CAA News Today
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 19, 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.
Making the Most of the Syllabus
On the first day of class, after a brief introduction to the class topic and my related background, I pass out the syllabus in hard copy. We then read the document together out loud. I ask a student to read the first paragraph. Then the next student reads the next paragraph, and so on. In addition to ensuring that every student reads the entire syllabus, I help students get over possible anxieties about hearing themselves speak in front of their peers. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
It’s the Little Things That Count in Teaching
Line up course readings. Plan the syllabus. Design lesson plans and homework assignments. Those are some of the big-picture elements that we all fret over as college instructors preparing for the fall semester. But as teachers of writing and rhetoric, we’ve come to realize the crucial role of the (often overlooked) “little” things. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
How Art Became Irrelevant
In terms of quantifiable data—prices spent on paintings and photographs and sculptures, visitors accommodated, funds raised, and square footage created at museums—the picture could hardly be rosier. Equally robust is the art market, to judge by a Christie’s auction on May 11 that set several records, including the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art. But quantifiable data can only describe the fiscal health of the fine arts, not their cultural health. Here the picture is not so rosy. (Read more from Commentary.)
Why Is Stolen Art So Hard to Find?
Twenty-five years ago, two thieves dressed as police officers bluffed their way into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made away with $500 million of artwork by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, and others. The thieves didn’t cover their faces and apparently didn’t know much about what they were stealing: they roughly cut the paintings from their frames and left more valuable works hanging on the walls. Despite the thieves’ apparent inexpertise and the ensuing media attention, no suspects were ever arrested and the art was never recovered. (Read more from Slate.)
Collectible after All: Christiane Paul on Net Art at the Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum artport has been an important institutional presence in net art and new media since its launch in 2002. Created and curated by Christiane Paul, artport features online commissions as well as documentation of new-media artworks from the museum’s exhibitions and collections. This year, artport as a whole was made an official part of the Whitney Museum collection; to mark this occasion, the artist Marisa Olson interviewed Paul about the program’s history and evolution over thirteen years. (Read more from Rhizome.)
The Hell You Say
Half a century ago, the defense of free speech was closely identified with groups like the Free Speech Movement, a confederation of activists who came together at the University of California in Berkeley, after a student was arrested for setting up a table of civil-rights literature, in defiance of antisolicitation rules. But as the 1990s progressed, fights over obscenity subsided and fights over so-called political correctness intensified; “free speech” became a different kind of rallying cry, especially on college campuses. (Read more from the New Yorker.)
Thirteen Art History Emojis We Desperately Wish Were Real
This one goes out to all the art-savvy texters of the world, looking to add some of history’s finest manifestations of creative expression to their OMGs and LOLs. It’s been over two years since the glory days of #emojiarthistory, when the art world banded together to adapt art classics into emojis using the options available. What if, instead of using two dancing ballerinas to signify a Diane Arbus photo, there existed a whole realm of ready-made art emojis based on the canon of art history? (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
Late Again?
It’s 9:30 AM, and the upper-level course I teach on mass communication is about to begin. Ten of my twenty-seven students are missing. Twenty minutes later, that number dwindles to just two, as eight students arrive, one by one, during my lecture. Frustration kicks in as I try not to let the latecomers derail my train of thought. Does any of that sound familiar? (Read more from Vitae.)
New Appointments to CAA’s Journals
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 14, 2015
The president of CAA’s Board of Directors, DeWitt Godfrey, has made appointments to the editorships and editorial boards of CAA’s three scholarly journals, in consultation with the editorial boards and the vice president for publications, Gail Feigenbaum. The appointments took effect on July 1, 2015.
The Art Bulletin
Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, professor emerita in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware in Newark, has been appointed the next editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin. She is a specialist in French art from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. In 2010 she published Théodore Géricault (Phaidon); other books have focused on Cézanne (University of Chicago Press, 2003) and Delacroix (Yale University Press, 1991). After a year as editor designate, Athanassoglou-Kallmyer will serve a three-year term, July 1, 2016–June 30, 2019. The March 2017 issue of The Art Bulletin will be her first issue. After her editorship, she will remain on the journal’s editorial board as past editor through June 30, 2020.
Two new at-large members have joined the Art Bulletin Editorial Board: Jonathan Reynolds is a scholar of modern Japanese art and architecture and a professor of art history at Barnard College and Columbia University in New York; Michael Schreffler, a specialist in early modern Latin American art, is an associate professor of art history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Their terms run through June 30, 2019.
Art Journal
Kirsten Swenson, an assistant professor of art history, contemporary art, and aesthetics at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, has been appointed reviews editor of Art Journal. Two books of her work will publish later this year: Irrational Judgments: Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, and 1960s New York (Yale University Press) and, coedited with Emily Eliza Scott, Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics (University of California Press). Swenson is serving as reviews editor designate for one year before her three-year term begins on July 1, 2016. Her first commissioned reviews will appear in the Spring 2017 issue.
Talinn Grigor, an associate professor of fine arts at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a new member of the Art Journal Editorial Board. Her area of expertise is modern and contemporary global art and architecture, with a focus on the art of Iran. Her term runs through June 30, 2019.
caa.reviews
The caa.reviews Editorial Board welcomes one new member-at-large, Ben Davis, an independent author and critic residing in New York. Davis is national art critic for Artnet News and the author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class (Haymarket Books, 2013). He will serve on the editorial board for a four-year term, through June 30, 2019.
New field editors of book reviews for the journal are: Gwen Allen, associate professor of art history at San Francisco State University in California, as field editor for artists’ books and books for artists; Lisa Florman, professor and chair of the Department of History of Art at Ohio State University in Columbus, as field editor for twentieth-century art; Angela Vanhaelen, associate professor of art history at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, as field editor for northern European art; and Helen Westgeest, assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history and of theory of photography at Leiden University in Leiden, the Netherlands, as field editor in photography.
New field editors for exhibition reviews are: Susan Best, professor of art history for the Queensland College of Art at Griffith University in South Bank, Australia, as field editor for modern and contemporary exhibitions in Australia and New Zealand; Natilee Harren, assistant professor of contemporary art history and critical studies in the School of Art at the University of Houston in Texas, as field editor for exhibitions in the Southwest; and Susan Richmond, associate professor of art history at Georgia State University in Atlanta, as field editor for exhibitions in the Southeast.
Smarthistory Seeks Short Essays
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 27, 2015
Smarthistory is working to provide essays and videos on the 250 objects that are part of the new AP art-history curriculum, launching fall 2015. We have eighteen objects left ranging from prehistoric to contemporary work. If you are interested in contributing a brief introductory essay on one of these, please drop us an email: drszucker@gmail.com and beth.harris@gmail.com.
