CAA News Today
Exhibitions Curated by CAA Members
posted by CAA — Apr 15, 2015
Check out details on recent shows organized by CAA members who are also curators.
Exhibitions Curated by CAA Members 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.
April 2015
Mike Bullock and Linda Aubry Bullock. Lagan. Fourth Wall Space, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 3–26, 2015.
N. Elizabeth Schlatter and Kenta Murakami. The Life in the Land: Art by Anna Líndal and Erling Sjovold. University of Richmond Museums, Richmond, Virginia, February 19–April 26, 2015.
Jennifer Tyburczy. Irreverent: A Celebration of Censorship. Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, February 13–May 3, 2015.
Charlotte Vignon. Coypel’s Don Quixote Tapestries: Illustrating a Spanish Novel in Eighteenth-Century France. Frick Collection, New York, February 25–May 17, 2015.
Books Published by CAA Members
posted by CAA — Apr 15, 2015
Publishing a book is a major milestone for artists and scholars—browse a list of recent titles below.
Books Published by CAA Members appears 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.
April 2015
David Bethune. Wynwood: Street Art of Miami (Miami: Bethune, 2015).
Maria F. P. Saffiotti Dale, ed. European Medals in the Chazen Museum of Art: Highlights from the Vernon Hall Collection and Later Acquisitions (Madison, WI: Chazen Museum of Art, in association with the American Numismatic Society, 2014).
Dario Gamboni. Paul Gauguin: The Mysterious Centre of Thought (London: Reaktion, 2014).
Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky. Chinese Religious Art (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014).
Sarah Krawcheck. Extreme Dessert Makeovers: Gluten Free and Beyond (Createspace.com, 2014).
Victor Margolin. World History of Design, 2 vols. (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).
Maureen Meister. Arts and Crafts Architecture: History and Heritage in New England (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2014).
Kristel Smentek. Mariette and the Science of the Connoisseur in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2014).
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 08, 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.
Almost One Third of Solo Shows in US Museums Go to Artists Represented by Just Five Galleries
Nearly one third of the major solo exhibitions held in American museums between 2007 and 2013 featured artists represented by just five galleries, according to new research. The Art Newspaper analyzed nearly 600 exhibitions submitted by 68 museums for its annual attendance-figures survey and found that 30 percent of prominent solo shows featured artists represented by Gagosian, Pace, Marian Goodman, David Zwirner, and Hauser and Wirth. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
How to Navigate the Art World
The art world can feel like that first time you walk into a high-end luxury store: everything is out of your reach, you’re not quite sure where to start, and there are a whole lot of venomous people judging your every move. Enter Roger White, author of the delicious new book The Contemporaries: Travels in the 21st Century Art World. Astute and conversational, White’s writing unveils the current state of the art academy, the studio, and the art market through the careers of the artists Dana Schutz, Mary Walling Blackburn, and Stephen Kaltenbach. (Read more from the Daily Beast.)
Artists, Not Judges, Should Decide Fair Use
This piece will focus on two implications of the Cariou and Sconnie Nation analyses: (1) the inherently factual nature of “fair use” analysis; and (2) fair use as an affirmative defense. “Fair use” started as a judge-made remedy to technically correct legal conclusions that led to absurd results, a practice commonly known as “equity.” Generally, and in the case of “fair use,” equity requires a court to make a significant factual investigation so as to demonstrate why the technical law should not apply. (Read more from the Center for Art Law.)
White Lies? Fibs? Tall Tales? Just Tell the Truth
Certainly, there are a lot of things that you might be reluctant to tell the truth about that don’t seem so terrible, such as one’s age. It may be embarrassing for some artists to be older and starting out, or to have not ever sold any work or to not have academic degrees in studio art or to not have any real exhibition history. (Read more from the Huffington Post.)
How the Tax Code Hurts Artists
With tax day looming, you can practically hear the cries of creative professionals across the country. That’s because the tax code hits many right where it hurts, by penalizing them for the distinctive way they make money. The biggest offender is still the alternative minimum tax, despite the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which brought long-overdue reform. (Read more from the New York Times.)
English-Only PhDs
What does it mean to be a doctor of philosophy in the sciences? What skills do we expect PhDs to possess? One thing you have to leave off that list: the ability to read or communicate in a language other than English. Nearly all US doctoral programs in the sciences have dropped their foreign-language requirement. (Read more from Vitae.)
An Illustrated Guide to Arthur Danto’s “The End of Art”
In an obituary for the New York Times, Ken Johnson described Arthur Danto as “one of the most widely read art critics of the Postmodern era.” Danto, both a critic and a professor of philosophy, is celebrated for his accessible and affable prose. Despite this, his best-known essay, “The End of Art,” continues to be cited more than it is understood. What was Danto’s argument? Is art really over? And if so, what are the implications for art history and art making? (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
AHTR Reports on AP Art History (Part II)
The second of two-part series on AP Art History, this post examines the revised curriculum for art history that will go into effect later this year, its intended outcomes, and its relevance to art historians at all educational levels. The post also identifies new resources developed specifically for the new curriculum, as well as others that are appropriate for both secondary and university-level instruction in art history. (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
CAA Seeks an Associate Director/Director of Conferences
posted by CAA — Mar 17, 2015
Associate Director/Director of Conferences
College Art Association
Under the supervision of the Executive Director, is responsible for providing leadership for CAA’s conference programs, identifying content, content providers, and dissemination mechanisms that meet the needs of those working in academic visual arts fields. This position enables CAA to respond to a changing environment by planning and implementing conferences as well as special programs and activities that support the CAA Strategic Plan.
Responsibilities include all planning and administrative activities related to organizing CAA conferences and meetings, such as the selection and contracting of the conference hotels and preparing and publishing all conference information. Acts as ex officio liaison to the annual conference committee, which vets all session proposals, and schedules its meetings. In consultation with leaders in the visual arts fields, identifies workshop leaders, career services mentors, roundtable leaders, distinguished artists to be interviewed, and distinguished art historians to be honored. Oversees the organization of CAA’s Career Services and interview hall. Works in cooperation with a local community to organize exhibitions and receptions. Prepares the schedule of special events, including convocation, openings, and the annual business meeting. Works cooperatively with the staff and individuals from the hosting community and local universities and museums to prepare and coordinate all conference programs. Administers conference travel grant programs. Organizes other conferences and regional meetings as needed.
Prepares annual budget and forecasts and adheres to budgets.
Supervises Programs Department staff: Assistant Director for Annual Conference, Manager of Programs and Archivist, CAA-Getty International Program Manager and Programs Assistant (part-time).
