CAA News Today
Karin Christine Nelson: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Oct 04, 2011
Amalia Nelson-Croner is the daughter of the deceased.
Karin Christine Nelson
Karin Christine Nelson, a Salt Lake City native and a thirty-seven-year resident of the Bay Area, passed away peacefully on June 22, 2011, at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. Nelson worked an independent curator, author, editor, and registrar for several San Francisco museums; was a respected and beloved career counselor for City College of San Francisco; and served on the Alameda County Arts Commission for many years. She was also a brave world traveler with a passion for art, as well as a selfless mother, sister, daughter, and friend.
After graduating with a double major in art history and sociology from Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1969, Nelson opted to explore the globe, traveling widely through India, Indonesia, and several countries in Europe. She lived in Japan for three years, teaching English and learning Japanese. During her time in Asia, she studied and documented traditional weaving and dyeing and amassed a stunning photographic portfolio of traditional textiles, which was later exhibited in the United States. She published articles on Okinawan textiles and was invited to speak at many textile exhibitions.
Upon moving to the Bay Area, Nelson did graduate coursework in museum studies at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California, and later earned her master’s degree in career development at the same institution. In 1983 she began working for the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco, an organization with which she was associated for the rest of her life. While there she curated the exhibition Craft Traditions of Okinawa and authored the accompanying essay, “On the Brink: Okinawan Textiles in the 21st Century,” which appeared in the museum’s scholarly journal, A Report, in the fall of 1996. It was also at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art that she and her friend, Delphine Hirasuna, first produced The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942–1946. Due to their continued efforts, the hugely successful show has toured four museums since 2006, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. It will continue traveling across the United States and will also appear in Japan.
Besides working for the Museum of Performance and Design in recent years, Nelson had been a career counselor for City College of San Francisco since 1992. She took pride in helping credit and noncredit students, alumni, and community members and was amazingly successful in assisting them in job placement. A member of the community in Albany, California, for two decades, Nelson served on the Albany Arts Committee, the Albany Waterfront Committee, and the Alameda County Public Art Advisory Committee. She was instrumental in creating the exhibition program at the Albany Community Center and volunteered at Albany public schools to help students experience all sorts of artistic expression. While her children attended Albany High School, she also worked to organize the school’s annual Job Shadow Day.
Nelson was a tireless supporter of several organizations relating to the arts, education, and the environment. She was a generous friend and colleague; a dedicated mother and daughter; and an extremely capable, intelligent, and passionate individual. She will be missed by all who knew her.
A memorial service was held on August 7, 2011, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. Karin Christine Nelson is survived by her mother, Ingeborg Nelson; her brother, Kenneth Nelson Jr.; and two daughters, Katarina and Amalia Nelson-Croner.
Karin Nelson Legacy Scholarship
In honor of Nelson’s commitment to students at City College of San Francisco, the Career Development Counseling Department is accepting donations for the Karin Nelson Legacy Scholarship, which can be mailed to: Karin Nelson Legacy Scholarship, Scholarship Office, MUB 130B, City College of San Francisco, 50 Phelan Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94112.
Karin C. Nelson Memorial Fund
In honor of Nelson’s contributions to the Bay Area arts community, the Alameda County Arts Commission and the Foundation for the Arts in Alameda County have created the Karin C. Nelson Memorial Fund, which will support special projects for arts education and community art programs that were important to her. You can make an online donation or mail one to: Karin C. Nelson Memorial Fund, Foundation for the Arts in Alameda County, PO Box 29004, Oakland, CA 94604-9004.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for September 2011
posted by CAA — Sep 10, 2011
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.
September 2011
Tracey Snelling, “Woman on the Run,” 2008–11, mixed media, dimensions variable (artwork © Tracey Snelling; photograph by Etienne Frossard)
Tracey Snelling’s “Woman on the Run”
Frist Center for the Visual Arts
919 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203-3822
September 9, 2011–February 5, 2012
Describing her work, the American artist Tracey Snelling has said that she creates new realities that change with her audience’s perception. She gives her impression of a place, its people and their experience, and allows the viewer to extrapolate his or her own meaning. “Woman on the Run,” an installation previously mounted at 21c Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, combines video, photography, and sculpture to tell the story of a mysterious woman sought for questioning in a murder.
“2011 Purdue Conference for Pre-Tenure Women”
Purdue University
155 South Grant Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2114
September 22–23, 2011
This second annual meeting on issues facing pretenure women in academia features plenary speeches by Sara Laschever, a researcher on women’s life and career obstacles; Mary Dankoski, a dean, administrator, and professor of family medicine at Purdue University; and Caroline S. Turner, a professor at California State University, Sacramento, and Arizona State University. Sessions include “Promotion and Tenure Document Review,” “Your Plan to Tenure,” and “From Graduate Student to Faculty Member.”
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, ca. 1613–14, oil on canvas, 162½ x 100 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (artwork in the public domain)
Artemisia Gentileschi: Story of a Passion
Palazzo Reale
Piazza Duomo, 12 – 20122 Milan, Italy
September 22, 2011–January 29, 2012
Organized by Roberto Contini, curator of late Italian and Spanish paintings at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Germany, this exhibition is the first solo survey in Italy of works by Artemisia Gentileschi. Story of a Passion comprises the majority of her oeuvre arranged chronologically in an installation designed by Emma Dante, an internationally renowned Italian director and playwright.
Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972
Wiels
Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Brussels, Belgium
September 10, 2011–January 8, 2012
Weils, a contemporary art center in Brussels, Belgium, will show the work of the late Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973). For Sculpture Undone: 1955–1972, Elena Filipovic and Joanna Mytkowska has organized a survey of this long-overlooked, Surrealist-inspired artist whose work addressing the female body has become increasingly influential to young feminist artists in the twenty-first century.
Zaha Hadid, WMF Flatware, 2007, stainless steel, dinner fork, 8¾ in.; salad fork, 6⅝ in.; dinner knife, 9⅛ in.; teaspoon, 5⅞ in.; soup spoon, 8⅞ in. Made by Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik AG, Geislingen, Germany (photograph provided by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Zaha Hadid Architects)
Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130
September 17, 2011–March 25, 2012
The architect Zaha Hadid has designed buildings, interiors, and furniture. Organized by Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, curator of European decorative arts after 1700 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion is the first presentation in the United States devoted to her furniture, objects, and footwear. The exhibition is also mounted in a setting that she designed.
Thin Black Line(s)
Tate Britain
Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
August 22, 2011–March 18, 2012
This exhibition explores the role of British women artists of African and Asian descent. Inspired by a series of thought-provoking shows curated by the artist Lubaina Himid in the 1980s, Thin Black Line(s) returns to many artists and works seen back then in order to revisit their place in current debates in contemporary art in the United Kingdom in the decades since.