Here’s what missing (images can be found on this list):
- Apollo 11 Cave Stones (State Museum Namibia)
- Running horned woman, 6000–4000 BCE, Algeria
- Hall of the Bulls, Lascaux, France, 15,000–13,000 BCE
- Anthropomorphic stele (El-Maakir-Qaryat al-Kaafa), fourth millennium BCE (Riyadh)
- Terracotta fragment, Lapita, Solomon Islands, Reef Islands, 1000 BCE (University of Auckland
- Michel Tuffery, Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000), 1994 (MNZM/Museum of New Zealand)
- Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 1997
- Magdalena Abakanowicz, Androgyne III, 1985, burlap, resin, wood, nails, and string (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
- Portrait mask (Mblo), Baule peoples (Côte d’Ivoire), late nineteenth or early twentieth century
- Lukasa (memory board), Mbudye Society, Luba peoples, (DR Congo), ca. nineteenth or early twentieth century
- Night Attack on the Sanjô Palace, Kamakura Period, Japan, ca. 1250–1300 CE (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
- Ambum Stone, Papua New Guinea, ca. 1500 BCE (National Gallery of Australia)
- Nan Madol, Pohnpei, Micronesia, Saudeleur Dynasty. ca. 700–1600 CE
- ‘Ahu ‘ula (feather cape), Hawaiian, late eighteenth century
- Tamati Waka Nene, Gottfried Lindauer, 1890 CE, oil on canvas
- Malagan display and mask, New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, ca. twentieth century (University Museum, Pennsylvania)
We are also looking for contributions from art historians on other broadly taught topics.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for June 2015
posted by CAA — Jul 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.
July 2015
Deirdre Logue and Allyson Mitchell: I’m Not Myself At All
Agnes Etherington Art Centre
Queen’s University, 36 University Avenue, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
May 2–August 9, 2015
In I’m Not Myself At All, the artists Deirdre Logue and Allyson Mitchell present an “exuberant revision of sexual identity and domesticity.” The multimedia body of work on exhibit at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University contains a multitude of forms and mediums, such as soft-sculpture dolls, wallpaper, crochet spider webs, needlepoint drawings, and papier–mâché.
Referring to the dolls in the exhibition catalogue, the theorist Heather Love writes, “the female body will not be cleaned up in this queer future—it will arrive trailing its effluvia: bodily fluids, odours, patches of fur, cellulite, granny panties, shag, that sucking sound.”
The artists present an oversized self-representation through amplification of the dolls genitalia, blown-up needlepoint patterned wallpaper, and a gigantic papier–mâché pink highlighter against a backdrop of feminist texts, “raising what curator Sarah E. K. Smith identifies as ‘potentiality, belonging and representation,’” via discarded feminist pasts.
Mitchell and Logue run the Feminist Art Gallery (FAG) in Toronto, which Mitchell describes on her website as “a response, a process, a site, a protest, an outcry, an exhibition, a performance, an economy, a conceptual framework, a place and an opportunity.”
Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
5216 Montrose Boulevard, Houston, TX 77006
April 18–August 2, 2015
Marilyn Minter’s exhibition Pretty/Dirty at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston “vividly manifest[s] our culture’s complex and contradictory emotions around the feminine body and beauty.” The exhibition spans Minter’s career from earlier works such as Coral Ridge Towers, of her “drug-addled mother,” to her 2014 video Smash, with “large female feet in bejeweled high-heeled shoes … dancing, sliding across the floor and smashing glass—all in Minter’s signature silver liquid.”
As a painter, photographer, and video artist, Minter offers a counterdialogue to the fashion industry, whose hypersearch for perfection and beauty are revealed in the artist’s own search for the all too human physical imperfections. “It is way too easy to criticize the fashion industry,” Minter said in her artist talk.
“Minter offers a smart woman’s critical look at issues that are otherwise presented by men for female consumption,” states the exhibition press release. “Minter shows the dual nature and slight imperfections of herself and her fellow woman, finding that true allure comes from the sensuality of imperfections.” But while Minter’s work sometimes calls attention to imperfection, there is a “pleasure rubric” in the exhibition, as Bill Arning calls his discussion with Minter. “I know pleasure exists,” Minter says, “I have it too when I look at these images.”
On view through August 2, 2015, are over twenty-five paintings from 1976 through 2013, three video works, and photographs exploring her development as an artist. The exhibition was organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. An artist’s talk with Minter, along with Arning, Elissa Auther, and Linda Yablonsky, is available online.
Installation view of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s exhibition Verses After Dusk at the Serpentine Gallery (June 2–September 13, 2015) in London (artwork © Lynette Yiadom-Boakye; photograph © readsreads.info)
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Verses After Dusk
Serpentine Galleries
Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA
June 2–September 13, 2015
The Serpentine Galleries present Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Verses After Dusk, the first major solo exhibition by the London-born artist. Yiadom-Boakye, born in 1977 from Ghanaian parents, was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2013. Her paintings explore figures that appear to exist outside a specific time and place. These subjects are all fictitious and drawn from memory or scrapbooks. The artist presents her “suggestions of people,” as she once put it, absent of background, or landscapes, or objects, freeing them from the restrictions of definite time, location, age, and even gender. Her characters may be presented in absence of context, but they are accompanied with enigmatic titles that encourages viewers to construct their own narratives and search a dialogue with the artist’s “poetic secrecy.”
Verses After Dusk is a survey of the artist’ recent work, presenting a comprehensive range of painterly techniques in a series that raises timeless questions of identity as well as representation in art, bringing awareness to the failings of such matters throughout art history. While the artist plays with the influence and references to eighteenth and nineteenth century masters such as Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, and Éduoard Manet, she deconstructs them and reconstructs the meaning, challenging the representation of black portraiture in the canon of art history. The display features exclusively black figures, pointing out the absence of references in the representation of black history in the canon of Western art.
Between the works on display, Yes Officer, No Officer (2008) unravels Manet’s famous avant-garde painting Olympia (1863). But in this case, Yiadom-Boakye substitutes the reclining nude female prostitute with a black man and completely deletes the black female servant from the background. Along an impressive collection of expressive paintings, the exhibition includes ten new etchings and introduces the artist’s less-known writings, published in occasion of the exhibition.
Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo / Evidence
Brooklyn Museum
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Fourth Floor, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052
May 1–November 1, 2015
Hosted at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the Brooklyn Museum presents Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo / Evidence. The exhibition is the most comprehensive museum presentation by the artist to date, in which the artist interlocks photography, video, and installation with human-rights activism.
Isibonelo/Evidence features several of the artist’s ongoing projects about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) communities, both in her home country of South Africa and abroad. The display includes eighty-seven works created between 2006 and 2014, including Muholi’s celebrated Faces and Phases portrait series, which uses firsthand accounts to speak to the experience of living in a country that constitutionally protects the rights of LGBTI people but often fails to defend them from targeted violence. In this series, and in an attempt to archive an “invisible” community, Muholi photographed around three hundred South African lesbians against plain or patterned backgrounds. Her compelling and undeniably powerful black-and-white portraits have infinite depth that allows the translation of haunting stories through a single look. The exhibition also includes the new series Weddings and the video Being Scene, which focus on love, intimacy, and daily life within the artist’s own community.
