CAA News Today
Shelly C. Lowe, Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, to give CAA AC2024 Convocation Keynote Address
posted by CAA — Nov 07, 2023
CAA is delighted to announce Shelly C. Lowe, Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, as the 2024 Convocation keynote speaker during the organization’s 112th Annual Conference in Chicago.
Chair Lowe is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and grew up on the Navajo Reservation in Ganado, Arizona. From 2015 to 2022 she served as a member of the National Council on the Humanities, the twenty-six-member advisory body to NEH, an appointment she received from President Obama. Lowe’s career in higher education has included roles as Executive Director of the Harvard University Native American Program, Assistant Dean in the Yale College Dean’s Office, and Director of the Native American Cultural Center at Yale University. Prior to these positions, she spent six years as the Graduate Education Program Facilitator for the American Indian Studies Programs at the University of Arizona.
Lowe has served in a variety of leadership roles nationally, most recently as a member of the University of Arizona Alumni Association Governing Board and of the Challenge Leadership Group for the MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellowship. She has served on the board of the National Indian Education Association and as a trustee on the board for the National Museum of the American Indian.
Lowe holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, a Master of Arts in American Indian Studies, and has completed doctoral coursework in Higher Education from the University of Arizona.
AC2024 Convocation will be held on Wednesday, February 14, 6:30–8 p.m. CT at the Hilton Chicago. This event will also be livestreamed on YouTube.
Register now for the CAA 112th Annual Conference, February 14–17, 2024 in Chicago!
CWA Picks: Fall 2023
posted by CAA — Oct 23, 2023
The exhibitions chosen for the Fall CWA Picks collectively highlight the power of art to engage with medium and memory in diverse and thought-provoking ways. Each exhibition showcases artists who engage with the concept of memory, whether by challenging societal norms and values, redefining perfection, or addressing historical and environmental legacies. Together, these exhibitions emphasize the power of art to shape our understanding of the past and how it shapes our present.
September 7–21 November, 2023
HackelBury, London
Medium and Memory is an exhibition featuring conversations between eight diverse artists whose work centers on memory in its various forms. The work in the show aims to challenge the act of forgetting and harness the potential of art to aesthetically transform traumatic historical legacies, including war, famine, genocide, colonialism, deindustrialization, and the memory-altering effects of the digital age.
RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology
October 5, 2023–January 14, 2024
Barbican Art Gallery, London
RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology showcases the work of nearly fifty international women and gender nonconforming artists. Through film, photography, and installations, the exhibition delves into the interconnectedness of gender and ecology, advocating for a just and equitable society where both people and the environment are valued and treated fairly.
The Brodsky Center at Rutgers University: Three Decades, 1986–2017
September 13–December 22, 2023
Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ
In 1986, Rutgers Distinguished Professor Emerita Judith K. Brodsky established the Brodsky Center to provide opportunities for women, gender nonconforming artists, and artists of color who were marginalized in the art world. This center, originally focused on print and papermaking, evolved into a hub of innovation, addressing contemporary concerns such as race, gender, climate, language, and immigration. The exhibition showcases artworks emblematic of the Brodsky Center’s mission to introduce new narratives into American culture and is organized thematically into sections reflecting its impact on art and society.
Alison Croney Moses: The Habits of Reframing
September 1–October 22, 2023
Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston
The Habits of Reframing is a solo exhibition by Boston-based artist Alison Croney Moses, featuring two new series of wooden artworks. These pieces encourage viewers to consider their ability to shape their sense of self and their understanding of the world, while also challenging societal values, celebrating imperfections, and redefining perfection through sensory engagement with the materials and forms used by the artist.
September 16–November 26, 2023
The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago
In the fall of 2023, the Renaissance Society will host the first solo exhibition of Beirut-based artist Dala Nasser, featuring a site-specific commission designed to fill the Ren’s expansive exhibition space. Nasser’s interdisciplinary approach encompasses painting, performance, and film, with a focus on abstraction and alternative image-making. Her artwork, created by directly engaging with landscapes, offers a unique perspective by highlighting the marks of political and environmental erosion and toxicity, exploring themes of ecological decay, historical narratives, and the consequences of capitalist and colonial practices. The exhibition centers on the Adonis River, where Nasser produced her paintings inside the cave associated with the mythical figure Adonis, utilizing locally sourced materials, and incorporating three-dimensional spatial environments that evoke the Adonis temple and its surroundings.
