CAA News Today
Participants Selected for 2015 CAA-Getty International Program
posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — Oct 09, 2014
CAA is pleased to announce this year’s recipients of travel support through the CAA-Getty International Program. In an effort to promote greater interaction and exchange between American and international art historians and artists, CAA will bring colleagues from around the world to its Annual Conference, this year to be held in New York City from February 11-14, 2015. This is the fourth year of the program, which has been generously funded by grants from the Getty Foundation since its inception. The participants—professors of art history, curators, and artists who teach art history—were selected by a jury of CAA members from a highly competitive group of applicants. Their names and affiliations are listed below. In addition to covering travel expenses, hotel accommodations, and per diems, the CAA-Getty International Program includes support for conference registration and a one-year CAA membership.
The CAA-Getty International Program participants’ activities begin with a one-day preconference colloquium on international issues in art history, during which they meet with U.S.-based CAA members to discuss common interests and challenges. The participants are assisted throughout the conference by CAA member hosts, who recommend relevant panel sessions and introduce them to specific colleagues who share their interests. Members of CAA’s International Committee have agreed to serve as hosts, along with representatives from several Affiliated Societies of CAA.
CAA hopes that this program will not only increase international participation in the organization’s activities, but will also expand international networking and the exchange of ideas both during and after the conference. The CAA-Getty International Program supplements CAA’s regular program of Annual Conference Travel Grants for graduate students and international artists and scholars. We look forward to welcoming the recipients at the next Annual Conference in New York City.
2015 CAA-Getty International Program Participants
Mokammal Bhuiyan, Professor, Department of Archeology, Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh
Dafne Cruz Porchini, Curator, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico
Boureima Diamitani, Executive Director, West African Museums Program, Burkina Faso
Ljerka Dulibic, Senior Research Associate, Curator of Italian Paintings 1400-1900, Strossmayer, Gallery of Old Masters, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Croatia
Georgina Gluzman, Assistant Professor of Argentine Art History, Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
Angelo Kakande, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department of Industrial Arts and Applied Design, Makarere University, College of Engineering, Design Art and Technology, Uganda
Nazar Kozak, Senior Researcher, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Department of Art Historical Studies, Ukraine
Savita Kumari, Assistant Professor, National Museum Institute of History of Art, Conservation and Museology, India
Nomusa Makhubu, Lecturer, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Ana Mannarino, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Brazil
Marton Orosz, Curator, and Director of the Vasarely Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary
Andrey Shabanov, Associate Research Fellow, Lecturer, European University at St. Petersburg, Art History Department, Russia
Shao Yiyang, Professor, Head of Western Art Studies, Central Academy of Fine Arts, China
Lize Van Robbroeck, Associate Professor, Stellenbosch University, Department of Visual Arts, South Africa
Nora Veszpremi, Lecturer, Institute of Art History, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
September Issue of The Art Bulletin
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 07, 2014
The opening essay of the September 2014 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, is by the Brazilan scholar Claudia Mattos, who examines local and global view on art history in “Geography, Art Theory, and New Perspectives for an Inclusive Art History.”
In other essays in the issue: Douglas Brine explores the memorializing function of Jan van Eyck’s van der Paele Virgin, with particular attention to its commissioning and original setting. Mitchell B. Merback considers the moral and phenomenological implications of a monstrous visage, reflected in the Centurion’s armor, in Hans Burgkmair’s Crucifixion in Augsburg. In “Watteau, Reverie, and Selfhood,” Aaron Wile finds that the French artist’s fêtes galantes establish a new relationship between painting and viewer, characterized by reverie and a modern sense of interiority. Finally, Rebecca Brown looks at the exhibitions associated with the 1985–86 Festival of India in the United States and how they isolated Indian art from broader movements in modern and contemporary art.
In the Reviews section, Matthew P. McKelway considers books by Alexander Hofmann and by Yukio Lippit on painting in early modern Japan. J. M. Mancini reviews Zahid R. Chaudhary’s Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India, and Ebba Koch examines Santhi Kavuri-Bauer’s Monumental Matters: The Power, Subjectivity, and Space of India’s Mughal Architecture.
CAA sends The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and to those individuals who choose to receive the journal as a benefit of their membership. The digital version at Taylor & Francis Online is currently available to all CAA individual members.
In the next issue of the quarterly journal, December 2014, Cheng-hua Wang offers a global perspective on eighteenth-century Chinese visual culture in “Whither Art History.” The feature essays offer new research and a reinterpretation of the Greek statue known as the Motya Youth, an analysis of two editions of a print series published in seventeenth-century Antwerp, an exploration of the Rococo revival in mid-nineteenth-century Austria, and a reading of Ad Reinhardt’s black square paintings as object lessons in Marxist dialectics. The issue will also include reviews on Maya art, color, and theories of visual culture.
Digital Art History Takes Off
posted by Linda Downs — Oct 07, 2014
Written by Anne Collins Goodyear and Paul B. Jaskot.