Muholi, born in 1972 in Durban at the height of apartheid, has developed for more than a decade a visual record of black lesbians in her home country, bringing visibility to communities who, although same-sex marriage has been legalized in 2006, continue to undergo hate crimes, stigma, and remain victims of “curative rape.” Through a work that claims her full citizenship as a South African female photographer who identifies as black, and also as a lesbian, the artist express her search of the deserved recognition, respect, and validation that mark and trace our existence.
Cover the issue 8 of Shotgun Seamstress
Osa Atoe: Shotgun Seamstress
Online and Print Zine
“I’m a punk and a feminist,” Osa Atoe declares on Shotgun Seamstress, her blog and fanzine the tagline describes as “old maximum rocknroll columns + new black punk rock thoughts.” In her blog post of March 24, 2015, “I Will Resist With Every Inch and Every Breath: Punk and the Art of Feminism” (which was also the name of a panel Atoe was invited to speak on at the Elizabeth A. Sackler for Feminist Art on March 12, 2015), she explains her roots in feminism and punk as well as the birth of Shotgun Seamstress in 2006. “I had a head full of feminist theory that I had acquired on my own, through my community and from school—including the very useful concept of intersecting identities … and I felt that any art I made should also be political.”
“The intersection of punk and radical politics felt natural to me,” Atoe says. Inspired by Riot Grrrl, Cometbus, and especially the zine Evolution of a Race Riot, Atoe says she set out to celebrate black punk identity within a predominantly white punk scene “that was constantly, but awkwardly attempting to address its own racism.” Atoe’s zine is not about critique, however. As she explains of her first issue, “I didn’t really talk about feminism so much, it just was feminist in its approach” (emphasis by Atoe).
You can see the full panel discussion “I Will Resist With Every Inch and Every Breath: Punk and the Art of Feminism” with Atoe and other panelists online. Printed copies of Shotgun Seamstress are available from Mend My Dress Press.
Agnes Gund: Fame, Fortune, and the Female Artist
Five Points Gallery, 33 Main Street, Torrington, CT
July 10 at 7:00 PM
Five Points Gallery is pleased to announce an upcoming lecture by Agnes Gund, a renowned philanthropist, civic leader, and devoted supporter of women’s issues. Gund, a president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art and chair of its International Council, will speak on “Fame, Fortune, and the Female Artist.” The talk will be free and open to the public on a first-come first-served basis. Five Points Gallery is a nonprofit fine art gallery showcasing professional regional and national visual artists in order to foster an understanding and appreciation of contemporary art in the community.
House, Work, Artwork: Feminism and Art History’s New Domesticities
University of Birmingham, UK
July 3–4, 2015
This conference is motivated by the premise that it is appropriate for feminist art history to revisit and newly configure theoretical, methodological, and political debate around modernist, postmodernist, and contemporary artistic practice in relation to the domestic. The debate is particularly timely in the light of art and art history’s “new” domesticities. These include queer art history’s turn toward the domestic as a site for imagining, making, and inhabiting space within or without the heteronormative, and recent art-historical and curatorial projects focusing on modern and contemporary art practice and the home—but in which the question of feminism is downplayed in favor of more generalized concepts of subversion, labor, and belonging. The keynote speakers are: Mignon Nixon from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and Julia Bryan-Wilson of the University of California, Berkeley. For further information, contact Francesca Berry, Department of Art History, Film, and Visual Studies, University of Birmingham; and Jo Applin, Department of History of Art, University of York.
Affiliated Society News for July 2015
posted by CAA — Jul 09, 2015
American Society for Aesthetics
The American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), an association for aesthetics, criticism, and theory of the arts, will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the ASA Feminist Caucus Committee with a full day of workshop discussions, followed by a celebratory reception, on Saturday, November 14, 2015. The Feminist Caucus Committee anniversary is part of the annual ASA conference, to be held from November 11–14 at the Desoto Hilton Hotel in Savannah, Georgia. Noted scholars will discuss the evolution and contributions of feminist scholarship within philosophical aesthetics, focusing on three main topics: “History, Feminism, and the American Society for Aesthetics”; “Feminist Scholarship Today OR the Impact—Hidden or Otherwise—of Feminist Scholarship”; and “Feminist Pedagogy and Curricula in Aesthetics.” For more information, please visit www.aesthetics-online.org/feminist or contact Peg Brand.
Arts Council of the African Studies Association
The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) is pleased to announce the large number of association members who will be participating in the upcoming European Conference on African Studies (Paris, July 8–10, 2015). The increased participation of ACASA members in events taking place outside the United States is evidence of the organization’s growing presence on a global scale. It also reflects concerted efforts to create synergies with international partners.
ACASA is currently inviting nominations and self-nominations for service on its board. New board members will begin service at the African Studies Association (ASA) meeting on November 19, 2015. Applicants must be members of ACASA to participate in the nomination and election process. The deadline for nominations is September 20, 2015.
Asian American Women Artists Association
The board president of the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA), Cynthia Tom, is one of three recipients of the Commons Curatorial Residency at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco for A Place of Her Own, on view November 19–December 11, 2015. The Commons, entering its sixth year, is a competitive, yearlong incubator for exhibition research, planning, installation, and realization. The Commons supports risk taking, intercultural learning, and awareness of social issues by providing space and support for exhibitions that instigate accessible, multifaceted participation in the arts. A Place of Her Own excavates the vital dreams and hopes of women and features more than thirty found object art works and large-scale installations by women artists. Each piece is a courageous visual answer to the question, “If you had a place of your own, what would it be?” Exhibited artworks, marked by a saturation of color, imaginative use of materials, and visual storytelling, highlight the personal yet universal journey to seek out and claim a place without external rules or expectations. Events and an interactive installation, Community House, invite the audience to join the journey.
Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey
The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) has launched the H-AMCA reviews program with six new reviews. The organization is thrilled to have partnered with the H-Net editorial team. Readers may access the reviews through the H-Net reviews page. This announcement marks an exciting transition for the established AMCA reviews program that was originally accessible through the AMCA website. The website’s “reviews” section will now act as a supplement to the full reviews published through H-Net.
The AMCA editorial committee that will oversee the new reviews program is: Tiffany Floyd, H-AMCA commons editor and PhD student at Columbia University; Jessica Gerschultz, assistant professor at the University of Kansas and AMCA board member (secretary); Berin Golonu, doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester; Sarah-Neel Smith, assistant professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (fall 2015); and Saima Akhtar, postdoctoral fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. If you have questions about the new H-AMCA reviews program or are interested in reviewing books or events, please contact Tiffany Floyd or Jessica Gerschultz.
Association of Historians of American Art
The board of the Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) thanks two outgoing members—Sarah Kelly Oehler, chair emerita; and Katherine Smith, sessions coordinator—for their service. The board welcomes incoming cochair Ellery Foutch and sessions coordinator Elizabeth Lee.
