CAA News Today
2011 Advocacy Days in Washington, DC
posted by Christopher Howard — May 24, 2011
Humanities Advocacy Day took place on March 6–8, 2011, and Arts Advocacy Day on April 4–5, 2011. Five members of the CAA Board of Directors represented CAA: Linda Downs, Barbara Nesin, Judith Thorpe, and Jean Miller, who contribute reports below, and Andrea Kirsh. CAA’s development and marketing manager, Sara Hines, also joined the ranks of attendees, which ranged from seasoned arts administrators, artists, scholars, curators, and educators to young students aspiring to enter these fields.
Humanities Advocacy Day
Linda Downs is CAA executive director and recently became secretary of the National Humanities Alliance board of directors.
On March 8, I represented CAA during Humanities Advocacy Day in Washington, DC. Sponsored by the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), this three-day event gathered advocates from across the country to meet on Capitol Hill to inform their senators and representatives about the importance of the humanities in their districts and to support federal funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Advocates usually don’t meet their representatives directly, but their staffers tally every visit and report on messages sent.
This year, more than two hundred people from colleges, universities, professional associations, and state humanities organizations visited 107 House and Senate offices representing thirty-four states. Participants asked that Congress maintain the NEH’s enacted level of $167.5 million for fiscal year 2010. The strong attendance indicated how important this annual event is and, in particular, that an increasing number of art-minded citizens were highly concerned about the proposed Congressional budget reduction that would eliminate the NEH. With colleagues from the state of New York, I targeted new members of Congress to inform them about the importance of the humanities in their districts.
Preceding Humanities Advocacy Day was the NHA annual meeting, which took place March 6–7 and included advocacy training, a workshop on finding grants, and panel presentations. In his keynote address, David Skorton, president of Cornell University, emphasized the importance of humanities education for cultural understanding and for the security of the United States. During a luncheon, Leslie Berlowitz, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, announced the launch of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, which will bring together scholars and corporate leaders to propose steps to strengthen the humanities nationally. On one panel, three individuals demonstrated how effective, important, and creative current humanities research is: Ashley Marshall, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, uses digital statistics to reinterpret eighteenth-century studies; Tara McPherson, associate professor in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, established the Vectors Journal at her school, an online venture that introduces an interactive publishing platform to humanities scholars; and Damon Dozier, director of public affairs at the American Anthropological Association, described the association’s RACE project that explores all aspects of the concept of race and has attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers over the past three years.
The humanities community made a strong impact on Congress this year. At this time of writing (late April 2011), the NEH remains in the Congressional budget, albeit at a reduced amount.
Arts Advocacy Day
Barbara Nesin is an artist, a professor and department chair of art foundations at the Art Institute of Atlanta in Georgia, and the president of the CAA Board of Directors.
Sponsored by Americans for the Arts, Arts Advocacy Day offered a full day of training followed by a second day of meeting Congressional representatives on Capitol Hill with the aim of preserving federal funding for the arts during an especially challenging economic period. During my first time attending the event, I learned how to speak about not just the intrinsic value of the arts, but also their real economic value in this country and the importance of the arts in education. In training sessions hosted by Americans for the Arts, my colleagues and I were given the voting history and committee work of our representatives and, when in conversation with them later, were told to highlight how the arts function as a business magnet, create jobs and tax revenue, attract tourism, and foster the country’s creative advantage internationally. We didn’t neglect education, as the arts strengthen academic performance in a variety of disciplines, such as science, technology, English, and math, and contribute to an innovative, competitive workforce.
This year, advocates had to prepare a unified message that was pertinent to current budget and political realities. Furthermore, those of us who wear more than one hat—for me, being a CAA board member, a professor and administrator, and a resident of Georgia—needed to understand the context of each position in relation to the overall mission for the day. We had to make a strong case to save the NEA’s budget for fiscal year 2012 and to maintain $40 million appropriated for the Department of Education’s Arts in Education programs and grants.
Americans for the Arts provided me with a wealth of information about pressing state issues, identifying key politicians with critical influence and importantly emphasizing that now is not the time to point out disparities in federal support between, for example, the visual and performing arts. What was the right approach? A consistent, nonpartisan message supported by facts and real-life examples, practical solutions, and a convincing, definite ask.
Before coming to DC, I had consulted my home institution’s public-relations department to determine appropriate topics and strategies. I also reviewed issues close to CAA’s heart, ready to share information about tax reform in the arts: preserving incentives for charitable giving, extending the IRA Charitable Rollover, and rejecting attempts to create a hierarchy for deductions to nonprofits that discriminates against the arts. I also wanted to ask for support for the Artist–Museum Partnership Act—something CAA has advocated for many years—which would allow artists to deduct from their federal income tax the fair-market-value of works of art donated to and retained by nonprofit institutions. (Currently artists can only deduct the cost of their materials used to make the work). Improving the visa process for foreign guest artists was also on my list of topics.
Even though representatives from Georgia raced to attend emergency meetings regarding the difficult budget negotiations that threatened to close down the government that very week, my group managed to meet several of them and speak to the staff of others. In some cases, staffers invited us to leave informational materials provided by Americans for the Arts, which outline major funding issues and, through maps and statistics, pinpointed concentrations of arts-related business in each representative’s district—with actual dollar amounts.
Since my school has already cultivated excellent relationships with several Congressional leaders in my state, I built on that firm groundwork by sharing a sincere “thank you” for the specific ways in which each had already supported the arts, regardless of his party or voting record. These representatives—whether recognized friends of the arts or not—responded supremely to people from their own district, whether by residence or place of employment. On that local turf, there was not one who had not made some effort to demonstrate their concern for arts education and some type of arts programming to their own community. From that point, conversations went one of two ways.
To those who had previously opposed arts funding, I emphasized the significance of the arts to economic development—that is to say, I talked jobs, jobs, jobs. Armed with hard figures that proved how the arts generate substantial employment and investment in specific districts and nationally, I made the case that opposing arts funding puts many people out of work and damages local economies that depend on the arts to attract employers and business activity. Keep in mind that even a single arts event generates not only sales of tickets or art objects, but also uses numerous surrounding services and accommodations, including printers, web designers, restaurants, and hotels. These are not insignificant dollars, and no politician wants to be viewed by constituents as opposing much-needed, economically healthy free enterprise. In addition, staunch supporters of cutting taxes listened with interest when my group spoke about implementing tax benefits that would have a real impact on estates and museum collections. If such representatives were at all concerned about swing votes in their district, it would not cost much in real dollars for them to support some form of arts funding. Even a slight increase would have a dramatic and highly visible effect—something investors might call an attractive “rate of return.”
In the offices of strong supporters of the arts is where I successfully addressed other issues that CAA has been working on. Staffers in Representative John Lewis’s office told me that orphan works was not on their radar before but will be now, promising to research the subject and bring it to Lewis’s attention. Finally, we offered ourselves as resources to these elected officials and asked them for advice on what we could do to assist them.
I was gratified to see a good number of graduate students among the five hundred plus attending Arts Advocacy Day. As a CAA member and an art educator, I was keenly interested in what students had to say, especially when speaking from their personal experience. One young woman finishing her master’s in arts administration made an impassioned plea for assurance of jobs when she graduates. When I described CAA to them, several students in programs of social policy and arts administration were excited about becoming actively involved in the organization, particularly in the area of advocacy. CAA needs to continue building these connections.
As the largest organization for the visual arts in the country, CAA has significant membership numbers—more than 12,000 individuals and 1,800 institutions—that amplify considerably when counting those who belong to the affiliated societies, making us a potentially powerful voice. Congress listens to voting constituents. Although CAA doesn’t vote, it does represent an exponential body of voters. If we want the visual arts better represented on a national level, CAA is an ideal body to do so year round.
This year’s was a success: participants helped preserve federal funding for the arts in large measure, with much smaller cuts than originally proposed, and saw first-hand our full potential reach and influence. I encourage as many members as possible to attend future Arts Advocacy Days.
Arts Advocacy Day
Judith Thorpe is an artist, professor of photography, and head of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. She is also a member of the CAA Board of Directors.
Two years ago, riding on the recent election of Barack Obama and the promise of increased funding for the arts and humanities, participants in Arts and Humanities Advocacy Days felt vibrancy and excitement in the air. The atmosphere in Congressional offices during Arts Advocacy Day in 2011 contrasted with that optimism tremendously. Facing budget and partisanship battles daily, federal legislators threatened once again to not just reduce but extinguish all NEA initiatives and Department of Education programs for Arts in Education. In the end, Congress did not axe the endowment as feared and returned $25 million to Arts in Education for fiscal year 2012. Truth be told, these amounts are so small that their impact on the national budget is negligible. These annual skirmishes, however, continue to reflect the raging ideological battles regarding the arts in this country.
