will take place on Thursday, February 4, 2016, 2:30–5:00 PM, at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Powell will be joined by three colleagues: Kobena Mercer, professor of history of art and African American studies at Yale University; Gwen Everett, associate professor of art history at Howard University and associate dean of the school’s Division of Fine Arts; Kellie Jones, associate professor of art history at Columbia University and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Art History and Archaeology; and Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

CAA inaugurated its Distinguished Scholar Session in 2001, first honoring James S. Ackerman of Harvard University. Since then, the organization has recognized many illustrious writers, teachers, and curators, including Leo Steinberg (2002), John Szarkowski (2006), Linda Nochlin (2007), Svetlana Alpers (2009), Jonathan Brown (2011), Rosalind Krauss (2012), and Wen C. Fong (2013).

Filed under: Annual Conference, Art History, People in the News —

News from the Art and Academic Worlds

posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 28, 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.

How to Document Heritage Sites under Threat

A major conference in Berlin to be held November 19–20 will bring together advocates to discuss how digital technology is being used to preserve the world’s heritage sites. “Resilience through Innovation” has been organized by CyArk, a California-based nonprofit organization that uses digital scanning to create a free-to-access online three-dimensional archive of heritage sites. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)

Ten Art-World Survival Tips They Didn’t Teach You in School

So you want to get a master of fine arts degree. But how well will your MFA program prepare you for life as a professional artist? The number of graduates from art MFA programs has doubled from 1987 to 2012, while BFA graduates have nearly tripled during the same time frame. Artnet News asked current students and recent graduates to share their advice for getting ahead. (Read more from Artnet News.)

A Look at the Museum of the Future

Museums are flirting with change that may be more revolutionary than at any other point in their history. The forces rocking the technology world—cheaper screens, miniaturized mechanics, and increased computing power—are prompting a rich period of experimentation in exhibition design. (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)

The Digital Innovations Seven LA Museums Are Most Excited About

Even though museum collections often go back hundreds—even millions—of years, these visitor-reliant institutions must stay relevant in the twenty-first century. There is healthy debate about how much technology is too much, and when and where within a museum it is appropriate to use technology, but there is little debate about the fact that technology is here to stay. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)

Back to the Drawing Board: The Crafty Art Students Rejecting Digital

Once it had connotations of classroom cutting and sticking or haberdashery departments, but today the word “craft” represents a movement of makers investing time in mastering skills, experimenting with design, and laboring over one handmade object at a time. Against a backdrop of the 3D printing revolution, craft is still going strong, and many young people across the UK are still interested in learning traditional techniques such as stone carving, silver smithing, and wood work. (Read more from the Guardian.)

For Obamas, a More Abstract Choice of Art

This past summer, President Barack Obama spent nearly an hour at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the nation’s largest repository of paintings and sketches by Edward Hopper. He also could have seen a few Hoppers at home. Two of the artist’s classic depictions of the American landscape—Cobb’s Barns, South Truro and Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro—now hang on the southeast side of the Oval Office and are part of a years-long shift by Obama and his wife, who have put their more modern aesthetic imprint on the White House. (Read more from the New York Times.)

Going through the Motions? The 2015 Survey of Faculty Workplace Engagement

Employee engagement is an important metric that can gauge how loyal and intrinsically interested people are in their work. So how engaged are faculty members, and how do they compare to other kinds of workers? A new Inside Higher Ed survey suggests that while faculty members over all aren’t actively engaged in their work, those at smaller, private institutions tend to be the most emotionally and intellectually connected to what they do. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

The Academic Book as Expensive, Nihilistic Hobby

I just got word from my editor at Northwestern University Press that my first (and last) academic monograph, Kafka and Wittgenstein, has been sent to the printer. My feelings about this range from mild pride, to medium-grade nihilism, to wide-ranging annoyance at a publication model that still depends on a tenure system that is largely extinct. (Read more from Vitae.)