Affiliated Society News for September 2011
posted by CAA — Sep 09, 2011
American Council for Southern Asian Art
The fifteenth biennial symposium of the American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) will take place at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis from September 22 to 25, 2011. The engaging event will feature speakers presenting a wide range of papers on historical and contemporary art from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan region. Please direct any questions about the symposium to Rick Asher at the University of Minnesota. You may download a PDF of the full program, registration, and related information.
American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works
The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) has published a second edition of The AIC Guide to Digital Photography and Conservation Documentation. The text has been updated since its first publication in 2008 to include recommendations for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and an expanded chapter on storage and backup of electronic records. The second edition is also fully illustrated with over 120 color plates, including detailed screenshot instructions for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom. This remarkable resource, nearly doubled in size, is available online for $60 (AIC members) and $75 (nonmembers).
Art Historians Interested in Pedagogy and Technology
The new website of Art Historians Interested in Pedagogy and Technology (AHPT), launched in August 2011, allows members to share and use technological resources for education in the visual arts. Projects, publications, and conference information are also available. New members may join via PayPal in order to access this abundance of resources and to contribute to the expanding conversation about technology in the classroom.
AHPT will participate in the upcoming Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), taking place November 9–12, 2011, at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. AHPT’s session, called “Reflections on Where We Are and Where We Are Going with Technology in the Art History Classroom,” will consider integrating technologies into established lecture courses and online teaching, fostering pedagogical change in departments and institutions, and negotiating curricular needs with administrators. The panel, chaired by Marjorie Och of the University of Mary Washington, will include presentations by Fran Altvater of Hillyer College at the University of Hartford in Connecticut; Janice Robertson of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York; and Saul Zalesch of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. This session marks the inauguration of AHPT’s affiliation with SECAC.
Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey
The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) held its first international conference, “Modern Arab Art: Objects, Histories, and Methodologies,” in Doha, Qatar, on December 16–17, 2010. Emerging and established scholars shared research, methodologies, and thoughts on the future of the field. In addition, AMCA joined Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in celebrating the institution’s subsequent opening on December 30.
AMCA mourns the passing of its dear friend and esteemed colleague, Rhonda Saad. In her memory, the organization has established the Rhonda Saad Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Modern Arab Art. Submissions must be produced between June 2010 and October 2011 and may not exceed thirty-five pages, excluding notes and bibliography. They also must be unpublished and sent via email. AMCA will award $500 to the author of the winning paper at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in December 2011. The prize is sponsored by donations from generous individuals. Deadline: October 1, 2011.
AMCA welcomes Anneka Lenssen, a PhD candidate in the History, Criticism, and Theory of Architecture and Art Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, to its board of directors as treasurer. Lenssen, who recently received a Fulbright scholarship to study the artistic and intellectual movements in Syria from 1960 to 1980, is hard at work on her dissertation, which examines “The Shape of the Support: Painting in Syria’s Twentieth Century.”
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
At its recent annual conference, held on May 23, 2011, the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) elected new officers to its board. Jill Hartz, executive director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in Eugene, was elected president for a three-year term. Hartz succeeds David Alan Robertson, the Ellen Philips Katz Director of the Mary and Leigh Block Art Museum at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The new vice president of strategic planning is Brent Tharp, director of the Georgia Southern University Museum in Statesboro. Kris Anderson, director of the Jacob Lawrence Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, has become vice president of communications, and taking over as treasurer is Michiko Okaya, director of art galleries and curator of the College Art Collection at Lafayette College’s Williams Center for the Arts in Easton, Pennsylvania. The new secretary is Lynn Marsden-Atlass, director of the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
AAMG summons new papers from members for its next annual conference, to be held on April 28, 2012, at the the University of Minnesota’s Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis. Papers should refer to the conference topic, “Tools of Engagement: Securing Commitment on Campus.” Deadline: September 15, 2011.
Association of Historians of American Art
The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) is offering a travel grant covering expenses (up to $500) for an ABD student of historical art of the United States who is participating in the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. The recipient must be an active AHAA member enrolled in a graduate program. To enter, please submit the name of the session you plan to participate in and your paper title to Melissa Dabakis, AHAA secretary, using the online form. Deadline: February 1, 2012.
In order to sustain its commitment to scholarship, AHAA has inaugurated an option for lifetime membership. Dues are $750, of which $730 is tax deductible.
The second AHAA symposium will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 12–13, 2012. Details about the symposium will be coming soon.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
The Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) has launched a new and improved website that features benefits for HIAA members as well as public resources for the study of Islamic art and culture. Please consult the Events & Exhibitions section for more information on upcoming HIAA programs at the CAA Annual Conference, the Middle East Studies Association’s annual meeting, and the American Oriental Society’s annual meeting.
Historians of Netherlandish Art
The Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) has published a new issue of its open-access, peer-reviewed Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art. Appearing twice a year, the journal examines Netherlandish art produced during the early modern period (1400–1750) and other work as it relates to Netherlandish art. The new issue comprises four articles: Els Stronks’s “Never to Coincide: The Identities of Dutch Protestants and Dutch Catholics in Religious Emblematics,” expanding on discrepancies between Protestant and Catholic literary practices and identity in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic; Michael Zell’s “Rembrandt’s Gifts: A Case Study of Actor-Network-Theory,” discerning the relevance of said social theor to the artist’s dealings with his patrons and collectors; Virginie Spenlé’s “‘Savagery’ and ‘Civilization’: Dutch Brazil in the Kunst- and Wunderkammer,” focusing on the collection of exotic objects such as the notorious coconut cup and the shifts in status of such objects; and Renée Kistemaker’s “Between Local Pride and National Ambition: The ‘Amsterdam Museum’ of the Royal Dutch Antiquarian Society and the New Rijksmuseum,” discussing the tension between the national and international aims of the new Rijksmuseum.
International Association of Art Critics
The United States chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) has appointed two new board members—Jill Connor and João Ribas—by a unanimous vote at its recent annual meeting, held on May 23, 2011. Both will serve the organization through May 2012. Connor is the New York editor of Whitehot Magazine, editor of On-Verge, and a contributor to AfterImage, ArtUS, Art in America, Interview, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, and Sculpture. Ribas, a curator at the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, previously held the same title at the Drawing Center in New York. His writing has appeared in numerous art and culture publications.
International Association of Word and Image Studies
The International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS/AIERTI) has published a bilingual volume containing papers from the eighth International Conference of Word and Image, held at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris in 2008. Edited by Véronique Plesch, Catriona MacLeod, and Jan Baetens, Efficacité/Efficacy: How to Do Things with Words and Images (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011) focuses on three central inquiries: What do we do with texts and images? How do texts and images become active cultural agents? What do texts and images help us do? The book’s contributions, culled from specialists in the field, cover a wide range of topics, from visual poetry and garden theory to new media art and ekphrasis. The publication aims to offer a broad survey of interactions among language, imagery, anthropology, memory, and writing, presenting a cutting-edge analysis of the study of word and image.