This summer four institutes held on the east and west coasts provided opportunities for art historians—both academics and museum professionals—to increase their familiarity with the tools and opportunities presented by a computational approach to “doing” art history. These programs, underwritten by the Getty and Samuel H. Kress Foundations took place at Harvard’s metaLAB (Beautiful Data: Telling Stories About Art with Open Collections, June 16–27, Getty Foundation), George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (Rebuilding the Portfolio: DH for Art Historians, July 7–18, Getty Foundation), UCLA’s Digital Humanities Program (Beyond the Digitized Library, July 28–August 6, Getty Foundation), and Middlebury College (Summer Institute on Digital Mapping and Art History, August 3–15, Kress Foundation). The firm groundwork laid by these programs as well as the enthusiastic response by participants suggest that the field of art history is in an ever-stronger position to take advantage of the opportunities provided by new technologies and to lead the digital humanities in key areas.
Each program had its own personality and addressed different needs in the field. At Harvard, attendees found themselves working on digital archival collections and exploring different approaches to using this kind of information, such as curating, annotating, and visualizing digital collections. The institute at George Mason provided self-identified newcomers to digital scholarship with broad exposure to digital environments and specific tools, including the use of social media, data mining, and visualization techniques. UCLA organizers focused on methodological and theoretical issues at stake in the digital humanities and encouraged participants to critically address their approaches. A one-day conference on publishing and the digital environment at UCLA allowed participants and audience members a chance to reflect on participant’s projects and the future of digital scholarship. For the Kress mapping institute, fellows were asked to come prepared with specific spatial questions related to their area of research and to include a database of spatial information. In the short period of the workshop, they were exposed to the methods of digital mapping through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and, on the last day, presented extraordinary maps of their own that pushed their research questions forward. Collectively, the summer institutes show the diversity of approaches as well as the depth of interest in digital scholarship, something unusual for any humanities field in recent years.
Digital or computational art history has been gaining ground since the advent of innovative projects like the Digital Roman Forum and Mapping Gothic France, among others. Work in our discipline has been further sustained by new publishing venues for digital work. These include not only new authoring and publishing platforms such as HyperCities and Scalar, but also more substantial interventions in long-standing print periodicals, such as the Journal of Society of Architectural Historians online edition, which allows authors to include a variety of digital formats with their texts. Indeed, CAA’s adoption of an electronic format for its print journals earlier this year through its partnership with Taylor & Francis continues the important role of facilitating new sorts of scholarly publishing.
More important, however, are the new forms of analysis and data sharing that digital art history makes possible or, alternatively, the ways in which digital methods push known scholarly questions in innovative and exciting directions. Addressing the “stuff” of art history from a computational standpoint may initially seem counter-intuitive, particularly given the field’s propensity for qualitative analysis and the stress placed on our ability to look closely. However, reflection upon the nature of the information we might encounter, particularly in the era of “big data,” suggests how rapidly the field might benefit from alternatives to traditional research methods. Depending on the nature of the art-historical problem, such analysis may involve the identification of trends in bodies of literature: the use of certain key terms for example, and their frequency. It may enable us to identify economic, social, or stylistic relationships between key entities through network analysis. It may utilize tools to analyze more minutely geographic settings and the relationships between buildings and human actors, or to study the physical evolution of sites over time. Each of the summer institutes took a different approach to these possibilities, with some offering a wide view while others provided a more focused set of inquiries. Tweets from the UCLA colloquium and the individual workshops have been gathered at #doingdah14.
While the summer institutes show the energy around the digital humanities in art history, CAA has also been continuing its strong investment in responding to member interest in this area. For example, in addition to hosting its third annual THAT (The Humanities And Technology) Camp, CAA will offer a number of digital humanities workshops at the upcoming CAA Annual Conference in February in order to meet the needs of both artists and art historians. These include: Building Scholarly Digital Archives and Exhibits with Omeka; Scalar; and Making Sense of Digital Images, which explores how to describe and develop optimal reproductions, both for current projects and for preservation.
Furthermore, CAA is now examining the question of tenure and promotion based on projects using digital tools. In our reading of the field, the digital future of art-historical scholarship rests in part, and for the near future, on its acceptance by those responsible for evaluating tenure and promotion applications. Since 1973, CAA has formulated and published standards and guidelines on its website after careful research and ratification by its Board of Directors, thereby offering guidance to arts institutions as they create policies and make decisions. In a 2005 addendum to CAA’s current guidelines concerning tenure, the Association recognized “that the well-documented “crisis” in scholarly publishing in the humanities is especially acute for art historians, and threatens the integrity and continuity of the discipline if colleges and universities continue to insist on books as the chief criterion for tenure and promotion.” This concern grows larger with the development of new forms of digital publishing.