Filed under: CAA News —

The Role of Contextual Studies in Art School Education in Scotland

posted by Sarah Smith, Joint Head of the Forum for Critical Inquiry, the Glasgow School of Art, and member of CAA’s International Committee — Oct 26, 2015

Last April, my colleagues and I in the Glasgow School of Art’s Forum for Critical Inquiry organized a seminar on “The Role of Critical and Contextual Studies in Art School Education in Scotland,” which aimed to facilitate and stimulate scholarly debate on art and design higher education and to establish a regional network of Scottish faculty who teach Critical and Contextual Studies. The seminar was funded by the UK’s Council for Higher Education in Art and Design and formed part of their Regional Seminar programme.

Since 1962–63, university level art and design education in the UK has included an “academic” element, which was originally referred to as the History of Art and Design and Complementary Studies and is now better known as Critical and Contextual Studies (CCS). This element was introduced to give “degree equivalence” to what was initially a quite technically focused diploma by providing context to studio practices and developing a broader range of skills in students. Topics taught under this rubric include histories of art and design, film and media histories, critical theory, aesthetics, and, more recently, curatorial and art writing practices. Recent changes to UK art and design higher education, precipitated by diverse drivers such as funding cuts and the emergence of the PhD by practice as the terminal degree, has brought the debate about the role of CCS back into sharp focus. A central question for this debate is: if the role of CCS is no longer “to elevate” and “lend academic credibility” to studio practice, as was originally the case (outlined in the Coldstream Reports of 1960 and 1970), then what do we see as its role both now and in the future?

This is a recurring (if not perpetual) question for art schools in the UK and Ireland where CCS still represents a sort of “minor” subject that underpins the “major” studio practice; the relationship between the two is never quite at ease. The question has been addressed by my institution, the Glasgow School of Art, three times through departmental review since I began teaching there in 2000, and it has not been satisfactorily answered to date. The most recent iteration was prompted by a recommendation in the Glasgow School of Art’s Fine Art 2013 Periodic Review, which advised that CCS be divided and brought under the management of the institution’s three schools (Fine Art, Design, and Architecture) rather than be managed centrally and provide cross-institution curriculum.

Across the UK there exists a variety of curricular and organizational CCS models, which are reflected in the different approaches of the four Scottish art schools: Glasgow School of Art; Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh; Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee; and Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. By focusing on the regional context, we hoped to identify issues and opportunities that may be unique to the Scottish higher education sector, which differs from the rest of the UK in a range of ways, including a tendency for four-year degree programs; no tuition fees for home or European Union students; the ability of Scottish students to start university at the age of seventeen; and a focus on educational breadth at the undergraduate level.

Thirty-five delegates from across Scotland and the UK attended the seminar, and for the opening keynote, Dr. Annebella Pollen from the University of Brighton presented an overview of a piece of pedagogic research that was recently published in Design and Culture.[1] In the paper, titled “Theory and Practice: Objective and Subjective?,” she critiques the perception of the “academic element” of studio-based programs as lacking in subjectivity and personal investment, instead arguing that design history is an embodied, reflective, and affective discipline.

Two lecturers from each of the four Scottish art schools then gave short presentations on CCS within their institutions, offering either overviews of their respective curricular and operational models or focusing on examples of innovative practice that, for instance, combine studio and CCS methodologies and techniques (such as visual presentation, collage, assemblage, collecting, curating, and writing) to design CCS courses.

Numerous differences emerged in the various models and approaches employed by each of the four institutions. It was clear that operational models have a considerable impact on learning and teaching practices. For example, the Edinburgh College of Art and the Glasgow School of Art can offer team-taught courses and a diverse range of electives because they have separate CCS departments that work across programs. In contrast, the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design faculty tend to be attached to specific programs and work in a more isolated way or, when possible, in pairs. (Certainly there is no sense in having a strategic approach to CCS provision—and related research—at an institutional level at Duncan of Jordanstone.) Perhaps because CCS at Gray’s School of Art has been through several different operational and pedagogic iterations over the past ten years (from being a separate department, to being fully integrated with studio, and then back to being a separate department), the school seems well placed to propose courses that endorse innovative practices to engage students with CCS.

The closing keynote by Neil Mulholland from the Edinburgh College of Art, provocatively titled “Juche: Art School State of Mind,” was based on his article for the New Art West Midlands 2014 exhibition catalogue and is part of his sustained research project into art school pedagogy.[2] His central thesis posits that, while there is an exciting scope for developing radical pedagogies within art schools, the insular culture fostered therein since the mid-twentieth century stymies opportunities for curricular diversity. Having broad-based contextual studies goes some way toward challenging the monoculturalism that art and design education can, at times, endorse; it does so both by fostering critical thinking and by facilitating the student’s development of a different skill set.