International Sculpture Center
The International Sculpture Center (ISC) is accepting nominations for the 2011 Outstanding Educator Award, which recognizes individual artist educators who have excelled at teaching sculpture in institutions of higher learning. Candidates for this award should be masters of sculptural processes and techniques who have devoted their careers to the education of the next generation and to the advancement of the field as a whole. Anyone can nominate a qualified educator; international submissions are welcomed and encouraged. Recipients receive a feature article in Sculpture, a lifetime ISC professional-level membership, and recognition at an award ceremony to be held at their educational institution (which also receives benefits, such as acknowledgement in Sculpture and a one-year ISC university-level membership). Deadline: October 21, 2011.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) seeks papers for the third annual IAS–Kress Lecture Series, taking place in Venice, Italy, in late May or early June 2012. This series enthusiastically promotes intellectual exchanges between art historians of North America and the international community of scholars living or working in Italy. Papers should present a topic related to the host city from any period. One distinguished scholar, necessarily an active IAS member, will receive an honorarium of $700 and an additional $500 allowance for travel and other conference-related expenses. Deadline: January 4, 2012.
IAS provides travel grants to graduate students and recent PhD recipients presenting papers at the annual meetings of the Renaissance Society of America, the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, the Society of Architectural Historians, the International Congress on Medieval Studies, and the College Art Association. Submissions need not be presented at IAS-sponsored sessions but must consider the art or architecture of Italy. International submissions are encouraged. Deadline: November 1, 2011.
The IAS newsletter, published quarterly and sent to all members via email, is accepting exhibition reviews, short articles, and announcements related to Italian art and architecture. Please contact Kay Arthur, the newsletter editor, with any questions or to send submissions. Deadline: September 15, 2011.
Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology
The San Francisco–based Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) has appointed Jeffrey N. Babcock as interim executive director. A current member and former chairman of the organization’s board, Babcock has over thirty years of experience as a senior nonprofit arts and academic executive, consultant, event and media producer, and entrepreneur. He aims to diversify the goals of Leonardo/ISAST and to expand the reach of ArtScience.
Paul Thomas, associate professor in the College of Fine Art at the University of New South Wales in Australia, will moderate a Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF) workshop in collaboration with the Australian Forum at this year’s International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2011) in Istanbul, Turkey. The workshop, entitled “Trans-disciplinary Visual Arts, Science, and Technology Renewal Post New Media Assimilation” and sponsored by the National Institute for Experimental Arts, will address issues encountered in fusing curricula across diverse fields and developing transdisciplinary research and teaching for research and teaching.
The next International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2012), entitled “Machine Wilderness: Re-envisioning Art, Technology, and Nature” and taking place September 19–24, 2012, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is accepting proposals for papers, workshops, and panels for the formal symposium. Interested parties may also submit suggestions for residencies, artworks, and performances to take place in Albuquerque throughout fall 2012 in conjunction with the event. Deadline: October 15, 2011.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) offers student scholarships to offset the cost of attending the 2012 national conference, “Intimacy and Voyeurism: the Public/Private Divide in Photography,” to be held March 22–25, 2012, in San Francisco. Applicants must be SPE student members currently enrolled as full-time undergraduate or graduate students at a postsecondary institution, concentrating or majoring in photography but not graduating before the end of the 2011–12 academic year. In addition to a cash award, SPE will waive the conference fee and provide a one-year membership. Ten SPE Awards and one SPE Award for Innovations in Imaging will each feature a $500 travel stipend. The Freestyle Crystal Apple Award for Outstanding Achievement in Black and White Photography, generously sponsored by Freestyle Photographic Supplies, includes a $5,000 cash prize and recognition for the sponsoring faculty member. Deadline: November 1, 2011.
Visual Resources Association
The Visual Resources Association (VRA) has recently posted Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images, originally published in 2006, on its website. The public may read the document online or download it as PDFs. Written and organized by Murtha Baca, Patricia Harpring, Elisa Lanzi, Linda McRae, and Ann Whiteside, Cataloging Cultural Objects establishes a metadata standard for the cultural-heritage community. A related online resource, CCO Commons, provides examples and training tools for practical application of the standard, defines key concepts, and offers a toolkit for users. CCO Commons aims to shape and manage information for images of art and architecture, allow increased access to collections, and educate art administrators on best cataloguing practices for museums, libraries, and archives.
Women’s Caucus for Art
The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) has announced five recipients of its 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award: Whitney Chadwick, professor emerita of San Francisco State University in California; Suzanne Lacy, artist and chair of fine arts at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles; Trinh T. Minh-ha, a filmmaker, composer, author, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley; Ferris Olin, curator, librarian, and professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey; and Bernice Steinbaum, a gallerist and advocate for female artists.
In addition, WCA will present its President’s Award for Art and Activism to two women: Cathy Salser, founder of A Window Between Worlds, a national public-art program initiated in 1991 that provides positivity and art therapy to battered women and children; and Karen Davalos, an accomplished author who is also chair and associate professor of Chicana/o studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
The awards ceremony will be held in Los Angeles on February 25, 2012, in conjunction with the organization’s fortieth anniversary celebration and conference, also syncing with the CAA’s 100th Annual Conference. The awards ceremony, free and open to the public, transpires from 6:00 to 7:30 PM in the ballroom of the Kyoto Grand Hotel and Gardens, 120 South Los Angeles Street. A ticketed gala, called “Momentum” and taking place 8:00–11:00 PM, follows the ceremony. Gala plans are still being finalized.
September Picks from CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — Sep 09, 2011
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts produces a curated list, called CWA Picks, of recommended exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship in North America and around the world.
The CWA Picks for September 2011 include an academic conference hosted by Purdue University in Indiana that addresses tenure issues for women professors. The picks also highlight several exhibitions of historical and contemporary art on view in the United States and abroad. In Nashville, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents Travey Snelling’s “Woman on the Run,” and the Philadelphia Museum of Art will soon open the much-anticipated Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion, which looks at the architect’s furniture, objects, and footwear.
In Europe, the Palazzo Reale in Milan is staging Artemisia Gentileschi: Story of a Passion, the Baroque painter’s first-ever survey in Italy. Up north in Brussels, a contemporary art center is showing work by the twentieth-century Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow, and Tate Britain in London is presenting a unique group exhibition called Thin Black Line(s).
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.
Image: Zaha Hadid, WMF Flatware, 2007, stainless steel, dinner fork, 8¾ in.; salad fork, 6⅝ in.; dinner knife, 9⅛ in.; teaspoon, 5⅞ in.; soup spoon, 8⅞ in. Made by Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik AG, Geislingen, Germany (photograph provided by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Zaha Hadid Architects)
George Thomas Noszlopy: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — Aug 31, 2011
Adrian Hicken, a professor at Bath Spa University in England, is the author of Apollinaire, Cubism, and Orphism (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002).