Other scholarly societies have developed or are investigating guidelines, including the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association. Professional literature also addresses the need and components for useful guidelines in The Journal of Digital Humanities, society reports, and in compendiums such as Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew Gold (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Digital_Humanities, by Peter Lunenfeld, Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). Additionally, NEH-funded workshops have addressed the need for guidelines, including an institute sponsored by NINES.[1] These initial efforts to promulgate advancement and tenure guidelines serve as models for other humanities disciplines.
An equally crucial question facing the field is the sustainability of digital scholarship, particularly in light of the rapid development of new technologies. Rather than allowing such scholarship to “sit on the shelf,” digital work must be networked in order to survive. The question of the interoperability of the programs utilized for scholarship aside, technology platforms become outmoded and CD-ROMs, disks, and external drives will inevitably deteriorate. The field would benefit from the development of “best practices” for the creation of digital scholarship, from mechanisms of data storage and retrieval, to the development of trustworthy digital repositories, and a careful analysis of the benefit of open-source versus proprietary software for particular forms of writing and data analysis. In addition, funding institutions need to consider the need for further training, like the four summer institutes, to assess what works and what doesn’t for the long-term sustenance of new scholarly innovation.
Despite these challenges, which may, in fact be invitations for future collaborations among art historians and across disciplines, the realm of the digital offers exciting new possibilities. Perhaps most significantly, digital scholarship may demonstrate the significance of some of the skills we tend to take for granted as humanists and experts in visual analysis: namely the ability to think critically about the function and production of images and language, as well as the source of these representations. Just what assumptions may be embedded in the very way we interact with the digital realm and how might we tease that apart? Digital art history, then, permits not only a new way for us to interrogate our data and our own assumptions, but for the very visualization of both traditional archival information as well as the digital itself to be rethought.
Anne Collins Goodyear, Co-Director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, is now CAA Past President. She served as president of CAA from 2012 to 2014. Paul B. Jaskot is currently Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA), Washington, DC (2014–16). He served as CAA’s president from 2008 to 2010.
[1] We thank Anne Helmreich for sharing her thoughts on the resources developing in this arena.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Sep 17, 2014
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.
Introduction to 2012–13 Humanities Departmental Survey
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences initiated the Humanities Departmental Survey, first administered in 2008, to fill critical gaps in knowledge about the state of the humanities in higher education—specifically, about the number of faculty and students in the field and the role of humanities departments in their institutions and society. Apart from trends in the number of students receiving degrees in humanities disciplines, data sources about the state of the humanities at the national level have fallen away over the past fifteen years, leaving decision-makers without key guideposts during a time of change in higher education. (Read more from Humanities Indicators.)
On Trigger Warnings
A current threat to academic freedom in the classroom comes from a demand that teachers provide warnings in advance if assigned material contains anything that might trigger difficult emotional responses for students. This follows from earlier calls not to offend students’ sensibilities by introducing material that challenges their values and beliefs. The specific call for “trigger warnings” began in the blogosphere as a caution about graphic descriptions of rape on feminist sites, and has now migrated to university campuses in the form of requirements or proposals that students be alerted to all manner of topics that some believe may deeply offend and even set off a PTSD response in some individuals. (Read more from the American Association of University Professors.)
Creative Schools: The Artists Taking Art Education into Their Own Hands
Several artists and arts professionals, spotting the same or similar failures in the UK’s official education programs at both schools and universities, have taken matters into their own hands. If the government’s curriculum changes, funding cuts, and fees are barring the way to education for many aspiring artists, independent initiatives might offer alternative routes into the creative industry. Who’s leading the way? (Read more from Apollo.)
Getting a Reference When You’re New
I just graduated with my PhD and am beginning my job as a one-year visiting assistant professor this fall. My first applications for this year’s job market are due about two weeks after the semester starts; most applications will be due by midterm. Will hiring committees be expecting a recommendation from my new colleagues? I don’t think they would be able to write a strong letter after knowing me for a month, but I also don’t want the lack of letters to throw up any red flags. (Read more from Vitae.)
Peer Review and Careers
I have no doubt that the humanities disciplines are, on the whole, the worst offenders when it comes to how long it takes to generate reader reports, and to move an article from an initial submission to a finished, published product. If it can take two years to publish humanities research in some traditional, print-based journals—and I’m talking articles here, not books—that lag makes it harder than ever to defend the project of humanities disciplines. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Hidden Monuments under Stonehenge Revealed by High-Tech Mapping
An astonishing complex of ancient monuments, buildings, and barrows has lain hidden and unsuspected beneath the Stonehenge area for thousands of years. Scientists discovered the site using sophisticated techniques to see underground, announcing the finds last week. Among the discoveries are seventeen ritual monuments, including the remains of a massive “house of the dead,” hundreds of burial mounds, and evidence of a possible processional route around Stonehenge itself. (Read more from National Geographic.)