AHAA hosted its successful third biennial symposium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this past October with 139 members in attendance. At its CAA business meeting on February 13, 2015, AHAA chair Anna Marley proposed a vote to add a new symposium liaison position to the board. The symposium liaison will serve a term of three years and, in consultation with the cochairs, facilitate the coordination of the biennial symposium and act as a liaison between the AHAA board and the local symposium steering committee. AHAA solicited candidates for this position this spring and have named the first symposium liaison: Sarah Kelly Oehler.
The next biannual AHAA symposium will to be held in Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas, in fall 2016. The symposium will be chaired by Maggie Adler and Shirley Reece-Hughes of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Mark Thistlethwaite of Texas Christian University.
Also in 2015, the active AHAA membership grew from 180 to 350, and the AHAA journal was launched.
AHAA looks forward to its sponsored sessions at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC: a professional session, “Claiming the Unknown, the Forgotten, the Fallen, the Lost, and the Dispossessed,” chaired by Robert Cozzolino; and a scholarly session, “Art and Invention in the US,” led by Ellery Foutch and Hélène Valance.
Association of Print Scholars
The Association of Print Scholars (APS) has grown to almost three hundred members since its official launch in October 2014. In May 2015, APS shared its new website, which allows members to create profiles, share scholarship, and learn about upcoming events.
Offline, APS held receptions for members during the CAA Annual Conference in New York, the Renaissance Society of America conference in Berlin, and the Salon de l’estampe in Paris. APS also announced the establishment of the Schulman and Bullard Article Prize, which will be given yearly to recognize an outstanding article by an emerging scholar in the field.
In the coming year, Peter Parshall, former curator of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, will give the APS inaugural lecture, entitled “Why Study Prints Now?” on September 25, 2015, in New York. During the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington, DC, Freyda Spira of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Elizabeth Rudy of Harvard Art Museums will chair the session “The Art of Collecting.”
Coalition of Women in the Arts Organization
At the 2015 CAA Annual Conference in New York, the Coalition of Women in the Arts Organization (CWAO) presented a panel on “Women Artists and Installation Art,” which discussed numerous and innovative approaches that women artists use to present the concepts and issues of their concerns. For CAA’s 2016 meeting in Washington, DC, the organization is preparing a panel on “Technology and Women Artists.” The panel is currently open for proposals, which may include artists who use technology or incorporate it into either traditional or new mediums in order to convey their concepts and their social concerns. Art historians may apply, if presenting a paper about one or more women that use technology in their papers. The panel chair is Kyra Belan, Broward College, PO Box 275, Matlacha, FL 33993.
International Association of Word and Image Studies
The International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS) has announced the latest in its book series, Interactions. The Imaginary: Word and Image/L’Imaginaire: texte et image, edited by Claus Clüver, Matthijs Engelberts, and Véronique Plesch, has just been published by Brill. The imaginary as a critical concept originated in the twentieth century and has been theorized in diverse ways. It can be understood as a register of thought; the way we interpret the world; the universe of images, signs, texts, and objects of thought. In this volume, the imaginary is explored as it manifests itself in encounters between the verbal and the visual. A number of the essays brought together here explore the transposition of the imaginary in illustrations of texts and verbal renditions of images, as well as in comic books based on paintings or on verbal narratives. Others analyze ways in which books deal with film or television and investigate the imaginary in digital media. Special attention is paid to the imaginary of places and the relationship of the imaginary with memory. Written in English and French, these contributions by European and American scholars demonstrate the various concerns and approaches characteristic of contemporary scholarship in word and image studies.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) has been awarded a grant of $8400 from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to continue the IAS/Kress lecture series in Italy for another three years. The 2016 lecture will take place in Florence. IAS announces a one-time, extra IAS Research and Publication Grant of up to $1,000 to fund or subsidize a research trip or publication (deadline: July 15, 2015) and a new grant of up to $1,000 that will support transoceanic conference travel for scholars holding the PhD presenting a paper on Italian art and architecture from the early nineteenth century to the present (deadline: October 1, 2015). Please visit the IAS website for further information and application guidelines.
IAS is currently accepting proposals for its sponsored long (2½ hours) and short (1½ hours) sessions at the 2017 CAA Annual Conference in New York (deadline: August 15, 2015). Visit the IAS website for further information and submission guidelines. IAS secretary Sean Roberts now serves as the society’s executive vice president; the organization will appoint an acting secretary this summer. Please consider writing for the IASblog on any topic related to Italian art and architecture from prehistory to the present!
National Art Education Association
The National Art Education Association (NAEA), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum invite you to participate in SummerStudio: Design Thinking for Art Educators, taking place July 13–17, 2015, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.
NAEA has published two new practical curriculum resources and texts for your classes: Curriculum Inquiry and Design for School- and Community-Based Art Educationand Design Standards for School Art Facilities.
Pacific Arts Association
The Pacific Arts Association-Europe conference will be held July 2–4, 2015, at the Museo de América in Madrid, Spain. The theme of the conference is “Recent Research in Pacific Arts.” For more information, please contact adama@adamaamerica.com.
Pacific Arts Association-Pacific seeks interest in its 2015 conference on “Trading Traditions: The Role of Art in the Pacific’s Expansive Exchange Networks,” to be held at the Fa’onelua Conference Centre in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, from September 30 to October 4, 2015. For further information, contact Karen Stevenson.
A three-day international conference entitled “Pacifique(S)” will take place at the University of Le Havre in France from November 4 to 6, 2015. The organizers of this interdisciplinary conference seek papers addressing the following broad thematic concerns: Oceans, Histories, and Diaspora. If you wish to participate, please send an abstract of up to 250 words to Jacqueline Charles-Rault.
The Pacific Arts Association – North America looks forward to you attending the session “Photography in and of the Pacific: Collecting the Past, Visualizing the Future” at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington DC. This session will be of interest to those studying historic and contemporary photography. Look for a detailed description in CAA’s Conference Program.
The twelfth Pacific Arts Association International Symposium 2016, to be hosted by Auckland Museum in New Zealand, promises to be a dynamic and engaging symposium that will take place between two iconic Pacific events in Auckland: Pasifika Festival (March 11–12) and Polyfest (most likely to occur March 18–20).
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) seeks curators, professors, gallerists, art historians, and scholars to review student and/or professional member portfolios at SPE’s fifty-third national conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference will take place March 10–13, 2016; portfolio reviewers will receive discounted admission to the four-day event in exchange for their participation. For more information on the conference offerings, visit the SPE website. To express interest in serving as a portfolio reviewer, please contact info@spenational.org.
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
As of April 1, 2015, the Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has become incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in the State of New York. As a CAA affiliate society, SHERA will sponsor a 1½-hour session at the 2016 CAA Annual Conference in Washington DC, entitled “Collecting, Curating, Canonizing, Critiquing: The Institutionalization of Eastern European Art” and organized by Ksenia Nouril. SHERA is successfully implementing its visiting scholar program with the Russian State University of Humanities in Moscow (RGGU) and the Art Department of the European University in St. Petersburg. Applications need to be submitted six weeks in advance of the planned trip for RGGU and ten weeks for the European University. Inquiries about the process should be submitted to shera.artarchitecture@gmail.com.
