CAA News Today
Art of Turkey: An Exclusive Tour for CAA Members
posted by Nia Page — Aug 30, 2012
CAA has partnered with Tutku Tours to provide an exclusive offer for its members to spend thirteen days exploring the ancient and contemporary sides of Turkey, from April 26 to May 10, 2013. Highlights of the Art of Turkey trip include stops in Istanbul, Izmir, Cappadocia, Troy, Ephesus, and Pamukkale. The tour begins with three full days in Istanbul—the “city located on two continents”—where travelers will visit the major attractions, including the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, and also get to know the city’s vibrant street life and local art scene.
Next, the tour will visit the ancient city of Troy and the Pergamum acropolis, and also the less-trodden destination of Ayvalık, a small town on the northwestern Aegean coast of Turkey. After several days of immersion in the ancient world, the group will pay a visit to the second International Izmir Art Biennial, one of the largest international art events in the country that will include more than three hundred artists; Seba Uğurtan, the biennial’s founder, will give tour participants an exclusive overview of the exhibition.
The Art of Turkey Tour will also provide CAA members with time for rest and relaxation. It will stop at the port city of Ephesus to visit a carpet school, along with an overnight stay at a spa hotel at the Pamukkale hot springs. The trip will conclude with a full day in Cappadocia, where travelers will explore the Goreme Open Air Museum, a vast collection of painted cave-churches dating from 1000 AD.
Getting There: Turkish Airlines provides nonstop, direct flights from the United States and Canada, leaving from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Toronto.
Land and Air Rates: $3,990 per person for a double room; $4,780 per person for a single room.
The Art of Turkey Tour features include:
- International flight from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, or Toronto
- Thirteen nights in superior hotels
- Meals (thirteen dinners, four lunches, daily breakfasts)
- All entry fees to museums and sites, including the Izmir Art Biennial
- Transportation and tour guide
- Hot-air balloon flight and a whirling-dervishes ceremony in Cappadocia
For a detailed, day-by-day tour itinerary, please download and review the Art of Turkey brochure. Tutku Tours will host demonstrations and lectures on art in Turkey at its exhibit booth (#100) in the Book and Trade Fair at CAA’s 2013 Annual Conference in New York.
People in the News
posted by CAA — Aug 17, 2012
People in the News lists new hires, positions, and promotions in three sections: Academe, Museums and Galleries, and Organizations and Publications.
The section 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 2012
Academe
Sinclair BellSinclair Bell, assistant professor of art history at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, has been granted tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor. Bell is a specialist in ancient Roman and Etruscan art.
Charles S. BuchananCharles S. Buchanan, associate professor of art and architectural history at Ohio University in Athens, has been named interim director of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts, a doctoral program within the university.
Jonathan FinebergJonathan Fineberg, the Gutgsell Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, has been appointed the Visiting Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln for academic year 2012–13. Fineberg will deliver four lectures that address modern art, neuroscience, and the “origin of the image.”
Amy HauftAmy Hauft, an artist and chair of the Sculpture Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, has joined the University of Texas at Austin as the Leslie Waggener Professor of Art in the College of Fine Arts.
Kriszta Kotsis, an assistant professor of ancient and medieval art, has been granted tenure by the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.
Sara M. Picard has accepted a position as assistant professor of art history at Rhode Island College in Providence.
Jack RisleyJack Risley, an artist and associate dean of academic affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, has been hired by the University of Texas at Austin to be Ruth Head Centennial Professor and chair of the school’s Department of Art and Art History.
Karen M. Wirth (photograph by Rik Sferra)Karen M. Wirth, an artist, professor, and former chair of the Fine Arts Department at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minnesota, has been appointed vice president of academic affairs at her school.
Museums and Galleries
Lisa Hostetler, curator of photographs at the Milwaukee Art Museum in Wisconsin, will join the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, as its new curator of photography. In her seven years at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Hostetler was responsible for many critically acclaimed exhibitions, including the first major survey of the photographer Taryn Simon.
Barbara Buhler Lynes, curator at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has resigned her position at the museum. Lynes was the museum’s first curator as well as its Emily Fisher Landau Director of the museum’s research center.
Patricia McDonnellPatricia McDonnell, director of the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University in Kansas, has accepted a position as the executive director of the Wichita Art Museum. A member of the CAA Board of Directors, McDonnell succeeds Charles K. Steiner, who stepped down as executive director at the end of 2011 after twelve years of service.
Amy MeyersAmy Meyers, director of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, has been reappointed for a third five-year term as director.
Matthew PalczynskiMatthew Palczynski, staff lecturer for Western art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania, has been appointed curator of the Woodmere Art Museum, also in Philadelphia.
Daniel H. Weiss, a scholar of medieval art and the president of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, has been chosed to lead Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania, as president, He begins the new position in July 2013.
Namita Gupta WiggersNamita Gupta Wiggers, a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, has been named the director and chief curator of the museum.
Organizations and Publications
Thomas W. Lollar, a ceramicist and scholar of fine-art prints, has left his position as director of the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He will join Paul Limperopulos as codirector of the Benefit Print Project in New York.
Dena Muller has been appointed to the newly established position of director of new initiatives at the New York Foundation for the Arts, based in Brooklyn. Previously, Muller was the executive director at ArtTable in New York, an organization that promotes women in the arts through outreach programs and mentorship.
Eugene F. Farrell: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Aug 14, 2012
Francesca G. Bewer is research curator at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums.
Eugene Farrell, ca. late 1970s, in the analytical laboratory at the Center for Conservation and Technical Studies (photograph provided by the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums)
It is with sadness that I inform you of the death of Eugene F. Farrell, former senior conservation scientist at the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. Gene passed away in his sleep on March 19, 2012, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 78 years old. Farrell will be remembered by generations of conservators as a generous colleague and a dedicated teacher. He was knowledgeable, calm, and open minded—qualities for which he was greatly appreciated, especially during discussions and at meetings.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1933, Farrell came to the conservation field with a background in geology. He received a BA cum laude and an MA in geology from Boston University, which he supplemented with courses in X-radiography, physics, mathematics, geochemistry, and petrology. In 1956, the same year he married Lynne Breda, he became a member of the Scientific Research Society, Sigma Xi, which “honors excellence in scientific investigation and encourages a sense of companionship and cooperation among researchers in all fields of science and engineering.” Farrell was a teaching fellow the following year at Boston University and spent the summer of 1958 studying ice cores in Thule, Greenland, as a crystallographer for Permafrost Ice Studies at the Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment (then based in Wilmette, Illinois, and now in Hanover, New Hampshire). That led to a job as a research staff member in the Crystal Physics Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1960–77), during which time he published numerous papers in the American Mineralogist, Materials Research Bulletin, and American Ceramics Society Bulletin,among others. He also collaborated on a patent for a “Cathode Ray Tube Whose Image Screen Is Both Cathodochromic and Fluorescent and the Material for the Screen.”