How Okwui Enwezor Changed the Art World
Since his 1996 breakthrough as a curator of In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to Present, an exhibition of thirty African photographers at the Guggenheim Museum, Okwui Enwezor has alternated between ambitious international exhibitions that seek to define their moment—biennials in Johannesburg, Gwangju, and beyond, along with the Paris Triennale in 2012—and historically driven, encyclopedic museum shows centered on topics such as African liberation movements in the twentieth century, the arc of apartheid, and the use of archive material in contemporary art. (Read more from the Wall Street Journal.)
Apply Now for Sustaining Digital Resources: A Course for Digital Project Leaders
Ithaka S+R will again offer its highly successful course, “Sustaining Digital Resources: A Course for Digital Project Leaders,” in 2015. If you are responsible for the future vitality and impact of a digital initiative, Ithaka S+R encourages you to apply. The application deadline is October 15, 2014. (Read more from Ithaka S+R.)
Affiliated Society News for September 2014
posted by CAA — Sep 09, 2014
The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) has announced the results of its recent election. Serving for the term September 1, 2014 to August 31, 2018: Deepali Dewan, president; Alka Patel, vice president; John Henry Rice, treasurer; Yael Rice, officer; Melodi Rod-ari, Bulletin editor (reappointed); and Emma Natalya Stein, graduate-student representative (term September 1, 2014–August 31, 2016; via lottery). They will join continuing board members, whose terms run through August 31, 2016: Catherine Becker, secretary; Molly Aitken, officer; Lisa Owen, officer; and Cathleen Cummings, webmaster. Many thanks to the outgoing board members: Stephen Markel, president; Deborah Hutton, treasurer; John Cort, officer; and Rashmi Viswanathan, graduate-student representative.
Arts Council of the African Studies Association
The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) held its sixteenth triennial symposium on African art, chaired by Kevin Dumouchelle and Gary van Wyk, at the Brooklyn Museum in New York from March 19 to 22, 2014. This was the largest ACASA gathering to date, with over 450 attendees from four continents. The South African artist and activist Kim Berman delivered a dynamic keynote address. Amidst the success of this year’s symposium, planning is underway for the next triennial, which will take place at the University of Ghana in Legon in August 2017. ACASA is also generating a sustained presence at international scholarly events, including the European Conference on African Studies (ECAS).
Several ACASA board members completed their terms this spring, with special thanks to John Peffer, Steven Nelson, and Kinsey Katchka for their dedicated service. ACASA welcomes four new board members: Silvia Forni, Eric Appau Asante, Boureima Diamitani, and Sidney Kasfir, and an incoming president, Dominique Malaquais.
Congratulations to: Jean Borgatti and Henry Drewal, recipients of the ACASA Leadership Award; the Roy Sieber Dissertation Award winner Amanda Rogers; and Arnold Rubin Book Award winners Allen Roberts (single author) and Marla Berns, Richard Fardon, and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (multiauthored volume). The honorable mentions are: Peter Probst, Gitti Salami, and Monica Blackmun Visonà.
Community College Professors of Art and Art History
The Community College Professors of Art and Art History (CCPAAH) will host two sessions at conferences next year. “Foundations Flipped? Active Learning in Art History and the Studio” will be the topic of a 2015 session at the CAA Annual Conference in New York. Join CCPAAH for this session and its business meeting, which will be a “Project Exchange” that offers a chance to share best practices and ideas to use in your studio and art-history classes. The second session, “Beyond Good, Bad, and ‘I Like It’: A New Take on Critique,” will be presented at next year’s Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. The organization seeks additional presenters for the CAA session. Please email the group at ccpaah@gmail.com if you are interested in presenting or if you have questions. You can also like CCPAAH’s Facebook page.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) is pleased to announce Ashley Dimmig as its most recent Grabar Travel Grant recipient. Dimmig is a doctoral student in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her work focuses on Persian and Turkish early modern and modern visual culture, with an emphasis on textile arts.
Established in memory of Professor Oleg Grabar, the Grabar Travel Grant competition is open to doctoral candidates who have been invited or accepted as participants in a scholarly conference or other professional meeting. These grants are intended to encourage and further the professional development of graduate students in all areas of the history of Islamic art, architecture, and archaeology. For more information on the Grabar Travel Grants and the related Grabar Postdoctoral Fellowships, please visit the above link.
International Association of Art Critics
The International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) announced the results of the general membership election for board members at its annual meeting, held at Artists Space Books and Talks in New York on June 11, 2014. Three existing board members—Phong Bui, Christopher French, and Barbara MacAdam—had their terms renewed for three years, and two new board members, Alexandra Anderson and Jane Farver, were elected to serve three-year terms. The board chose its officers at a subsequent meeting: Barbara MacAdam is president; Norman Kleeblatt is vice president for membership; Jill Conner is treasurer; and Josephine Gear is secretary. All officers have two-year terms.