Yolanda López: Portrait of the Artist
July 7–October 29, 2023
San José Museum of Art
This is the first solo museum presentation of the work of Yolanda López, the pathbreaking Chicana artist and activist whose career in California spanned five decades. The exhibition presents a compendium of López’s work from the 1970s and 1980s, when she created an influential body of paintings, drawings, and collages that investigate and reimagine representations of women within Chicano/a/x culture and society at large.
Yolanda M. López: Women’s Work is Never Done
August 31–November 12, 2023
Thacher Gallery, University of San Francisco
Curated by her archivist, Angelica Rodriguez, and son, Rio Yañez, this body of work reveals López’s inquisitive approach to artistic mediums and the feminist and political sensibilities that emerged in her practice from life experiences, research, and community activism. Artworks include drawings from her youth, protest designs, preparatory studies for her iconic 1978 Guadalupe series, photography, collage, and xerox art from 1980 and 1990s Mission, prints from her Women’s Work is Never Done series, as well as her final reflective works. This body of work reveals López’s inquisitive approach to artistic mediums and the feminist and political sensibilities that emerged in her practice from life experiences, research, and community activism.
Hung Liu: Capp Street Project, 1988
September 16–November 18, 2023
Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
This collection of paintings and artifacts re-imagines the 1988 exhibition Hung Liu: Resident Alien, the culmination of Liu’s two-month artist residency at the Capp Street Project in San Francisco, presented at the downtown Monadnock Building, a sprawling, under-construction office space that offered Hung Liu a liberating and engaging opportunity. The original exhibition, which took place just five years after Liu immigrated to the US from her native China, was instrumental in bringing her work to the attention of the larger art world. The multimedia installation—composed of paintings, wall drawings, Chinese calligraphy, ceremonial objects from Chinatown, a pile of abacuses, and small mounds of fortune cookies—addressed the history and complexities of the immigrant experience, looking specifically at the history of Chinese immigration to San Francisco from the Gold Rush of 1849 to her own immigration to the US in 1984 and her subsequent status as a “resident alien.” This exploration was both a central theme of the 1988 show, and a focus Liu would pursue for the rest of her career.
June 30–December 10, 2023
SFMOMA, San Francisco
Chinese-born artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) created richly layered portraits and installations that interweave memory and history. This exhibition features works from SFMOMA’s collection, from her most significant paintings made in China during the tumult of the Cultural Revolution between 1966–76 to those created in the US during the 1990s and 2000s. Intimate and large-scale works blend landscapes and images from historical and family photographs with dripping brushwork. Together, they reveal Liu’s enduring commitment to “be a witness of my time” as she elevated her subjects to “mythic figures on the grander scale of history painting.”
August 26–November 4, 2023
Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco
Born in Mexico and based in California’s Napa Valley, Arleene Correa Valencia creates paintings, textiles, and drawings that reflect on patterns of migration and family separation. Her recent work is inspired by the letters that she wrote to her father as a child, during a period when her father had migrated to the United States while Correa Valencia remained in Mexico. Correa Valencia draws on her family’s archives and correspondence to craft a visual language that considers the politics of visibility and the complexities of undocumented immigration.
Mika Rottenberg: Spaghetti Blockchain
May 18–October 22, 2023
Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco
New York–based Mika Rottenberg (b. 1976, Buenos Aires) employs a disarmingly absurd sense of humor to confront the paradoxes of global capitalism and uncover the surprising ways in which we are all connected. This exhibition presents Rottenberg’s most prominent videos, installations, and sculptures of the past decade in the first museum survey of her work ever to be presented on the West Coast. Explore a collection of vividly colorful video installations and kinetic sculptures that uncover the surreal qualities of mass production and consumption.
Women In Revolt! Art And Activism In The UK 1970-1990
November 8, 2023– April 7, 2024
Tate Britain, London
This exhibition is a major survey of feminist art by over 100 women artists working in the UK. It explores how networks of women used radical ideas and rebellious methods to make an invaluable contribution to British culture. Through their creative practices, women’s liberation was forged against the backdrop of extreme social, economic, and political change.
Women in Revolt! brings together a wide variety of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, film, and photography. It explores and reflects on issues and events such as: the British Women’s Liberation movement, the fight for legal changes impacting women, maternal and domestic experiences, punk, and independent music, Greenham Common and the peace movement, the visibility of Black and South Asian Women Artists, Section 28 and the AIDS pandemic.
The show celebrates the work and lived experiences of a hugely diverse group of women. Many who, frequently working outside mainstream art institutions, have largely been left out of artistic narratives. Women in Revolt! presents many of these works for the first time since the 1970s.