Key Responsibilities
- Schedules conference sites, contracts the hotels, and works with onsite hotel staff during the conferences
- Selects and contracts all conference service providers, including AV provider and temp agencies
- Schedules all sessions, meetings, and special events
- Oversees the organization and content of the conference website
- Organizes the convocation program in cooperation with the president and executive director
- Oversees the organization of the book and trade fair exhibitors
- Works cooperatively with the Board of Directors, staff, and standing committees to organize and schedule board sessions, professional development programs, mentoring, special events, tours, and receptions
- Oversees the organization of the CAA Career Services, including the Interview Hall
- Proposes the jurors for the awards of distinction, oversees the jury process, and organizes the awards presentation ceremony at Convocation
- Works cooperatively with the IT staff on the session submission systems, database design, registration processing, financial management
Education and Experience
- MA in art history or MFA in studio art; PhD in art history preferred with some studio coursework;
- At least 3 years experience in academic administration such as department head or collaborative scholarly or creative projects
- Experience in organizing national or international scholarly conferences
- Academic committee experience
- Familiarity with academic curriculum and tenure requirements, current trends in art history, critical theory, contemporary art, studio art and design and with leaders in the academic field of the visual arts
- Familiarity with scholarly communications, streaming, and other types of real-time communications
- Preference will be given to those with technical skills in areas that will enhance both the organizing of the meetings and with their success
Salary dependent on experience
EEOC Employer
Start date: September 1, 2015
Full-time with benefits
Please send letter of interest, CV and references to: nyoffice@collegeart.org
3-9-15
March 2015 Issue of The Art Bulletin
posted by Christopher Howard — Mar 16, 2015
The opening essay of the March 2015 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, is “The Fine Art of Being Indigenous” by the Tuscarora photographer Richard W. Hill Sr., the latest in the “Whither Art History?” series.
In other essays in the issue, Sheri Francis Shaneyfelt analyzes collaborations among the five painters of the Società del 1496 workshop in relation to the art market of Perugia. Next, Mark Rosen considers the portraitlike representation of slaves in Pietro Tacca’s Quattro Mori in Livorno in view of contemporary social conditions—including the slave trade—in seventeenth-century Tuscany. Matthew C. Hunter wrote “Joshua Reynolds’s ‘Nice Chymistry’: Action and Accident in the 1770s” to situate the artist’s use of unstable and unconventional materials within late-eighteenth-century cultural practices. Finally, Susan L. Siegfried investigates the classical ideal and fashion in post-Revolutionary France as sources for Marie-Denis Viller’s A Study of a Woman after Nature.
In the Reviews section, Robert J. Wallis considers Peter S. Wells’s How Ancient Europeans Saw the World: Visions, Patterns, and the Shaping of the Mind in Prehistoric Times, and Todd Cronan analyzes a translation of Henri Matisse and Pierre Courthion’s Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview. A recent exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Italian Futurism 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, is assessed by Anthony White, and Jennifer A. Greenhill reviews Permission to Laugh: Humor and Politics in Contemporary German Art by Gregory H. Williams.
CAA sends print copies of The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and to those individuals who choose to receive the journal as a benefit of membership. The digital version at Taylor & Francis Online is currently available to all CAA individual members regardless of their subscription choice.
In the next issue of the quarterly journal, to be published in June 2015, essays will consider the physical and textual evidence in the construction history of the basilica of S. Lorenzo in Florence, Anthony van Dyck’s paintings of Saint Sebastian, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s images of lapdogs as evidence of an Enlightenment shift in attitudes about animals, and the largely unrecognized modern type of the gawker in Félix Vallotton’s prints and his novel, The Murderous Life.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Mar 11, 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.
The Benefits of No-Tech Note Taking
The moment of truth for me came in the spring 2013 semester. I looked out at my visual-communication class and saw a group of six students transfixed by the blue glow of a video on one of their computers, and decided I was done allowing laptops in my large lecture class. “Done” might be putting it mildly. Although I am an engaging lecturer, I could not compete with Facebook and YouTube, and I was tired of trying. The next semester I told students they would have to take notes on paper. Period. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Net Neutrality and the Arts
Last month, the Federal Communications Commission approved new rules for enforcing net neutrality. Independent agency rulemaking might sound like a sleepy topic, but over 4 million people—a record-setting number—sent in comments. What does the rule mean for artists and arts organizations? (Read more from ARTSblog.)
The Forgotten Masterpieces of African Modernism
In the 1960s and 1970s, countries across Africa celebrated their independence with astonishingly avant-garde architecture. Oliver Wainwright reports on a fascinating attempt to chronicle this forgotten history. (Read more from the Guardian.)
$5,200 or $5.2 Million? It’s All in How It’s Framed
When Lady Hambleden moved from her stately manor to a cottage in a village outside London, she had little room, and even less desire, for the Aubusson carpets, Louis XV chairs, Regency girandoles, and lesser English paintings that populated her estate. So, in 2013, she held a kind of Downton Abbey tag sale at Christie’s in London. Among the three-hundred-plus items she put up for auction was an oil sketch that copied Salisbury Cathedral From the Meadows, one of the best-known works of the great nineteenth-century English landscape painter John Constable. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Alt-Ac or Bust
The busy season of tenure-track hiring is winding down, and those many candidates who were unsuccessful on that front are now waiting for the visiting professorships and postdoctoral fellowships to shuffle through the rotation. They’re also pondering their nonfaculty options. (Read more from Vitae.)
Why Has the Scholarly Journal Endured?
Last week marked the 350th anniversary of the first publication of a scholarly journal: Philosophical Transactions, edited by Henry Oldenburg and published, then as now, by the Royal Society. This publication “pioneered the concepts of scientific priority and peer review which, together with archiving and dissemination, provide the model for almost 30,000 scientific journals today.” Given how much change is happening in the world of scholarly communication, we wondered: Why has the journal endured as a form of scholarly communication, and will it continue to thrive? (Read more from Exchanges.)
Study Discovers Power of Art Making on Mood
For people who work with textiles to create art, whether it’s knitting, quiltmaking, or needlework, it is likely no surprise that the activities aid in relaxation and improve mood. Ann Collier, assistant processor of psychological sciences, has first-hand experience with the phenomenon and the research to explain it. After having three children in about a year, Collier turned to making textiles as a means of coping. “It was the only relief I had, the only part of my life where I could finish something beautiful and have control,” Collier said. (Read more from Phys.Org.)
Navigating the Academic Conference with Social Anxiety
Academic conferences can be one of the most enjoyable experiences that you can have during graduate school. A paid-for trip, usually somewhere at least semiexotic, to allow you to talk about the kind of work that you are personally interested in—what’s not to like about that? Well, for those of us who deal with anxiety in unfamiliar situations, attending an academic conference alone in a strange place without knowing anyone can be a difficult and demanding experience. (Read more from GradHacker.)