Events of a week in which Congress canceled appropriations hearings and a budget stalemate nearly closed down the federal government subdued advocacy meetings with senators, representatives, and their aides. My group from Connecticut found it difficult to advocate more than flat funding for the NEA, but we asked the offices of Senators Joseph Lieberman and Richard Blumenthal and Representatives Rosa L. DeLauro, John Larson, Joe Courtney, Jim Himes, and Chris Murphy to renew their commitment to the arts and to join or continue serving on the Congressional Art Caucus and the Senate Cultural Caucus.
In order to benefit the arts and humanities—and the interests of CAA in particular—we must develop a means to send advocates to meet specifically with key members of Congress during the annual Arts, Humanities, and Museums Advocacy Days. CAA’s vast number of professionals in academia, museums, and elsewhere should be heard in a focused manner, and members of the CAA Board of Directors may need to get more involved in organizing participation in the three national advocacy days.
Attending this year sharpened my awareness of how members of Congress perceive the role of the arts differently in this country. That said, I was heartened to see bipartisan support for the arts and encouraged to advocate continued and greater support for the arts. It was quite a civics class!
Arts Advocacy Day
A member of the CAA Board of Directors, Jean Miller is associate dean of administrative affairs of the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas in Denton. She also oversees her school’s Design Research Center in Dallas.
I became acquainted with Americans for the Arts and attended Arts Advocacy Day for the first time in 2009 as a representative of CAA’s Professional Practices Committee and a resident of the state of Maryland. This year, I represented CAA as a board member and cochair of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans (ICFAD) Advocacy Task Force. Now a Texas resident, I also made efforts to cultivate a relationship with members of Texans for the Arts.
Although Arts Advocacy Day has a similar structure and comparable messages from year to year, the underlying sense of urgency during the 2011 proceedings made it markedly different from those of 2009. This was due in part to the possibility of the government shutting down during the budget talks. All advocates intensely felt the charged atmosphere during the Americans for the Arts–sponsored Congressional Arts Breakfast and later on Capitol Hill when meeting representatives and their staff.
Like my colleagues above, I was impressed by the record attendance of over five hundred advocates from around the country, gathering to communicate a consistent message about the value of art and culture in our lives to Congress. Actors Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin and several other celebrities joined attendees over the course of the two days to lend their voices in support of the arts and artists. As they spoke candidly about their mentors and career opportunities, these individuals served as great moral support and inspired us to strategize together to position the arts better in the national budget conversation.
To help frame discussions with legislators and their staff, advocacy leaders urged us to take a practical, bipartisan approach to all conversations. At the same time, they also encouraged us to send a clear, strong, and persistent message to Congress about sustaining NEA funding—not increasing it as we had asked in the past—and to share stories about how the NEA has had a strong impact on our communities and states.
Were we successful? I believe that yes, as a committed group of arts professionals and students, we took the time to study current issues, applied an advocacy framework to discuss important points, and stood up as citizens to increase visibility for the arts locally and nationally. Was it enough? Unfortunately no. What else could CAA do as an organization? Perhaps we can strengthen ties with its affiliated societies, which in sum represent over 300,000 people, and use a large collective voice in support of advocacy efforts. With the affiliates, CAA can design strategies to reach the political leaders who are in positions of making the tough budget decisions. With many CAA staff and board members involved in strengthening connections to affiliated societies and working on advocacy and outreach, I think this is entirely possible.
Affiliated Society News for May 2011
posted by CAA — May 09, 2011
American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies
Janice Mann’s Romanesque Architecture and Its Sculptural Decoration in Christian Spain, 1000–1120 won the 2011 Eleanor Tufts Award
The American Society of Hispanic Art Historical Studies (ASHAHS) has announced the recipients of two annual awards, with one honorable mention, at a business meeting held during the CAA Annual Conference in February 2011. The Eleanor Tufts Award, which recognizes an outstanding English-language publication in Spanish or Portuguese art history, went to Janice Mann for Romanesque Architecture and Its Sculptural Decoration in Christian Spain, 1000–1120: Exploring Frontiers and Defining Identities (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). In addition, the jurors selected Giles Knox’s The Late Paintings of Velázquez: Theorizing Painterly Performance (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009) as an honorable mention. The winner of the ASHAHS Photographs Grant is Kelly Watt of the University of Louisville, who is conducting research for her dissertation, “Medieval Churches on the Spanish Frontier: How Elite Emulation in Architecture Contributed to the Transformation of a Territorial Expansion into Reconquista.”
Art Libraries Society of North America
The Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) has awarded its 2010 George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award to Five Centuries of Indonesian Textiles: The Mary Hunt Kahlenberg Collection (New York: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2010). Edited by Ruth Barnes and Mary Hunt Kahlenberg, this large, beautifully produced catalogue includes stunning, detailed photographs of many rare and unique textiles and essays by expert art historians and anthropologists that seamlessly connect the history and cultural significance of these aesthetically beautiful weavings for the reader. Aimée Brown Price’s Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) received the honorable mention. Her exceptional two-volume set includes a scholarly monograph on the artist and a catalogue raisonné of his painted works. ARLIS/NA presented the two awards at a joint conference with the Visual Resources Association, another CAA affiliated society, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on March 25, 2011.
Association for Latin American Art
The Association for Latin American Art (ALAA) announces the election results for its executive committee: Margaret A. Jackson of the University of New Mexico holds the office of president; Elisa Mandell of California State University, Fullerton, is the new vice president; and Paul Niell of the University of North Texas becomes secretary-treasurer. As advocates for all areas and periods of Latin American art, committee members hold office for a three-year term (2011–13).
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) will hold its next annual conference, “Who’s Muse? Challenges to the Curatorial Profession in Academic Museums,” on May 21, 2011, at the University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum in Texas. Curatorial practices in academic museums and galleries are sometimes highly experimental. Faculty members from a wide variety of fields and with limited curatorial experience periodically recommend and help lead exhibition projects. The organization of exhibitions likewise engages both graduate and undergraduate students, museum-education professionals, librarians, and even area school classes in project leadership roles. Exhibitions thus generated offer unorthodox approaches to curatorial planning and execution. Appropriate to a scholarly mission, they can stretch disciplinary boundaries, cross-fertilize disciplinary methodologies, and generate wholly new paradigms for knowledge. Academic museums and galleries thus become vital centers of original research, interdisciplinary dialogue, and participatory learning. While this democratic and laboratory approach to curatorial practice contributes in significant ways to the groundbreaking research and all-important teaching missions of universities and colleges, it can also challenge conventional standards of the curatorial profession. Through the presentation of outstanding case studies and lively roundtable discussions, the 2011 conference will explore the pros and cons of the broad curatorial approaches found in academic museums and galleries.
Association of Art Historians
Art History, the flagship journal of the Association of Art Historians (AAH), has just published a special issue on “Creative Writing and Art History.” Guest edited by Patricia Rubin of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and Catherine Grant of the Courtauld Institute of Art and Goldsmiths, University of London), this collection of articles and projects considers the ways in which the writing of art history intersects with creative writing, from the creative writing of art history to dialogues between modes of creative and art-historical writing. Essays range from the analysis of historical examples of scholarship that have a creative element to presentations of contemporary modes of creative writing about art.
Association of Historians of American Art
The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) has announced the names of new board members: Peter John (P. J.) Brownlee of the Terra Foundation of American Art is chair (2011–12); Jenny Carson of Maryland Institute College of Art is cochair (2011–12); Elizabeth Kuebler-Wolf of the University of Saint Francis is web coordinator (2011–14); and Melissa Renn of the Harvard University Art Museums is membership coordinator (2011–14).
AHAA has named the winner of the $500 AHAA Travel Grant: Maggie Cao, a graduate student at Harvard University and a predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She delivered a paper, “Invisible Color: Abbott Handerson Thayer and Camouflage,” in the AHAA-sponsored scholarly session, “Color and Nineteenth-Century American Painting,” at the recent CAA Annual Conference in New York.
Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art
Édouard Manet, Summer or the Amazon, ca. 1882, oil on canvas, 73 x 52 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (artwork in the public domain)
The Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) held its eighth annual graduate-student symposium in nineteenth-century art at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, on March 4, 2011. Speakers included ten doctoral candidates from the United States, France, Spain, and Switzerland. AHNCA will also hold a special event for its members this summer in conjunction with the current exhibition, Manet, the Man Who Invented Modernity, at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Association of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey
Created in honor of a dear friend and colleague, Rhonda A. Saad (1979–2010) and sponsored by donations from numerous generous individuals, the Association of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) has established the Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Modern Arab Art. The award, which aims to recognize and promote excellence in scholarship on modern and contemporary art, is offered annually to a graduate student (defined as predissertation) working in any discipline whose paper is judged to provide the most significant contribution to Middle Eastern studies and art history. Papers will be evaluated according to the originality of research and methodological approach, cogency of argument, and clarity of writing. The submission must be written in English by a single author. AMCA will award $500 to the winner at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting in December 2011. The paper must have been produced between June 2010 and June 2011; must not exceed thirty-five pages, excluding notes and bibliography; and must not be or have ever been submitted for publication. Applicants should send their entry for the inaugural prize to info@amcainternational.org by June 30, 2011.