The Feminist Art Program (1970–1975): Cycles of Collectivity
September 13, 2023–January 21, 2024
REDCAT, Los Angeles
In 1970, artist Judy Chicago pioneered a feminist model for art and education with her students at Fresno State College. Chicago was invited by Miriam Schapiro to collaboratively expand this program at CalArts in 1971, where they would go on to develop radical and now influential forms of art, pedagogy, and performance. The program began a cycle of collective activity with the contribution of numerous students, faculty, artists, and designers, many of whom are now considered pivotal artists in feminist art history.
This exhibition acknowledges the many generations of women, trans, queer, and non-binary faculty, students, and artists at CalArts who have stewarded these histories through teaching, archiving, and experimenting. Engaging with these initial moments, while also drawing connections with subsequent contributions, The Feminist Art Program (1970–1975): Cycles of Collectivity brings together these histories through its diverse feminisms, gender theories, and transfeminismos. The exhibition gathers materials from institutional and personal archives, joining them with new responsive artworks by CalArts alumni ak jenkins, Andrea Bowers, Gala Porras-Kim, and Suzanne Lacy. The show includes a special presentation of The Performing Archive by Leslie Labowitz Starus and Lacy. The Feminist Art Program (1970–1975): Cycles of Collectivity presents an ever-growing feminist contribution to art and pedagogy with a multiplicity of voices, contexts, and identities, with an intergenerational collective of scholars, artists, activists, and curators contributing to the research, memory, syllabi, and artworks on display.
Joanne Leonard, Artemesia’s Suzanna and the Elders and Men Conspiring, 2006
(From Medium & Memory)
Apply now for CAA’s Professional Development Fellowships for graduate students!
posted by CAA — Sep 15, 2023
2022 Professional Development Honorable Mention in Visual Art Alberto Lozano Ruvalcaba in the studio
The Professional Development Fellowships program supports promising artists, designers, craftspersons, historians, curators, and critics who are enrolled in MFA, PhD, and other terminal degree programs. Fellows are honored with $10,000 unrestricted grants to help them with various aspects of their work.
One award will be presented to a practitioner—an artist, designer, and/or craftsperson—and one award will be presented to an art, architecture, and/or design historian, curator, or critic. Fellows also receive a free, one-year CAA membership and complimentary registration to the Annual Conference. Honorable mentions, given at the discretion of the jury, also earn a free one-year CAA membership and complimentary conference registration.
ARE YOU ELIGIBLE?
CAA seeks applications from students who are current members; will receive their MFA or PhD degree in the calendar year 2023, following the year of application (2024 for the current fellowship cycle); and have outstanding capabilities and demonstrate distinction in their contribution to art history and the visual arts.
HOW TO APPLY
See our website pages for the Professional Development Fellowship in Art History and the Professional Development Fellowship in Visual Arts for the full guidelines for each program and follow the APPLY NOW button.
DEADLINES
MFA and PhD Fellowships: November 15, 2023
CONTACT
For more information about the CAA Professional Development Fellowship program, Cali Buckley, Manager of Grants and Awards & Director of the CAA-Getty International Program, at cbuckley@collegeart.org.
CAA Signs ACLS Statement on Proposed Cuts at West Virginia University
posted by CAA — Sep 14, 2023
CAA has signed on to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) statement, Fighting for an Ambitious Vision of Public Higher Education in America, in response to proposed cuts at West Virginia University. CAA stands with ACLS in the belief that the stewards of the university are “duty-bound to protect the creation and circulation of knowledge for the public good in all its diverse aspects, across disciplines and interdisciplinary areas.”
“By proposing major cuts in its undergraduate and graduate programs, including engineering, environmental planning, languages other than English, law, linguistics, mathematics, music, public administration, and theater, the university is denying its students and the people of West Virginia access to the wide range of knowledge necessary to fulfill that mission. The path WVU is treading is unprecedented for a public flagship and dangerous for American higher education and society.”
Other learned societies and higher education institutions who have signed the ACLS statement:
American Academy of Religion
American Folklore Society
American Historical Association
American Society for Environmental History
Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Association of University Presses
College Art Association
Dance Studies Association
Linguistic Society of America
Medieval Academy of America
North American Conference on British Studies
Rhetoric Society of America
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Society for Ethnomusicology
Society for Music Theory
Join the caa.reviews Council of Field Editors!
posted by CAA — Sep 05, 2023
CAA is inviting nominations and self-nominations for an individual to join the caa.reviews Council of Field Editors as Field Editor for Exhibitions—West Coast, for a term that begins immediately and runs through June 30, 2026.