Visual Resources Association
The Visual Resources Association (VRA) held its annual conference in Denver, Colorado, from March 11–14, 2015. With fourteen sessions, six workshops, nine posters, and numerous other events, the program covered digital humanities, visual literacy, mapping and geospatial projects, image rights and reproductions, usability testing, digital asset management, crowdsourcing, metadata, sharing collections, archives, research data management, visualization, and more. The two plenary speakers shared thought-provoking perspectives from museums and digital libraries. The opening speaker, Aaron Straup Cope, head of engineering for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, addressed experiences as design objects. Can a design museum collect objects that convey the full experience of, say, Virgin America as service design? Extending the concept of collecting to museum visitors, Cope described the New Cooper Hewitt Experience and new interactive pen that allows visitors to “collect” and “save” objects to customized webpages. The closing speaker, Emily Gore, director for content for the Digital Public Library of America, discussed content and collections workflows, including the DPLA Hubs program. DPLA is currently focused on sustainable collaborations, building community, data quality, and use/reuse. Gore is working to establish new Service Hubs and a framework for rights statements for cultural-heritage materials in partnership with experts in the United States and Europe.
Women’s Caucus for Art
The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has announced the recipients for the 2016 WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards: Tomie Arai, Helene Aylon, Sheila Levrant de’ Bretteville, and Juana Guzman. The recipient for the 2016 President’s Art and Activism Award is Stephanie Sherman. The WCA Lifetime Achievement (LTA) Awards were first presented in 1979 in President Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office to Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O’Keeffe. The LTA awards were the first awards recognizing the contribution of women to the arts and their profound effect on society. Today the WCA’s Lifetime Achievement Awards continue to honor women and their work, vision, and commitment. Past honorees have represented the full range of distinguished achievement in the visual arts. This year’s awardees are no exception, with considerable accomplishment, achievement, and contributions to the arts. Join us for the celebration! The LTA awards will be held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, on Thursday February 4, 2016. The event will include a ticketed cocktail reception (6:00–7:30 PM) and the LTA ceremony (8:00–9:30 PM), which is free and open to the public. More information will be available online beginning August 1, 2015.
Committee on Diversity Practices highlights for July/August 2015
posted by CAA — Jul 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.
July/August 2015
Hidden Histories in Latin American Art
Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix, Arizona
May 9, 2015–August 23, 2015
“This exhibition features Latin American and Latino artists who investigate stories or histories marginalized by the media, historical events and present circumstances that we might rather forget. These artists explore neglected yet pressing histories, such as the violence against women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; the marginalization of indigenous communities in Guatemala; the fate of civilians “disappeared” by military and paramilitary groups in Colombia; and the lynching of Latinos in the southern United States beginning in the mid-19th century and continuing into the mid-20th.
These works allude to politics, though they touch upon different historical moments in diverse regions of Latin America as well as the special circumstances confronting Latinos living in the United States. Each story is different, but what unites them is the means by which they are told: through intentional processes of veiling and fragmentation. These artists engage in a kind of storytelling in which the part stands in for the whole. They also endow everyday objects with potent symbolism, often made all the more powerful through collaged imagery. In this way, a handcrafted dress, a felt blanket, a wooden barricade, a wardrobe, and even part of an urban glass wall become vehicles for exploring larger histories, made present before the viewer but only partially revealed.
Hidden Histories includes works by Luis González Palma (Guatemala, born 1957), Annie Lopez (US, 1958), Teresa Margolles (Mexico, 1963), Graciela Sacco (Argentina, 1956), Doris Salcedo (Colombia, 1958), and Vincent Valdez (US, 1977).”
Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, California
June 7, 2015–September 27, 2015
“Noah Purifoy (1917–2004) lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California. A founding director of the Watts Towers Art Center, his earliest body of sculpture, constructed out of charred debris from the 1965 Watts Rebellion, was the basis for 66 Signs of Neon, a landmark group exhibition about the riots that traveled to nine venues between 1966 and 1969. In line with the postwar period’s general fascination with the street and its objects, Purifoy’s 66 Signs of Neon constituted a Duchampian approach to the fire-molded alleys of Watts, a strategy that profoundly impacted artists such as David Hammons, John Outterbridge and Senga Nengudi.
In the late 1980’s, after eleven years of public policy work for the California Arts Council, where Purifoy initiated programs such as Artists in Social Institutions, bringing art into the state prison system, Purifoy moved his practice to the Mojave desert. He lived there for the last fifteen years of his life, creating ten acres of large-scale sculpture constructed entirely from junked materials.
The exhibition explores a pivotal yet under-recognized figure in the development of postwar American Art whose effect is only beginning to be fully understood.”
Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn, New York
May 1, 2015–November 1, 2015
“Zanele Muholi meshes her work in photography, video, and installation with human rights activism to create visibility for the black lesbian and transgender communities of South Africa. Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence is the most comprehensive museum presentation to date of Muholi’s works and features several of the artist’s ongoing projects about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) communities, both in her home country and abroad.
The exhibition presents eighty-seven works created between 2007 and 2014, including Muholi’s Faces and Phases portrait series, which uses firsthand accounts to speak to the experience of living in a country that constitutionally protects the rights of LGBTI people but often fails to defend them from targeted violence. Also included is the new series Weddings and the video Being Scene, both of which focus on love, intimacy, and daily life within Muholi’s close-knit community.”
Arts Aids America
ONE Archives Gallery & Museum and the West Hollywood Library
West Hollywood, California
June 6, 2015–September 6, 2015
“Art AIDS America examines 30 years of artistic production made in response to the AIDS epidemic in the United States. Surveying the early 1980s to the present, this exhibition reintroduces and explores a spectrum of artistic responses to HIV/AIDS from the politically outspoken to the quietly mournful, considering how the disease shifted the development of American art away from the conceptual foundations of postmodernism and toward a more insistently political and autobiographical voice.
Presented in two parts at the ONE Gallery and the West Hollywood Library as a part of One City One Pride, this iteration of the exhibition comprises a select preview of the larger show opening at the Tacoma Art Museum in October 2015. In West Hollywood, works on view at the Library explore a wide range of creative expressions from the early years of AIDS to the present, while the presentation at the ONE Gallery focuses special attention on California-based artists.”
Hoy toca el Prado (Touching the Prado)
Museo Nacional del Prado
Madrid, Spain
January 20, 2015–October, 18 2015
The Prado Museum and the AXA Foundation, with the collaboration of ONCE have devised a pioneering initiative aimed essentially at people with visual disabilities. Curated by Fernando Pérez Suescun, the exhibition comprises six embossed paintings, which are the most representative of the Prado Museum, belonging to diverse genres and artistic styles (religious paintings, portraits, still life’s, mythology and traditional scenes). They include Touch me Not by Correggio; The Forge of Vulcan by Velázquez; The Parasol by Goya; The Mona Lisa from Leonardo da Vinci’s studio; Gentleman with his Hand on his Chest by El Greco; and Still Life with Artichokes, Flowers and Glass Vessels by Van der Hamen. The last three are real scale reproductions and the rest are on a lower scale. Visitors can touch them with their own hands, offering them the unique possibility of capturing their beauty down to the very smallest detail.