International Sculpture Center
The International Sculpture Center (ISC) returns ten years later to the culturally vibrant city of New Orleans for the twenty-fourth International Sculpture Conference: Sculpture, Culture, and Community, to be held October 1–4, 2014. This conference will feature panel discussions, keynote speakers Alice Aycock and Fairfax Dorn, ARTSlams, optional tours, networking events, and workshops. The event will also explore how sculpture and the arts can rejuvenate communities and economies. Registration is open now and includes admission to all panels, the keynote speakers, the opening reception at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, a gallery hop at the Art for Arts’ Sake street party, the littleSCULPTURE show, Friday Nights at NOMA, ARTSlams, and networking events, among other activities. Registrants may also sign up for optional tours and workshops, for which additional fees may apply. The conference is hosted in collaboration with the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Creative Alliance of New Orleans, New Orleans Arts District, New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Renaissance New Orleans Arts Hotel, and Sculpture for New Orleans.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The forty-second annual meeting of the National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) convenes September 24–26, 2014, in Nashville, Tennessee. The event will be hosted by Vanderbilt University. The world is the new studio. Artists are involved in ever-expanding production involving constituents beyond the art world and marketplace. As educational institutions, how do we respond to this massive shift in artistic attitude? Is there a balance between standard nineteenth- and twentieth-century production and new twenty-first-century practice centered on global and social interconnectedness? This conference investigates art’s expanding field by exploring influences of globalization, art education and integrated practice. Participants will consider their role as educators of creativity, how they influence their institutions, and their effect upon local and world communities. Speakers include: Pablo Helguera, author and director of adult and academic programs in the Education Department of the Museum of Modern Art; Richard Lloyd, author of Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Post Industrial City; David Owens, author of Creative People Must Be Stopped! Six Ways We Stop Innovation (without Even Trying); and Steven Tepper, author of Not Here, Not Now, Not That! Protest over Art and Culture in America. Visit http://www.vanderbilt.edu/arts/ncaa/ for more information.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) offers student member scholarships to offset the cost of attending the SPE national conference, taking place March 12–15, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Each award includes a $550 travel stipend, a conference fee waiver, and a complimentary one-year SPE membership. For more information, visit the SPE website. Application deadline is November 1, 2014, at 11:59 PM EST.
Society of Architectural Historians
The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) is accepting applications for the 2014 H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship. The prestigious fellowship of $50,000 will allow a recent graduate or emerging scholar to study by travel for one year. The fellowship is not for the purpose of doing research for an advanced degree. Instead, it is intended to allow the recipient to see and experience architecture and landscapes firsthand, to think about his or her profession deeply, and to acquire knowledge useful for his or her future work and contribution to society. The deadline is October 1, 2014. For details and to apply, visit the website.
Save the date for the 2014 SAH Awards Gala: Saturday, November 8, 6:00–9:00 PM at the Fortnightly of Chicago. The gala’s theme is “A Foundation for Preservation,” honoring those individuals who initiated early preservation work in Chicago and continue to support and encourage preservation. The winners and their award categories include: Ben Weese, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (Preservation Advocacy); Tim Samuelson (Stewardship of the Built Environment); Robert Furhoff (Architectural Conservation); Wilbert Hasbrouck, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and Marilyn Hasbrouck (Architectural Media); and Toni Preckwinkle (Conservation of the Natural Environment). The gala benefits SAH’s educational mission and restoration of the Charnley-Persky House.
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) is delighted to welcome the Art History Department of the European University at St. Petersburg as a new institutional member. The department’s special area of interest is the history of cultural contacts between Russia and Europe. SHERA’s officers look forward to working with Dean Ilia Doronchenkov on collaborative projects that will bring together scholars working on areas of mutual interest.
SHERA’s News Blog continues to be a source of information on events and opportunities for scholars working on art and architecture of any period from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Be sure to keep up with the news by going to SHERA’s website and clicking on News.
2016 Conference Session Proposals Due by September 12
posted by Emmanuel Lemakis — Sep 09, 2014
The CAA 104th Annual Conference will take place February 3–6, 2016, in Washington, DC. The Annual Conference Committee invites session proposals that cover the breadth of current thought and research in art, art and architectural history, theory and criticism, pedagogical issues, museum and curatorial practice, conservation, and developments in technology. Deadline: Friday, September 12, 2014.
In order to submit a proposal, you must be a current CAA member. For full details on the submission process for the conference, please review the information published below.
Open Formats
This category encourages experimental and alternative formats that transcend the traditional panel, with presentations whose content extends to serve the areas of contemporary issues, studio art, historical studies, and educational and professional practices. Proposals may experiment with session hierarchies, length, technology, and modes of participation. Open Formats are the only sessions that may be preformed, with participants chosen in advance by session chairs. These sessions require advance planning by the chair.
Historical Studies
This category broadly embraces all art-historical proposals up to the third quarter of the twentieth century. Historical Studies session proposals may not be submitted as preformed panels with a list of speakers.