George Thomas Noszlopy
The sudden death of George Thomas Noszlopy on June 5, 2011, age 78, removes a singular and memorable personality from the ranks of British art historians. A longtime member of CAA and a foundation member of the Association of Art Historians, he made notable contributions to the teaching and dissemination of art history in England for almost fifty years.
For more than a decade at Birmingham Polytechnic, Noszlopy served as course director of an ambitious and challenging master’s degree program of which he had been a principal instigator and architect in the early 1970s. At its height and under his aegis, this department was, perhaps, the largest and one of the most successful for postgraduate study of history of art and design in the country. To this achievement may be added his years of service as a regional convenor and tutor for the Open University and his supervision of many doctoral research candidates, an activity he continued as emeritus professor at Birmingham City University.
Born and educated in Budapest, Noszlopy belonged to a generation formed under two successive regimes: first the right-wing, pseudoparliamentarianism of Admiral Miklós Horthy and then the postwar Stalinism of Mátyás Rákosi and the tragic Imre Nagy. During these years black humor became the language of criticism, if not a technique of survival. Noszlopy was not alone in developing a somewhat wry, sardonic attitude. This was to become mollified later in life with an appreciative embrace of the ironic.
Noszlopy published some poetry while still attending gymnasium, but recognizing these efforts to be too derivative, he turned increasingly to the writing of art criticism and the study of art history. His early work matured in direct contact with major figures such as George Lukács and Robert Berény. Noszlopy shared their desire to search for radical alternatives to the then-dominant Stalinist orthodoxy, an attitude epitomized by his slightly older contemporary at university, the writer, poet, and activist István Eörsi, with whom Noszlopy served in the army.
Noszlopy took his first degree in museology (art history and subsidiary subjects) from Eötvös Lóránd University in 1956. His earliest academic experiences were blighted by his family’s “class alien” designation and the constant investigation of his alleged Trotskyist views. The decision to debar him from all universities and colleges in the country was repealed only after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953.
During the revolutionary fervor of October 1956, Noszlopy was elected to the Revolutionary Committee of the Hungarian Artists’ Association but was soon arrested following the second Soviet military intervention later that year. He escaped from custody and left Hungary, thanks to the sympathetic assistance of an influential friend. Adopting the transitory existence of a stateless individual, he first lived in Vienna, then had a short sojourn in Paris. Noszlopy later remembered this relatively short period, when a single suitcase held his few possessions, as the most intense sense of freedom he had ever experienced.
After Paris, where he was introduced to a circle of scholars around André Chastel, Noszlopy settled in London, having accepted a grant from the Courtauld Institute of Art. He joined the expatriate intelligentsia gathered around the Irodalmi Ujság (Literary Gazette), the organ of the Hungarian Writers’ Union in exile, becoming a regular contributor until 1961 when the editorial office moved from London to Paris. Thus for some five years Noszlopy was an active participant in this cultural milieu, presided over by such established figures as the essayist and editor Béla Szász, the poet and essayist László Cs. Szabó, the poet György Faludy, and the novelist Tamás Aczél. When Gyula Illyés, the pioneer of surrealist and expressionistic leftist poetry from the interwar years and the leading socialist spokesman for the oppressed peasant class, visited England, Noszlopy acted as his guide.
By this time Noszlopy was a student at the Courtauld, where the renowned Hungarian scholar Johannes Wilde was then coming to the close of his tenure as deputy director. Three years after graduating in 1960, and with the support of Leopold Ettlinger at the Warburg Institute, Noszlopy secured a full-time teaching post at Coventry College of Art. Shortly afterward, he moved to a similar position at Birmingham College of Art and remained in Birmingham throughout his subsequent career.
As an art historian, Noszlopy was quick to embrace the methods of Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky. Controversially, while still at the Courtauld, he had extended this methodology to the examination of the iconography of Pablo Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon, to the displeasure of Anthony Blunt. This approach to early-twentieth-century art became evident in Noszlopy’s subsequent studies and seminars on Guillaume Apollinaire and on allegorical imagery in Cubism. The manuscript of a book, “Robert Delaunay’s ‘La Ville de Paris’ and the origins of Orphic Cubism…,” rested in the hands of a publisher for some time but fell victim to an economic downturn. It never appeared. Had a book been published then (1973) it would surely have secured Noszlopy a deserved position among the early, postformalist revisionist historians of Cubism and Orphism.
In 1991 Noszlopy received a DPhil summa cum laude from his alma mater, Eötvös Lóránd University, in recognition of his research on Apollinaire and art in Paris before 1914. This event was emblematic of the scholar’s emotional and physical reconnection with Hungary and his intellectual roots. After years of enforced absence from the country, the thawing of East–West relations offered opportunities for visits, for renewing old friendships, and for reclaiming treasured family possessions. These rediscoveries catalyzed an essay on Tivadar Kosztka Csontváry and two short monographs: the first on an older contemporary, the painter György Gordon, was followed by one devoted to Gordon’s first wife, the caricaturist Edma (Márta Edinger).
While devoting much time to Renaissance and early-twentieth-century European art, Noszlopy was highly responsive to, and enthusiastic about, aspects of British art and crafts hitherto ignored, undervalued, or maligned by local populations and professionals. His study of the painter Bryan Pearce in 1964 was the first monograph devoted to the artist. This was followed by a “Note on West’s ‘Apotheosis of Nelson’” and essays and lectures on the iconography of Britannia. The four volumes in the series Public Sculpture of Britain, surveying the entire West Midlands of England, which Noszlopy had brought to press since 1998, make a fitting memorial to the humanity and humanistic breadth of a scholar who lived and worked in the region for most of his life.
Summer Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 31, 2011
In its semimonthly roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, curators, collectors, museum directors, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. Of special note is Adrian Hicken’s text on the Hungarian-born British art historian George Thomas Noszlopy, written especially for CAA.