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. Candidates may be artists, art historians, art critics, art educators, curators, or other art professionals with stature in the field and experience writing or editing books and/or exhibition reviews; institutional affiliation is not required.
Working with the caa.reviews editor-in-chief, the caa.reviews Editorial Board, and CAA’s staff editor, the field editor selects content to be reviewed, commissions reviewers, and considers manuscripts for publication. 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 once a year at the CAA Annual Conference. Members of all CAA committees and editorial boards volunteer their services without compensation.
Candidates must be current CAA members and should not be serving on the editorial board of a competing 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.
Interested applicants—both self-nominated or nominated by someone else—should submit a CV and a cover letter, in one PDF document, by November 1, to ebell@collegeart.org.
Now Accepting Applications for the Wyeth Foundation and Millard Meiss Publication Grants for Fall 2023
posted by CAA — Jul 27, 2023
Fall 2022 Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant winner Stephanie Buhmann, Frederick Kiesler: Galaxies, The Green Box, Berlin, 2023
WYETH FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART PUBLICATION GRANT
Since 2005, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art has supported the publication of books on American art through the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, administered by CAA.
For this grant program, “American art” is defined as art created in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Eligible for the grant are book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art, visual studies, and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher on their merits but cannot be published in the most desirable form without a subsidy.
The deadline for the receipt of applications is September 15 of each year. Learn more about the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant.
MILLARD MEISS PUBLICATION FUND
Twice a year, CAA awards grants through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund to support book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art, visual studies, and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher on their merits, but cannot be published in the most desirable form without a subsidy. Thanks to the generous bequest of the late Prof. Millard Meiss, CAA began awarding these publishing grants in 1975.
Books eligible for a Meiss grant must currently be under contract with a publisher and be on a subject in the arts or art history.
The deadlines for the receipt of applications are March 15 and September 15 of each year. Learn more about the Millard Meiss Publication Fund.
Apply for CAA Committee Service!
posted by CAA — Jul 07, 2023
Join one of CAA’s twelve Professional Committees, the Annual Conference Committee, or the Publications Committee as an at-large member! Each committee works from a charge that is established by the Board of Directors. For many CAA members, committee service fosters professional relationships, community, and facilitates impactful contributions to pressing issues in the visual arts.
Important Committee Service Information:
- Committee members serve a three-year term. Service for this committee cycle begins in February 2024 at the CAA 112th Annual Conference and concludes in February 2027 at the 115th Annual Conference.
- All applications are reviewed by current committee members as well as CAA leadership.
- Appointments will be announced by November 1, 2023. New members will be introduced to their committees during their respective business meetings at the 112th Annual Conference in Chicago.
- If appointed, applicants are expected to attend committee meetings, participate actively in the work of the committee, and contribute expertise to defining the current and future work of the committee.
- Appointees must be current CAA members before the start of their committee service.
- All committee members volunteer their service without compensation.
Click the links below to review the mission of each committee as well as the current roster of committee leadership and members:
CAA ANNUAL CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
The Annual Conference Committee is responsible for shaping the program of the Annual Conference, ensuring that the program reflects CAA’s goals: to make the conference an effective place for intellectual, aesthetic, and professional learning and exchange; to reflect the diverse interests of the membership; and to provide opportunities for participation that are fair, equal, and balanced
CAA PROFESSIONAL COMMITTEES
CAA’s twelve Professional Committees represent the constituent interests of the organization by addressing standards, practices, and guidelines in the professions of our individual and institutional members.
- Committee on Design
- Committee on Diversity Practices
- Committee on Intellectual Property
- Committee on Research and Scholarship
- Committee on Women in the Arts
- Education Committee
- International Committee
- Museum Committee
- Professional Practices Committee
- Services to Artists Committee
- Services to Historians of the Visual Arts Committee
- Student and Emerging Professionals Committee
CAA PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE
The Publications Committee oversees CAA’s publishing activities and supervises the editorial boards of The Art Bulletin, Art Journal/AJO, and caa.reviews.
Please Note: At-large members of the Publications Committee represent the voice of our membership, and perform the role of committee secretary, taking minutes at three Publications Committee meetings per year in February, May, and October.
How to Apply for Committee Service
If you are interested in applying to serve on a CAA committee, please click the APPLY TO SERVE button below to fill out the application form and upload your CV as well as a brief personal statement describing your interest and experience.