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for March 2015
posted by CAA — Mar 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.
March 2015
Poetry and Exile
British Museum
Gallery 34, Great Russell Street, London
WC1B 3DG United Kingdom
October 1, 2014–March 1, 2015
Housed within the Islamic World Galleries, Poetry and Exile displays a series of works by artists of the Middle East and North Africa recently acquired by the British Museum. This small but powerful exhibition explores the effects of exile through the eyes of four women artists:Ipek Duben, Mireille Kassar, Mona Saudi, and Canan Tolon.
Tolon’s series ofink and graphite drawings, titled Futur Imparfait, is a memoir fromher exile from Istanbul to France, where she spent a decade in hospital as a result of contracting polio as a child. In the series Tolon portrays an exile not only from home, but also from her own body. Duben’s book Refugee belies the helplessness and terror suffered by people forced to flee their homeland with images on delicate gauze pages and using childlike embroidery that depicts the crossing of borders. The Istanbul-born Duben has been making books and installations that focus on identity, domestic violence, and the worldwide forced migration of the twentieth century.
The Jordanian artist Saudi combines the evocative verses of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish with drawings, while the Lebanese-born Kassar developed a series of drawings inspired by the Persian poem The Conference of the Birds. Here, Kassar conjures a story of exile from her own family history. Originally from Mosul and Mardin—present day Iraq and Turkey—her ancestors fled the Ottoman massacres of minorities during the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Sophie Calle: For the Last and First Time
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
185, rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest, Montréal, Québec H2X 3X5 Canada
February 5–May 10, 2015
The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal presents For the Last and First Time,a two-part exhibition by Sophie Calle (b. Paris, 1953), one of the most important conceptualists artists of her generation. The exhibition comprises two successive projects developed in Istanbul, The Last Image (2010) and Voir la mer (2011). Calle’s poetic investigation of beauty, blindness, and the sea reflects on visual and emotional relationships with the concept of beautythrough an insightful look at both the loss of one’s eyesight, through the particular mental images of blind people, and at the discovery of beauty and the sublime for the first time.
The Last Image isan installation of a series of photographs, tinged with melancholy and accompanied by texts and the soothing sound of waves. For this project, the artist spoke to blind people who had lost their sight suddenly, asking them to recall and describe the last thing they saw. Later on, while in Istanbul, Calle met many people that, in a city surrounded by water, had never seen the sea. For Voir la mer, a series of captivating first encounters with the sea, she filmed fifteen people from different ages looking at the sea for the first time in their lives.
Aware of the impossibility of re-creating the first glance, these series of digital films were in this case created with the assistant of a filmmaker. Calle found most meaningful to remain herself at the back of the viewers, waiting to observe their glances when they turn around after seeing the sea for the first time in their lives. As the artist recalls: “I went with each person individually, such as this man in his thirties. Before we arrived I made him cover his eyes. Once we were safely by the sea, I instructed him to take away his hands and look at it. Then, when he was ready—for some it was five minutes and for others fifteen—he had to turn to me and let me look at those eyes that had just seen the sea.”
Through presenting together The Last Image and Voir la mer, the exhibition opens a moving dialogue among memory, sight, beauty, and the sea. As often in the development of Calle’s projects, The Last Image and Voir la mer derive from an earlier series, The Blind, developed in 1986, in which the artist asked blind people to describe the notion of beauty for them. One of them had answered: “The most beautiful thing I have ever seen is the sea, the endless sea.”
Calle has developed a “polyphonic” art dealing with photography, writing, video, and performance. Throughout four decades of creative practice, she has produced extraordinary, audacious works that draw on her own history as well as that of others. Through a poetic, sincere, and intimate approach, Calle invites us to break through the boundaries between private and public life, creating and recording moments of startling truth, tinged with notions of loss, absence, and desire.
Doris Salcedo
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
220 East Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
February 21–May 24, 2015
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, presents the first retrospective of the thirty-year career of the renowned Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, whose work, although deeply rooted in her country’s social and political landscape, investigates human conflict manifested in different parts of the world. Salcedo (b. 1958), who lives and works in Bogotá, transforms ordinary and domestic objects (such as chairs, tables) into alternative memorials to the painful absence that embodied a traumatic loss of human life. In this process, the artist grounds her art in rigorous fieldwork, which involves extensive interviews with people who have experienced loss and trauma in their everyday lives due to political violence. She has been increasingly noted for her large-scale installations and architectural interventions. Between them, her work Shibboleth, a 167-meter-long crack in the turbine floor, developed as a commission for the Tate Modern Unilever Projects in 2007, raised questions of borders, racial hatred, and exclusion. Through a laborious and seemingly healing art-making process, Salcedo creates sculptures and installation that explore the indescribable wounds of violence as a universal phenomenon through a subtle, poetic, yet devastatingly powerful visual language.
Salcedo’s retrospective at the museum begins with a selection of her earliest works, many of which are exhibited together en masse for the first time since 1998: sculptures made with concrete-filled doors, tables, armoires, chairs. Other major installations include La Casa Viuda (1993–95), Unland (1995–98), Atrabiliarios (1992–2004), A Flor de Piel (2014), and Disremembered (2014). It also presents the American debut of Salcedo’s major work Plegaria Muda (2008–10), an expansive installation of tables, inverted one atop another, while individual blades of grass grow through the holes in their surfaces. Responding once again to acts of violence, its contemplative stillness evokes associations of a collective burial site. This piece was inspired by a three-year-long research of gang violence at the ghettoes of southeastern Los Angeles, as well as by the 2008 discovery that members of the Colombian Army had been killing innocent civilians and dressing their corpses in guerrilla uniforms to claim government bounties. As Salcedo points out, speaking about modern, war-torn societies, “we have lost our ability to mourn…. I want my work to play the role of funeral oration, honoring this life.”
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, is producing a short film documenting Salcedo’s site-specific and ephemeral installations and a 250-page publication featuring an overview of the artist’s career by leading scholars and curators. The exhibition travels to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where it will be seen June 26–October 14, 2015.
Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality, and the Body in the Work of Six African Women Artists
WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre
Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Brussels, Belgium
February 14–May 3, 2015
WIELS Contemporary Art Center in Brussels presents Body Talks, an exhibition along a series of conversations and performances that address issues feminism, sexuality, and the body in the work of six African women artists. Curated by Koyo Kouoh and assisted by Eva Barois De Caevel from the RAW Material Company in Dakar, the exhibition explores the body as the subject of reflection and medium of artistic practice, as in the case of the “confrontational” performances of the South African artist Tracey Rose.