Historians of British Art
Marcia Pointon won an HBA prize for post-1800, single-author book for Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery
The Historians of British Art (HBA) recently announced the winners of its 2011 Book Prizes for publications on British art. Kevin Sharpe received the award for pre-1800, single-author book for Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Marcia Pointon won the prize for post-1800, single-author book for Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery (New Haven: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2010); and Elizabeth Prettejohn, Peter Trippi, Robert Upstone, and Patty Wageman received the multiauthor publication honor for J. W. Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2009).
The HBA awarded its Publication Grant to Leon Wainwright for Timed Out: Art and the Transnational Caribbean, forthcoming from Manchester University Press in 2011. Lyrica Taylor received the HBA Travel Grant to present a paper, “Winifred Knights and Interwar Artists at the British School at Rome, 1920–1925,” at the Association of Art Historians’s 2011 conference, held at the University of Warwick, March 31–April 2, 2011.
Historians of Islamic Art Association
At its 2011 annual business meeting, the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) recognized the visionary leadership of Renata Holod as president (2008–10) and welcomed Shreve Simpson as her successor (2010–12). Members chose Sheila Canby as president-elect (to follow Simpson), and Lara Tohme became the new webmaster. HIAA also decided to separate the secretary-treasurer position, currently held by Glaire Anderson. Anderson will continue serving as treasurer, and Ladan Akbarnia will be acting secretary for 2011.
HIAA also announced the winner of its 2011 Margaret B. Sevcenko Prize in Islamic Art and Culture for the best unpublished article written by a young scholar: Silvia Armando of the Università della Tuscia in Viterbo, Italy, for her paper on “Ugo Monneret de Villard (1881–1954) and the Establishment of Islamic Art Studies in Italy.” The organization then described several new initiatives, including the establishment of the Oleg Grabar Memorial Fund and the Richard Ettinghausen Achievement Award. The venue and dates for the third biennial symposium were given: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, October 18–20, 2012. Finally, HIAA announced plans to organize a memorial service for Grabar with the Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture, which took place at Harvard University on April 23, 2011, at 2:00 PM.
International Center of Medieval Art
At its annual meeting for 2011, the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) announced the election of new officers and a new group of directors, all to serve three-year terms. Lawrence Nees is president, Nancy Sevcenko became vice president, and Gerry Guest is secretary. Rebecca Corrie continues as treasurer. The new directors elected by the membership are Eva Hoffman, Melanie Holcomb, Charles McClendon, Elizabeth Morrison, Kirsten Noreen, Elizabeth Teviotdale, Benjamin Withers.
At the CAA Annual Conference, ICMA sponsored a well-attended and stimulating interdisciplinary session, “Medicine and Science in Medieval Visual Culture.” Organized and chaired by Jennifer Borland, the panel features papers from Megan McNamee, Kathleen Crowther, Jean Givens, Talia Avisar, and Jack Hartnell. ICMA thanks the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for a generous grant that underwrote some of the travel costs for speakers.
ICMA seeks proposals for the 2011–12 Harvey Stahl Lectureship. Named in memory of a longtime professor of medieval art at the University of California, Berkeley, the fund supports talks by distinguished scholars in any field of medieval art history, to be held at one or more locations. The precise number of venues depends on the availability of funds and the readiness of local host institutions to provide hospitality. While lectures may take place anywhere in North America, proposals that involve a venue in the Southwest (particularly New Mexico) are given priority, with the goal of having at least one event in that region every three years. Due to the current financial climate, ICMA cannot fund speakers who must travel from outside North America. Applications for the 2011–12 Stahl Lectureship should consist of a completed application form (available on the ICMA website) and CV(s) of the host(s). Please direct all lectureship proposals and inquiries to: Kirk Ambrose, Department of Art and Art History, 318 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0318. Deadline: May 15, 2011.
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) has elected its new officers for 2011–13 terms: Kirstin Noreen of Loyola Marymount University is president, and Cathleen Fleck of Saint Louis University is vice president. The society also welcomes new committee members: Niall Atkinson, Jennie Hirsh, Martina Bagnoli, Sara Kozlowski, Catherine Hess, and Ian Verstegen. David Boffa, Rebekah Perry, Gilbert Jones, and Lisa Tom are members of a newly formed Graduate Student Committee. Jasmine Cloud of Temple University and Rebekah Perry of the University of Pittsburgh received 2011 Graduate Student Travel Grants to give papers, respectively, at the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting in Montreal, Quebec, and the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
IAS has selected Alison Luchs, curator of early European sculpture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, to present the 2011 Italian Art Society–Kress Foundation Lecture. Her talk, entitled “The Wake of Desiderio: His Impact on Sculpture of the Late Quattrocento,” will take place at the historic Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence at 4:00 PM on June 8, 2011.
Japanese Art History Forum
The new officers of the Japanese Art History Forum (JAHF) are: John Carpenter, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, president; Monika Dix, Saginaw Valley State University, vice president; John Szostak, University of Hawai‘i, Manoa, treasurer; Alicia Volk, University of Maryland, College Park, secretary; and Asato Ikeda, University of British Columbia, graduate-student representative.
Leonardo Education and Art Forum
Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF) thanks those members who organized events, panels, and meetings at the 2011 CAA Annual Conference in New York. Special thanks goes to Ellen K. Levy, who, after making significant contributions on behalf of LEAF, has rotated off as former chair. Levy and Victoria Vesna hosted a LEAF event, called “ART SCI Salon,” at the former’s studio in New York on April 9, 2011. The salon theme was “Art and Neuroscience,” and attendees participated in a Pecha Kucha–style presentation of their work.
Midwest Art History Society
The Midwest Art History Society (MAHS) recently hosted its thirty-eighth annual conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Held April 14–16, 2011, the conference was hosted jointly by Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, with additional support from the Grand Rapids Art Museum and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts. The event offered twenty scholarly sessions, including special topics on the body in art, conservation, gardens as art, and public sculpture. Several featured events included an evening dialogue with the iconic American artist Jim Dine, who joined the conference at the Meijer Gardens on April 14, and a presentation by Rebecca Zorach, author of the acclaimed book Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
National Council of Arts Administrators
Three National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) members, Cora Lynn Diebler, Kim Russo, and Andrea Eis, presented a highly successful CAA Annual Conference session on the uses of social media.
The next NCAA annual meeting, entitled “Push: The Artistic Engine of Innovation,” will take place November 2–5, 2011, at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. The NCAA board seeks proposals for presentations, sessions, and/or panels for the annual Arts Administrators Workshops, scheduled for Wednesday, November 2. Initial proposals should be no more than 350 words. Topics may include but are not limited to: leadership and management; promotion and tenure; interpersonal communication; succeeding with external constituencies; budget management; personnel evaluation; personal growth; career paths; and case studies (in any area related to arts administration). Please send proposals and inquiries to Sergio Soave by May 16, 2011. Selected entries will be asked to submit a 1,000-word abstract by June 20.
Radical Art Caucus
The Radical Art Caucus (RAC) had a strong presence at the CAA Annual Conference this year. Many thanks to Benj Gerdes and Nate Harrison for chairing “Video Art as Mass Medium” and to RAC copresident Travis Nygard for organizing “Environmental Sustainability in Art History, Theory, and Practice.” RAC especially is grateful to Dan S. Wang for his hard work on the beautifully designed RAC newsletter, reaching hundreds of participants at CAA. At the annual reception, the group held a compelling discussion on academic organizing, thanks to Nayla Wren. Please help RAC continue its important discussions by joining as a member or contributing to dialogues on Facebook or the listserv. For more information, please contact Joanna Gardner-Huggett, RAC secretary.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) seeks proposals for its forty-ninth national conference, called “Intimacy and Voyeurism: The Public/Private Divide in Photography” and taking place March 22–25, 2012, in San Francisco, California. Topics, which need not be theme based, may include but are not limited to: image making, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. The conference offers six presentation formats: (1) Lecture: presentation on historical topic, theory, or another artist’s work; (2) Imagemaker: presentation on your own artistic work (photography, film, video, performance and installation, multidisciplinary approaches); (3) Panel: a moderator-led group discussing a chosen topic; (4) Demonstration: a how-to presentation; (5) Graduate Student: short presentation of your own artistic work and a brief introduction to your graduate program (you must be enrolled in a graduate program at the time of submission); and (6) Academic Practicum Workshop: lectures and panels that address educational issues. SPE membership is required to submit; proposals are peer reviewed. Visit the SPE website for information on membership and to read the full proposal guidelines. Deadline: June 1, 2011.