Farrell began his museum career in 1977 after he answered a small “help wanted” ad in the Boston Globe for analytical work at Harvard University’s Fogg Museum in the Center for Conservation and Technical Studies (CCTS). Like Rutherford John Gettens, the museum’s illustrious first staff chemist from 1928 to 1950, Farrell had no prior museum experience but quickly learned to apply his skills and knowledge to the materials of art. He started as assistant conservation scientist under the museum’s science associate, Leon Studolski, and helped to integrate petrography, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) in the laboratory work. He was soon promoted to conservation scientist. Shortly thereafter, in 1980, he became the senior conservation scientist of the CCTS, which is now called the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. It was a position he held until his retirement in 2004.
Farrell greatly enjoyed the collaboration among scientists, curators, conservators, and students. His quiet demeanor belied his great productivity; the quality and quantity of analyses he carried out is attested by the cabinets filled with report files and by his numerous publications. Among the broad range of topics and materials he investigated were: the painting materials of Vincent van Gogh and Winslow Homer; the composition of pigments from ancient Persia and from sixteenth- to eighteenth-century house paint; and pasteprints. His research on illuminated Renaissance manuscripts found in the Historical Library of the University of Valencia in Spain, while he was a visiting professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in 1990 culminated in the bilingual book he coauthored with Salvador Muñoz Viñas, published in 1999. The materials of stone in Indian and Gothic art and in Chinese scholar’s rocks fascinated Farrell, as did the substance of Chinese ceramics and Baroque terracotta sculpture. He contributed to an eighteen-month project on the analysis of Gothic stone sculpture from New England collections, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He also trained his analytical skills on the origins of turbidity in acrylic paints and on the metal composition of Renaissance bronze medals.
Farrell was a lecturer in history of art and architecture at Harvard University from 1984 onward, teaching courses on the “Technical Examination of Works of Art” and “The Materials of Art” and in the Harvard freshmen seminar program. His many students will remember him for his patience and courteousness: regardless of their level of scientific knowledge, they knew that they could depend on him for any help they needed. He also genuinely took pleasure in helping the Straus Center’s graduate conservation interns and fellows with their research projects and worked with them enthusiastically. Some of the projects that he oversaw were of great interest to the museum community at large. For instance, in 1984–85, under the guidance of Farrell and the center’s director Arthur Beale, Pamela Hatchfield and Jane Carpenter undertook the first major investigation of the potential effects of formaldehyde and formic acid on museum collections.
Farrell, along with Beale and a fellow conservation scientist, Richard Newman, publicized the effects of acid rain on outdoor cultural properties. He was also involved in the important two-day seminar on “The Role of Conservation and Technical Examination in the Art Museum” that was hosted in 1985 by the CCTS in conjunction with the New England Museum Association; more than a hundred participants attended the seminar. Also, in collaboration with colleagues at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, Farrell developed ways of applying atomic absorption spectroscopy instrumentation to the analysis of cultural artifacts.
At the beginning of the 1990s he oversaw the major upgrading of the Straus Center’s analytical facilities and, together with his colleagues, began creating libraries of FTIR and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectra using the Forbes Pigment Collection and the Gettens Collection of Binding Media and Varnishes. He also oversaw a new internship in conservation science and, more recently, the first Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellowship in conservation science at the center—a program initiated in 2002.
After a brief break from museum work following his retirement, Farrell worked on a part-time basis on a range of analytical projects at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, collaborating anew with his former colleague Newman, who is now head of the MFA’s Scientific Research Department.
Farrell always had a dual interest in science and art. Throughout much of his adult life he took courses in art history, languages, and history. He played the guitar and studied instrument making at the Museum of Fine Art’s antique instruments collection, building several guitars and a lute. Farrell also obtained a certificate in the art of hand-wrought ironwork, of which he was very proud. His interests ranged beyond science and art—particularly to all matters Gaelic. The Farrell ancestors had come from the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland before they settled in what is now West Virginia. He took numerous trips back to the old homeland starting in 1968, both with his family and with study groups, and he also studied Gaelic assiduously at the Harvard Extension School. It is in Ireland that he and his family made the acquaintance of—and fell in love with—Irish wolfhounds. They adopted their first one from a shelter in 1982. Farrell was an indefatigable student to the end: in addition to other courses, he was giving himself a self-tutorial on quantum physics in the period before he died.
Gene Farrell is survived by his wife Lynne Breda Farrell, his son Eugene Thoralf, and his dog Owen (Gaelic for Eugene)—the latest in a long line of rescued Irish hounds. Gene will be greatly missed and remembered by all who had the very good fortune to spend time with him.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 14, 2012
In its monthly roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, curators, designers, photographers, filmmakers, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. This month was marked by the loss of the larger-than-life art critic Robert Hughes, the French filmmaker Chris Marker, the beloved collector Herbert Vogel, the New York painter and professor Denyse Thomasos, and the Austrian sculptor Franz West.
- Jane Barbour, a British researcher of African artifacts and textiles, died on June 14, 2012, at the age of 89. Barbour and her husband, a geographer, lived in different parts of Africa from the 1950s to the 1980s. She edited the volumes Adire Cloth in Nigeria (1971) and Kenyan Pots and Potters (1989)
- Karl Benjamin, a prominent member of the West Coast art scene in the 1950s and 1960s, died on July 26, 2012. He was 86 years old. Benjamin painted in an ordered geometric pattern, dubbed Abstract Classicism by his painting cohort as a response to New York’s Abstract Expressionism. His methodology was informed by many decades as an elementary school art teacher in southern California
- Bram Bogart, a Dutch-born artist who lived in France and Belgium and was known for his heavily layered pigment-and-cement paintings, died on May 2, 2012. He was 90 years old. Associated with the CoBrA art movement in Europe, Bogart exhibited with Jean Dubuffet, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Soulages, and Karel Appel
- Horacio Coppola, an Argentine photographer active in the avant-garde art scene of Buenos Aires, died on June 18, 2012, at the age of 105. Coppola worked in two modes of black-and-white photography: Surrealist-tinged nocturnal shots of city streets, and stark abstract portraits of objects reminiscent of Bauhaus experiments with the medium
- Stephen Dwoskin, an experimental filmmaker and teacher originally from New York and based in London for over forty years, passed away on June 28, 2012, at age 73. In 1966 he cofounded the London Film-Makers’ Co-op with his fellow filmmaker Jeff Keen (who died in June) and the poet Bob Cobbing. Dwoskin’s films include Chinese Checkers (1964) and Trixi (1969); retrospectives of his work have been held at the British Film Institute in 2009 and at the Arsenal in Berlin in 2010
- Eugene F. Farrell, formerly senior conservation scientist at the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, passed away on March 19, 2012. He was 78 years old. Farrell’s colleague Francesca G. Bewer has written a special obituary for CAA
- Mary Fedden, a British painter of modernist-inflected still lifes, passed away on June 22, 2012, at the age of 96. Her subject matter was domestic life, but her work also made reference to the choices of Cubist painters and Henri Matisse: flattened tabletops, vases, bottles, and flowers. Fedden was the first woman to teach at the Royal College of Art in London, a position she held from 1956 to 1964
- Chris Honey, a British architect and humanitarian, died on June 20, 2012, at the age of 52. Honey’s most significant assignment was the design of the Sanctuary Lakes Resort in Melbourne, Australia. He and his wife Rebecca were supporters of the Oxford-based charity Lifelines that works to abolish the death penalty in the United States
- Marilyn Houlberg, an artist and a scholar of the arts of Haiti and Western Africa, died on June 30, 2012. She was 72 years old. Houlberg was a professor emeritus of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She cocurated the traveling exhibition Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou (1995) and contributed essays to the publications Fragments of Bone: Neo-African Religions in a New World (2005) and Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti (1998)