The spread of artistic practices to international networks, along with the critical resonance of a specifically African (and black) feminism, have given shape to the development of a black feminist art. Referencing to historical and political figures, black feminist art depicts bodies that continue a tradition of activism and freedom of speech. Bringing together the work of a generation of women artists from Africa active since the late 1990s, this group exhibition challenges pervasive fantasies and inequalities relating to women’s bodies and sexuality. While in the work of the selected artists the body manifests itself, as a model, support, subject, or/and object, the project as a whole attempts to define and articulate notions of feminism and sexuality in the work of women artists whose body serves as a tool, a representation, or a research field.
Exhibiting artists, from diverse regions of the continent and the diaspora, are: Zoulikha Bouabdellah (Algeria/France, b. 1977); Marcia Kure (Nigeria, b. 1970); Miriam Syowia Kyambi (Kenya, b. 1979); Valérie Oka (Cote d’Ivoire, b. 1967); Tracey Rose (South Africa, b. 1974); and Billie Zangewa (Malawi/Zimbawe, b. 1973).
Between the presented projects: Kure evokes Saartjie Baartman, “the Hottentot Venus,” who was born in what is now South Africa but taken to Europe in the early nineteenth century to be put on show. As the curator explains, “Baartman has really become a point of departure for thinking about the African woman’s body.”
Bouabdellah—who was at the center of a recent dispute about self-censorship for her Silence piece, an installation composed of prayer mats on which she had arranged high-heeled shoes—presents a series of collages for which she has cut famous paintings depicting women’s bodies into Eastern motifs. Oka presented two performances at the opening reflecting on the sexual clichés inherited from the period of slavery and colonization that stigmatize the black body and the idea that the African woman is allegedly more sensual and better at sex.
Rediscovering, reintegrating, and reinterpreting the body, this exhibition presents the response of a generation of African women artists that challenge stereotypes of the notion “black” sexuality and feminism through diverse means of dialoguing with—and experienced from—the own body.
Maryland to Murano: Neckpieces and Sculptures by Joyce J. Scott
Museum of Art and Design
2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019
September 30, 2014–March 15, 2015
The Museum of Art and Design in New York presents Maryland to Murano: Neckpieces and Sculptures by Joyce J. Scott, which bringstogether neckpieces and blown-glass sculptures by the renowned “Queen of Beadwork” for the first time. Provocative and confrontational, Scott’s exuberant beaded sculptural forms and neckpieces address contentious political and social issues such as gender, race, and class struggle.
Maryland to Murano examines Scott’s ever-evolving techniques and continued exploration of provocative narratives through her commitment to craft. The show also highlights Scott’s range in both form and content in a extensive body of work created in her workshop in Baltimore, Maryland, and in her recent glass sculptures made at the Berengo Studio on Murano Island in Venice, Italy.
Scott (b. Baltimore, 1948) is a descendant of African Americans, Native Americans, and Scots. She received her first art lessons at home watching her mother—the renowned fiber artist Elizabeth Talford Scott—using unconventional techniques of embroidery and appliqué in creating her quilts. Scott’s creative process is deeply rooted in her ethnic and family heritage: three generations of storytellers, quilters, basket makers, and shapers of wood, metal, and clay.
Through the interplay between these two bodies of work, as well as a documentary video, the exhibition not only reveals the range of Scott’s technique and skill and the complex relationship she has shaped among adornment, content and methodology, but it also expresses her commentary on issues affecting contemporary society in an effort to elicit awareness and response. As the artist states: “It’s important to me to use art in a manner that incites people to look and then carry something home—even it it’s subliminal—that might make a change in them.” Scott’s thought-provoking, portable beaded pieces are certainly inciting us to be carried either way.
caa.reviews Seeks Field Editors for Books and Exhibitions
posted by Betty Leigh Hutcheson — Mar 09, 2015
caa.reviews invites nominations and self-nominations for individuals to join its Council of Field Editors, which commissions reviews within an area of expertise or geographic region, for a three-year term: July 1, 2015–June 30, 2018. Candidates may be artists, art historians, critics, curators, or other professionals in the visual arts; institutional affiliation is not required. An online journal, caa.reviews is devoted to the peer review of new books, museum exhibitions, and projects relevant to art history, visual studies, and the arts.
The journal seeks field editors for books in the following subject areas: contemporary art; photography; Northern European art; twentieth-century art; Pre-Columbian art; South/Southeast Asian art; the Middle East and North Africa; and artists’ books. The journal also seeks a field editor to commission reviews of exhibitions of pre-1800 art on the West Coast and field editors for reviews of exhibitions in the Southeast and the Southwest.
Working with the caa.reviews editor-in-chief, the editorial board, and CAA’s staff editor, each field editor selects content to be reviewed, commissions reviewers, and reviews manuscripts for publication. Field editors for books must stay abreast of newly published and important books and related media in their fields of expertise, and field editors for exhibitions should be aware of current and upcoming exhibitions (and other related projects) in their geographic regions. The Council of Field Editors meets annually at the CAA Annual Conference. Field editors must pay travel and lodging expenses to attend the conference.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not currently serve on the editorial board of a competitive journal or on another CAA editorial board or committee. Nominators should ascertain their nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a name; self-nominations are also welcome. Please send a statement describing your interest in and qualifications for appointment, a CV, and your contact information to: caa.reviews Editorial Board, College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004; or email the documents to Deidre Thompson, CAA publications assistant. Deadline: April 10, 2015.
Affiliated Society News for March 2015
posted by CAA — Mar 09, 2015
American Council for Southern Asian Art
As approved by a vote of the membership, the American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) membership dues will be increasing. In addition, there are new membership categories and, as per request of the membership, multiyear options. ACSAA membership dues have not changed in more than ten years. Since then the organization has grown and thus taken on more expenses, such as the creation and regular maintenance of a website. The new dues structure brings ACSAA into alignment with other similar organizations.
The new membership dues structure is as follows:
- Students, Retired Members, Independent Scholars, and Scholars in South and Southeast Asia: $20 and $40 (two years)
- Regular Member: $50 and $100 (two years)
- Contributing Member: $100 and $200 (two years)
- Institutional Member: $100
- Sustaining Member: $250 minimum
- Lifetime Patron: $3,000
To join or renew as an ACSAA member, go to http://www.acsaa.us/membership.
ACSAA is also pleased to announce that the 2015 symposium, which celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the organization’s founding, will be held in Toronto, Ontario, this coming October. Additional details will soon be available on the website.