Society of Architectural Historians
The sixty-fourth annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) was held April 13–17, 2011, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Thirty thematic paper sessions presented the latest research in the history of architecture, landscapes, and urbanism. In addition, the meeting featured more than twenty-five architectural tours to the Garden District, the Lower Ninth Ward, the Make it Right Foundation neighborhood, and other notable sites and landscapes throughout the city.
SAH currently seeks abstracts of papers for the sixty-fifth annual meeting, to be held April 18–22, 2012, in Detroit, Michigan. Visit the SAH website to view the full list of sessions and to read instructions on how to submit your abstract online. A PDF describing all session is also available. Deadline: June 1, 2011.
Visual Resources Association
The Visual Resources Association (VRA) republished its Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) webpage in a new format in January 2011, after the IPR Committee completed its reorganization project. Called Resources Providing Guidance on Academic Use of Images, the section is arranged into eight sections of information about copyright and fair use that are important to the educational community. Maintenance and workability of current information and the incorporation of new resources guided this revision, and the contents have been more efficiently laid out and are easier to navigate. In other news, VRA has developed fair-use guidelines regarding the use of images in educational settings, and the IPR Committee has begun publishing a monthly news blog, called IPR in the News.
FIELD REPORT
posted by Christopher Howard — May 03, 2011
Lucille A. Roussin is an attorney-at-law who earned a PhD in art history and archaeology from Columbia University. She is the founder and director of the Holocaust Restitution Claims Practicum at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York from which she earned her JD. Roussin introduced the conference and served as moderator of one panel, “Nazi Era Looted Art: Research and Restitution.”
A Conference Report on “Human Rights and Cultural Heritage”
Paul Cézanne, Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory, 1891, oil on canvas, 36¼ x 28¾ in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (artwork in the public domain)
The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York hosted an all-day conference, entitled “Human Rights and Cultural Heritage: From the Holocaust to the Haitian Earthquake,” on March 31, 2011. The program brought together experts in both human-rights law and Holocaust-era restitution law. Its organizers also invited specialists in the same areas who had not previously engaged this important topic.
The program commenced with opening remarks by Allan Gerson, chairman of AG International Law PLLC, a Washington, DC–based law firm specializing in complex issues of international law and politics. During his talk on “Civil Litigation to Secure Cultural Property as a Human Right,” he spoke of the continuing debate over the existence of a recognized human right to secure restitution of cultural property and, when a victim is deprived of actual possession, the right to just compensation. Gerson included news about his current litigation against the Metropolitan Museum of Art over Paul Cézanne’s Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory (1891) and Yale University over Vincent van Gogh’s The Night Café (1888). Both cases involve major issues in international law, including the Act of State Doctrine and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
The first morning panel, entitled “Natural Disasters: Haiti and Beyond,” comprised leaders in the law-related nonprofit world. A former officer of the United States Army, Corine Wegener has witnessed cultural-heritage catastrophes firsthand in Sarajevo, Iraq, and, most recently, Haiti. In 2006 she founded the US Committee of the Blue Shield—the “cultural equivalent of the Red Cross”—and serves as its president. Her illustrated presentation addressed what has been, and is being done, to preserve the many cultural monuments of Haiti since the devastating earthquake in January 2010. Wegener stressed that, because of current law, the US cannot provide aid to endangered nations on its own initiative: the country suffering the disaster must first request assistance. Her current efforts focus on training local communities to conduct preservation work themselves.
As executive vice president and chief operating officer of the New York–based World Monuments Fund, Lisa Ackerman helps lead an organization dedicated to protecting and preserving threatened ancient and historic sites around the globe. Using a wonderful PowerPoint presentation, she demonstrated the evolution of heritage-protection efforts in which she has been involved. Ackerman commented that when floods ravaged Venice in 1966, operations rallied around the city as a cultural icon and saved many important works of art. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, however, community building took precedence over art and architecture. She drove home her point with images of the preservation efforts at the Greater Little Zion Baptist Church in the Ninth Ward, which is not just an architectural gem but the heart of a community. Her two-fold message was a powerful one. First, nonprofits so accustomed to operating on shoestring budgets should not be afraid to think big. Second, widespread public perception that cultural-heritage preservation during times of crisis occurs at the expense of helping humans is a false dilemma. The two-pronged effort in Haiti is an excellent example of how disaster relief led by medical and humanitarian organizations can work side by side with specialists in cultural heritage.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam, ca. 1530, oil on panel, 75 x 27½ in. Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena (artwork in the public domain)
Tess Davis, the executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation who has significant preservation experience, particularly in Cambodia and Sri Lanka, summed up the panel. She observed that the public does not realize how important cultural heritage becomes until after the dust settles, floods recede, and immediate humanitarian needs are met. She also emphasized how cultural-heritage preservation should be an up-front part of postwar and disaster-management planning.
The second morning panel concerned “Nazi Era Looted Art: Research and Restitution.” Marc Masurovsky, a leading scholar in this field and the cofounder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, led with an historical overview of the restitution of artworks looted during the Holocaust. Inge van der Vlies, a member of the Dutch Restitution Committee in Amsterdam and a professor of constitutional law and of art and law at the University of Amsterdam, considered the workings of Dutch project, its processes, and recent successes. Lucian Simmons, vice president and head of the Restitution Department at the New York branch of Sotheby’s, informed us about the process used at his auction house to determine if a work of art has a questionable provenance. He then illustrated recent restitutions and settlements, discussing research efforts and the outcomes. Lawrence M. Kaye, partner and cochair of the Art Law Group at Herrick, Feinstein LLP, spoke of recent major recoveries to the heirs of the Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. Kaye also addressed the current lawsuit against the Norton Simon Museum for two notable pieces from the former Goudstikker collection, Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Adam and Eve (both ca. 1530), in which a petition for certiorari has been filed with the US Supreme Court. He then detailed other art cases that his firm had handled, most importantly the restitution of several paintings in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam to the heirs of the Suprematist artist Kasimir Malevich.
One program highlight was the midday keynote address by Howard N. Spiegler, also cochair of the Art Law Group of Herrick, Feinstein LLP, who provided an overview of many aspects of and results in cases involving Holocaust-era looted art. He related several examples, including the recently settled case of United States v. Portrait of Wally, in which the firm represented the heirs of Lea Bondi Jaray, the rightful owner of the Egon Schiele painting, Portrait of Wally (1912). Spiegler referenced a haunting testimonial by Rabbi Israel Singer, who once related that: “Himmler said you have to kill all the Jews because if you don’t kill them, their grandchildren will ask for their property back.”
Moderating the first afternoon session, “Libraries and Archives: Restitution of Recorded Cultural Heritage,” was Lynn Wishart, Cardozo’s associate dean for library services and professor of legal research. Her three panelists examined the many difficult issues with the restitution not of art but of written documents. Jeff Spurr, secretary and board member of the Sabre Foundation (based in Cambridge, Massachusetts), deliberated contesting arguments for the restitution of the ancient Jewish books, papers, and manuscripts rescued from the looting and burning of the Iraq National Library and Archives after the American incursion in 2003. Library representatives contend that the holdings belong to their country’s history, but a Jewish community no longer exists in Iraq. With some support from the American government, former Iraqi Jews in Israel and the US argue that the documents should be given to a living Jewish community. Nathan Lewin, a partner at the Washington, DC–based firm Lewin & Lewin LLP, represented the successful plaintiff, Agudas Chasidei Chabad, against the Russian Federation, discussed the case from the viewpoint of international law, under which the Russian Federation is obligated to return books and documents to the Chabad in New York but has refused. Patricia Krimsted, senior research associate at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute in Massachusetts, provided a history of looting by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in Western Europe. She noted that the three largest ERR concentrations of books contained works that came from both West and East—but far more originated in the West. Grimsted also highlighted how looted collections (an estimated 600,000 books) that came to rest in the Soviet sectors of postwar Berlin, taken as part of the Soviet trophy brigades. Prospects for restitution today largely hinge on whether the archives ended up in the Soviet or Allied sectors. Six years ago the Russians admitted for the first time that collections were taken to Minsk in November 1945; Grimsted had found scraps of evidence in card catalogues that matched ERR confiscation lists. She questioned how the Russians could view the cultural materials, taken from Jews and published in languages few people in Russia can read, to be compensation for their World War II–era losses and then demand their own compensation to return them.