Coinciding with the presentation of Touching the Prado, the Museum has launched a new audioguide service that includes audio descriptions of fifty-three works in its collection. These detailed explanations of the figures, themes and other elements depicted in the works are specifically aimed at visually impaired visitors. Fourteen descriptions of masterpieces in the collection are particularly detailed. Audio descriptions are available free for visually impaired visitors at the Audioguide desks.
Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talladega College
Birmingham Museum of Art
Birmingham, Alabama
June 13, 2015–September 6, 2015
“In 1938 Atlanta-based artist Hale Woodruff was commissioned to paint a series of murals for Talladega College, Alabama, one of the first colleges established for blacks in the United States. Installed in the institution’s newly constructed Savery Library, the six murals portray noteworthy events in the rise of blacks from slavery to freedom. Though he painted the murals for a local audience of students and faculty, Woodruff intended their impact to reach beyond Talladega’s campus.
They attracted national attention. Cultural leaders in the African American community, in particular, championed Woodruff’s murals, adopting the project as a statement of pride and hope for racial equality. Today the murals remain symbols of the centuries-long struggle for civil rights. This project, a collaboration between the High Museum of Art and Talladega College, conserves these works and presents them to a national audience for the first time.”
Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933–1945
Museum of Jewish Heritage
New York, New York
May 29, 2015–October 2, 2015
“Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi German regime promoted racial health policies that sought to eliminate all sources of biological corruption to its dominant “Aryan” race. Among the groups persecuted as threats to the national health were Germany’s homosexual men. Believing them to be carriers of a “degeneracy” that weakened society and hindered population growth, the Nazi state arrested and incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps tens of thousands of German men as a means of terrorizing them into social conformity.
This exhibition examines the Nazi regime’s attempt to eradicate homosexuality. The Nazis’ efforts left thousands dead and shattered the lives of many more.”
Baye Fall: Roots in Spirituality, Fashion, and Resistance
Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan
Brooklyn, New York
June 18, 2015–September 27, 2015
“Baye Fall: Roots in Spirituality, Fashion, and Resistance is a photographic series that visually engages the Baye Fall, an enterprising sub-group of Senegal’s notable Sufi Muslim community, the Mourides. These images encourage viewers to contemplate Sufism in a West African context by exploring the community’s reverence for Baye Fall’s founder and leader, Cheikh Amadou Bamba, and his most celebrated disciple, Ibrahima Fall, the namesake of this suborder.
An integral part of the cultural fabric of Senegalese society, the Baye Fall possess a unique aesthetic that includes ‘locked’ hair, patchwork garments, symphonic chanting and artisanal leather talismans and prayer beads. Gathering after the evening prayer to sing in collectives calleddahrias, their voices gently resonate throughout the shadows of the night. But perhaps the most distinctive aspect of their religious practice is the incorporation of physical labor as a form of worship.
Through witnessing the everyday lives of the Baye Fall, and the Senegalese cities in which they dwell, this series shows how indigenous ideology and pre- and post-colonial politics have influenced the contemporary spiritual practice of the Baye Fall, as well as their social, economic and political philosophies.”
Royals & Regalia: Inside the Palaces of Nigeria’s Monarchs
Recent Photographs by George Osodi
Newark Museum
Newark New Jersey
February 25, 2015–August 9, 2015
“Royals & Regalia: Inside the Palaces of Nigeria’s Monarchs presents 40 visually stunning portraits from a new series by acclaimed Nigerian photographer George Osodi. Exhibited for the first time in the U.S., these vibrant color photographs feature the regional rulers of modern-day monarchies throughout the country. They provide audiences with a rare and intimate look inside Nigeria’s palaces and throne rooms, capturing the personalities of the rulers, the splendor of their dress, and the details of their settings. The near life-size photographs will be shown to dramatic effect along with select examples of prestige dress and regalia from the internationally renowned collections of the Newark Museum.”
“The idea behind this project is to travel around this diverse country and go beyond the portraits to explore the subjects’ environments—being the custodians of our cultural heritage and peace makers—exploring their architecture and fashion with the view to showcase and celebrate them and to mirror the country’s great culture through their personalities.”— Photographer George Osodi
Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life
New York Botanical Gardens
New York, New York
May 16, 2015–November 15, 2015
“This blockbuster exhibition is the first to examine Frida Kahlo’s keen appreciation for the beauty and variety of the natural world, as evidenced by her home and garden as well as the complex use of plant imagery in her artwork. Featuring a rare display of more than a dozen original Kahlo paintings and works on paper, this limited six-month engagement also reimagines the iconic artist’s famed garden and studio at the Casa Azul, her lifelong home in Mexico City.
Accompanying events invite visitors to learn about Kahlo’s life and enduring cultural influence through music, lectures, Frida al Fresco evenings, Mexican-inspired shopping and dining experiences, and hands-on art activities for kids. As a complement to your visit, use our new mobile guide to see rare photos and footage, listen to expert commentary, and create your own Frida Selfie to share with friends.”
Rebecca M. Brown Is the Next Editor-in-Chief of Art Journal
posted by Christopher Howard — Jun 26, 2015
On July 1, Rebecca M. Brown becomes the new editor-in-chief of Art Journal, CAA’s quarterly journal of modern and contemporary art. A scholar of colonial and post-1947 South Asian art and visual culture, Brown is associate professor of history of art at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. She also chairs Hopkins’s Advanced Academic Program in Museum Studies. Brown succeeds Lane Relyea, associate professor in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who has led the journal since 2012.
In her nomination letter, Brown wrote, “In putting my name forward for editor, I am keenly aware that if I am selected my editorship would confirm a shift already well underway within the discipline—namely, the incorporation of questions related to global modern and contemporary art, transnational visual culture, and the machinations of art-making not solely in the northern Atlantic cities of Paris, London, and New York, but also in Lagos, Durban, Mexico City, Rio, Mumbai, Singapore, Beijing, Osaka, and Auckland. I believe the time has come for such a statement, but I also want to assert that in my own work I have been at pains to articulate a global modern that acknowledges the centrality of Europe and America as touchstones around the world. That is, rather than privilege such locations I suggest that thinking of the global modern as a set of distinct regional ‘modernisms’ is dishonest to the global interrelations of power that operate for artists around the world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Part of my own intellectual commitment is to bring the conversations happening around modernism in Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and the Pacific region together with those in Europe and North America in order to enhance scholarship and the production of both art and its history, wherever its local focus might be.”
Brown earned her PhD in South Asian and Islamic art history at the University of Minnesota in 1999, where she was a Mellon Fellow in Humanistic Studies and a CAORC research fellow. Her undergraduate degree is from Pomona College in Claremont, California. She has served as a consultant and a curator for modern and contemporary Indian art for the Peabody Essex Museum, the Walters Art Museum, and the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation. She has led seminars in art history and museum studies at Georgetown University and George Washington University, and has lectured throughout North America and in Asia.