American Institute for Conservation
Please join the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) at its forty-third annual meeting in Miami, Florida, from May 13 to 15, 2015. The theme is “Practical Philosophy, or Making Conservation Work.” All aspects of conservation, from preventive care to inpainting, include both theory and practice. In most cases, theory supports practice. Nonetheless, conservation professionals are sometimes challenged in their efforts to smoothly meld the two. Many factors, ranging from available resources to questions of public access and politics, can thwart even the best treatments plans and noblest intentions. The transition from what is initially envisioned as ideal to what is eventually acknowledged as realistic often requires compromise. But, are less than satisfactory outcomes inevitable? Or, can better solutions evolve from necessity? Attend AIC’s annual meeting to learn how philosophical principles can be successfully translated into workable—even superior—practice. In addition, as UNESCO has proclaimed 2015 the International Year of Light, presentations on practical solutions that take advantage of optical technology to examine and preserve cultural heritage are being highlighted. Learn more and register at www.conservation-us.org/meetings.
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 November 11–14 at the Desoto Hilton in Savannah, Georgia. Noted scholars will discuss the evolution and contributions of feminist scholarship within philosophical aesthetics, the history of the ASA, and its publication, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Topics will include: “Forty Years of Feminist Scholarship in Aesthetics,” “The Influence—Hidden or Otherwise—of Feminist Scholarship in Aesthetics,” and “Feminist Pedagogy and Curricula in Aesthetics.” For more information, please visit http://www.aesthetics-online.org/feminist/ or contact Peg Brand.
American Society of Appraisers
The Personal Property Committee of the American Society of Appraisers invites you to its annual spring conference, “Current Issues in Determining Authenticity in Visual Art and Objects, the Catalogue Raisonné, Art Scholarship, and Value in the Marketplace,” to be held March 25–27, 2015, at the Yale Club in New York. This scholarly conference will bring together highly regarded and noted experts in their fields. Speakers and topics to be addressed will include numerous aspects of the problems appraisers, art-industry professionals, and collectors must continually consider. An optional field trip to the Princeton University Art Museum, Sculpture Collection, and Libraries will take place on Saturday, March 28. Accommodations have been reserved at the Yale Club and the Roosevelt Hotel for this event. This will be a not-to-miss conference! Register now to save your spot. Limited spaces are available for the conference, which is expected to sell out. Go to www.appraisers.org or call 800-272-8258.
Arts Council of the African Studies Association
The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) continues to have a sustained presence at national and international conferences in the first part of 2015. Numerous member-developed panels and individual papers have been accepted at the sixth European Conference on African Studies (ECAS 6), which will be held at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. The principal theme of ECAS 6 is “Collective Mobilizations in Africa: Contestation, Resistance, Revolt,” and ACASA panels will engage with topics ranging from the circulation of African art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to censorship and politically engaged artists to the consumption of African art in the electronic age. In addition, Jordan Fenton chaired the ACASA-sponsored panel “African Art and Economics in Urban Spaces,” at the 2015 CAA Annual Conference. Finally, plans for the seventeenth ACASA Triennial Symposium on African Art continue to make positive advancements. The symposium, which will take place at the University of Ghana in Legon in August 2017, will be ACASA’s first meeting on the African continent, marking the association’s longstanding commitment toward promoting greater understanding of African expressive culture from a global perspective.
ArtTable
This summer, ArtTable is expanding its Summer Mentored Internship for Diversity in the Visual Arts Professions program, one of the longest standing internship programs supporting diversity in the visual arts in the country. ArtTable’sprogram places women graduate students from cultural/ethnic backgrounds underrepresented in the field with ArtTable mentors at institutions around the country, providing them with a one-on-one mentoring relationship, valuable professional experience, and a stipend. Through the support of private donors, the Sam Francis Foundation, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the program will expand to provide internships to six young women this summer.
ArtTable and the arts community suffered a great loss with the passing of Lea K. Green this year. Lea was a long-standing ArtTable member, a vice president and client strategy director at Christie’s, a recent member of ArtTable’s board of directors, and an active and passionate member of the arts community. In collaboration with Lea K. Green’s family, ArtTable has established a fund to support its Diversity Internship Program and host a Lea K. Green summer intern. To make a contribution in Lea’s name, please contact info@arttable.org.
Association of Art Museum Curators
The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) has announced the keynote speaker and hosts for its fourteenth annual conference and meeting, taking place May 9–12, 2015. The keynote speaker will be Tom Finkelpearl, commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. His experience and perspective on the powerful and mutually rewarding relationship that can exist between a museum and its immediate community and the ways in which to engage a culturally diverse region will resonate with and inspire the conference attendees. Conference sessions and events will be held at several New York area cultural institutions, including the Newark Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. “The historically adventurous characteristics of these institutions and the ways in which they have met the challenges of the twenty-first-century art museum will make for thought-provoking and insightful case studies for our AAMC members,” said Emily Ballew Neff, AAMC president. “The AAMC looks forward to learning more about the challenge and success of each museum in connecting effectively with its communities, and we are honored to be so warmly welcomed by each venue for the conference.”
Community College Professors of Art and Art History
The Community College Professors of Art and Art History (CCPAAH) had a successful session at this year’s CAA Annual Conference. “Foundations Flipped? Active Learning in Art History and the Studio” was the topic of the 2015 session. Thanks to Monica Anke Hahn (chair) and Lauren Patterson of the Community College of Philadelphia and Richard Thompson and Susan Altman of Middlesex County College for presenting, and also to all the attendees for their lively discussion. CCPAAH would also like to thank the twenty-five-plus faculty members who shared their “best practices” and project ideas at the business meeting. Everyone left with new ideas to take back to their classrooms. Join CCPAAH for “Beyond Good, Bad, and ‘I Like It’: A New Take on Critique,” to be presented at this year’s Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. Please email the group at ccpaah@gmail.com if you are interested in learning more or if you have questions. You can also like CCPAAH’s Facebook page.
Historians of British Art
The board of the Historians of British Art welcomes two new members: Julie Codell, professor of art history at Arizona State University; and Melinda McCurdy, associate curator of British art for the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. We would also like to welcome Douglas Fordham, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Virginia, as the incoming Book Prize Committee chair. Hyeyun Chin of Binghamton University, State University of New York, has been awarded HBA’s Travel Grant to support the presentation of a paper at CAA’s 2015 Annual Conference. For more information on HBA, including our prizes and membership, visit the website or find HBA on Facebook.
International Association of Art Critics
The International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) is pleased to announce that Martha Schwendener, art critic for The New York Times, has joined the organization’s board.