The second afternoon panel on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) presented a lively discussion on the applicability of the law. Jennifer Anglim Kreder, a professor in the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University, conducted a roundtable with four experts on FSIA litigation to explore the intersection of cultural property, human rights, and the War on Terror. The panelists, all based in Washington, DC, were Mark N. Bravin (partner, Winston & Strawn LLP); Lisa Grosh (deputy assistant legal adviser, US Department of State); Laina C. Lopez (attorney, Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe LLP); and Stuart H. Newberger (partner, Crowell & Moring LLP). Bravin has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in FSIA litigation, including McKesson v. Islamic Republic of Iran (plaintiff), ongoing for twenty-five years, and Orkin v. The Swiss Federation, concerning a van Gogh drawing allegedly sold by a Jew under Nazi duress to a Swiss collector in 1933 (defendant). Grosh, who spoke in her individual capacity, was heavily involved with litigation under the FSIA’s Terrorism Amendments, which expressly authorized litigation against nations identified as State Sponsors of Terrorism. Lopez’s firm represents Iran, included in the McKesson case and proceedings brought by plaintiffs who obtained default judgments against Iran under the Terrorism Amendments; the plaintiffs seek to seize and sell Persian antiquities currently held in US museums to partially execute their judgments. The panelists engaged in a fascinating discussion of the mechanics of FSIA litigation, exploring such questions as: Should forced seizure and possible auction of cultural objects be fair game to compensate victims of terrorism? Is litigation or mass-claims resolution a better course to secure justice for terrorism and genocide victims—and for public safety?
In conclusion, “Human Rights and Cultural Heritage,” which brought together new voices in cultural heritage and human rights, was dynamic, informative, and thought provoking.
FIELD REPORT
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 26, 2011
Svetlana Mintcheva is director of programs at the National Coalition Against Censorship. She is also the editor, with Robert Atkins, of Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression (New York: New Press, 2006) and the curator of Filth, Treason, Blasphemy? Museums and Censorship, shown at the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago, Illinois, in 2007.
Hide/Seek: Museums, Ethics, and the Press: A Symposium Report
Hide/Seek may be remembered as the censorship controversy that launched a hundred discussion panels. There were public statements and street protests, of course, letters to the Smithsonian Board of Regents and articles in the press, but most of all, there were the conferences. Starting with a gathering at the Jewish Community Center in Washington, DC, spreading to the West Coast, and featuring major public events at the Corcoran and the New Museum, these discussions responded to an apparently endless desire to analyze and assign blame, to blow off steam and extract lessons, and to place what happened within the history of Culture Wars in America.
An April 9 symposium, “Hide/Seek: Museum, Ethics, and the Press,” organized by the Institute of Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University and the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School, had the goal of framing the issues surrounding the Hide/Seek controversy as ethical ones. Daniel Okrent, former chairman of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), opened the event by posing several key questions: Is choosing to do a controversial show an ethical decision? Should a show ever be changed after opening? What happens after a controversy in terms of institutional definition and future planning? A diverse group of participants from such disciplines as art history, law, political science, and philosophy, as well as Smithsonian representatives and one journalist, attempted to grapple with these issues and more.
Mounting a show on a controversial topic was, indeed, a decision requiring courage and commitment to the concept of the museum as a space where important cultural conversations should happen. Over forty-five other arts institutions had rejected the idea of a canonical show of queer art before the NPG took it up. With the curators Jonathan Katz and David Ward, the museum went forward with Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture even though it expected—and was prepared to respond to—controversy and homophobic reactions. Unfortunately the NPG was not as capable of resisting the internal hierarchy of Smithsonian decision-making.
The attacks on the show came a full month after its opening, just as the museum was ready to declare the Culture Wars over. Detractors latched onto a few seconds of video portraying a plastic crucifix, taking the position of the offended victim of hate speech, rather than that of the intolerant bully, which would have happened if they had focused on what really annoyed them: the queer content of the exhibition. The rest of the story is familiar: the NPG’s preparedness to face public complaints was never tested as Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough unilaterally—and within a single day—ordered the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly, with its eleven seconds of ants crawling over a crucifix. Clough’s ill-conceived effort to appease Republicans in Congress backfired, and the censorship controversy hit the headlines.
Clough’s decision appears to have pitched the pragmatic, that is, protecting funding for the Smithsonian from congressional assault, against the ethical: protecting the integrity of the institution and free-speech principles against partisan pressure. As Abe Zakhem, a philosophy professor at Seton Hall, commented: when normative ethics and practical considerations are in conflict, the need for courage arises. Courage and, perhaps, some political sense: it is far from certain that oppositional bluster in Congress would have succeeded in cutting the budget for the venerable Smithsonian. Worse, it is almost guaranteed that the artwork’s removal will only encourage future interference with the Smithsonian’s curatorial independence.
Failing to demonstrate either courage or political sense, Clough comes out as the villain in the story. Even his supporters on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents criticized his decision as rash. What about the other actors in this drama? Symposium panelists discussed the role of Penny Starr, whose outrageously titled article—“Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts”—published on November 29, 2010, for the Cyber News Service (formerly the Conservative News Service) appears to have started it all.1 Starr was the first to isolate the eleven seconds of A Fire in My Belly; she also described and photographed other pieces from Hide/Seek and, in an email, goaded Republican Representatives Eric Cantor and John Boehner, among other congressional leaders, with questions about the offensiveness of these images.2
The panelists agreed that the press was indisputably the instigator of crisis in this case, as it has been in many others.3 No matter how detestable and biased one may find Starr’s cultural “intervention,” the press has the right, even the obligation, to direct the public’s attention to matters of importance, including the curatorial politics of the Smithsonian. As the cultural journalist and blogger Lee Rosenbaum noted, Starr was practicing “Journalism 101” when she contacted stakeholders to elicit a response in a potentially controversial case.
The actions of politicians who, alerted by Starr, threatened to cut funds to the Smithsonian remained virtually unquestioned—perhaps because Republican congressmen were so clearly in the wrong, or perhaps because such actions have become politics as usual. Nevertheless, if we have learned anything from the Hide/Seek controversy, it is that museum leaders do not make their ethical decisions in a vacuum but must negotiate a path spiked with the demands of politicians, the eyes of the press, and the campaigns of special-interest groups. Could things have gone differently? Should Martin Sullivan, director of the National Portrait Gallery (and symposium participant), have resigned in protest? Should the Smithsonian’s secretary have attempted to persuade the detractors in Congress—some of whom admitted they never even saw the show—to temper their threats? The possibilities are many, but none present a magic-bullet solution. The Smithsonian has bent under political and interest-group pressure before, and neither the resignation of a museum director nor attempts to appease critics by exhibition script revisions has won any victories.
There is reason to believe that something moderately positive may come from the situation. Sullivan welcomed the new policy adopted by the Smithsonian Board of Regents, which states “in the absence of actual error, changes to exhibitions should not be made once an exhibition opens without meaningful consultation with the curator, director, Secretary, and the leadership of the Board of Regents.” The regents have also decided that the director of the specific museum should make the call regarding the fate of an exhibition, not the Smithsonian secretary, whose decisions are heavily influenced by the risk-averse Office of Congressional Relations.
Another new Smithsonian policy is much more ambiguous, if not ominous. Criticized as “curating via crowdsourcing,” the policy requires solicitation of public input during the exhibition-planning process.4 In previous instances, including the Enola Gay exhibition at the Air and Space Museum (1995–98) and the show of photographs from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at the National Museum of Natural History (2003–4), preexhibition input has had dire consequences for curatorial freedom.5 One can easily imagine the effect of public input in which the Catholic League or a similar professional “offense hound” attacks a show in the vulnerable period of its gestation.
In his memoir about the attacks and subsequent cancellation of the Enola Gay exhibition, Martin Harwit, who resigned as director of the Air and Space Museum in protest, writes that “our nation has begun to settle important issues … not through substantive debate, but through partisan campaigns aimed at victory by any means.”6 Apparently little has changed since.
Nevertheless, it was encouraging to hear Rachelle V. Browne, associate general council at the Smithsonian, clearly state that the First Amendment protects museums from having to choose between government funds and self-censorship. She also formulated the most unequivocal ethical message of the day: that concerns about financial sustainability do not override the museum’s obligation to sustain integrity and free speech.
Notes
1. Penny Starr, “Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts,” CNS News, November 29, 2010, http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/smithsonian-christmas-season-exhibit-fea.
2. In an email obtained by Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo, Starr wrote to House and Senate leaders from both parties asking for feedback on her story. The email reads: “The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian, is running an exhibition through the Christmas season that features an ant-covered Jesus and what the Smithsonian itself calls ‘homoerotic’ art. Should this exhibition continue or be cancelled?” Boehner and Cantor responded by immediately asking that the exhibition be pulled. See Brian Beutler, “Ant Jesus: An Anatomy of the Latest War on Christmas Scandal,” On Capitol Hill (blog), Talking Points Memo, December 1, 2010, http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/author_blogs/2010/12/ant-jesus-an-anatomy-of-the-latest-war-on-christmas-scandal.php.