Brown has published her scholarship widely, notably in two books: Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel and the Making of India (2010) and Art for a Modern India, 1947–1980 (2009). She wrote the exhibition catalogue for Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest: Modern and Contemporary Indian Art from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Collection (2011). She has also edited two publications with Deborah S. Hutton—A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture (2011) and Asian Art (2006)—and has written essays for Visual Anthropology, Res, Interventions, CSSAAME, Archives of Asian Art, Journal of Urban History, Screen, and Journal of Asian Studies.
Brown has performed the CAA journal trifecta: publishing in The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, and caa.reviews. Her most recent contribution was “A Distant Contemporary: Indian Twentieth-Century Art in the US Festival of India (1985–86),” published in the September 2014 issue of The Art Bulletin. Previous to that, “P. T. Reddy, Neo-Tantrism, and Modern Indian Art” appeared in the Winter 2005 issue of Art Journal. Brown has written two book reviews and one exhibition review for caa.reviews over the years.
Before Johns Hopkins, Brown taught at Swansea University in Wales and the University of Redlands in California. She served as research associate for the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and was a visiting scholar in history at Pennsylvania State University. She started her academic career as an assistant professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
In discussing her plans as editor, Brown writes, “It is crucial that Art Journal maintains its reputation as the top venue for the publication of articles and other kinds of engagements with modern and contemporary art, and as a space for artists to share their work and experiment in the context of a print journal. I would love to see artists taking advantage of the ‘analogue’ quality of the page and the journal format, perhaps in concert with filmic or other media shared via Art Journal Open.
“As a scholar situated often on the margin of the discipline—and recognizing that every scholar feels that way to some extent—I think of modern and contemporary art in wide scope: the entirety of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, certainly, and from anywhere around the world, including sites outside the usual urban metropolises. In addition, I’d like to seek out other kinds of unexplored spaces for art and for art history: pockets where, for example, medievalists might encounter contemporary mosaicists, or where temperature becomes a central element of art making, displaying, or writing. These engagements can happen in artist projects and scholarly articles or in more informal spaces within the pages of the journal, as exchanges, responses, object-studies, artist reflections, or conversations. In all of these areas, I am committed to maintaining the focus of Art Journal on artist projects that push boundaries and challenge norms and on scholarly, rigorously peer reviewed contributions to the field.”
Issues of Art Journal edited by Relyea will appear through Winter 2015. Brown’s first issue will be Spring 2016.
Images
First: Portrait of Rebecca M. Brown (photograph by J. Roffman)
Second: Rebecca M. Brown, Art for a Modern India, 1947–1980 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Jun 24, 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.
A Win for Academic Freedom: Steven Salaita Awarded Back-to-Back Victories against University That Fired Him
The first part of June has awarded back-to-back victories to Steven Salaita, a professor who last year was dismissed from his post at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for posting tweets considered by some to be beyond the pale of proper academic discourse. What makes this case especially interesting—and what the recent court decision and a critical vote by the largest confederation of US professors in the country shows—is the undue and improper interference of wealthy donors on the internal affairs of public educational institutions. (Read more from Salon.)
Should I Ask Someone to Write about My Show?
I’ve had two solo shows in the last couple of years that received absolutely no press coverage. I’m trying to get a better position at the college at which I currently teach and need all the help I can get. Reviews look good on a résumé. Should I ask some of the local writers to write about my next show? What if they are good friends? (Read more from Burnaway.)
Help Desk: Serious Damage
I have my work up in a solo exhibition at a well-known arts center in a large city. Last weekend during open gallery hours, I walked in to find five wall pieces and a major floor sculpture missing. The attendants had no idea what had happened or where the work was. Finally, I found someone who let me in to the offices where the work was being stored. Two pieces were broken and the rest were undamaged. How should I handle this situation? (Read more from Daily Serving.)
Blurring the Museum-Gallery Divide
Ever since Mark Rosenthal left his job as head of twentieth-century art at the National Gallery in Washington to become an independent curator, museums around the country have sought his talents. Now art galleries are trying to hire him, too—but not just for his scholarship. “There was a big expectation,” Rosenthal said, “that I could deliver works for sale.” (Read more from the New York Times.)
You Want to Write for a Popular Audience? Really?
At a recent job interview, I explained to the committee that I was trying to write a book for a popular audience. One of them smirked, but at least had the grace to try to hide it behind her hand. The self-described maverick of the team simply laughed out loud. The head of the committee stared at me in genuine amazement. “Why bother?” he asked. After all, there was no hope of reaching the general public. Or as he put it, “the masses will always just be the masses.” (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
World’s Most Inaccessible Art Found in the Heart of the Colombian Jungle
A British wildlife filmmaker has returned from one of the most inaccessible parts of the world with extraordinary footage of ancient rock art that has never been filmed or photographed before. In an area of Colombia so vast and remote that contact has still not been made with some tribes thought to live there, Mike Slee used a helicopter to film hundreds of paintings depicting hunters and animals believed to have been created thousands of years ago. (Read more from the Guardian.)
Arts Philanthropy Booming, Cultural Giving Rises 9.2 Percent, New Study Says
Americans’ donations to arts and culture rose 9.2 percent in 2014, the highest increase in nine categories tracked by Giving USA, an annual report on charitable contributions. Overall, however, arts and culture commanded a modest share of the philanthropic pie. (Read more from the Los Angeles Times.)
How to Use Student Evaluations Wisely
I’m well aware that the value of student evaluations is contested, but like my father, I’ve also found that they can be useful tools. At my own institution, I inherited a nuanced set of faculty-designed guidelines on the use of student evaluations. Among the best ideas I found in them. (Read more from Vitae.)
2015 Fellowships for MFA and PhD Students
posted by CAA — Jun 19, 2015
CAA has begun accepting applications from MFA and PhD students for its Professional-Development Fellowships in the Visual Arts and Art History. For the current cycle, CAA will award grants of $10,000 each to outstanding students who will receive their terminal degrees in the calendar year 2016. One award will be presented to a practitioner—an artist, designer, and/or craftsperson—and one award will be presented to an art, architecture, and/or design historian, curator, or critic.
Fellows also receive a free one-year CAA membership and complimentary registration to the 104th Annual Conference in Washington, DC, taking place February 3–6, 2016. Honorable mentions, given at the discretion of the jury, earn a free one-year CAA membership and complimentary conference registration.
CAA’s fellowship program supports promising artists, designers, craftspersons, historians, curators, and critics who are enrolled in MFA, PhD, and other terminal degree programs nationwide.. Awards are intended to help the students with various aspects of their work, whether it be for job-search expenses or purchasing materials for art/design practice. CAA believes a grant of this kind, without contingencies, can best facilitate the transition between graduate studies and professional careers.