The panel “Art Critics’ Websites: Options and Rationales” has been rescheduled for Monday, March 16, 2015, 6:15–7:45 PM, at Artists Space, 55 Walker Street. Judith Stein will chair the panel, and four panelists will speak. Please RSVP to info@aicausa.org. Seating is limited to eighty people and available on a first-come, first-served basis.
International Center of Medieval Art
The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) is pleased to announce a new initiative. Drawing upon its own resources, the organization plans to make available a number of small grants to graduate students; these grants are designed to underwrite a month or so of travel to sites, collections, or libraries abroad. The awards will most likely be offered to graduate student members in the first stages of dissertation research. For more information, contact icma@medievalart.org.
International Sculpture Center
You’re invited to join International Sculpture Center (ISC) to celebrate International Sculpture Day, or IS Day for short. This event is an annual celebration held worldwide on April 24 to further the ISC’s mission of advancing the creation and understating of sculpture and its unique, vital contribution to society. IS Day is free and open to anyone or organization with an interest in sculpture; it will include a wide range of events, openings, and educational and promotional activities around the world. Visit www.sculpture.org/isday to learn how you can participate and to view events in your area. Visit ISC on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation.
ISC will hold the twenty-fifth International Sculpture Conference, on “New Frontiers in Sculpture,” from November 4 to 7, 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. Over three hundred sculpture enthusiasts from around the world will gather for engaging panel discussions, exciting cultural events, and peer networking surrounding topics in contemporary sculpture. Conference registration will open summer 2015. For more information, visit www.sculpture.org/az2015.
National Art Education Association
Don’t miss the largest gathering of art educators in the world! Register now for the 2015 National Art Education Association (NAEA) national convention. Focusing on “The Art of Design: Form, Function, and the Future of Visual Arts Education,” the event will take place March 26–28, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. New NAEA publications that will at the convention are: Connecting Creativity Research and Practice in Art Education: Foundations, Pedagogies, and Contemporary Issues (2015), edited by Flávia Bastos and Enid Zimmerman; and Curriculum Inquiry and Design for School- and Community-Based Art Education (2015) by Lynn Beudert and Marissa McClure.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The forty-third National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) annual meeting, “Changing Lanes: Adapting, Reacting, Navigating,” convenes September 23–25, 2015, in Boston, Massachuhsetts. Please join NCAA at Boston University for a conversation about the road(s) to best practices in our changing educational climate. We all know that the very structure of universities is shifting beneath our feet. How do and will art programs and administrators not only accommodate but also harness these changes? We invite current and aspiring art department chairs, directors, and deans to attend. The keynote speaker will be the architect and artist Maya Lin. Visit the website to learn more about the conference and to join NCAA.
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 presentation of papers is open to any topic within the theme of “Recent Research in Pacific Arts.” Presentations can be either 30 minutes (20–25 minutes talk, 5–10 minutes discussion) or 10-minute reports on current exhibition projects or work in progress in museums or galleries. For more information, please contact adama@adamaamerica.com.
Pacific Arts Association-Pacific is calling for 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. The conference theme examines the role art has played in the exchange of objects, peoples, technologies, and ideologies in the prehistoric, historic, or modern Pacific. It is not limited to “physical” exchanges but also addresses complex social, economic, and political arrangements and interactions among interconnected systems, structures and peoples. For further information, contact Karen Stevenson.
Public Art Dialogue
Harriet F. Senie and Kelly Pajek are stepping down as cochairs of Public Art Dialogue (PAD), and Juilee Decker is stepping down as membership coordinator. (PAD officers are limited to two three-year terms according to its bylaws.) In addition, Natasha Khandekar departs from her role as newsletter editor and web-content editor. PAD’s new cochairs are Cameron Cartiere and Jennifer Wingate. PAD’s membership coordinator is Anna Heineman. Marisa Lerer will serve as newsletter and web-content editor in addition to serving as PAD’s public relations coordinator.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) is accepting proposals for its fifty-third conference, “Constructed Realities,” to be held from March 10–13, 2016, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Topics are not required to be theme-based, and may include but are not limited to: image-making, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. SPE membership is required to submit and proposals are peer reviewed. The presentation formats are:
- Graduate Student: short presentation of your own artistic work and a brief introduction to your graduate program
- Imagemaker: presentation of your own artistic work (photography, film, video, performance, installation, multidisciplinary approaches)
- Lecture: presentation of a historical topic, theory, or another artist’s work
- Panel: group led by a moderator to discuss a chosen topic
- Teaching: presentations, workshops, demos that address educational issues, including teaching resources and strategies; curricula to serve diverse artists and changing student populations; seeking promotion and tenure; avoiding burnout; and professional exchange
Visit www.spenational.org for information on SPE membership and full proposal guidelines.
Society of Architectural Historians
Registration is open for the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) sixty-eighth annual international conference in Chicago, Illinois, taking place April 15–19, 2015. The conference features over 180 speakers presenting new research on built environment topics from antiquity to the critical present. Public programming includes the SAH Chicago Seminar and over thirty architectural tours. The seminar includes a keynote address by Harvard University professor Charles Waldheim and two panels of local speakers addressing the transformation of Chicago waterways and neighborhoods.
Registration is open for two Study Programs: SAH Study Day at the Museum of Modern Art and the United Nations Headquarters (New York, March 27, 2015); and Architectures in the Rio de la Plata Basin: Between Tradition and Cosmopolitanism (Uruguay and Argentina, September 1–12, 2015).
SAH is accepting applications for the SAH/Mellon Author Awards, which provide financial relief to scholars who are publishing their first monograph on the history of the built environment and who are responsible for paying for rights and permissions for images or for commissioning maps, charts, or line drawings in their publications. Deadline: June 1, 2015. The call for papers for the SAH sixty-ninth annual international conference will open on April 1, 2015. The H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship will open on April 1, 2015.
Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
Following elections in January 2015, the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) has elected Eva Forgacs as its new vice president/president elect. Ksenya Gurshtein, the web news editor, was running unopposed. Margaret Samu stepped down as SHERA’s president after the end of her two-year term, and Natasha Kurchanova assumed the duties of this position.
At CAA’s Annual Conference in New York, Margaret Samu served as host to visitors from Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine who were part of the CAA-Getty International Program. Samu arranged meetings with specialists in the visitors’ expertise and facilitated their participation in a full-day preconference program organized by the CAA International Committee about international issues in art history, as well as in other events organized connected to the conference.
SHERA sponsored three sessions at CAA this year: a session on teaching methods, “Infiltrating the Pedagogical Canon”; and a double session, “Reconsidering Art and Politics: Towards New Narratives in Russian and East European Art.” During CAA, the society held its membership meeting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library. After the meeting, Jared Ash, SHERA member and the museum’s librarian, hosted a reception at which he showed the attendees rare books and materials related to Russian, East European, and Eurasian art and architecture from the library’s collection.