3. Recent examples include the leadership role taken by the New York Daily News in the efforts to boot the Drawing Center from a proposed new space at Ground Zero in 2005 (which succeeded) and to close the Brooklyn Museum’s Sensation show in 1999 (which did not).
4. Bob Duggan, “Mob Rule: Curating via Crowdsourcing,” Picture This (blog), Big Think, April 7, 2011, http://bigthink.com/ideas/37784.
5. For a fascinating story of the workings of the Smithsonian’s politics, see Martin Harwit, An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of “Enola Gay” (New York: Copernicus, 1996).
6. Harwit, vii.
People in the News
posted by CAA — Apr 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.
April 2011
Academe
Steven BleicherSteven Bleicher has been promoted to professor of visual arts in the Department of Visual Arts at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina.
Patricia CroninPatricia Cronin, an artist and associate professor of art at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, has been promoted to full professor of art at her school.
Harper MontgomeryHarper Montgomery, currently teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, has been named the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Professor in Latin American Art at Hunter College, City University of New York. She will begin her new position in fall 2011.
Joshua Rosenstock, a multimedia artist and musician, has been promoted to associate professor of humanities and arts and was granted tenure at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Museums and Galleries
Lloyd DeWitt, presently associate curator of the John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania, has been appointed curator of European art at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. He will assume his duties on June 6, 2011.
Jessica MayJessica May has been promoted to associate curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. She joined the museum in 2006.
Kevin M. MurphyKevin M. Murphy, formerly Bradford and Christine Mishler Associate Curator of American Art at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, has been appointed curator of American art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Organizations and Publications
Linda DownsLinda Downs, executive director of the College Art Association, has been elected secretary of the National Humanities Alliance for a two-year term.
Marti Mayo, a New York–based consultant to nonprofit organizations and artists’ estates, has become the executive director of the Thomas Moran Trust, based in East Hampton, New York.
Institutional News
posted by CAA — Apr 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.
April 2011
Théodore Rousseau, Farm in Les Landes, 1844–67, oil on canvas, 25½ x 39 in. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. 2009.8 (artwork in the public domain)The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has received two gifts that will endow a pair of critical jobs at the museum. Robert and Martha Berman Lipp gave $2.5 million to fund the senior curator position, and Sylvia and Leonard Marx donated $2 million for the director of collections and exhibitions.
Howard Pyle, The Mermaid, 1910, oil on canvas, 57⅞ x 40⅛ in. Delaware Art Museum, Gift of the children of Howard Pyle in memory of their mother Anne Poole Pyle, 1940 (artwork in the public domain)The Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington has received four grants to assist with exhibitions, publications, research, and development. The Henry Luce Foundation contributed $100,000 from its Luce Fund in American Art to support work on the exhibition Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts gave $11,000 for curatorial research on the photographer Scott Heiser. A $10,000 gift from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation will sustain the exhibition and publicity of the recently acquired M. G. Sawyer Collection of Decorative Bindings, and $50,000 from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund will help launch a 1:1 matching fundraising challenge.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, The Little White Sofa, ca. 1883–84, oil on wood panel, 4½ x 7 3/16 in.; framed: 4⅛ x 5 3/16 x 11/16 in. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.169 (artwork in the public domain)The Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have received $75,000 in a 2010 Access to Artistic Excellence Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The funds will support an education program called “Engaging New Americans: Explorations in Art, Self, and Our Democratic Heritage.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has accepted a $10 million donation to support the creation of a major exhibition space, to be called the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Gallery, within the Costume Institute. Earlier this year, the museum launched a series of online videos called Connections, which highlight the perspectives and insights on art from the collection by curators and other staff members.
View of the Rodin Court at the North Carolina Museum of Art (photograph provided by the North Carolina Museum of Art)The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh has been awarded a 2011 American Institute of Architects Honor Award for its new building, designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners. The award is the institute’s highest recognition for building design.
The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded more than $1.6 million in grants to support artist communities, colonies, and residency programs. Among the recipients are these CAA institutional members: the American Academy in Rome, New York ($75,000); Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado ($15,000); and Bates College, Lewiston, Maine ($30,000).
CAA’s Positions for Arts Advocacy Day
posted by Christopher Howard — Mar 29, 2011
At Arts Advocacy Day 2011, CAA representatives from five states—Connecticut, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York and Texas—will meet congressional staff to advocate for the visual arts in higher education. Organized by Americans for the Arts, of which CAA is a member institution, the annual event will take place April 4–5, 2011, in Washington, DC. CAA delegates will address the following issues of critical importance and invite you to register and get involved.
As the leading association in the world that represents professional visual-arts practitioners, CAA endorses government support of creativity and innovation that has made this country great.
CAA seeks support for artists and art historians who work in colleges, universities, and art museums, as well as for independent artists and scholars. The federal government must support professionals in the visual arts like it does for practitioners and scholars in other arts, such as dance and music. The professional practice, study, and teaching of the visual arts deserve further support because of the power these disciplines have to educate, inspire, and stimulate independent thinking.
CAA also believes that public and private partnerships should expand not only between schools and communities but also among the academic community in colleges, universities, and art schools.
CAA fully endorses the creation of an art corps comprising professionally educated artists and art historians who will work with students in urban schools on community-based projects, raising an awareness of the importance of creativity and professional artists. CAA also encourages government-sponsored projects such as Americorps and Vista to emphasize the visual arts. Young artists are eager to work on environmental programs that involve community-organized design projects such as, for example, mine-reclamation endeavors in which community recreation centers are established near cleaning pools for toxic mine runoff to help redevelopment the land.
CAA would like to emphasize that, in order to champion publicly the importance of arts education, America must support the preparation of artists and art historians who teach on a primary, secondary, and college/university level. The visual arts are integral to core curricula in each grade and at every stage of education.
CAA fully supports increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for Library and Museum Services. Specifically, professional artists must supported on individual bases. CAA strongly recommends that the NEA reinstate Individual Artist Fellowships, so that visual artists can pursue and develop their work. Similar grants in other areas of the arts and humanities far exceed federal and private foundation grants to professional visual artists, who are often forced to abandon their own work to support themselves and their families. Professional artists desperately need government support.
CAA supports legislation to change tax laws for artists. The organization has worked hard—and will continue to work hard—to support the Artist-Museum Partnership Act, first introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in 2005. The proposed act would amend the Internal Revenue Code to allow artists to deduct the fair market value of their work, rather than just the costs of materials, when they make charitable contributions. Not only has the current tax laws been harmful to artists, the creative legacy of a whole generation of American visual artists has been lost.
In addition, CAA supports legislation that would allow scholars to publish so-called orphan works, which are copyrighted works—such as books, pictures, music, recordings, or films—whose copyright owners cannot be identified or located. The House of Representatives and Senate has previously introduced orphan-works bills, and CAA hopes Congress will pass one in the coming session. The lack of clear laws and procedures regarding the issue has prevented many art historians from publishing orphan works, causing a great detriment to scholarly publishing and research.
CAA supports cultural diplomacy by enhancing international opportunities, through agencies such as the United States Information Agency, for professional visual artists and art historians to exhibit, teach, research, and lecture. CAA’s international membership testifies to the promotion of cultural understanding that occurs through international cultural exchange. Every year CAA seeks funding to support the travel of international art historians and artists to our Annual Conference. Current Homeland Security laws and a lack of government funding make it difficult for foreign art historians and artists to present their work and research at conferences, symposia, and exhibitions. CAA endorses streamlining the visa process and providing government support for international exchanges of graduate students and professional artists and art historians.
CAA supports providing healthcare to independent artists and scholars—a major concern for those professionals who are not associated with a college, university, or art museum and who attempt to work on their own to support themselves. Each state creates its own health-insurance legislation, and thus differences in laws regulating insurance companies prohibit professional organizations such as CAA from offering national healthcare coverage.
Affiliated Society News for March 2011
posted by CAA — Mar 09, 2011
American Council for Southern Asian Art
The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) has elected three new officers. Stephen Markel, curator and head of the South and Southeast Asian Art Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, is the new president. Serving as vice president will be Deepali Dewan, curator in the Department of World Cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum and assistant professor in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. Last, John Cort, professor in the Department of Religion at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, has become a board member.