We hoped that the keynotes from Pollen and Mulholland would provide a sort of framing, and they did by asking provocative questions about what art school education is and should be in the twenty-first century, and by considering how to challenge ossification and reconceptualize the role of contextual studies as part of a diverse curriculum. The short presentations from the four Scottish art schools gave us a chance to see what and how we teach, and allowed us to share good practices. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the seminar was the opportunity to meet and talk about the issues we share as contextual studies faculty working within art schools, thereby kick-starting a range of collaborations between CCS staff within Scotland, from informal teaching exchanges and joint writing projects to developing cross-institutional research funding bids.

Scottish higher education institutions have a strong tradition of collaboration due to their relatively small number, geographical proximity, and shared well-defined regional/national identity, yet Scottish CCS staff have rarely collaborated. This lack of collaboration may be partly attributable to a lack of organizational support and recognition of this “minor” subject, but it is also a result of there being no natural home for an interdisciplinary subject area that spans art and design history, cultural studies, philosophy, film and media studies, gender studies, ethnography, and various other subjects. Individual CCS faculty tend to participate in professional networks tied to one or two of these disciplines, but there is something distinctive about teaching and researching in an art school context that requires another kind of network and other kinds of support. Currently Scotland is bereft of this kind of support, and we therefore need to build this support at regional and national levels while simultaneously connecting with major national and international organizations such as the UK’s Council for Higher Education in Art and Design and the College Art Association, which have long recognized the need to support art and design higher education across studio and contextual studies.

[1] Annebella Pollen, “My Position in the Design World: Locating Subjectivity in the Design Curriculum,” Design and Culture 7, no. 1 (2015): 85–106.

[2] Neil Mulholland, “Juche: Art School State of Mind,” in New Art West Midlands 2014, exh. cat. (Birmingham, UK: Birmingham Museums Trust, 2014), 25–28, at www.newartwestmidlands.org/wp-content/uploads/New-Art-West-Midlands-catalogue-2014.pdf, as of October 19, 2015.

Filed under: International —

Pamela Z. Blum: In Memoriam

posted by CAA — Oct 23, 2015

Pamela Z. Blum, a historian of medieval art noted for her innovative iconographical and archeological work distinguishing original from restored sculpture at the Royal Abbey Church of Saint-Denis in Paris, and for her contributions to studies of the provenance of limestone used in medieval sculpture, died on August 6, 2015, in North Branford, Connecticut. She was 92. The cause of death was a sudden, undefined cardiovascular event.

Blum became an art historian relatively late in life. She was a homemaker for twenty-four years before she discovered her calling in the churches of East Anglia while spending a year in Cambridge. Her interest in medieval art grew from making rubbings of the commemorative brass plaques in the surrounding churches into a serious intellectual pursuit inspired by the medieval art-history lectures of Nikolaus Pevsner at Cambridge University. Blum enrolled in Yale University Graduate School in 1968 at the age of 45, obtained an MA and an MPhil, and was awarded a PhD in history of art in 1978.

Blum established her reputation at the Royal Abbey Church of Saint-Denis in France. Using a toothbrush and camera, she worked high up on scaffolding erected along the abbey’s façades to reveal, distinguish, and document the original from the restored elements of the sculpture there. She continued to study and publish her findings on the Royal Abby throughout her career, including codirected studies sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on the provenance of limestone used in medieval sculpture. These studies were noted for their intellectually stimulating collaborations among scientists, archeologists, and art historians.

She edited and contributed to the book The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis: From Its Beginning to the Death of Suger, 475–1151 and authored Early Gothic Saint-Denis: Restorations and Survivals. She wrote or cowrote articles such as “Fingerprinting the Stone at Saint-Denis: A Pilot Study” (Gesta) and“The Sculptures of the Salisbury Chapter-house” (Salisbury Cathedral Medieval Publications Art and Architecture),among many other articles that appeared in Gesta and CAA’s Art Journal, and in commemorative compendiums honoring her mentor, Sumner McKnight Crosby.