Contemporary Issues/Studio Art
This category is intended for studio-art proposals, as well as those concerned with contemporary art and theory, criticism, and visual culture. Contemporary Issues/Studio Art session proposals may not be submitted as preformed panels with a list of speakers.
Educational and Professional Practices
This category pertains to session proposals that develop along more practical lines and address the educational and professional concerns of CAA members as teachers, practicing artists and critics, or museum curators. Educational and Professional Practices session proposals may not be submitted as preformed panels with a list of speakers.
Affiliated Societies
Each CAA affiliated society may submit one proposal that follows the guidelines outlined b elow. A letter of support from the society or committee must accompany the submission. The Annual Conference Committee considers it, along with the other submissions, on the basis of merit.
Committees
Each CAA committee may submit one proposal that follows the guidelines outlined below. A letter of support from the society or committee must accompany the submission. The Annual Conference Committee considers it, along with the other submissions, on the basis of merit.
Proposal Submission Guidelines
All session proposals are completed and submitted online; paper forms and postal mailings are not required. Prospective chairs must include the following in their proposal:
- The Annual Conference Committee considers proposals from individual CAA members only. Once selected, session chairs must remain current members through 2016. No one may chair a session more than once in a three-year period. (That is, individuals who chaired sessions in 2014 or 2015 may not chair a session in 2016.) The committee seeks topics that have not been addressed in recent conferences or areas that have traditionally been underrepresented as well as formats that explore new modes of dialogue
- A completed session proposal made through an online database
- If you have prior approval from a CAA affiliated society or committee to submit an application for a sponsored session, an official letter of support from the society or committee uploaded as a PDF or Word file. If you are not submitting an application for a sponsored session, please skip this step
- Your CV and, if applicable, the CV of your cochair; no more than two pages in length each, uploaded as a PDF or Word file (both CVs in one document)
The committee makes its selection solely on the basis of merit. Where proposals overlap, CAA reserves the right to select the most considered version or, in some cases, to suggest a fusion of two or more versions from among the proposals submitted. The submission process must be completed online. Deadline: Friday, September 12, 2014.
General Proposal Information
The process of fashioning the conference is a delicate balancing act. The 2016 program is shaped by four broad submission categories: Open Formats, Historical Studies, Contemporary Issues/Studio Art, and Educational and Professional Practices. Also included in the mix are sessions by CAA’s affiliated societies and committees.
The Annual Conference Committee welcomes session proposals from established artists and scholars, along with those from younger scholars, emerging and midcareer artists, and graduate students. Particularly welcome are proposals that highlight interdisciplinary work. Artists are especially encouraged to propose sessions appropriate to dialogue and information exchange relevant to artists.
Sessions selected by the Annual Conference Committee for the 2016 conference are considered regular program sessions; that is, they are 2½-hours long, are scheduled during the eight regular program time slots during the four days of the conference, and require a conference badge for admission. With the exception of the Open Formats category, CAA session proposals may not be submitted as preformed panels with a list of speakers. Proposals for papers for the 2016 conference are solicited through the 2016 Call for Participation, to be published in March 2015.
Contact
For more information about session proposals for the 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, DC, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, at 212-392-4405.
American Philological Association Becomes the Society for Classical Studies
posted by CAA — Sep 08, 2014
The following message was sent as an attachment to an email from Adam D. Blistein, executive director of the Society for Classical Studies, on Friday, September 5, 2014.
Letter about Our New Name
Dear Colleague:
I am writing to let you know that the American Philological Association, founded in 1869 and the principal learned society for Classics scholars in North America, has changed its name to the Society for Classical Studies (SCS). We have also unveiled the new logo that appears on this letterhead and will soon launch a new web site. These changes culminate a decade-long process of re-examining the role of the Society in the 21st century, with the goal of better promoting and serving a growing interest in Classical antiquity on the part of students and teachers at all levels as well as the general public.
For centuries the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome have inspired creativity, contemplation, scholarship, and teaching both inside and outside of the academy. While we continue to serve our original academic mission, we also want to take advantage of new technologies which make it easier to share the insights and pleasures of studying Classical antiquity with the widest possible audience. A new name is critical to this expanded mission. A philological focus is at the core of much scholarship on Greek and Latin texts, and we will continue to take an active role in projects like the Digital Latin Library that represent excellent philology in the 21st Century. However, we recognize that the term is no longer widely understood and therefore can be a barrier to communication with a broader public. Especially now, when it is so important for us to advocate for the study of Classics and, indeed, of all the humanities, we must strive for clarity in the transmission of our message.
We recently completed a successful capital campaign which raised an unprecedented $3.2 million to provide essential resources for Classics teachers and scholars and to share our appreciation for Classical antiquity as broadly as possible. The name of the Campaign (From Gatekeeper to Gateway: The Campaign for Classics in the 21st Century) reflected this ambition. Donors from both inside and outside of our membership supported this effort because they shared our belief that knowledge of Classics is a valuable component of education, attracts broad interest, and has much to contribute to contemporary society. Our new web site is the next step in responding to this interest. It will add features targeted to a variety of audiences, improve its accessibility to different types of users, and facilitate communications that support the Society’s goal to be the public face of Classics in North America.