Please visit collegeartassociation.slideroom.com to submit applications to the Professional-Development Fellowship programs. The deadline for applications for the PhD fellowships is Friday, October 2, 2015, and Monday, November 16, 2015, for the MFA fellowships. Awardees will be announced in January 2016.
Grants, Awards, and Honors
posted by CAA — Jun 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.
June/August 2015
Natalie Adamson, senior lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews in St Andrews, Scotland, has been named a 2015–16 Getty Scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Her research project is called “What Counts as Painting: Pierre Soulages and the Materiality of Postwar Art in France.”
Hannah Baader, academic program director and senior research scholar at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut, Italy, has been appointed a 2015–16 Guest Scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will work on “Aesthetics and Materiality of Water, Fifteenth to Nineteenth Century.”
Susan Bean has received a spring 2015 research support grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for her project, “Modeling Cosmos and Colony: India’s Clay Sculpture in the Nineteenth Century.”
Christian Berger, research fellow and lecturer in the Department of Art History at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Musikwissenschaft at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz, Germany, has been appointed Volkswagen Foundation Fellow by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. His project is entitled “The Materials of Conceptual Art.”
Gregory Charles Bryda, a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has won a 2015–16 Predoctoral Fellowship from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. His project is titled “The Spiritual Wood of Late Gothic Germany.”
Amy BryzgelAmy Bryzgel, lecturer in history of art at the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland, has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Fellowship for 2015–16 to support the finalization, publication, and dissemination of her research project, “Performance Art in Eastern Europe since 1960.”
Karen L. Carter (photograph by Matt Gubancsik and provided by Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University)Karen L. Carter, associate professor in the art-history program of Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will participate in the 2015 NEH Summer Institute, “Teaching the History of Modern Design: Beyond the Canon.”
Henry Colburn, a curatorial fellow in ancient art at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has received a 2015–16 Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. At the Getty Villa, he will work on “Archaeology of Empire in Achaemenid Egypt.”
Thomas Crow, Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts and associate provost for the arts at New York University, delivered the sixty-fourth annual Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, in March and April 2015.
Susan Dackerman, consultative curator at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been named a 2015–16 Getty Scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Her project is called “Early Modern Print Culture and the Islamic World.”
Vidya Dehejia, Barbara Stoler Miller Professor of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University in New York, has been chosen to deliver the sixty-fifth annual Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts next spring at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Nathan S. Dennis of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, has won a 2015 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in the category of ancient studies.
Ljerka Dulibić has been appointed Craig Hugh Smyth Fellow for 2015–16 at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Studies in Florence. She is researching “Italian Renaissance Paintings in the Strossmayer Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia.”
Nina Ergin, associate professor in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey, has been appointed a 2015–16 Getty Fellow by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will work on “Heavenly Fragrance from Earthly Censers: Conveying the Immaterial through the Sensory Experience of Material Objects.”
Noémie Etienne, a recent graduate of the Department of Art History at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and the University of Paris 1 Sorbonne in France, has accepted a 2015–16 Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will research “A Material Art History? Paintings Restoration and the Writing of Art History.”
Andrew Finegold has been appointed a 2015–16 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Holly Flora has been selected to be a fellow for 2015–16 at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Studies in Florence. She will work on “Cimabue, the Franciscans, and Artistic Change at the Dawn of the Renaissance.”
Caroline O. Fowler has been appointed A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC, by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will work on “Absence Made Present: An Early-Modern History of Drawing and the Senses.”
Thomas W. GaehtgensThomas W. Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California, has been awarded the prestigious Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca 2015. The prize, given by the Simone et Cino del Duca Foundation, is awarded each year by the Foundations of the Institut de France.
Katharine McKenney Johnson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, has won a 2015 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in the category of modern Italian studies.
Sonal Khullar has won a spring 2015 research support grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for her project, “Fertile Grounds: Art, Primitivism, and Postcoloniality in Twentieth-Century India and Great Britain.”
Christian K. Kleinbub has received a 2015–16 fellowship at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Studies in Florence. He will research “Michelangelo’s Inner Anatomies.”
Marci Kwon, a doctoral student at the Institute of Fine Arts, has received a scholarship from New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Science to attend the 2015 Summer School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University.
Brett Lazer, a PhD student at the Institute of Fine Arts, has won a 2015–16 Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship from New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Science.
Barbara London, an independent scholar and curator based in New York and an adjunct professor in the School of Art at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has been appointed a 2015–16 Getty Fellow by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Her research project concerns “Video Art: From Fringe to the Forefront.”
C. Matthew Luther, an artist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has earned a 2015 residency at the Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions, better known as ACRE.
Monika Malewska has won a 2015 Working Artist Grant/Art Purchase Award for $1,000 for her watercolor, Bacon Wreath No. 4 (2009).
Leo Mazow, associate professor of art history in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, has been awarded a Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellowship by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC.
Susanna McFadden, assistant professor at Fordham University in New York, has been appointed a 2015–16 Getty Scholar by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She will work on “Tales of a Lost Art: Megalographic Wall Paintings and the World of Late Antiquity” at the Getty Villa.
Amy F. Ogata, professor of art history at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has become a 2015–16 Getty Scholar. While at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, she will explore on “Metallurgy: Metal and the Making of Modern France.”
Laurel O. Peterson of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has earned a spring 2015 fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art to conduct research in the United Kingdom for her doctoral dissertation, “The Decorated Interior: Artistic Production in the British Country House, 1688–1745.”
John Pollini, professor of classical art and archaeology in the Department of Art History at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has been appointed a 2015–16 Getty Villa Scholar. At the Getty Research Institute, he will work on ”From Polytheism to Christianity in Late Antique Egypt.”
Joanna Sheers, a doctoral student at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, will be the 2015–17 Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow at the Frick Collection in New York.
Caitlin SilbermanCaitlin Silberman, a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, has been selected as a 2015 Committee on Institutional Cooperation–Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow. She will research her doctoral project, “Thinking with Birds in British Art and Visual Culture, 1840–1900,” at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.
Laura Splan, an artist based in Brooklyn, New York, has earned a 2015 residency at the Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions, better known as ACRE.
Anatole Tchikine has accepted a Craig Hugh Smyth Fellowship for 2015–16 at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Studies in Florence. His project is “Water and Form: Reinventing the Fountain in Renaissance and Baroque Italy.”
Ruth WeisbergRuth Weisberg, an artist and educator, has received the 2015 SGC International Printmaker Emeritus Award.
Bert Winther-Tamaki, a professor of art history at the University of California, Irvine, has been named Consortium Professor with his 2015–16 Getty Fellowship. While at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, he will focuses on “Wood, Ink, Clay, Stone: Bringing Natural Materials to Life for Modern Japan.”
Katharine J. Wright, a PhD candidate at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has accepted an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Research Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Allison Young of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, has earned a spring 2015 fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art to conduct research in the United Kingdom for her doctoral dissertation, “‘Torn and Most Whole’: Zarina Bhimji and the ‘Culture Wars’ in Britain, 1970–2002.”