- Robert Hughes, the Australian-born art critic, died on August 6, 2012, at the age of 74. Hughes began writing for Time in 1970, and in 1980 his book and BBC television series The Shock of the New brought his theory of modern art and culture to a wider audience. Hughes was known for his elegant yet fiery critical voice that rattled the genteel art worlds of New York and London
- Georgina Hunt, a British artist known for her luminous, gradient-color paintings, passed away on April 16, 2012. She was 89. Hunt was transformed by her time spent in New York in the early 1970s, where she furthered developed her minimalist approach to painting. Another early influence on her technique was Carl Jung’s theory of the integrated personality
- Sunil Janah, a photojournalist who captured India as it fought against colonial rule to become an independent state in 1947, died on June 21, 2012. He was 96 years old. Working with a rudimentary camera—a Kodak Box Brownie—he photographed Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, as well as moments of ordinary life and mass demonstrations
- Wael Issa Kaston, a Syrian sculptor who worked in wood and mud, has reportedly been killed in Homs under torture by the Syrian government. He was 46 years old, and the news of his death was first announced on July 24, 2012. Kaston’s figurative work dealt with the “freedom of women,” and he described his choice of materials as connected to the elemental life force of the human body
- Bill Komodore, a painter and professor of art at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, died on August 3, 2012, at the age of 80. Born in Athens, Greece, Komodore made expressive, lyrical work that engaged the subjects of myth, war, and love. His 2010 exhibition Arcadia: The Recent Paintings was held at the Decorazon Gallery in Dallas
- Chris Marker, the renowned French filmmaker who invented the essay-film and took the medium to new heights of poetry and political force, passed away on July 30, 2012. He was 91. Marker’s best-known films, La Jetée (1962) and Sans Soleil (1982), deal with memory, time travel, and human longing. He also worked in photography, video installations, and new media: his last exhibition was a portrait series of anonymous Paris métro riders, called Passengers (2011) at Peter Blum in New York
- Helen Messenger, one half of a flamboyantly bohemian artist couple (her husband was the artist Tony Messenger), died on April 11, 2012, at the age of 77. The Messengers met as students at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London and established an informal salon for new ideas in fashion, art, and lifestyle, in their Notting Hill home in London. Helen was later involved in costume design in the 1960s and 1970s, working for Ossie Clark, Laura Ashley, and, most famously, David Bowie
- Dewey Mosby, a specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French art and director emeritus of the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, died on August 1, 2012, at the age of 70. Mosby was the first African American to receive a PhD in art history from Harvard University and also the first African American curator of European art at a major art museum (Detroit Institute of Arts)
- Alvin Nickel, a fabric artist and professor emeritus of art and art history at the University of Texas at Austin, died on August 27, 2011. He was 85 years old. Prior to joining the university in 1960, he worked as a craft director for the United States government in Germany. Nickel created large-scale painterly wall hangings using the dyeing process of batik
- Walter Pichler, a visionary Austrian architect and artist, passed away on July 16, 2012, at the age of 75. Pichler called his architectural plans “dream drawings” and was invested in the narrative possibilities of architecture and design. In later years he moved even further in the direction of fine art with a series of drawings and installations based on his farm in rural Austria
- Jacinto Quirarte, professor emeritus and former dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Texas at San Antonio, died on July 20, 2012. He was 81 years old. Quirarte specialized in Precolumbian art, Latin American art, and Latino art history. From 1982 to 1987 he chaired the National Task Force on Hispanic Art of the National Endowment for the Arts. His books include The Art and Architecture of the Texas Missions (2002), Izapan-Style Art: A Study of Its Form and Meaning, and Mexican American Artists (both 1973)
- Mary Louise Milligan Rasmuson, a patron of the arts in Alaska, died on July 30, 2012, at the age of 101. She was married to Elmer Rasmuson, chairman of the National Bank of Alaska, and through the Rasmuson Foundation the couple helped to found Alaska’s Anchorage Museum of History and Art in 1968. During World War II and after, she was an ardent campaigner for women’s rights in the military and was named fifth commandment of the Women’s Army Corp in 1957 by President Dwight Eisenhower
- Denise René, a Parisian gallery director and an art collector whose stable of abstract artists included Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, and Piet Mondrian, passed away on July 9, 2012. She was 99. A 1938 meeting with the artist Victor Vasarely in the Café de Flore in Paris ignited her career in dealing art. In 2001 the Pompidou Center in Paris held an exhibition in homage to her cultural impact as a gallerist
- Wayne Roberts, a Bronx-based graffiti artist known by the street moniker Stay High 149, died on June 11, 2012, at the age of 61. Roberts’s heyday was in the 1970s; his work was featured in Norman Mailer’s book The Faith of Graffiti (1973), and he was respected by graffiti aficionados for his easily identifiably tag of a joint-smoking haloed stick figure
- Martin E. Segal, a patron of the arts and a long-time supporter of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, passed away on August 5, 2012. He was 96 years old. Segal was instrumental in setting up the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where he served as chief executive from 1968 to 1978. In his last years he remained a spritely figure in the philanthropic world, always wearing a rose in his lapel at social functions around the city
- Roy Shaw, formerly secretary-general of the Arts Council of Great Britain, died on May 15, 2012, at the age of 93. During his tenure, Shaw sought to make the arts more accessible to the public without consenting to vulgarization and commercialism. He was knighted in 1979 and authored the volume The Arts and the People (1987)
- Jack Simcock, a British painter, died on May 13, 2012, at the age of 82. Simcock’s signature paintings were rich, dark-toned images of the village of Mow Cop in North West England, where he lived and worked from 1958 until his death. He exhibited his work at the Piccadilly Gallery in London and also published an autobiography and a collection of poems
- Jonathan Speirs, an architect who specialized in creatively lighting monumental buildings around the world, passed away on June 18, 2012, at the age of 54. In 1993 Speirs founded the architectural lighting firm Speirs + Major, with Mark Major, and the projects the team worked on include Terminal 5 at the Madrid Barajas International Airport, the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building
- Denyse Thomasos, a painter who created large-scale expressionistic work that referenced urban space, maps, and travel, died on July 19, 2012, at the age of 47. Thomasos was a beloved professor to many art students at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where she taught from 1995 to the present day. Her work is represented by Lennon Weinberg in New York and Olga Korper Gallery in Toronto
- Herbert Vogel, one half of a legendary contemporary art collecting couple, died on July 22, 2012, at the age of 89. Vogel worked as a postal clerk in New York for decades and, with his wife Dorothy, came to collecting from a genuine love of art. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC—the institution that first ignited the couple’s fascination with modern art during a 1962 honeymoon visit—was bequeathed a significant portion of their collection. CAA plans to publish a tribute to Herbert Vogel
- Franz West, the Austrian sculptor of ebullient abstract forms, passed away on July 25, 2012, at the age of 65. West was invested in the functionality of an artwork, bridging the darker currents of the European avant-garde with the lightness and accessibility of Pop art. Recent installations include an outdoor sculpture in New York’s Central Park, called The Ego and the Id (2009)
- George Wyllie, a Scottish sculptor who called himself a “scul?tor” to emphasize the social aspect of his practice, died on May 15, 2012, at the age of 90. Wyllie specialized in outdoor artwork that commented on the decline of industry in his native Glasgow. His best-known pieces are two temporary works, Straw Locomotive, a full-scale reproduction of a train made from straw and chicken wire, and Paper Boat, a vessel that caused a stir when it docked at the harbor of New York’s World Financial Center in 1990
Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the September list.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for August 2012
posted by CAA — Aug 10, 2012
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.