Blum taught at many institutions throughout her career, among them Columbia University, the International Center for Medieval Art at the Cloisters, Wesleyan University, and Yale University. Other positions included Miriam Sacher Visiting Fellow at St. Hilda’s College in Oxford, England.

Throughout her life Blum supported significant numbers of environmental and humanitarian causes. Kent Place School awarded her the Barbara Wright Biddison Distinguished Alumna Award in 2010. She was also an active alumna of Smith College and a vital member of New Haven’s intellectual community.

Blum was born in 1923 in Jersey City, New Jersery, to William A. Zink and the former Marjorie Powell. She attended Kent Place School in Summit, New Jersery, and graduated cum laude from Smith College in 1943, on an accelerated wartime program, with a BA in economics. She married John M. Blum in 1944. They were married for sixty-seven years when he died in 2011. She is survived by three children—Ann of Arlington, Massachusetts; Pamela of Kingston, New York; and Thomas of Dobbs Ferry, New York—and three grandchildren.

Published on October 23, 2015.

Filed under: Obituaries —

Grants, Awards, and Honors

posted by CAA — Oct 15, 2015

CAA recognizes its members for their professional achievements, be it a grant, fellowship, residency, book prize, honorary degree, or related award.

Grants, Awards, and Honors 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

Lauren Applebaum, a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, has won a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Her project examines “Elusive Matter, Material Bodies: American Art in the Age of Electronic Mediation, 1865–1918.”

S. Elise Archias, assistant professor in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois in Chicago, has been named George Gurney Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her project is called “Armatures—Joan Mitchell, Lygia Clark, and Melvin Edwards circa 1960.”

Nadya Bair, a PhD student in art history at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has won a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Her project is titled “The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Art of Collaboration in Postwar Photojournalism.”

Nicole Bass, a PhD student in the history of art at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has received a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. She will research “The Shade of Private Life: Privacy and the Press in Turn-of-the-Century American Art.”

David Brownlee, Frances Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Professor of 19th Century European Art and chair of the Graduate Group in the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has been inducted as a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians.

Emily Casey, a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware in Newark, has been appointed Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her project is called “Waterscapes: Representing the Sea in the American Imagination, 1760–1815.”

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, professor of communications and arts at Seton Hall University in Seton Hall, New Jersey, has accepted an ACLS Comparative Perspectives on Chinese Culture and Society Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies for her project, “Artistic Exchanges between China and the West during the Late Qing Dynasty (ca. 1795–1911).”

Michael Cloud, an artist based in Brooklyn, New York, has received a 2015 fellowship for painting by the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Blane De St. Croix, Broken Landscapes III, 2013 (artwork © Blane De St. Croix)

Blane De St. Croix, an artist based in Brooklyn, New York, who is also associate professor and head of sculpture at Indiana University in Bloomington, has received an artist’s residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

R. Ruth Dibble, a doctoral student in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has been named James Renwick Predoctoral Fellow in American Craft at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will work on “‘Strike Home to the Minds of Men’: Crafting Domesticity in the Civil War Era.”

Erica DiBenedetto, a graduate student in art history at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, has become Patricia and Phillip Frost Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her project is called “Drawing from Architecture: The Conceptual Methods of Sol LeWitt’s Art, 1965–1980.”

Randall Edwards, a PhD student in art history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has accepted a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. He is researching “Dennis Oppenheim: Sites, 1967–75.”

George F. Flaherty, assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, has won the Founders’ JSAH Article Award from the Society of Architectural Historians for his essay, “Responsive Eyes: Urban Logistics and Kinetic Environments for the 1968 Mexico City Olympics,” published in the September 2014 issue of the Journal of Architectural Historians.

Kate Flint, professor of English and art history at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has earned an ACLS Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for “Flash! Photography, Writing, and Surprising Illumination.”

Finbarr Barry Flood, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the Humanities in the Institute of Fine Art at New York University, has received an ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies to work on “Object Histories—Flotsam as Early Globalism.”

Emily Ann Francisco, an MA student in art history and museum studies at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, has completed the summer internship program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. This program provides opportunities for graduate and postgraduate students to work on projects directed by a museum department head or curator.