Deadline: September 15, 2023.
CAA Signs ACLS Statement on SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling
posted by CAA — Jul 07, 2023
Following the June 30 CAA Executive Director’s response to the US Supreme Court ruling invalidating race-conscious admissions considerations, CAA signed on to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) statement on affirmative action.
The SCOTUS ruling stands in stark contrast to CAA’s commitment to meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. We concur with ACLS that “the active participation of diverse people in the scholarly enterprise is the best way to combat historic and systemic inequities,” and we remain dedicated to the contributions of all art scholars and practitioners.
Other learned societies and higher education institutions who have signed the ACLS statement:
American Academy of Religion
American Folklore Society
American Historical Association
American Philosophical Association
American Political Science Association
American Society for Environmental History
American Society for Theatre Research
Association for Jewish Studies
Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
Association of University Presses
German Studies Association
Medieval Academy of America
National Women’s Studies Association
North American Conference on British Studies
Oral History Association
Organization of American Historians
Rhetoric Society of America
Shakespeare Association of America
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Society for Ethnomusicology
Society for Social Studies of Science
Society of Architectural Historians
Society of Biblical Literature
CAA-Getty International Program 2024: Applications now open!
posted by CAA — Jul 06, 2023
Photo: Stephen Fọlárànmí
Getty has awarded College Art Association (CAA) a grant to fund the CAA-Getty International Program for a thirteenth consecutive year. The Getty Foundation’s support will enable CAA to bring twelve international visual-arts professionals to the 112th Annual Conference, taking place in Chicago, February 14–17, 2024. These individuals will be first-time participants in the program and will be accompanied by alumni of the program returning to present papers during the conference.
Participants will receive funds for travel expenses, hotel accommodations, per diems, conference registrations, and one-year CAA memberships. We encourage all international art historians, art history educators, and museum curators to apply. The program will also include a one-day preconference colloquium on international issues in art history on Tuesday, February 14, as well as ongoing engagement with other alumni from the program online and at future conferences. The deadline for applications is August 15, 2023. Guidelines and application can be found here.
In 2021, CAA organized a publication to celebrate ten successful years of the CAA-Getty International Program. The publication, entitled Global Conversations: 10 Years of the CAA-Getty International Program features in-depth accounts of the program, a timeline of important events and milestones, and directories of past papers, members, and meetings.
The CAA-Getty International Program was established to increase international participation in CAA and the CAA Annual Conference. The program fosters collaborations between North American art historians, artists, and curators and their international colleagues and introduces visual arts professionals to the unique environments and contexts of practices in different countries.
Since it began in 2012, the program has brought 159 scholars to the conferences, from over 50 countries located in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. Each year, a preconference colloquium on international topics in art history inaugurates the week, kicking off four days of conference sessions, meetings with new colleagues, and visits to museums and galleries. Subsequent to these events, the program has generated many scholarly collaborations, including publications, conferences, and exhibitions.
Most of all, former grant recipients have become ambassadors of CAA in their countries, sharing knowledge gained at the Annual Conference with their colleagues at home. Past recipients have said that “variety of topics presented also exposed me to the realization that there is so much to be done to unearth the hidden treasures of global art history, which hitherto I have overlooked in my discipline and nation but which will now form the basis of my future projects,” and “the direct contact with other global south researchers is an unique occasion, rarely possible and extremely enriching.”
SCOTUS Ruling on Affirmative Action: CAA ED Response
posted by CAA — Jun 30, 2023
The US Supreme Court ruling invalidating race-conscious admissions considerations at colleges and universities is antithetical to CAA’s mission, specifically our commitment to the diversity of practices and practitioners in the visual arts and academia. This is another in a series of blows to the field, the reverberations of which will be felt for generations to come.
Justice Clarence Thomas dismissing affirmative action policies at universities as “rudderless, raced-based preferences” demonstrates a deliberate suppression of the entire history of institutional racism in this country, which by design actively obstructs opportunity and access for so many.
Now more than ever, we must come together as an organization and develop alternative strategies for ensuring equity and representation in a meaningful way, without performativity or tokenism. Even with affirmative action policies in place, many important voices were relegated to the margins; this ruling will only serve to repress them further. We have a responsibility to continue fighting to center and amplify such voices.
Despite this current era of national regression in the realm of human rights, I still have faith we can have an impact, learn from a problematic past, and reshape the future of the field. Join me in continuing to transform pain into purpose.
Meme Omogbai
Executive Director & CEO
CAA | Advancing Art and Design