August 2012
Rineke Dijkstra, Self Portrait, Marnixbad, Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 19, 1991, 1991, chromogenic print, 35 x 28 cm (artwork © Rineke Dijkstra; photograph provided by the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum)
Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
June 29–October 8, 2012
It has been a great year for female photographers exhibiting in New York museums: Cindy Sherman at the Museum of Modern Art, Francesca Woodman at the Guggenheim, and now the Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra, who has a midcareer survey at the Guggenheim. Active since the early 1990s, Dijkstra works in video and large-format color photography, addressing a diverse range of subjects, from adolescents in Poland, Ukraine, and the United States to new recruits to the Israeli army, juxtaposed in their civilian dress and soldier gear.
Feminist Genealogies in Spanish Art: 1960–2010
MUSAC: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses 24, León, Spain 24008
June 23, 2012–January 6, 2013
Curated by Juan Vicente Aliaga and Patricia Mayayo, this exhibition investigates the underrecognized role that feminist activism and theory has played in Spanish art since the 1960s. Showcasing the work of seventy-seven artists (individuals and artist collectives) and representing several generations, Feminist Genealogies in Spanish Art: 1960–2010 strives to restore what the museum justifiably refers to as “the erased memory of feminist knowledge, practices, and genealogies” from Spanish art history—from the waning years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship to the current rise of the Indignados (“Indignant”) protest movement.
Ulrike Müller: Raw/Cooked
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
June 29–September 9, 2012
In the fifth installment of the Brooklyn Museum’s Raw/Cooked series, Ulrike Müller asked queer and feminist artists to create drawings based on slogans from historical feminist t-shirts found in the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The resulting one hundred drawings are both a valentine to the work of queer and feminist activists of the past and a testament to the ongoing struggle faced by the contributing artists. In addition, Müller also culled the museum’s permanent collection to find objects that spoke to her project, displaying these alongside the drawings.
Joana Vasconcelos Versailles
Palace, Museum, and National Estate of Versailles
Versailles, France 78646
June 16–September 30, 2012
The Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos’s installation of large-scale sculptures in the Palace of Versailles addresses history and politics with a child’s sense of wonder and a master craftsman’s feel for material and form. Starting from the idea that the “world is an opera and Versailles embodies the operatic and aesthetic ideal,” Vasconcelos has installed her work, made from everyday objects and materials, in primary locations throughout the palace and its gardens. Mary Poppins (2010), a colorful creature composed of handmade and industrial fabric, hovers expectantly above a grand staircase. A pair of giant-sized high-heel shoes, made entirely from stainless-steel pots and pans, occupies the Hall of Mirrors, adding an Alice in Wonderland element to the ornate surrounding.
Sharon Hayes, Beyond, 2012, research/ production still (photograph © Sharon Hayes and photograph provided by the artist and provided by the artist, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin, and the Whitney Museum of American Art)
Sharon Hayes: There’s So Much I Want to Say to You
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10021
June 21–September 9, 2012
Sharon Hayes uses photography, film, video, sound, and performance to investigate the critical relationships among politics, history, speech, and desire. In her largest museum installation to date, Hayes worked with a collaborator, Andrea Geyer, to build an environment on the Whitney Museum’s third floor for staging a collection of the artist’s “speech acts,” which date from 2000 to today. The radical conceit of the installation calls to mind moments in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, such as Dawn Kasper’s studio residency, while also evoking the contemporary protest culture that the biennial displaced outside the museum.
Burnt Breakfast and Other Works by Su Richardson
Constance Howard Gallery and Women’s Art Library
Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW, United Kingdom
July 6–September 9, 2012
Curated by Alexandra Kokoli for the Constance Howard Gallery and Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, Burnt Breakfast and Other Works by Su Richardson is the latest in a string of exhibits and symposia around London that have been dubbed the “Feminist Art Spring.” Richardson’s crocheted plate of a typical English breakfast of sausage, egg, bacon, and tomato was created in 1975 as a transatlantic exchange with other women artists. It has since become an iconic work and been reclaimed as a precursor of the contemporary use of crafts in fine art by artists working in the United Kingdom.
Niki de Saint Phalle on Park Avenue
Park Avenue between 52nd and 60th Street, New York, NY
July 12–November 15, 2012
Ten years after Niki de Saint Phalle’s death and forty-four years since her art was exhibited in Central Park’s Conservatory Garden, residents of and visitors to New York can once again commune with her sculptures of mosaic-bejeweled figures, installed in the traffic islands that line Park Avenue from 52nd to 60th Street. The parade of nine sculptures includes signature de Saint Phalle pieces, such as her everywoman “Nana” figures, as well as work from a series that celebrate African American jazz musicians and athletes. This outdoor exhibition is sponsored by Nohra Haime Gallery.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — Jul 09, 2012
In its monthly roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, curators, designers, photographers, filmmakers, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. This month was marked by the loss of the Pop art dealer Ivan Karp, the film scholar Andrew Sarris, and the feminist art historian Paula Hays Harper.