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
The University of Houston will host the 2011 AAMG annual conference. Clockwise from top left: the Blaffer Art Museum, the Moores Opera House, and the Roy G. Cullen Building (photographs provided by the University of Houston)
The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) will hold its next annual conference, “Who’s Muse? Challenges to the Curatorial Profession in Academic Museums,” on May 21, 2011, at the University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum in Texas. Curatorial practices in academic museums and galleries are sometimes highly experimental. Faculty members from a wide variety of fields and with limited curatorial experience periodically recommend and help lead exhibition projects. The organization of exhibitions likewise engages both graduate and undergraduate students, museum-education professionals, librarians, and even area school classes in project leadership roles. Exhibitions thus generated offer unorthodox approaches to curatorial planning and execution. Appropriate to a scholarly mission, they can stretch disciplinary boundaries, cross-fertilize disciplinary methodologies, and generate wholly new paradigms for knowledge. Academic museums and galleries thus become vital centers of original research, interdisciplinary dialogue, and participatory learning. While this democratic and laboratory approach to curatorial practice contributes in significant ways to the groundbreaking research and all-important teaching missions of universities and colleges, it can also challenge conventional standards of the curatorial profession. Through the presentation of outstanding case studies and lively roundtable discussions, the 2011 conference will explore the pros and cons of the broad curatorial approaches found in academic museums and galleries.
Association of Historians of American Art
The Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) seeks to sponsor a scholarly session for CAA’s 2013 Annual Conference in New York. The scholarly session, lasting two-and-half hours and part of the regular conference program, tends to be similar to the type of sessions generally held at CAA, although sometimes more topical issues are addressed. Please read the submission guidelines and send your session proposal by April 1, 2011, for notification by June 1.
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) and the Mid-America College Art Association, another CAA affiliated society, will present a joint conference, called “ON STREAM,” at the Ball Park Hilton in St. Louis, Missouri. Taking place March 30–April 2, 2011, the conference will explore how artists and teachers develop and foster creativity in the second decade of the third millennium. For more details, visit the FATE website or contact Jeff Boshart, conference coordinator.
Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture
The Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) congratulate the recipients of the Mary Vidal Memorial Fund for graduate student travel. Georgina Cole, a PhD student at the University of Sydney in Australia, will present a paper, “Eavesdropping: Rethinking Space and Subjectivity in the Eighteenth Century,” at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, The second recipient, Susan Wager, a doctoral student at Columbia University in New York, presented a paper, “Madame de Pompadour’s Indiscreet Jewels: Boucher, Reproduction, and Luxury in Eighteenth-Century France,” at CAA’s 2011 Annual Conference in New York.
Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture
The Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture (HGCEAA) have announced the results of its recent board election: Marsha Morton is president; Rose-Carol Washton Long is treasurer; Eva Forgacs is secretary; Emily Pugh is newsletter editor; and Jay Clark, James van Dyke, Keith Holz, and Juliet Koss are at-large board members.
Historians of Netherlandish Art
Jan van Eyck, Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine and Michael and a Donor (the Dresden or Giustiniani Triptych), 1437, oil on oak panel, 33.1 x 27.5 cm (center), 33.3 x 13.6 cm (wings) (artwork in the public domain)
The Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) have published the Winter 2011 issue of its open-access, online peer-reviewed, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, which features articles by Noëlle L. W. Streeton on Jan van Eyck, Jürgen Müller on Albrecht Dürer, Stephanie Porras on peasant imagery, and Alexandra Onuf on Claesz Visscher’s landscape prints.
The HNA Fellowship for Scholarly Research, Publication, and Travel for 2011 has been awarded to Christopher D. M. Atkins of Queen’s College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, for his book Frans Hals’s Signature Style: Painting, Subjectivity, and the Market in Early Modernity (forthcoming from Amsterdam University Press).
Italian Art Society
The Italian Art Society (IAS) has selected Alison Luchs, curator of early European sculpture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, to present the 2011 Italian Art Society–Kress Foundation Lecture. Her talk, entitled “The Wake of Desiderio: His Impact on Sculpture of the Late Quattrocento,” will take place at the historic Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence at 4:00 PM on June 8, 2011.
Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Science, and Technology
Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Science, and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) has partnered with the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences to present DC Art and Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER), a monthly discussion forum on art and science projects in or near Washington, DC. Historically, the artist has communicated, educated, and preserved the ideas of science. But how does the creative processes of artists inform the work of scientists, engineers, physicians, and experts from other disciplines? Each DASER will feature presentations by such practitioners along with time for discussion and socializing. The monthly series began on February 16 at the Keck Center in Washington, DC. The next events take place on March 16 and April 21.
National Council of Arts Administrators
The National Council of Arts Administrators (NCAA) has announced the names and affiliations of its 2011 board officers and members. Officers for the coming year are: Carolyn Henne, Florida State University, Executive Director; Jim Hopfensperger, Western Michigan University, President; Cora Lynn Diebler, University of Connecticut, Secretary; Andrea Eis, Oakland University, Treasurer. Board members for 2011 are: John Kissick, University of Guelph; Sally McRorie, Florida State University; Kim Russo, Ringling College of Art and Design; Sergio Soave, Ohio State University; and Georgia Strange, University of Georgia.
The next NCAA annual meeting, entitled “Push: The Artistic Engine of Innovation,” will take place November 2–5, 2011, at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. The NCAA board seeks proposals for presentations, sessions, and/or panels for the annual Arts Administrators Workshops, scheduled for Wednesday, November 2. Initial proposals should be no more than 350 words. Topics may include but are not limited to: leadership and management; promotion and tenure; interpersonal communication; succeeding with external constituencies; budget management; personnel evaluation; personal growth; career paths; and case studies (in any area related to arts administration). Please send proposals and inquiries to Sergio Soave by May 16, 2011. Selected entries will be asked to submit a 1,000-word abstract by June 20. The NCAA board will formally acknowledge the presenters, whose names will be posted to the NCAA website.
Society for Photographic Education
The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) seeks proposals for its forty-ninth national conference, called “Intimacy and Voyeurism: The Public/Private Divide in Photography” and taking place March 22–25, 2012, in San Francisco, California. Topics, which need not be theme based, may include but are not limited to: image making, history, contemporary theory and criticism, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, and funding. The conference offers six presentation formats: (1) Lecture: presentation on historical topic, theory, or another artist’s work; (2) Imagemaker: presentation on your own artistic work (photography, film, video, performance and installation, multidisciplinary approaches); (3) Panel: a moderator-led group discussing a chosen topic; (4) Demonstration: a how-to presentation; (5) Graduate Student: short presentation of your own artistic work and a brief introduction to your graduate program (you must be enrolled in a graduate program at the time of submission); and (6) Academic Practicum Workshop: lectures and panels that address educational issues. SPE membership is required to submit; proposals are peer reviewed. Visit the SPE website for information on membership and to read the full proposal guidelines. Deadline: June 1, 2011.
Society of Architectural Historians
On March 1, 2010, a multimedia edition of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH Online), led by the editors Hilary Ballon and David Brownlee with the stewardship of the University of California Press, became available to individual members of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH). As part of the Current Scholarship Program at JSTOR, JSAH Online has begun publishing papers that incorporate images, video, and geographic information system (GIS) technologies, enabling readers to engage in new ways and better understand their arguments. SAH has also mounted a campaign to encourage submissions of this kind and is working with other societies in the arts to do the same. Read more on the Resource Shelf blog and view a sample multimedia article in JSAH Online. SAH also offers instructional videos about how to prepare multimedia content for JSAH Online and other internet-based journals.
In addition, SAH will hold its sixty-fourth annual meeting in New Orleans, April 13–17, 2011. The meeting will focus on new research in the history of architecture, landscapes, and urbanism in 150 papers delivered by historians, preservationists, and architects from around the world. Additional offerings at the meeting include evening receptions, networking opportunities, and a vast array of architecture and landscape tours of the city and region. This year, SAH will offer attendees the opportunity to perform community service at the Priestly School, a charter high school devoted to architecture and the arts.
Southeastern College Art Conference
The Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) will hold its sixty-seventh annual meeting at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia this fall. Taking place November 9–12, 201, the conference theme is “Text + Texture: an intersection of academics and the arts.” The conference headquarters will be the DeSoto Hilton Hotel, located in the heart of historic Savannah. Featuring extensive panels and sessions for the exchange of ideas and concerns relevant to the practice and study of art, the conference will include the annual awards luncheon and the fourteenth annual members’ exhibition, as well as offer a rich array of tours, workshops, and evening events. Dan Cameron, founding director of Prospect New Orleans, will present a plenary address and jury the SECAC members’ exhibition, to be held at one of SCAD’s premier venues.
The conference website offers PDFs of both the call for papers and the call for entries. Please download and review the documents and follow the instructions for proposals on the website. The deadline for papers is April 20; the deadline for entries is April 1. For more information, write to secac@secollegeart.org or secac2011@scad.edu. All are welcome to SECAC membership, which is required for exhibitors.