It is a special privilege to be guiding the Society as we take this significant step and establish a new level of leadership in Classical Studies. The SCS looks forward to continuing to work with you to encourage the study of Classics and of all humanistic disciplines.
Very truly yours,
Kathryn Gutzwiller
President
Grants, Awards, and Honors
posted by CAA — Aug 15, 2014
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.
August 2014
Wendy Bellion, associate professor of American art and material culture at the University of Delaware in Newark, has been awarded the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art from the Smithsonian American Art Museum for her book Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; Williamsburg, VA: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2011).
Elizabeth Buhe, a doctoral student in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has received a Student Research Grant from the Mellon Research Initiative to participate in “From ‘Surface’ to ‘Substrate’: The Archaeology, Art History, and Science of Material Transfer,” a conference taking place November 7–8, 2014.
Jennifer Cohen, a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has earned a William H. Truettner Predoctoral Fellowship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will work on “Fantastic Boxes: Shop Windows and Surrealist Space in Wartime New York.”
Laura Dickey Corey, a PhD candidate in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has been awarded the Frick Center for the History of Collecting Junior Fellowship for summer/fall 2014.
John Fagg, a lecturer in the school of English, Drama, and American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham in England, has won the 2014 Terra Foundation for American Art International Essay Prize for “Bedpans and Gibson Girls: Clutter and Matter in John Sloan’s Graphic Art,” which will appear in the journal American Art in 2015.
Annika Fine, a doctoral student in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has received a Student Research Grant from the Mellon Research Initiative to give a presentation during “From ‘Surface’ to ‘Substrate’: The Archaeology, Art History, and Science of Material Transfer,” a conference taking place November 7–8, 2014.
Kristen Gaylord, a doctoral student in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, has been awarded the Joan R. Challinor Award for distinction in the area of women and Catholicism from the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Gaylord has also received the Patricia Dunn Lehrman Fellowship from NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Orit Halpern, assistant professor in history at the New School of Social Research and Eugene Lang College and an affiliate in the graduate program in design studies at Parsons the New School for Design, all in New York, has won a 2014 research grant from the Graham Foundation. She will work on “Rational Utopias,” a project that explores the history and ethnography of “smart” territories and ubiquitous computing.
Nicholas Hartigan, a PhD student in art history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has been named a Committee on Institutional Cooperation-Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellow by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. His research project is called “The Changing Function of Public Sculpture.”
Leslie Hewitt, an artist based in New York, has won a 2013 Biennial Award from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, which comes with a $20,000 grant.
Alicia Imperiale, assistant professor of architectural history, theory, and design at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has won a 2014 research grant from the Graham Foundation. Her project is called “An Alternate Organicism in the Journal Zodiac, 1965–1974.”
Katherine Jentleson, a doctoral student in art history at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has become a Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, for her project, “Gatecrashers: The First Generation of Outsider Artists in America.”
Steve Locke, an artist based in Boston, Massachusetts, has accepted a 2013 Biennial Award from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. He will receive a $20,000 gift.
Katherine Markoski, an independent scholar based in Alexandria, Virginia, has received a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her research examines “The Imagination of Community: Artistic Practice at Black Mountain College”
Rachel Middleman, assistant professor of art history at Utah State University in Logan, has won a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, to research “Radical Eroticism: Women, Art, and the Transformation of Sexual Aesthetics in the 1960s.”
Jennifer Stettler Parsons, a graduate student in art history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has received a Sara Roby Predoctoral Fellowship in 20th-Century American Realism from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her project is titled “John Sloan: Between Philadelphia and New York, 1892–1907.”
Carol McMichael Reese, Mary Louise Christovich Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, has been awarded a 2014 publication grant (with her two coeditors) from the Graham Foundation for New Orleans under Reconstruction: The Crisis of Planning, the first book to illustrate and analyze architectural, landscape, and planning responses for post-Katrina New Orleans.
Margaret Samu, from the Art History Department at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women in New York, has been awarded a Summer Fellowship in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, DC. She will use the fellowship to work on her project “Baroque Sculpture Display in Peter the Great’s Summer Garden.”
Nina Schleif from the Bavarian State Art Museums has become a Terra Foundation Senior Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She is investigating “Warhol’s Drawings of the Fifties: Sources, Techniques, Meanings.”
Michelle Smiley, an MA student in history of art at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, has been accepted into the 2014 summer internship program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Juliet Sperling, a graduate student in art history at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has accepted a Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She will research “Animating Flatness: Seeing Moving Images in American Painting and Mass Visual Culture, 1820–95.”
Edit Tóth, who teaches at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania State University in Altoona, has earned a 2014 research grant from the Graham Foundation for her book, Bauhaus Photography and Design: Moholy-Nagy, Breuer, Henri, Yamawaki, and Kepes.