- Carl F. Barnes Jr., a former president of the International Center of Medieval Art, died on May 25, 2012, at the age of 77. Barnes was a professor emeritus of art history at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where he had taught from 1971 to 2001. A specialist in European medieval art, he wrote extensively on the thirteenth-century French artist Villard de Honnecourt
- Barton Lidice Benes, a sculptor and collector, died on May 30, 2012, at the age of 69. Benes made art from the raw materials of everyday life, drawing support and controversy for using medical equipment associated with AIDS/HIV treatment and the cremated remains of friends who perished from the disease. His object and art-filled apartment is now being meticulously re-created as an installation at the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks
- Willard Bond, an artist known for his vibrant paintings of yachts and seascapes, died on May 19, 2012. He was 85 years old. Bond was a versatile artist, influenced in equal parts by the teaching of Buckminster Fuller and by his own experience as a pier master at New York’s South Street Seaport. Admirers claim that his paintings embody the ineffable experience of being on a boat at sea
- Frederick J. Brown, a figurative painter deeply inspired by jazz music and the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, passed away on May 5, 2012. He was 67 years old. Brown created colorful, highly expressionistic portraits of people whom he admired, such as the avant-garde composer Anthony Braxton and the painter Willem de Kooning. His artworks were exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, and the New Orleans Museum of Art
- Paula Hays Harper, an art historian who challenged the discipline with her feminist perspective, died on June 3, 2012, at the age of 81. In the 1970s, Harper was instrumental in establishing the feminist art program at California Institute of the Arts and for three decades was a professor at the University of Miami in Florida. She also coauthored a biography of the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro
- Paul Jenkins, an American abstract painter known for his poured-paint technique, died on June 9, 2012, at the age of 88. In the 1950s Jenkins spent extensive time working and showing in Europe, a factor that made him less visible in the New York art scene than his aesthetic peers, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis. Jenkins’s art, though, was wildly popular, and the artist had many prominent patrons and museum exhibitions throughout the United States, France, and Great Britain. On a side note to his career arc, Jenkins’s paintings were featured in the 1978 film, An Unmarried Woman
- Gerhard Kallmann, an architect known for his controversial modernist design for Boston City Hall, died on June 19, 2012, at the age of 97. Built in 1968, the Brutalist building was criticized and praised, sometimes at the same time. Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic for the New York Times, wrote that Boston now had “one of the handsomest buildings around, and thus far, one of the least understood”
- Ivan Karp, an art dealer and gallery owner who championed Pop art in its early days, passed away on June 28, 2012. He was 86 years old. Karp served as codirector of the Leo Castelli Gallery and in 1969 opened his own space, OK Harris, in SoHo, which established the fledgling artist neighborhood as the new gallery mecca in Manhattan. Artists whom Karp promoted include Andy Warhol, John Chamberlain, Roy Lichtenstein, and Claes Oldenburg
- Jeff Keen, a British experimental filmmaker, visual artist, and poet, passed away on June 21, 2012. He was 88 years old. In his late 30s Keen hit his stride as an artist with a series of short, surrealistic films that combined collage techniques and innovative sound tracks. Keen was a founding member of the London Film-Makers Co-op in 1966 and actively participated in the counterculture movement
- Mary Katharine MacGregor, a former curator of prints and drawings at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, died on May 16, 2012, at the age of 89. MacGregor was affiliated with several New York art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, before she returned to her native Iowa to pursue a curatorial position at the Print and Drawing Study Room at the University of Iowa’s Museum of Art
- Georges Mathieu, a French abstract painter, passed away on June 10, 2012. He was 91 years old. In the 1940s and 1950s Mathieu worked in the mode of Lyrical Abstraction, a French counterpart to Abstract Expressionism in the United States. He often performed his paintings in front of a live audience as a demonstration of his dramatic, freeform technique
- LeRoy Neiman, an artist and illustrator of the good life, died on June 20, 2012, at the age of 91. Like a contemporary Norman Rockwell, Neiman worked in a space between the fine-art and magazine worlds. He painted illustrations of sporting events for Playboy in the 1950s and taught for many years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Justine Price, a professor of art history at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, died on October 24, 2011, at the age of 42. A faculty member of Canisius College since 2005, she had recently received tenure and been named the director of the college’s art-history program. Her scholarly interests extended from American Pop art to contemporary Polish photography
- Michael Rabe, a scholar of South Asian art and a professor at Xavier University in Chicago, died in late March 2012. Rabe’s colleague Andrew Cohen has written a special obituary for CAA
- Andrew Sarris, a film critic and scholar who wrote for the Village Voice for many years, passed away on June 20, 2012, at the age of 83. A champion of auteur theory, Sarris wrote a seminal book on the subject, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968 (1968). He had taught at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and was an inspirational figure to several generations of film critics and historians
- A. Richard Turner, an expert on Italian Renaissance art, particularly the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci, died on September 9, 2011. He was 79 years old. Turner was the author of Inventing Leonardo (1993), a book that analyzed five centuries of critical dialogue on the artist. Turner had a long teaching career that included stints at the University of Michigan, Princeton University, and Middlebury College before he became the director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 1979
- Jeff West, a champion of the arts in Dallas, Texas, died on May 22, 2012, at the age of 54. The executive director of the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas, West had helped bring film culture to the city with the AFI Dallas International Film Festival. He also worked for eleven years as executive director of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, an institution that preserves the memory of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination
Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the August list.
Affiliated Society News for July 2012
posted by CAA — Jul 09, 2012
American Council for Southern Asian Art
The Bulletin of the American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) will be available to all ACSAA members this summer. As printed versions of the bulletin were discontinued in 2011, members should visit the ACSAA website to download the latest edition in PDF format, as well as all past Bulletins and Newsletters that have now been digitized.
American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies
The American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies (ASHAHS) announced its awards winners at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference. Jessica Weiss of the University of Texas at Austin is the recipient of the Photographs Grant, given to support the acquisition of photographs by graduate students who are preparing their doctoral dissertation or MA thesis on the topic of Spanish or Portuguese art history. Weiss’s dissertation is entitled “Juan de Flandes and the Commoditization of Aesthetics in Isabelline Spain.”
The Eleanor Tufts Award, which recognizes an outstanding English-language publication in the area of Spanish or Portuguese art history, went to Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011), edited by Ilona Katzew. In addition, the jurors selected two books for honorable mention: Book of Honors for Empress Maria of Austria: Composed by the College of the Society of Jesus of Madrid on the Occasion of Her Death (1603) (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2011), edited by Antonio Bernat Vistarini, John T. Cull, and Tamás Sajó; and Maruja Mallo and the Spanish Avant-Garde (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), by Shirley Mangini.
Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence
Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism and Decadence (ALMSD) thanks everyone who helped make its recent conference, “The Symbolist Movement: Its Origins and Its Consequences,” a success. The event took place April 25–28, 2012, at Allerton Park in Monticello, Illinois. Visit the conference website for complete program information and to watch a video of the opening. ALMSD has signed a contract with a publisher to publish an annual journal, to be called Art, Literature, and Music in Symbolism, Its Origins, and Its Consequences, beginning in 2013. The organization invites interested scholars working on aspects of the Symbolist movement to learn more about membership in the organization. Please contact Rosina Neginsky to contribute to the annual newsletter.
Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History
The Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH) seeks papers for a special session during CAA’s 101st Annual Conference in New York, taking place February 13–16, 2013. The session will examine how stained glass evolved as an art form between the years 1400 and 1900. Papers may also address how images are derived from the Bible, mythology, history, and literature. Please send abstracts to Liana Cheney, ATSAH president.
Association of Historians of American Art
The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) will sponsor two sessions at CAA’s 2013 Annual Conference in New York. Elizabeth Lee of Dickinson College and Robin Vedder of Pennsylvania State University will chair the scholarly session, “The Body of the Artist and the Artist as Body in American Artistic Practice.” Jaleen Grove and Douglas Dowd, both of Washington University in Saint Louis, will chair the professional session, “The Art History of American Periodical Illustration.” See the AHAA website for more information on the two panels.
The second AHAA symposium, “American Art: the Academy, Museums, and the Market,” will feature Holland Cotter, art critic for the New York Times, as the keynote speaker. The event will take place at the Boston Athenaeum in Massachusetts on October 11–13, 2012. The full schedule of speakers and registration information can be found online. Registration opened on June 1, 2012.