Julie Green, The Last Supper, 2000–2015, ongoing, 600 plates completed to date, dimensions variable (artwork © Julie Green)

Julie Green, professor of fine arts at Oregon State University in Corvallis, has received an artist’s residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Rachel Haidu, associate professor of art and art history and of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, has earned an ACLS Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Her project is called “The Knot of Influence.”

Taro Hattori, an installation artist based in Oakland, California, has accepted a fall 2015 residency at the Luminary in Saint Louis, Missouri.

Mary Beth Heffernan’s Personal Protective Equipment Portrait Project (photograph by Marc Campos)

Mary Beth Heffernan, associate professor of sculpture and photography at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, was awarded the Presidential Grant from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation for her Personal Protective Equipment Portrait Project, a social-practice art intervention in the Ebola epidemic.

Ellie Irons, an artist based in Brooklyn, New York, has been awarded a 2015 fellowship for interdisciplinary work by the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Saisha Grayson, assistant curator for the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and a doctoral candidate in art history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has been awarded a Predoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her research project is “Cellist, Catalyst, Collaborator: The Work of Charlotte Moorman, 1963–1980.”

Christopher Ketcham, a doctoral student in the history, theory, and criticism of architecture and art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, has been awarded a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies. His project is called “Minimal Art and Body Politics in New York City, 1961–75.”

Yuko Kikuchi, a professor at University of the Arts London in the United Kingdom, has been appointed Terra Foundation Senior Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her project is titled “Russel Wright and Asia: Studies on the American Design Aid and Transnational Design History during the Cold War.”

Marci Kwon, a PhD student at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, has accepted a Predoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will work on “Vernacular Modernism: Joseph Cornell and the Art of Populism.”

Lex Morgan Lancaster, a doctoral student in art history at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, has completed the summer internship program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. This program provides opportunities for graduate and postgraduate students to work on projects directed by a museum department head or curator.

Solveig Nelson, a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has received a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Her project is titled “Direct Action, Mediated Bodies: How Early Video Changed Art.”

Alexander Potts, Max Loehr Collegiate Professor of History of Art at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has been elected to the British Academy as a corresponding fellow.

John Paul Ricco has accepted a faculty research fellowship at the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute in Ontario for 2015–16.

Kristine K. Ronan, a PhD candidate in the history of art at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has earned a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Her research examines “Buffalo Dancer: The Biography of an Image.”

Julia B. Rosenbaum, associate professor of art history at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, has become a senior fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her project explores “Curated Bodies: The Display of Science and Citizenry in Post–Civil War America.”

James H. Rubin

James H. Rubin, professor of art history at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Grant for calendar year 2016.

Wenhua Shi, assistant professor of art and art history at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, has been awarded a 2015 fellowship by the New York Foundation for the Arts in the category of interdisciplinary work.

Mark Van Proyen, associate professor of painting at the San Francisco Art Institute in California, has received the Kenneth J. Botto Research Fellowship from the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His project examines “Kenneth J. Botto and the Tradition of Surrealist Photography.”

Alicia W. Walker, assistant professor of history of art at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, has received a Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for “Christian Bodies, Pagan Images: Women, Beauty, and Morality in Medieval Byzantium.”

Julie Warchol, formerly Brown Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow at the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Massachusetts, has completed the summer internship program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. This program provides opportunities for graduate and postgraduate students to work on projects directed by a museum department head or curator.

Allison Wiese, associate professor of sculpture in the Department of Art and Architecture at the University of San Diego in California, has completed a July 2015 residency at the Montello Foundation near Montello, Nevada.

Tobias Wofford, assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, has been named Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. He will work on “Visualizing Diaspora: Africa in African American Art.”

Elaine Y. Yau, a graduate student in art history at the University of California, Berkeley, has become the William H. Truettner Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will research “Acts of Conversion: Sister Gertrude Morgan and the Sensation of Black Folk Art, 1960–1983.”

Alice Pixley Young, an artist based in Cincinnati, Ohio, has finished an artist’s residency at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia.

Catherine Zuromskis, associate professor in the Department of Art and Art at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, has accepted an Ansel Adams Research Fellowship from the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her project will investigate “The Crime Scene and the Archive: Reframing Evidence.”

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Grants Awards Honors, Member News, Member Spotlight —

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