- Tadek Beutlich, a teacher, printmaker, and textile artist whose experiments with three-dimensional weaving toured internationally in the 1960s, passed away on April 16, 2011, at 88. Beutlich authored The Technique of Woven Tapestry (1967) and pushed the boundaries of his medium further with “free-warp” tapestries, a technique that created wall hangings and freestanding pieces that resembled living organisms
- Robert Breer, an artist and animator who cofounded the Film-makers’ Cooperative in New York and taught the medium at Cooper Union from 1971 to 2001, passed away on August 13, 2011, at age 84. A major figure in Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), Breer began animating his own abstract paintings, which he referred to as “Form Phases,” in the 1950s, successfully derailing narrative and assaulting the viewer with movement and speed through glitchy imagery
- Charles E. Buckley, director of the Currier Museum of Art (1955–64) and the Saint Louis Art Museum (1964–75) who helped enlarge the collections of both institutions with American and European works, furniture, and wares, died on June 26, 2011, at age 86. He served as president of the American Association of Museums from 1972 to 1974, helping to establish the organization’s important accreditation system
- Duncan Campbell, a London art dealer who championed modern British printmaking and promoted the White Stag group of the 1930s, died on February 14, 2011, at the age of 66
- Edmund Carpenter, an archeologist and anthropologist who with Marshall McLuhan at the University of Toronto laid the foundation for modern media studies, died on July 1, 2011, at age 88. Carpenter’s work considered the effects of media on human interactions, supported by investigations of tribal peoples in Papua New Guinea in the 1970s and further research at the Museum of Ethnology in Basel in the 1980s. He also edited the journal Explorations and gathered the papers of the art historian Carl Schuster, published in twelve volumes
- Irene Chou (born Zhou Luyun), a prominent artist of the New Ink Painting movement in Hong Kong who reinvigorated the Zen and Tao-derived “one stroke” technique in oil, acrylic, and watercolor, died on July 1, 2011, at the age of 87. She was a founding member of two collectives, the In Tao Art Association (Yuan Dao huahui) and the One Art Group (Yi huahui), which sought new ways to combine Eastern and Western techniques while maintaining the principles of traditional Chinese art
- Roger Davies, the chief book designer for the British Museum from the 1970s through the 1990s whose work won numerous awards, has passed away at the age of 72
- Biren De, an internationally exhibited Indian artist who depicted universal energies through geometry, light, and traditional Hindu or Buddhist symbols, died on March 12, 2011. He was 85 years old
- Fred Dubery, a figurative painter known for his quietly colorful and off-kilter oils and a longtime professor at the Royal Academy Schools, passed away on April 8, 2011, at the age of 84. He was also a lifetime member of the New English Art Club
- T. Lux Feininger, a painter and photographer who documented the daily lives of the German avant-garde and the Bauhaus in particular, died on July 7, 2011, at the age of 101. After emigrating to the United States in 1936, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Virginia Fields, a distinguished scholar, educator, and the first curator of Precolumbian art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, died on June 15, 2011, at the age of 58. In her twenty two years at the museum, Fields helped acquire more than three thousand ancient objects for the collection, organized blockbuster shows on Mayan and Olmec art, and allocated new resources for the study of ancient American art
- Gunnar Fischer, Ingmar Bergman’s cinematographer who shot twelve of the director’s films between 1948 and 1960, including The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), and The Devil’s Eye (1960), passed away on June 11, 2011. He was 90 years old
- Trevor Frankland, a British painter of abstract scenes who served as president of the Royal Watercolor Society from 2003 to 2006, died on April 17, 2011, at the age of 79
- Lucian Freud, a major twentieth-century artist whose dedication to painting the human figure kept stark realism alive throughout an era of modernist abstraction, died on July 20, 2011. He was 88 years old. He was also the grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud
- Ussman Ghauri, a celebrated Pakastani printmaker known for his investigations of alphabets, symbolic narratives, and societal distress, died on April 9, 2011, at the age of 41. Ghauri was also an associate professor at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and served as a curator for the IVS Gallery and the Koel Gallery
- Selwyn Goldsmith, an advocate for the functional evolution of architecture in England and the author of Universal Design (2000) and Designing for the Disabled (1963), a pioneering guidebook that suggested adjustments for facilities and buildings to better accommodate handicapped people, died on April 3, 2011. He was 78
- Dov Gottesman, the president of the Israel Museum, a collector of art, and the recipient of the 2005 King Solomon Award for art patronage, died on February 22, 2011, at age 82. Gottesman founded the Artist’s Portfolio Project, a program and workshop that published twenty series of prints by Israeli artists and that turned into the Gottesman Etching Center
- Fred Griffin, an artist based in the Pacific Northwest who taught graphic design at the Art Institute of Seattle and the Burnley School of Professional Art, passed away on April 23, 2011. He was 79 years old
- Nancy Hamon, a passionate philanthropist and cultural advocate in Dallas who served on the board of trustees at the Dallas Museum of Art, passed away on July 31, 2011, at age 92. Hamon helped fund the acquisition of the Nora and John Wise Collection of ancient American artworks and objects, the construction of new exhibition spaces and a library at the museum, and the Jake and Nancy Hamon Art Library at Southern Methodist University
- Melissa Hines, the director of cultural partnerships at the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs since 2004 and a member of the King County Arts Commission (now called 4Culture) from 1996 to 2001, died on April 8, 2011. She was 63 years old
- John Hoyland, an English painter and printmaker who created emotionally charged abstract imagery that favored size, pigment, and form over visual references, passed away on July 21, 2011. He was 76 years old
- Freda Koblick, a prominent San Franciscan sculptor who in the 1960s produced abstract work in cast acrylic, passed away June 18, 2011, at the age of 90. Before using the new medium, she designed functional objects in plastic, often collaborating with architects
- Owen Land, an American teacher and filmmaker associated with the Fluxus movement who was keen on disregarding narrative in exchange for a more essentially visual experience of film, died on June 8, 2011, at the age of 67. Born George Landow, he was the founder of the Experimental Theatre Workshop in the Performance Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Lawrence Lee, a master glass artisan responsible for creating large public stained-glass compositions throughout Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, died on April 25, 2011, at age 101. He was the author of several books, among them Stained Glass (1967), Stained Glass, an Illustrated Guide (1976), and The Appreciation of Stained Glass (1977)
- Jerome Liebling, a member of the Photo League, a collective of photojournalists documenting the social climate in New York, in the 1930s and 1940s and the founder of photography and film programs at the University of Minnesota and Hampshire College, died on July 27, 2011. He was 87
- Gilbert Luján aka Magú, a teacher, painter, sculptor, muralist, and pioneer of the Chicano art movement in California since the 1960s, died on July 24, 2011, at the age of 70. Magu was a founding member of the art collective Los Four, responsible for enhancing the political and aesthetic aims of Chicano art
- Norma “Duffy” Lyon, the official Iowa State Fair butter cow sculptor from 1960 to 2006, died on June 26, 2011, at the age of 81. Lyon also created likenesses of celebrities and presidents, and even produced a life-size reproduction of Leonardo’s The Last Supper from two thousand pounds of butter
- Ján Mančuška, an experimental writer, painter, and video artist who challenged traditional presentations of art within architectural environments and was notorious for his conceptually playful installations, died on July 1, 2011. He was 39 years old
- Rachel Maxwell-Hyslop, a teacher, archaeologist, and president of the British School of Archaeology in the 1990s, died on May 9, 2011, at age 97. A scholar of jewelry, Maxwell-Hyslop wrote extensively on Bronze Age weapons and tools from West Asia
- Eddy G. Nicholson, an industrialist who was an avid collector of early American art and furniture, passed away on June 16, 2011, at the age of 73
- Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, a French Egyptologist who rescued antiquities from southern Nubia in the 1960s and mounted the groundbreaking King Tut exhibition at the Musée du Louvre in 1967, died on June 23, 2011. She was 97 years old
- George Thomas Noszlopy, a Hungarian-born scholar and longtime professor at Birmingham Polytechnic in England who produced novel explorations on early-twentieth-century art, Renaissance art, and British art and crafts, passed away on June 5, 2011, at age 78. Adrian Hicken has written a special text on him for CAA
- Breon O’Casey, a modernist jeweler, weaver, printmaker, painter, and sculptor who was a member of the St. Ives School in England, which included Barbara Hepworth, died on May 22, 2011. He was 83
- Roman Opalka, a Polish painter recognized for his series Opalka 1965/1 — ∞, which numerically annotated his days starting in 1965 with the number one, passed away on August 6, 2011. He was 79 years old
- Ruth Perelman, a cultural patron in Philadelphia who contributed to the expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and funded the Perelman Building, which opened in 2007, died on July 31, 2011. She was 90
- Edward Carlos Plunkett, an Irish abstract painter known as Lord Dunsany who emerged in the 1960s but traded in art for design in the 1980s, died on May 24, 2011, at the age of 71. He helped found de Marsillac Plunkett, for which he created furniture and decorative vessels to complement his wife’s architectural work, yet returned to painting in the 1990s
- Wonil Rhee, a prolific South Korean curator who organized numerous exhibitions and biennials around the world, died on January 11, 2011, at the age of 50. Working at several musuems and independently, Rhee diligently promoted contemporary Asian artists and evoked broader international dialogue via exhibitions such as Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves (2007) at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Germany
- Albert M. Sack, a New York–based antique dealer and the author of Fine Points of American Furniture: Good, Better, Best (1950), an important criterion for aesthetic judgment of furniture for collectors and nonspecialists alike, died on May 29, 2011. He was 96
- Stanley Seeger, a coy patron of art known for a stunning collection of homes in the United Kingdom and an expansive collection of work by Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Egon Schiele, and Francis Bacon, died on June 24, 2011. He was 81 years old
- Robert Sklar, a professor of cinema studies at New York University from 1977 to 2009 and the author of several publications exploring how film influences morals, beliefs, and social context, including Movie-Made America: A History of American Movies (1975), died on July 2, 2011, at age 74. An active member of the National Film Preservation Board, Sklar served on the New York Film Festival selection committee during the 1990s
- Geoffrey Squire, a designer and an educator at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, both in London, died in June 2011 at the age of 86. Squire was the author of Dress, Art, and Society, 1560–1970 (1974) and The Observer’s Book of European Costumes (1975)
- Alex Steinweiss, an art director at Columbia Records who in 1940 invented the modern album cover when he packaged a Rodgers and Hart 78 RPM record with a grandly lit marquee on the sleeve rather than a flat monochrome packaging, died on July 17, 2011. He was 94
- Zdenek Sykora, a Czech artist whose computer-generated compositions in the 1960s garnered attention for their relentless mathematical method and abstraction within predetermined rules, died on July 12, 2011, at age 91. He was also a professor at Charles University in Prague
- Prince Twins Seven-Seven, a Nigerian painter associated with the Oshogbo School in Ibadan who focused on Yoruban myths through intricate patterns and bright colors, died on June 16, 2011, at the age of 67. His work was shown internationally, including the controversial 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la Terre in Paris
- James Earnest Vivieaere, a New Zealand–based artist whose multimedia and video work demonstrated the multifarious identity of Pacific Islanders outside their enforced exoticism, died on June 3, 2011, at age 63. As a curator, Vivieaere produced the survey exhibitions Bottled Ocean (1994) in his home country and The Great Journey: In Pursuit of the Ancestral Realm (2009) in Taiwan
- Shelagh Wakeley, an installation artist who focused on integrating continuity and sensation into public spaces in Britain while contrasting nature and artifice, died on March 19, 2011, at the age of 78. She met the Brazilian artist Tunga in 1989 and collaborated with him on video projects in the 1990s
- George White, architect of the American Capitol from 1971 to 1995 who was responsible for maintaining the Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and the surrounding grounds, died on June 17, 2011, at the age of 90. White oversaw the complete restoration of the Capitol Building’s rotunda, renovations of the Supreme Court and Senate Chamber, and the revitalization of the electrical and transportation systems in Congressional office buildings
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 September listing.
2012 Distinguished Scholar Session Honors Rosalind Krauss
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 23, 2011
The 2012 Distinguished Scholar Session, taking place at the 100th Annual Conference in Los Angeles, will honor Rosalind Krauss, University Professor at Columbia University in New York. Yve-Alain Bois of the Institute for Advanced Studies will chair a session, called “The Theoretical Turn,” in which five to six participants—among them Harry Cooper, Jonathan Crary, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, and Hal Foster—will explore and celebrate Krauss’s many contributions to the history of art. The Distinguished Scholar Session will be held in Room 515B at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Thursday, February 23, 2:30–5:00 PM.
Krauss’s acute observation of twentieth-century art began at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she received her undergraduate degree in 1962. She began writing criticism in 1966, mostly for Artforum, while working on her PhD at Harvard University, which she earned in 1969. MIT Press published an expanded version of her dissertation as Terminal Iron Works: The Sculpture of David Smith in 1971.1
Krauss continued writing criticism and generating art-historical essays that challenged steadfast analyses of Auguste Rodin, the Surrealists, and Jackson Pollock, to name a few topics. She joined the Artforum editorial board in the late 1960s and appeared on the masthead as assistant editor from 1971 to 1974. Krauss and her colleague Annette Michelson left the magazine in 1975 to establish the scholarly October, which strove to forge a relationship between contemporary concerns and scholarship, with particular emphases on the history of modernism, its fundamental premises, and the ability of writing to reinvigorate the era. For Krauss and others, October was an opportunity to integrate artists such as Richard Serra and Sol LeWitt into their theoretical convictions and investigative criticism.
Krauss collected her essays into several influential books, including Passages in Modern Sculpture (1977), The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985), and Bachelors (1999). She has also written monographs on David Smith and Cindy Sherman, among others, as well as shorter books such as The Optical Unconscious (1993) and A Voyage on the North Sea (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000). Her curatorial work—which includes Joan Miro: Magnetic Fields (1971) and Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem (1994) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Richard Serra/Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in 1986—has resulted in significant advances in art history while relaying her amorous relationship with the provocations of Minimalism and the tactility of sculptural mediums. Most recently, she organized L’Informe: Mode d’emploi with Bois at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1996.
For the last decade, Krauss has battled what she calls the “post-medium condition”—the claim that a momentous shift from a singular artistic medium (such as canvas, plaster wall, or metal armature) to work that amalgamates various materials has only advanced ambiguity in art. In contrast, she suggests that the specificity of the aesthetic medium vitalizes modernism’s strengths, and that contemporary work that integrates text and technology has the capacity to triumph in similar terms. Perpetual Inventory (2011) is Krauss’s most recent publication intent on restoring logic and scrutinizing specificity in the history of art. A personal meditation on the relationships between aesthetics and memory, called Under Blue Cup, is forthcoming.