Association of Research Institutes in Art History
The Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH) invites nominations and self-nominations for the newly established ARIAH Prize for Online Publishing. This award, which carries a $1,000 cash prize, seeks to encourage and promote scholarly standards in online publishing in all fields of art history. The prize will be awarded annually to the author(s) of a distinguished article or essay published online in the past three years in the form of an ejournal or a short-form epublication that advances the study of art history and visual culture. The article should either appear exclusively online, or should be substantially distinct from any print version, creatively capitalizing on the potential of digital publishing.
Community College Professors of Art and Art History
Community College Professors of Art and Art History (CCPAAH) is reaching out to new members: please visit the new blog and watch for a Facebook page that is being developed. The organization seeks papers for a symposium, “Teaching All of Our Students: Few Majors, Fewer Transfers, Many Others,” to be held at the next CAA Annual Conference, taking place February 13–16, 2013, in New York. The symposium will explore the diverse make-up of the community-college student body and consider how best to teach art and art history to students who may have no interest in pursuing a major in the field. Panelists will be asked to share an example of a “best practice” that they feel addresses this concern. For more information about the upcoming symposium and for general inquiries about CCPAAH, please write to communitycollegeart@gmail.com.
CCPAAH invites its members to submit proposals for papers for Foundations in Art: Theory and Education’s next conference, “postHaus,” taking place April 3–6, 2013, in Savannah, Georgia. The session topic, “The Value of Writing in the Foundation Year: Exploring New Approaches,” will examine the importance of writing in both studio and art-history courses in the foundation year. Paper topics might include: how writing is integrated into your studio course; writing assignments beyond the standard art-history research paper; and using technology to get students writing. Please address all questions regarding FATE proposals to communitycollegeart@gmail.com.
Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture
Michael Yonan, associate professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia, has been elected the new president of the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA).
HECAA will be represented at the next American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies conference, taking place April 4–7, 2013, in Cleveland, Ohio, with two panels, chaired by Christopher Johns and Heather McPherson. Proposals for papers are due by September 15, 2012, and should be sent directly to the seminar chairs. HECAA will also host its annual luncheon and its business meeting at the conference.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
Registration is open for “Looking Widely, Looking Closely,” the third biennial symposium of the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA), hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, October 18–20, 2012. Early registration ends on August 1. For more information about registration, travel tips, and hotels, please visit the website.
HIAA welcomes Jennifer Pruitt to the organization’s executive board as interim webmaster, succeeding Lara Tohme, who served for two years, from 2011 to 2012.
International Sculpture Center
Registration is now open for the twenty-third International Sculpture Conference of the International Sculpture Center (ISC), taking place October 4–6, 2012, in Chicago, Illinois. The conference will bring together people from around the world and across the field of contemporary sculpture to Chicago for ARTSlams, mentoring sessions, and an invigorating roster of presenters, including two keynote speakers: the artists Sophie Ryder and Sanford Biggers. This is an event you don’t want to miss!
ISConnects is hosting three upcoming summer and fall events in 2012. On July 21 in Omaha, Nebraska, ISC, KANEKO, and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts will present a full day of discussions and artist-led tours with Nathalie Miebach and Michael Jones McKean, coinciding with McKean’s Bemis exhibition, The Rainbow: Certain Principles of Light and Shapes between Forms. On August 25, ISC and Grounds for Sculpture will host tours and an exciting panel discussion exploring the evolution and transformation of sculpture, followed by a reception in the Grounds for Sculpture Museum in Hamilton, New Jersey. Funded in part by the Johnson Art and Education Foundation, ISConnects explores the unique perspectives on sculpture in the contemporary art world. With partner organizations, ISC offers intimate programming that addresses cutting-edge, timely trends in sculpture through lively and insightful discourse.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) seeks nominations and self-nominations for various committee positions; please review the list of vacancies for more information on how to apply for a position. The deadline for nominations is November 1, 2012. Those interested in submitting proposals for papers for four linked sessions at the forty-eighth International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, taking place May 9–12, 2013, should review the online call for additional information.
Leonardo Education and Art Forum
Patricia Olynyk, an artist and chair of the Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF), will moderate a panel, “Eco-Art + the Evolving Landscape of Social and Situated Practices,” at the eighteenth International Symposium on Electronic Art, to be held September 19–24, 2012, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The panelists include Linda Weintraub, Sam Bower, and Saul Ostrow, and the focus will be on education and the complex triad of ecoart, situated practices, and project-based public work that embraces various democratic processes and inspires progressive social, cultural, and environmental change. Jill Scott and Ellen K. Levy are cochairs of another ISEA panel, “Synaptic Scenarios for Ecological Environments,” which addresses cognitive issues in relation to ecology with the goal of gaining a greater embodied sense of place within the ecological environment. The panelists include Patricia Olynyk, Nicole Ottiger, Angelika Hilbeck, and Alison Hawthorne Deming.
LEAF seeks panelists for its session at CAA’s 2013 Annual Conference in New York. Entitled “Re/Search: Art, Science, and Information Technology (ASIT): What Would Leonardo da Vinci Have Thought?” and moderated by Joe Lewis of the University of California, Irvine, the session takes a close look at art projects that involve the intersection of science and technology. When Leonardo da Vinci introduced himself to the Duke of Milan, he did not reveal himself as an artist but instead presented a proposal to create military weapons to protect the duke’s city in times of siege. What entrepreneurial ideas have contemporary artists developed to provide funding for their projects? Please submit proposals to Joe Lewis by July 31, 2012.
Mid-America College Art Association
The Mid-America College Art Association (MACAA) will hold its biannual conference from October 3 to 6, 2012, in Detroit, Michigan. The James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University will host the conference. Programming will include three featured speakers; panels on art, design, art history, and visual resources; and studio workshops, member exhibitions, and museum visits. The conference will have two content areas, “Meaning and Making” and “Community and Collaboration.” Visit the Detroit conference website to learn more about the event, travel and hotel information, and how to become an MACAA member.
National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Lee Ransaw, chairman and founder of the National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (NAAHBCU), was a panelist on the 2012 James A. Porter Colloquium at Howard University in Washington, DC. He presented on “The Growth and Development of the National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” The James A. Porter Colloquium is the leading forum for scholars, artists, curators, and individuals in the field of African American Art and Visual Culture. Established at Howard University in 1990, the colloquium is named in honor of James A. Porter, the pioneering art historian and professor, whose 1943 publication Modern Negro Art laid the foundation for the field.
The annual NAAHBCU meeting was held June 29–30, 2012, in Atlanta, Georgia. Coinciding with the meeting was an exhibition, Influence and Legacy: Shaping the Future while Preserving the Past, featuring NAAHBCU artists and held at the Stewart McClain Gallery in Atlanta.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) board seeks proposals for the presentation of case studies for its annual conference, “Granting Permission,” taking place November 7–10, 2012, and hosted by Ohio State University and Columbus College of Art and Design. Topics might include but are not limited to: leadership and management; interpersonal communication; succeeding with external constituencies; budget management; personnel evaluation; issues related to promotion and tenure; personal growth; career paths; and any topical area related to arts administration and leadership. Please outline your proposal, or send an actual case study, in 350 words or less to Lydia Thompson or Amy Hauft. Proposals are due by Friday, July 31, 2012. Selected entries will be notified by September 1, 2012. Confirmation of presenters will be posted at NCAA’s website and formally acknowledged by the NCAA board.