Jesús Vassallo, assistant professor in the School of Architecture at Rice University in Houston, Texas, has accepted a 2014 research grant from the Graham Foundation for his project, “Building with Images.”
Jillian Vaum, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in art history at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has participated in the 2014 summer internship program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Megan Whitney, an MA student in art history at the University of Tucson in Arizona, has been accepted into the 2014 summer internship program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Lara Yeager-Crasselt, a lecturer in the Department of Art at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, has been awarded a Belgian American Educational Foundation Fellowship for academic year 2014–15. She will carry out postdoctoral work as a research fellow in the Department of Art History at KU Leuven in Belgium.
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, an artist based in Chicago, Illinois, has received a 2013 Biennial Award from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. She will receive a $20,000 gift from the foundation.
Books Published by CAA Members
posted by CAA — Aug 15, 2014
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.
August 2014
Ronald R. Bernier. The Unspeakable Art of Bill Viola: A Visual Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014).
Rosalind P. Blakesley and Margaret Samu, eds. From Realism to the Silver Age: New Studies in Russian Artistic Culture (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014).
Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. Introducing Feminist Art History (Amazon ebook, 2014).
Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern, eds. The Photographer’s Playbook: 307 Assignments and Ideas (New York: Aperture, 2014).
Penny Howell Jolly. Picturing the “Pregnant” Magdalene in Northern Art, 1430–1550: Addressing and Undressing the Sinner-Saint (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014).
Bibiana K. Obler. Intimate Collaborations: Kandinsky and Münter, Arp and Taeuber (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).
Todd P. Olson. Caravaggio’s Pitiful Relics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).
Jeongho Park. Men in Armor: El Greco and Pulzone Face to Face (New York: Frick Collection, 2014).
Conrad Rudolph. The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Judith Zilczer. A Way of Living: The Art of Willem de Kooning (New York: Phaidon, 2014).
Art History Teaching Resources Seeks Lesson Plans
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 14, 2014
Do you have a great lesson plan you want to take some time to codify and share? Funded by a Samuel H. Kress Foundation grant for digital resources, Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR), a peer-populated platform for instructors and a collectively authored online repository of art-history teaching content, seeks contributors for specific subject areas in the art-history survey. This is the second call for participation (the first went out in early 2014).
AHTR is particularly interested the following sections in art and architecture for publication in early fall 2014:
- Jewish and Early Christian Art and Architecture
- Byzantine Art and Architecture
- Islamic Art and Architecture
- Chinese Art and Architecture (early/pre-1279)
- Chinese Art and Architecture (after 1279)
- Japanese Art and Architecture (early)
- Japanese Art and Architecture (modern)
- Korean Art (early)
- Korean Art and Architecture (modern)
- Art and Architecture of Africa
- Early Medieval Art in Europe
- Romanesque Art and Architecture
- Gothic Art and Architecture
- Art of Pacific Cultures
- Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Art in Europe and North America
- Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sculpture
- Twentieth-Century Sculpture
AHTR is also interested in receiving proposals for thematic art-history survey lesson plans. The editors have already received plans that engage with, for example, “Race and Identity” and “Transnationalism and Citizenship.” Please propose a thematic plan germane to the survey-level class.
For each content area, AHTR seeks lecture and lesson plans similar to those developed for its sections on the Americas (pre-1300) and Feminist Art. (Please see a great example here.) Full template guidelines will be given for the sections to be included in each plan; writers will be expected to review and amend their plan (if necessary), once edited by AHTR. These plans, which will be posted to the AHTR website in fall 2014, are supported by $250 writing grants made possible by the Kress award.
AHTR is looking for contributors who:
- Have strong experience teaching the art-history survey and strong interest in developing thoughtful, clear, and detailed lesson plans in particular subject areas
- Are committed to delivering lecture content (plan, PowerPoint, resources, activities) for one to two (a maximum of two) content areas in a timely manner. Each content area will be supported by a $250 Kress writing grant.
- Are able to make a September deadline for submission and an early October deadline for any edits.
- Want to engage with a community of peers in conversations about issues in teaching the art-history survey
AHTR’s intention is to offer monetary support for the often-unrewarded task of developing thoughtful lesson plans, to make this work freely accessible (and thus scalable), and to encourage feedback on them so that the website’s content can constantly evolve in tandem with the innovations and best practices in the field. In this way, AHTR wants to encourage new collaborators to the site—both emerging and experienced instructors in art history—who will enhance and expand teaching content. It also wishes to honor the production of pedagogical content at the university level by offering modest fellowships to support digital means of collaboration among art historians.
Please submit a short, teaching-centered CV and a brief statement of interest that describes which subject area(s) you wish to tackle to teachingarthistorysurvey@gmail.com. These initial texts should be delivered to AHTR in September 2014. Collaboration on content for further subject areas will be solicited throughout 2014.