The integration of literary and philosophical references in her writing, combined with an enthusiasm for ravaging stagnant theories, has made Krauss a tenacious teacher and mentor. She joined Hunter College in New York in 1974, rising to Distinguished Professor both there and at the Graduate Center. In 1995 she transitioned to the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia, where she became Meyer Shapiro Professor of Modern Art and History and then, ten years later, University Professor. Krauss’s experiences as a scholar and educator culminated in the textbook Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004), a didactic yet vital interpretation of modern art that was coauthored by Bois, Buchloh, and Foster. (A revised edition is expected soon.) As a further testament to her academic success, Krauss was an honorary degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2008 and another from Harvard University in 2011.
CAA inaugurated its Distinguished Scholar Session in 2001, first honoring James S. Ackerman of Harvard University. Since then, the organization has recognized the most illustrious writers, teachers, and curators, including Leo Steinberg (2002), John Szarkowski (2006), Linda Nochlin (2007), Svetlana Alpers (2009), and Jonathan Brown (2011).
1. MIT Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has published Krauss’s books mentioned in this article, unless indicated otherwise.
People in the News
posted by CAA — Aug 17, 2011
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 2011
Academe
Laurel Jay Carpenter (left) performs with the Norwegian artist Terese Longva, an alumna of Alfred UniversityLaurel Jay Carpenter, a performance and installation artist, has received tenure and was promoted to associate professor of art at Alfred University in Alfred New York.
John Ford, an artist and an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, has accepted a position at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Jeremy Melius, a recent graduate of the University of California in Berkeley, has received an ACLS New Faculty Fellow to teach in the Department of the History of Art at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, for the 2011–12 and 2012–13 academic years.
Jeffrey Saletnik, who recently finished his doctorate at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has accepted an ACLS New Faculty Fellowship. He will teach as a visiting assistant professor of art at Amherst University in Amherst, Massachusetts, through academic year 2012–13.
Stacey L. Sloboda, a historian of eighteenth and nineteenth-century European art, has received tenure and was promoted to associate professor in the School of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
Museums and Galleries
Diane P. FischerDiane P. Fischer, an independent curator and scholar, has been appointed chief curator of the Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Donna Gustafson (photograph by Andrew Mitchell)Donna Gustafson has been appointed Andrew W. Mellon Liaison for Academic Programs and Curator at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Organizations and Publications
Reni Gower, professor in the Painting and Printmaking Department of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, has been elected as the representative from her state to the board of the Southeastern College Art Conference.
Michèle Hannoosh, professor of French in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Catriona MacLeod, associate professor of German and chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, have become the editors of the journal Word & Image: A Journal of Visual/Verbal Enquiry. They succeed the founding editor, John Dixon Hunt.
Elena PhippsElena Phipps, vice president of the Textile Society of America, based in Middletown, Delaware, has become president, succeeding Ruth Scheuing, who has resigned from the position.
Institutional News
posted by CAA — Aug 17, 2011
Read about the latest news from institutional members.
Institutional News 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 2011
The American Academy in Rome has upgraded their website to include images of the community at a higher resolution and dedicated sections for News, Events, Publications, and Society of Fellows. The site is compatible with mobile devices and will soon offer the content in Italian.
South view of the Michigan Avenue façade of the Art Institute of Chicago (photograph provided by the Art Institute of Chicago)The Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has received a $40,000 Access to Artistic Excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts on behalf of School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The reward will go toward the Teacher Institute of Contemporary Art, a professional-development program that will facilitate workshops and lectures on new media and visual arts for 120 high school teachers across the United States.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Lucie Berard (Child in White), 1883, oil on canvas, 24¼ x 19¾ in. Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1933.1172 (artwork in the public domain)The Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has also been awarded $400,000 from the Getty Foundation to help the Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative produce an online publication of forty-nine paintings and twenty-three drawings by Claude Monet and Pierre-August Renoir. The catalogue will be fully interactive and include features such as contemporary research, pigment analysis, access to underdrawings or infrared filters, a glossary of technical terms, and “sticky notes” for a user’s own observations.
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland has been granted an $80,000 award from the National Endowment for the Arts through the Access to Artistic Excellence program to aid the reinstallation of the West Wing for Contemporary Art, a collection that extends from Abstract Expressionism to the present. New lighting and technology systems will allow the museum to display light-sensitive objects and new media.
Julian Alden Weir, Portrait of John F. Weir, 1890, drypoint, 7 x 6 in. Brigham Young University Museum of Art (artwork in the public domain)Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, has received a $60,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to support the touring exhibition, The Weir Family, 1820–1920: Expanding the Traditions of American Art, which originated at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art.The funds will facilitate an accompanying catalogue and educational programs to investigate the contributions of John Weir and his two sons, Julian Alden Weir and John Ferguson Weir.
Frederic S. Remington, A Dash for the Timber, 1889, oil on canvas, 48¼ by 84⅛ in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas. 1961.381 (artwork in the public domain)The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, has received a $75,000 Picturing America School Collaboration Project Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the second year in a row. The grant will predominantly fund the 2011 Picturing America Teaching Institute, in which Texan educators in public, private, and home-schooling environments to learn about American art and its relevance to the classroom. The program also provides classroom resources, online curricula, student fieldt rips, and interactive video conferences.
The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, has been awarded a $45,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Arts through the Access to Artistic Excellence program. The museum will publish a catalogue on its permanent collection of glass, logging each item and providing previously unpublished scholarly analyses.
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has received two 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the category of fine arts: Picasso Looks at Degas by Elizabeth Cowling and Richard Kendell won a silver medal, and Eye to Eye: European Portraits 1450–1850 by Richard Rand and Kathleen M. Morris earned a bronze. The awards recognize original content, design, and production among independent, self-published, and university-press publications, as well as their impact on the community.
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has received $60,000 from the Access to Artistic Excellence program hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts. The fund will aid the reinstallation of the European and American works in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art’s collection, with an emphasis on flexibility and variety and a reinvigorated engagement with the public.
Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849, oil on canvas, 44 x 36 in. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (artwork in the public domain)The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, scheduled to open in Bentonville, Arkansas, in November 2011, has received an $800 million contribution on behalf of the Walton Family Foundation. The funds are allocated for operating needs, general endowment, and future capital needs.
The Dallas Museum of Art in Texas has been awarded an $85,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to create the Archival Exhibition Resources Online interface, which will enable the public to access digital content created for and during an exhibition, including images, video, audio, and other documents.
The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles has acquired Harald Szeemann’s extensive archive including correspondence with artists, proposals and brainstorms for exhibitions, documentary photographs of exhibitions, and other rare ephemera from his vibrant, international career as a curator. The Getty also attained Szeemann’s library, containing 28,000 volumes of monographs, artists’ books, and limited-edition publications.