New Media Caucus
The New Media Caucus (NMC) extends a warm welcome to its new board members: Elizabeth Demaray, Rutgers University; Margaret Dolinsky, Indiana University Bloomington; Conrad Gleber, La Salle University; Claudia Hart, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Krista Hoefle, Saint Mary’s College; Meredith Hoy, University of Massachusetts, Boston; Patrick Lichty, Columbia College Chicago; Gail Rubini, Florida State University; and Joyce Rudinsky, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. These outstanding artist practitioners, educators, and academics will join continuing board members and officers.
Public Art Dialogue
Public Art Dialogue (PAD) has published the latest issue of its eponymous journal, which features a theme of “Audience Response.” Public art today is often commissioned with community input, but very little is known about how such art is received initially and over time. Although “the public” is often invoked, the actual audience is rarely consulted after a work is in place. In this issue, Public Art Dialogue aims to document this elusive but critical aspect of public art and suggest a methodology for its study.
The fourth annual PAD award for achievement in the field of public art was presented to the media artist Ben Rubin at the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. Rubin treated all in attendance to a unique glimpse into the behind-the-scenes happenings of his new public project, Shakespeare Machine. Commissioned by New York City’s Percent for Art program, the site-specific sculpture will be installed in the lobby of the Public Theater in New York. After the presentation, Rubin shared some of the joys and obstacles of the public art process in an intimate question-and-answer session.
Society for Photographic Education
This fall the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) will host regional conferences in Rochester, New York; Jersey City, New Jersey; Daytona Beach, Florida; Starkville, Mississippi; Cincinnati, Ohio; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Eugene, Oregon. Photographic artists, educators, students, and professionals will gather on an intimate scale for discussions on programming, photography critiques, exhibitions, tours, receptions, and more. Regional conferences are great opportunities to meet other members of the organization. If you are not an SPE member, you can still attend the conferences at a nonmember rate. Visit the SPE website to find out more about the regional conferences, including registration and proposal deadlines.
Society for the Study of Early Modern Women
The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW) has elected the following officers for the current year: Allyson M. Poska, professor of history, University of Mary Washington, president; Jane Couchman, professor emeritus, York University, vice president; Deborah Uman, professor of English, Saint John Fisher College, treasurer; Abby Zanger, independent scholar, secretary; and Karen Nelson, Center for Literary and Comparative Studies, University of Maryland, webmaster.
Society of Architectural Historians
At its sixty-fifth annual conference in Detroit in April 2012, members of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) warmly welcomed a new slate of officers: Abigail A. Van Slyck, Connecticut College, president; Kenneth Breisch University of Southern California, first vice president; Ken Tadashi Oshima, University of Washington, second vice president; Gail Fenske, Roger Williams University, secretary; and Jan M. Grayson, treasurer. SAH also welcomes the following incoming board members, who will serve three years: Michael J. Gibson, Greenberg, Whitcombe & Takeuchi; Duanfang Lu, University of Sydney; Robert Nauman, University of Colorado, Boulder; Donna Robertson, Illinois Institute of Technology; and Gary Van Zante, MIT Museum.
Visual Resources Association
The Visual Resources Association (VRA) presented the winners of its highest honors at an awards luncheon on April 19, 2012, which took place during the organization’s thirtieth annual conference, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Kathe Hicks Albrecht of American University received the Distinguished Service Award for her contributions to visual resources and image management. The ceremony featured comments from Albrecht’s nominators and a discussion of her engagement with visual resources advocacy, service to the profession, and long term involvement with VRA and the VRA Foundation over her twenty-one year career. In addition, VRA presented two Nancy DeLaurier Awards for distinguished achievement to Sheila M. Hannah of the University of New Mexico and Patti McRae Baley of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Hannah was honored for her early, innovative development of image automation: the Visual Information Checklist, the development of Visual Resources Catalog of Native American Artists, and the implementation of a thriving internship program. Baley was honored for her long and successful role as the “Empress” of the VRA conference; inaugurating the “VRAffle,” which provides income for the Tansey Travel Awards; and immediate involvement in the association for new and veteran conference attendees. You can find images and information about the awards presentation and a selection of multimedia illustrated conference presentations on the VRA website.
THE REMARKABLE JOURNEY OF JUDY PETER
posted by Ann Albritton and Janet Landay — Jul 03, 2012
Ann Albritton is a professor of modern and contemporary art history at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, and chair of CAA’s International Committee.
Judy Peter, a scholar at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, speaks at a meeting of CAA International Travel Grant recipients at the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles (photograph by Bradley Marks)
A short time before the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles, Judy Peter and I began sending occasional emails back and forth from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Sarasota, Florida. As incoming chair of the International Committee, I had been assigned to Peter, one of twenty recipients of the CAA International Travel Grant Program, generously funded by the Getty Foundation. We had been paired based on a shared academic pursuit: teaching contemporary issues in art. Her short biography describing her as head of the Department of Jewellery Design and Manufacture at the University of Johannesburg gave me a brief introduction that made me curious to meet her. We met face-to-face early on the first morning of the conference and went with several other grant recipients and their hosts to a large roundtable breakfast at the Hotel Figueroa. It was there that I began getting to know her as a fellow art historian and theorist who was delighted to be at the conference and determined to make the most of the experience.
Peter is a dedicated scholar who has the distinction of being the first black person in South Africa to complete a PhD in visual studies: she earned her degree in 2011 at the University of Pretoria. Even though her country has been a democracy for eighteen years, many blacks and women in academia must still confront, and break through, the proverbial glass ceiling. Peter describes her research as a “critical reading of the politics of gender and identity issues in a new South Africa.” She is currently studying the work of thirteen female South African artists, looking at myriad geographical and historical influences that have affected their art practice. Each artist she has chosen to write on is working with identity, place, and displacement.
Between visits to the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Peter attended sessions she felt were useful to her, including the CAA International Committee panel, “Internationalizing the Field: A Discussion of Global Networks for Art Historians,” and others, such as “Black Venus: They Called Her Hottentot.” These sessions, she writes, “allowed me to compare teaching and learning practices between institutions in the United States and in South Africa.” In addition, Peter attended two of CAA’s Professional Development Workshops: “Advice for New Instructors” and “The Syllabus: Mapping Out Your Semester.” At the latter she made a connection with a workshop presenter, Steven Bleicher, a professor of visual arts at Coastal University in South Carolina. Since the conference, the two have been in communication regarding opportunities for scholars at the University of Johannesburg to contribute to Bleicher’s new book.
For the international scholars, networking within their diverse group was among the most important benefits of being a travel-grant recipient. Discovering common areas of research, exploring conflicting views, and sharing divergent teaching practices made for dynamic discussions and brought various groupings of scholars together. Isolation remains a common problem for many of the grantees, and the conference provided immediate and long-range opportunities for them to build new communities. In fact, many of them have continued these conversations online; several are making concrete plans for future collaborations.
Like even the most seasoned of CAA conference goers, Peter and the other international scholars attended a whirlwind of workshops, sessions, panels, meetings, and museums without much time for reflection. Directly following the event in Los Angeles, however, most travel-grant recipients flew across the country to spend a few days at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. At the Clark they were able to relax and get to know each other in a less formal environment, and to start to lay the groundwork for future work together.