Southeastern College Art Conference
The next meeting of the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 21–24, 2015. The deadline for the call for entries in the annual juried exhibition is April 1. The deadline for the call for papers is April 20. For more information, please visit www.secollegeart.org/conference.
New officers were elected at the members meeting on October 11, 2014, which took place at the seventieth annual meeting of SECAC, held in Sarasota, Florida: Jason Guynes of the University of South Alabama is president; Sandra Reed of Marshall University is first vice president; and Kevin Concannon of Virginia Tech is second vice president. The new board members are: Heather Deyling of Savannah College of Art and Design (appointed to fill vacated seat for Georgia); Ute Wachsmann-Linnan of Columbia College (South Carolina); and Heather Stark, Marshall University (West Virginia).
The new issue of the Southeastern College Art Conference Review (vol. XVI, no. 4) is now available. Rachel Stephens of the University of Alabama is the new editor. The name of the journal will change to Art Inquiries with volume XVII.
The future conference locations for SECAC will be:
- 2016 Roanoke, Virginia (hosted by Virginia Tech with Hollins University)
- 2017 Columbus, Ohio (hosted by Columbus College of Art and Design)
- 2018 Birmingham, Alabama (hosted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham)
The $5,000 Artist’s Fellowship award has a deadline of August 1, 2015. Membership is required for applications For details, visit http://www.secollegeart.org/artists-fellowship.
Visual Resources Association
The Visual Resources Association (VRA) has opened registration for the 2015 Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management (SEI), a joint project of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF). SEI seeks to provide information professionals with a substantive educational and professional-development opportunity focused on digital imaging, the information and experience needed to stay current in a rapidly changing field, and the opportunity to create a network of supportive colleagues. This intensive three-and-a-half-day workshop will feature a curriculum that specifically addresses the requirements of today’s visual-resources and image management professionals. Expert instructors will cover: intellectual property rights, digital imaging and digital preservation, metadata and cataloging, project management, and professional growth and development. SEI 2015 will be held at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, June 9–12, 2015. SEI is a residential learning workshop for library-school students, new graduates, and midcareer professionals interested in learning more about digital collections, including metadata, project management, and professional best practices. For more information, please go to the SEI website.
Committee on Diversity Practices highlights for March/April 2015
posted by CAA — Mar 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.
March/April 2015
Wael Shawky: Cabaret Crusades
MoMA PS1
Long Island City, New York
January 31, 2015–August 31, 2015
“For his first solo exhibition at a major American museum, Wael Shawky presents his epic video trilogy that recounts the history of The Crusades from an Arab perspective. Inspired by The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Lebanese historian Amin Maalouf, Shawky’s videos chart the numerous European campaigns to the Holy Land, starting from the early Crusades from 1096–1099 A.D. that are depicted in CABARET CRUSADES: THE HORROR SHOW FILES (2010) and the First and Second Crusades from 1099–1145 A.D. in CABARET CRUSADES: THE PATH TO CAIRO (2012). The MoMA PS1 exhibition will feature both works and debut the third and final video from the series, CABARET CRUSADES: THE SECRETS of KARBALA.
Based on accounts from primary sources, Shawky complicates the traditional civilization clash narrative by describing scenes that refute common notions of the era. Shawky highlights both the secular motivations of the European fighters and the competition and violence among Arab leaders. Using 200-year-old marionettes from a collection in Italy for the first installment, and custom-made ceramic figures for the second, Shawky says the puppets help create a “surreal and mythical atmosphere that blends drama and cynicism, telling a story of remote events that could hardly be more topical today. The puppets’ strings clearly refer to the idea of control. The work also implies a criticism of the way history has been written and manipulated.” (http://momaps1.org/exhibitions/view/394)
More information: http://momaps1.org
After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary India 1947/1997
Queens Museum
Queens, New York
March 8, 2015–June 28, 2015
“After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary India 1947/1997 presents a comparative study of art created in the wake of two defining moments in Indian history. The first, Indian independence in 1947 was notable for the emergence of the Progressives Artists Group. The second was 1997, which marked 50 years of India’s independence, a period that coincided with economic liberalization, political instability, the growth of a religious right wing, as well as a newly globalizing art market and international biennial circuit, in which Indian artists had begun to participate. The year 1997 also prompted a host of several important international exhibitions of Indian art around the world including the first Indian exhibitions in the United States: Out of India, at the Queens Museum and Traditions/Tensions at The Asia Society 1996–1997. Telling Tales: 5 Women artists from India, held at the Victoria Gallery, Bath, UK was followed by Private Mythology: Contemporary Art from India, curated by The Japan Foundation in Tokyo, 1998.
After Midnight will be the first exhibition large-scale examination of Indian art in the United States prominently featuring the Modern masters, core members of the Progressives including M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, F. N. Souza, and their extended circle of friends such as Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, V. S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta, and Akbar Padamsee.
The contemporary section of the show brings to the fore pertinent issues that have taken place from 1997 to the present. These include a critique of globalization-at-large, affected by the changing economy that forever altered the nation. Not only did this prompt economic growth in India that created opportunities for growth and progress, but at the same time it brought several setbacks such as the exploitation of labor and rural migration to name a few. The contemporary artists in the exhibition are CAMP, Nikhil Chopra, Desire Machine Collective, Atul Dodiya, Anita Dube, Sheela Gowda, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Tushar Joag, Jitish Kallat, Tallur L. N., Prajakta Potnis, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Raqs Media Collective, Sharmila Samant, Mithu Sen, Dayanita Singh and Asim Waqif.
After Midnight, while a large-scale survey show itself, adopts a critical position against blockbuster exhibitions of Indian art that have undertaken tokenist representation of India, or have attempted to illustrate the nation through its art. Instead of capitulating to the market forces and the need of the West to “present” and “frame” Indian cultural practices, the intent of the exhibition is to dismantle the stereotypical nationalist presentations of India. The exhibition attempts to produce and present art practices, dialogues, and questions emerging from an Indian context to be embraced within the larger global framework of modernity. After Midnight resists being mapped or firmly placed with the boundaries of the nation. Instead, it looks to draw on a new critical body of knowledge that has arisen from a new globalism, in which everything seems to be in the process of being redefined, including individual freedom and rights and the idea of India itself. Most importantly the exhibition disbands positions that are no longer useful, to allow for an expanded, inclusive dialogue of art and culture to emerge. The exhibition includes work in a variety of media and consists of both existing works and new commissions.” (http://www.queensmuseum.org/exhibitions/2013/11/08/after-midnight/)
More information: http://www.queensmuseum.org
Jesse Howard: Thy Kingdom Come
Contemporary Art Museum St Louis.