The International Center of Photography in New York has been granted $100,000 through the Access the Artistic Excellence program of the National Endowment for the Arts to organize Roman Vishniac’s collection of more than 20,000 items from the early twentieth century. The collection encompasses many iconic photographs of Jewish life in Europe between the World Wars.
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, has received approximately $33,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to conduct a survey of 435 sculptural objects, ranging from antiques to contemporary work, and determine long-term plans for care and treatment. This conservation effort will support research and educational advancement; it will also increase access to the museum’s sculpture by facilitating public display and loans to institutions.
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, has been awarded $75,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to support an artist-in-residence program. In collaboration with the Plymouth School District, the Kohler will support eight visual artists during the 2011–12 school year for two weeks at a time.
Students from Maryland Institute College of Art teach art to Baltimore-area children in a recent festival in the Community Arts Partnerships program (photograph provided by Maryland Institute College of Art)Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore has been honored by the Corporation for National and Community Service for programs that allow their students and staff members to participate in volunteer efforts and generous civic engagement. The school has thus been admitted to the 2010 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.
The New York State Historical Association has received $16,000 from the Access to Artistic Excellence program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to support the conservation of seventy-three folk, Native American, and academic works of art housed in the Fenimore Art Museum. The award will animate the institution’s conservation priorities and treatment recommendations and facilitate a storage plan.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania has received a $250,000 exhibition grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to fund a midcareer retrospective of Zoe Strauss, a photographer and native Philadelphian who highlights blue-collar experiences and marginalized people and places. The show—comprising more than 125 prints placed between the photography galleries and the lobby—will also host an interactive kiosk designed by publishing and curatorial collective Megawords, a slide show of Strauss’s work projected on the museum’s façade, and select photographs appearing on billboards throughout the city.
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey,has been awarded $65,000 through the Access to Artistic Excellence program on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts to support public programs related to Momentum: Women/Art/Technology. This exhibition, organized by Rutgers’ Institute for Women and Art with the Mason Gross School of the Arts, will be accompanied by lectures and symposia, educational workshops, interactive web activities, and a film and video festival highlighting the work of established and contemporary female artists who manipulate technology.
The San Diego Museum of Art in California has received a $60,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to reinstall their permanent collection of East Asian art. Approximately four hundred works from Japan, Korea, and China from 1000 BCE to the present will be on display.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois has accepted a $5 million donation from Leroy Neiman, an artist and alumni, to build the Leroy Neiman Center, a two-story student hub opening in spring 2012. The architecture firm Valerio Dewalt Train Associates will fabricate the interior design of the space, which will house a café, lounge, art gallery, and more.
The University of Maryland in College Park has been honored with a $60,000 grant from the Access to Artistic Excellence program, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to support the conservation of the permanent collection at the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora. The award will facilitate the documentation of roughly 1,000 works, the addition of a full-time registrar, and further development of the collection’s management policies and procedures.
The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has received a $25,000 grant via the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence program to publish a catalogue documenting the Ackland Museum of Art’s collection of Mediterranean art. The publication will cite 225 objects in the collection hailing from Egyptian, Grecian, Etruscan, and Roman origins between the third and first millennia.
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has announced an eight-year collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to begin in 2015 at the Whitney’s landmark building, designed by Marcel Breuer. The Metropolitan will generate exhibitions and educational programming at the Breuer building with a global emphasis while supporting dialogue between the two distinct collections, publications, and educational initiatives. The Whitney will maintain a small space in the building for storage and permanent site-specific works.
The Yale Center for British Arts in New Haven, Connecticut, has launched a new online catalogue of their extensive collection and is offering free high-resolution images of all objects in the public domain. An exhibition, called Connections, will be on display through September 11, 2011, to emphasize the value of the vivacious holdings.
The Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, has been awarded $125,000 by the Access to Artistic Excellence grant program, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, to support the renovation of its ancient Mediterranean collection. The grant will initiate the construction of a new gallery to house the treasures from the university’s excavations in Dura-Europos in the 1930s and refurbish the existing exhibition space with another 13,000 objects from Egypt, Etruria, Greece, the Near East, and Rome.
September Issue of The Art Bulletin Features Essays on Michelangelo and John Sloan
posted by Christopher Howard — Aug 17, 2011
The September 2011 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, features an essay on Michelangelo’s drawings, in particular his cartoon for The Battle of Cascina (1504), and an article on urban scenes by the twentieth-century American painter John Sloan. Two additional contributions explore women and portraiture in postrevolutionary France and Roman mosaic labyrinths in North Africa. Book reviews on the art of Byzantium and imperial China, Mamluk culture, and the impact of modernist primitivism round out the issue.
In “Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Subject of Art,” Joost Keizer uncovers Michelangelo’s zeal for disegno, evasion of iconography, and emphasis on educational models for pupils—all of which contribute to art history via visual commentary on historical moments. In his study, Michael Lobel examines the significant body of work generated by John Sloan in 1907 that experiments with spatial orientation and pigment while challenging the artist’s identity as a painter, illuminated by meditations on New York as a shifting metropolis and his background in illustration.
Amy Freund’s cover essay for The Art Bulletin elucidates the importance of portraiture in France after 1789 in which female portraits, like that of Thérésia Cabarrus by Jean-Louis Laneuville in 1796, incorporated women into the French Revolution’s political presence and momentum toward engaged citizenship in the new republic. In “Roman Labyrinth Mosaics and the Experience of Motion,” Rebecca Molholt explores the effects of a transitory viewing experience within Roman baths in North Africa and the intermingling of architecture, myth, and the spectator.
The Reviews section has a particular emphasis on ancient cultures, starting with Jessica Rawson’s discussion of ancient commercial artists in China and Anthony J. Barbieri-Low’s book, Artisans in Early Imperial China. Charles Barber highlights the complexities of the Byzantine icon through the lens of innovations in fifteenth-century Cretan painting, as well as the sensory experience in Byzantium as described by Clemena Antonova in Space, Time, and Presence in the Icon and Bissera V. Pentcheva’s The Sensual Icon. Several books on the history of the Mamluk period, where military slaves became soldiers and eventually rulers of an empire across Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, and greater Syria, are reviewed by Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, including Cairo of the Mamluks by Doris Behrens-Abouseif. The final review is an analysis of the tension between African art and Western modernism by Elizabeth Harney, in which she sites Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens by Wendy A. Grossman and Picasso’s Collection of African and Oceanic Art by Peter Stepan as the newest sources to investigate the legacy of primitivism.
Please see the full table of contents for September to learn more. CAA sends The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and to those individuals who choose to receive the journal as a benefit of their membership.
The next issue of The Art Bulletin, to be published in December 2011, will feature essays on the portraiture of nuns in colonial Mexico, on the sociological context of Hokusai’s famous print Under the Wave off Kanagawa, and on Federico Zuccari’s painting The Encounter of Christ and Veronica on the Way to Calvary, among other articles and reviews.