I look forward to keeping in touch with Judy Peter in order to keep learning about the vastly different social and political landscape that artists and art historians inhabit in South Africa. I’m especially interested in her research on female artists active from 1994 to 2004. We’ll continue to exchange ideas, share our writing with one another, and possibly collaborate on a project.
Read about another travel-grant recipient, Dóra Sallay from Hungary, and review a report on all activities from the 2012 CAA International Travel Grant Program.
Intellectual Property and the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — Jun 25, 2012
The Committee on Intellectual Property (CIP) is pleased to announce the posting of the revised and expanded Intellectual Property and the Arts pages on CAA’s website. CIP monitors and interprets copyright legislation for the benefit of CAA’s various constituencies. In so doing, it seeks to offer educational programs and opportunities for discussion and debate in response to copyright legislation affecting educators, scholars, museum professionals, and artists.
The section is divided into the following eight categories: US Copyright: Fundamentals & Documents; Visual Art/Visual Artists; Publishing in the Visual Arts; Libraries, Archives, and Museums; Image Sources and Rights Clearance Agencies; Fair Use Guidelines, Practices, and Policies; Copyright Outside the United States; and Legal Assistance.
Education is essential for informed communication. The committee hopes that the resources presented in the updated pages will answer your questions about intellectual property and inform your discussions and debates.
Recent CAA Advocacy
posted by Christopher Howard — Jun 18, 2012
CAA’s advocacy efforts this year addressed a wide range of issues of critical importance to the visual arts, from the necessity of artists to have affordable health-insurance options, to the ethical treatment of animals in works of art, to the ins and outs of copyright law and museum practices. Below is a summary of eleven issues to which CAA has been committed during the past twelve months.
In June 2011, CAA filed an amicus brief in the case of Golan v. Holder, which the United States Supreme Court began hearing in October. The issue raised in Golan v. Holder is whether Congress, after enacting the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994, could legally remove tens of thousands—if not millions—of foreign works from the public domain and bring them back into copyright. Consistent with the First Amendment, the brief argued that those works should remain freely available. On January 18, 2012, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s previous decision, 6–2. In short, foreign works formerly in the public domain in the US can have their copyrighted status reinstated.
In December 2011, CAA signed onto a statement from the Association of Art Museum Directors that opposed the pending sale of a fifty percent stake in the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern American and European Art at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Since 2005 the school had been attempting to sell the collection, donated by Georgia O’Keeffe (who specified that it never be sold or broken up). “Such an action,” stated the letter, “would violate a core professional standard of AAMD and of the museum field, which prohibit[s] the use of funds from the sale of works of art for purposes other than building an institution’s collection.” Nevertheless, the Tennessee Supreme court did not block the sale to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, on April 25, 2012. The university and museum will share the collection on a three-year rotating basis, with the museum helping to conserve the collection.
CAA board and staff members represented the organization at two events this spring in Washington, DC: Anne Collins Goodyear, then-incoming board president, and Linda Downs, CAA executive director and chief executive officer, attended Humanities Advocacy Day in March; and Judith Thorpe, an outgoing board member, and Helen Bayer, CAA marketing and communications associate, went to Arts Advocacy Day in April. The goal of both days was to support continued federal funding through the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, and to articulate to Congress the vital importance of the humanities and the arts in higher education. The National Humanities Alliance’s annual meeting coincided with Humanities Advocacy Day. Goodyear and Downs have offered a summary of this important event.
At the request of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), CAA investigated the use of homing pigeons in Jon Rubin’s interactive artwork, Thinking about Flying (2012), on view this year at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Colorado. The piece invites museum visitors to take home a bird, placed in a cardboard box, for a day before releasing it, so that it may fly back to the museum. CAA confirmed the humanitarian treatment of the birds by the artist and museum and notified PETA of the findings.
In April, CAA investigated the complaint raised by several artists who lent work to the 2010 World Festival of Black Artists and Cultures in Senegal that was not returned due to a dispute with an art shipper in Dakar. CAA determined that the situation did not need the organization’s assistance.
Michael Fahlund, CAA deputy director, testified on behalf of the organization at an oversight hearing convened by New York City’s Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations on January 25, 2012, regarding increasing access to affordable health insurance for artists. Even though CAA is an international organization, its office is in the state of New York; presently the healthcare industry is regulated state by state. Fahlund proposed that CAA be given “employer status” in relation to its members living in New York State in order to provide health-insurance options for them. The committee’s discussions are ongoing.
CAA monitored a federal bill, the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699), that was introduced in the US House of Representatives on December 16, 2011, by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and cosponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)— chairman and member, respectively, of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The legislation would prohibit federal agencies from mandating free access to scholarly articles submitted to a scientific or scholarly publication without the consent of the publisher. This act primarily addresses science and technology publications but, if enacted, could affect art and humanities publications as well. Many learned societies who are publishers oppose the legislation, and CAA board members have begun discussing the issue and are paying close attention to the legislation’s development.
Representing CAA, Fahlund contributed his expertise to a National Coalition Against Censorship committee that developed Museum Best Practices for Managing Controversy, published in May. The document offers guidance for institutions to turn controversial situations into learning experiences for their public. The committee comprised representatives from the American Association of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Association of Art Museum Curators, Columbia University, Arizona State University, the University of Washington, and the New School. CAA’s Museum Committee is reviewing the guideline and will present it for adoption at the CAA board meeting on October 28, 2012.
Fahlund also worked with a liability insurance broker, Herbert L. Jamison and Co. LLC, and Philadelphia Insurance Companies, and with two CAA members, Barbara Buhler Lynes and Nancy Mowll Mathews, to establish comprehensive, affordable liability insurance for art historians and artists who authenticate works of art. Such insurance would help defend against a damaging financial loss that could occur from alleged mistakes or negligence. CAA does not administer the insurance but acts as a referral to the insurance company; in a brief article from this past January, Fahlund offers helpful loss-prevention tips for the art professional to avoid potential workplace liabilities.
Last month CAA signed onto a letter from the Association of Art Museum Directors sent to Congress, urging legislators to pass the Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act (S. 2212), a proposed law that would shield a loaned work of art from a non-US collection from being seized by anyone with a claim to legal ownership while the art is on display in the country. According to the letter, the US has “long provided the crucial legal protection that helps make loans from foreign museums possible” through the Department of State, until a 2004–8 lawsuit involving heirs of Kasimir Malevich and the City of Amsterdam weakened those protections. The House passed the bill (H.R. 4086), which the Senate is now debating.
As a member of the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, a group that addresses workforce issues in higher education, CAA helped to prepare and administer a 2010 survey on contingent-faculty issues. The results have been tabulated and will be distributed soon. More than one thousand CAA members filled out the survey. [June 20 update: the survey results have been published.]
Founded as an advocate for the visual arts in higher education, CAA actively engages matters of public policy, litigation, and activism at the local, state, federal, and international levels. For further information, visit the Advocacy section of the website. If you have questions or have advocacy issues you would like to bring to the attention of the CAA board, please contact Anne Collins Goodyear, CAA president, and Linda Downs, CAA executive director and chief executive officer, at info@collegeart.org.