St. Louis, Missouri
January 16, 2015–April 11, 2015
“Thy Kingdom Come is the first comprehensive museum survey of the work of Jesse Clyde Howard, a self-taught artist, evangelist, and keen advocate of “free thought and free speech” who lived and worked in Fulton, Missouri, from the 1940s through the early ’80s. Presenting more than 100 of Howard’s hand-painted signs comprising religious exhortations, political denunciations, and autobiographical details, the exhibition documents the profusion of creative energy reflected in the artist’s dogmatic faith in the First Amendment—rights that were, according to Howard, under threat from the dissemination of communism and progressivism.
In 1903, at the age of eighteen, Howard left home to pursue a variety of temporary occupations on the West Coast. These years of migrant labor exposed him to a system of vernacular signage that would later instruct his principal period of artistic production. In 1944 Howard and his wife, Maude Linton, moved with their five children to “Sorehead Hill,” a twenty-acre compound north of Fulton. Here he began crafting model airplanes, dog carts, and other curiosities before devoting himself to creating signs expounding personal dogmas and cultural perceptions. By the time of his death in 1983, Howard had constructed a landscape of sculptural and textual works surrounding his home and workshops.
Howard’s initial artistic projects of the 1940s were met with condemnation by Fulton, leading some in the community to steal and deface his works, which resulted in subsequent allegations in Howard’s later signage. For Howard, the biblical citations of “the confusion of language” and “the earth divided” found throughout his text are not simply cosmic consequences of human transgression but intimate biographical details that reflect his community’s misunderstanding and rejection. Howard projects the inequities present in Biblical literature onto his neighbors to legitimize the prophetic nature of his “signs and wonders,” and in the process reveals the problematic relationship between self-advertisement and recourse to scriptural authority.” (http://camstl.org/exhibitions/main-gallery/jesse-howard/)
More information: http://camstl.org
Wifredo Lam: Imagining New Worlds
High Museum of Art
Atlanta, Georgia
February 14, 2015–May 24, 2015
“The High Museum of Art presents a retrospective of work by Wifredo Lam, a preeminent artist of Latin American origin and one of the Surrealist movement’s most influential figures, from Feb. 14 through May 24, 2015. Wifredo Lam: Imagining New Worlds features more than 40 paintings and a selection of drawings, prints and ephemera by the internationally renowned, Cuban-born artist. Many of Lam’s masterworks—drawn from public and private collections across Europe, Latin America and the U.S.—are presented together for the first time in the exhibition, which offers a rare overview and reexamination of the artist’s career.
Wifredo Lam: Imagining New Words sheds light on Lam’s seminal periods of artistic development, tracing the global path of his career from its academic roots in Madrid to Lam’s pivotal stay in pre-war Paris and his return to Cuba in the early 1940s. The works reveal the many important influences on Lam’s career, from the European literary and artistic avant-garde to African art.
Born in Cuba to a Chinese father and a mother of African and Spanish descent, Lam (1902-82) gave expression to his multiracial and cultural ancestry while engaging with the major political, literary and artistic circles whose work came to define modernism in the 20th century. In 1938, Lam moved to Paris, where he absorbed the tenets of European modernism, became an important artist of the 1940s Surrealist group, and was introduced to such influential figures as Pablo Picasso and André Breton.
The impact of Lam’s interactions with artists, poets and philosophers on his work is a central theme of Imagining New Worlds, which examines the influence of such pioneering figures as Picasso, Breton, Federico García Lorca, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Márquez and Aimé Césaire.
The exhibition will also consider how the Négritude movement shaped Lam’s work. Lam discovered the literary and ideological movement during his time in Haiti through his relationship with Césaire, the Francophone writer from Martinique whose book of poetry “The Native Land” was published in Spanish translation (“Retorno al pais natal”) in 1943 with illustrations by Lam. Césaire was one of the founders of the movement, which focuses on a black identity that rejects French colonialism.
Returning to Havana in 1941, Lam arrived at his signature hybrid style of painting: a blend of surrealism, magic realism, modernism and postmodernism characterized by a cross-cultural fusion of influences including Afro-Cuban symbolism and imagery related to the Santería religion practiced in the Caribbean.” (http://www.high.org/Press/Press-Releases/2015/February/Wifredo-Lam-Press-Release.aspx)
More information: http://www.high.org/
Lee Bul
National Museum of Contemporary Art
Seoul, Korea
September 30, 2014–March 1, 2015
“In the 1980s, Lee received a very traditional education in sculpture at Hongik University in Korea. From her earliest works, however, she has actively rebelled against the conventional academic art that tends to dominate the Korean art field. She officially launched her professional career in the late 1980s with a series of provocative performances, installations, and sculptures that scathingly criticized the social and political power structure of patriarchal culture. She hung upside down from a rope while naked, to the accompaniment of a pop song. The work was a powerful visualization of the pain of abortion as well as a public confession about her own experience. The same year, in her outdoor performance, she wore the makeup of a shaman and a soft costume of a monster with giant tentacles, and then ran through the fields of Jangheung. In another performance, she wore a similar monster outfit when she wandered Gimpo Airport in Korea, Narita Airport in Japan and the streets of downtown Tokyo for twelve days in costume, eliciting various responses from pedestrians. These performances represented her resistance to a number of binary oppositions: human vs. monster, reason vs. feeling, man vs. woman, logic vs. illogic. Furthermore, they were parodies of femininity, which has been identified with the seditious object of exclusion. As such, she raised compelling questions about existing values and conventions.
Lee’s Mon grand récit series, first shown in 2005, continued to explore the oppressive relationship between the human and society and the gloomy future of science and technology. At the same time, Lee harkened back to some of the central issues of early twentieth-century architecture, with its pursuit of utopia through design. For On Every New Shadow, Lee’s 2007 exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, she made to unfold massive installation works, as if reconstituting these themes as landscapes unto themselves. The Mon grand récit series reflects Lee’s views on Jean-François Lyotard, who posited that the so-called “grand narrative,” or metanarrative, was impossible in the age of post-modernism. Recognizing the impossibility of grand narrative, Lee presented various “small narratives” that were fragmented and imperfect, and which continuously floated around with no resolution. Her works were designed to make viewers contemplate the traces of corruption disclosed in history, the failure of modernist idealism, and the specters of modernism that continue to haunt the daily life and consciousness of individuals.” (http://www.mmca.go.kr/eng/exhibitions/exhibitionsDetail.do?exhId=201409300000154&menuId=1010000000)
More information: http://www.mmca.go.kr/eng/