Southern Graphics Council International
For a panel called “Coaction: Innovative Printmaking Collaborations” for the 2012 CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles, the Southern Graphics Council International (SGCI) invites proposals from artists, curators, and historians who have participated in or have written about innovative community print projects that contribute to social change, the environment, communications, and technology. Historically, printmakers are artists who enjoy the sense of community that a print shop creates by sharing their images, ideas, and techniques. They also produce multiples, thus increasing their reach to individuals outside their immediate community in the practice of exchanging prints. The use of the multiple, the shared history of fine art printmaking with commercial graphics, and the need for printmakers to share equipment and expertise have encouraged the propagation of community print projects—many that have redefined the role of printmaking as a vehicle for social innovation. This panel focuses on printmaking collaborations that extend beyond the traditional print exchange or work that is done in the print shop, hence examining partnerships between printmakers and the communities they live in; the impact that collaborations have in these communities; and the innovations in printmaking that have resulted. Please email your proposal—which must include a one-page abstract; 1–4 JPEGs of referenced images (no more than 1.5 MB each); and short CV—to Candace Nicol. Deadline: May 1, 2011.
Visual Resources Association
The Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress, in partnership with the Visual Resources Association (VRA), is now hosting the VRA Core, a data standard for descriptions of works of visual culture and images that document them. VRA has also published user support materials, such as VRA Core examples, FAQs, and presentations.
VRA’s Data Standards Committee formed the Embedded Metadata Working Group (EMwg) to explore use of embedded metadata in images of artworks and other cultural resources. EMwg is developing guidelines and tools to make embedded metadata easy to create and use. The group’s first product is a free custom File Info Panel (beta) for use with Photoshop and Bridge in Adobe’s Creative Suites 4 and 5. This panel allows users—including students, faculty, and image-collection assistants—to enter rich descriptive metadata that can then be ingested into a database or used on a local computer to find and organize images. You can download the info panel and user guide, which contain instructions for installing and using the panel.
2011 Annual Conference Summary
posted by Nia Page — Mar 02, 2011
The College Art Association recently held its 99th Annual Conference and Centennial Kickoff at the Hilton New York in midtown Manhattan. Taking place February 9–12, 2011, the conference began the organization’s yearlong celebration of its one hundredth anniversary. The program comprised four days of presentations and discussions on art, art history, and visual culture; career-development workshops, mentoring programs, and job interviews with colleges and universities; a Book and Trade Fair featuring publishers of art books and journals, manufacturers of artists’ materials, and providers of various services for artists and academics; and a host of special events throughout the New York area.
Attendance
The New York conference was not only the largest CAA has produced, it was also the best attended. More than seven thousand art professionals from across the United States and around the world—including artists, art historians, students, educators, curators, critics, collectors, and museum staff—came the event.
Sessions
The conference offered more than two hundred sessions, panels, and talks—all developed by CAA’s members, affiliated societies, and committees. These sessions, which featured presentations from participants and institutions across the country and internationally, addressed a wide range of topics. With papers and presentations as manifold as “The Aesthetics of Sonic Spaces,” “Gender and Sexuality in the Art Museum,” and “Civic Performance and the Genesis of the Roman Social Cityscape,” the 2011 conference was highly diverse.
CAA also organized seven special Centennial Sessions in which invited panelists from different corners of the visual arts—among them Mark Tribe, Griselda Pollock, and James Elkins—came together to debate core concepts, such as diversity, experience, feminism, globalization, medium, technology, and tradition.
Career Services
Career Services included three days of mentoring and portfolio-review sessions, workshops and roundtables on professional-development issues, and job interviews. Approximately one hundred schools, academic departments, and institutions conducted interviews at the conference. Workshops addressed such topics as planning for retirement, advice for new instructors, securing a job in the arts, and self-marketing for artists.
Book and Trade Fair
The Book and Trade Fair presented 149 exhibitors, including participants from the United States, Turkey, Spain, England, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium, displaying new publications, artists’ materials, digital resources, and innovative products of interest to artists and scholars. The Book and Trade Fair also featured book signings, lectures, and demonstrations, as well as three exhibitor sessions on artists’ materials and publishing.
ARTspace and ARTexchange
ARTspace, a “conference within the conference” tailored to the needs and interests of practicing artists, presented the Annual Artists’ Interviews with Krzysztof Wodiczko and Mel Chin, as well as wealth of presentations and programming by and for artists. ARTexchange, an open-portfolio event in which artist members displayed their small paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and work on laptops, hosted over fifty artists this year.
Convocation and Centennial Awards
More than six hundred people attended Convocation and the Centennial Awards Presentation, held at the Hilton New York on Wednesday, February 9. Jim Leach, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, spoke about the importance of the humanities, and eco-art pioneers Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison delivered a lively keynote address.
On the occasion of CAA’s centennial year, the Board of Directors presented four awards to living individuals who have contributed significantly to the advancement of the visual arts in the United States. The recipients of CAA’s four Centennial Awards are:
- Stuart E. Eizenstat, attorney and former US ambassador, Centennial Award for Protecting Art as a Cultural Product, presented by Paul Jaskot of DePaul University
- Agnes Gund, arts advocate and philanthropist, Centennial Award for Service to the Field, presented by Ann Temkin of the Museum of Modern Art
- Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centennial Award for Leadership, presented by Linda Downs, CAA executive director
- Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, collectors of contemporary art, Centennial Award for Patronage, presented by Anne Goodyear of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Awards for Distinction
Each year CAA recognizes the accomplishments of individual artists, art historians, authors, conservators, curators, and critics whose efforts transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large. More than four hundred people attended the presentation of the 2011 Awards for Distinction in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Thursday, February 10.
The recipients of CAA’s 2011 Awards for Distinction are:
- Lynda Benglis, Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement
- John Baldessari, Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
- Mieke Bal, Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art
- Luis Camnitzer, Frank Jewett Mather Award
- Faith Ringgold, Distinguished Feminist Award
- William Itter, Distinguished Teaching of Art Award
- Patricia Hills, Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award
- Molly Emma Aitken, Charles Rufus Morey Book Award for The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting
- Darielle Mason, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal
- Yasufumi Nakamori, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions for Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture
- Ross Barrett, Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize for “Rioting Refigured: George Henry Hall and the Picturing of American Political Violence”
- Kirsten Swenson, Janet Kraynak, Paul Monty Paret, and Emily Eliza Scott, Art Journal Award for “Land Use in Contemporary Art”
- Joyce Hill Stoner, CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
Centennial Book
CAA introduced The Eye, the Hand, the Mind: 100 Years of the College Art Association, a new book that surveys the impressive history of the organization from 1911 to the present. Susan Ball, executive director emerita, edited the 330-page hardcover book, which was published jointly by CAA and Rutgers University Press.
Special Events
The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted CAA’s Centennial Reception in the Great Hall and the Temple of Dendur. Hunter College offered its expansive galleries for the CAA Regional MFA Exhibition, which surveyed work by artists from twenty institutions within one hundred miles of New York. The New York Center for Art and Media Studies (NYCAMS) hosted the CAA Regional BFA Exhibition, which featured seventeen undergraduate student artists from seven area BFA programs. Sold-out tours explored the riches of New York’s cultural attractions, from a Chelsea Gallery District excursion to a preview tour of the Museum for African Art.
Save the Date
CAA will conclude its Centennial Celebration at the 100th Annual Conference, to be held February 22–25, 2012, in Los Angeles, California.
About CAA
The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally, offering forums to discuss the developments in art and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other avenues. CAA focuses on a wide range of issues, including education in the arts, freedom of expression, intellectual-property rights, cultural heritage and preservation, and workforce topics in universities and museums. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching.
Propose a Paper or Presentation for the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles
posted by Emmanuel Lemakis — Feb 28, 2011
The 100th Annual Conference in Los Angeles—which concludes CAA’s Centennial year—takes place February 22–25, 2012. Listing more than one hundred sessions, the 2012 Call for Participation will arrive in the mailboxes of all individual and institutional members in March; you can also download a PDF of the twenty-four-page document from the CAA website immediately.
The 2012 Call for Participation describes many of next year’s panels and presentations. CAA and session chairs invite your participation: please follow the instructions in the booklet to submit a proposal for a paper. This publication also includes a call for Poster Session proposals and describes the eleven Open Forms sessions.
The deadline for proposals of papers and presentations for the Los Angeles conference is Monday, May 2, 2011.
In addition to dozens of wide-ranging panels on art history, studio art, contemporary issues, and professional and educational practices, CAA conference attendees can expect participation from many area schools, museums, galleries, and other institutions. The Los Angeles Convention Center is the conference headquarters, holding most sessions and panels, Career Services and the Book and Trade Fair, receptions and special events, and more.