Author: Camara Dia Holloway

I am the Project Manager for the Romare Bearden Digital Catalogue Raisonné at the Wildenstein Plattner Institute. I earned my PhD at Yale University in the History of Art Department and specialize in twentieth century American art with a particular focus on the history of photography, race and representation, and transatlantic modernist networks. I also serve as a Founding Co-Director of the Association for Critical Race Art History (ACRAH).

JOB: Assistant Professor/Provost Fellow- Black Atlantic Art and Architecture @ UChicago

The Department of Art History at the University of Chicago seeks (an) art or architectural historian(s) of the Black Atlantic, specializing in any pertinent historical period and in any territory of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, Iberia, and/or the more ramified Atlantic world. We are also interested in art or architectural historians working more broadly on race, (post)colonialism, and visual culture in the Atlantic world. The ability to work across fields and subfields is highly desirable, as we expect the successful candidate to collaborate with faculty within and beyond our department.

The Department of Art History values diversity. A goal of the search is to increase the diversity of the faculty in the Department of Art History and across the Humanities Division, and we therefore welcome applicants from groups historically underrepresented in academia, such as black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian or Alaskan Native.

Successful candidates will be appointed either as a tenure-track Assistant Professor, or as a Provost Fellow at the rank of Instructor with an initial two-year faculty appointment. This initial period is intended to serve in lieu of a postdoctoral appointment. Provost Fellows will teach one class/year, receive research support, and participate in programming designed to help support them in their transition to Assistant Professor. Provost Fellows will ordinarily be promoted to Assistant Professor at the end of their 2-year term. Candidates for Provost Fellow appointment must have no more than two years of postdoctoral experience. All candidates must have the Ph.D. in hand by the start of the appointment, 1 July 2018.

Complete application materials include cover letter (including discussion of research and teaching interests), CV, two scholarly writing samples, names and contact information for three professional references, and a statement describing the applicant’s prior and potential contributions to diversity in the context of academic research, teaching, and service. Applicants should send all materials in electronic format (MS Word or PDF) to Caroline Altekruse at caltekruse@uchicago.edu with subject heading “Black Atlantic Art and Architecture Search.” In addition, applicants must upload the CV and cover letter to the Academic Career Opportunities website at http://tinyurl.com/ya6e3sek. No applications received after 20 September 2017 will be accepted. University positions are contingent upon budgetary approval.

The University of Chicago is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity/Disabled/Veterans Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, age, status as an individual with a disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information please see the University’s Notice of Nondiscrimination at http://www.uchicago.edu/about/non_discrimination_statement/. Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call 773-702-0287 or email ACOppAdministrator@uchicago.edu with their request.

CFP: “A Way/s From Home: Blackness Across Nations” @ CAA2018

The following session is for the 2018 College Art Association Annual Conference in Los Angeles, February, 21 – 24, 2018. Proposals from ACRAH members most welcome.

A Way/s from Home: Blackness across Nations
Chair(s): Julie L. McGee, University of Delaware, mcgee@udel.edu

In 1964, African American writer and artist Allen Polite, living then in Stockholm, organized “10 American Negro Artist[s] Living and Working in Europe” for Copenhagen’s Den Frie, one of the oldest venues for contemporary art in Denmark. Polite included work by Harvey Cropper, Beauford Delaney, Herbert Gentry, Arthur Hardie, Clifford Jackson, Sam Middleton, Earl Miller, Norma Morgan, Larry Potter, and Walter Williams. Polite’s justification for the grouping was poetic if not opaque: “In short, apart from their distinguishing racial features these exhibitors have only this in common: they are all living in Europe at present. And that is natural enough when one considers the unwritten tradition in art history that makes the artist a wanderer, an observer and digestor [sic] of cultures; a restless soul in search of the images and symbols.” Many black artists took up residence in Europe after WWII to study or to live on a semi-permanent basis. Many found both camaraderie and exhibition opportunities with other African American artists living abroad. To what extent they escaped racial discrimination or exchanged one kind for another is debatable: personal, conceptual, and artistic freedoms and external perceptions of blackness are codependent. Disputes over artistic freedom and both real and hypothetical homefront responsibilities haunt this history and artistic practice. Europe’s inconsistent place within a “freedom narrative” illuminates the complexity of blackness and artistic agency on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. This session encourages presentations that revisit, revise, or otherwise creatively engage the problematic of the “expat.”

Please send 250-word proposals, a completed session participation proposal form, and a short academic CV to Julie McGee mcgee@udel.edu by 14 August 2017.

Please consult the guidelines at the end of the CAA Call for Participation (http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/call-for-participation.pdf) for further details.

CFP: “Critical Race Art Histories in Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe” @ CAA2018

The following session for the 2018 College Art Association Annual Conference in Los Angeles, February, 21 – 24, 2018 is sponsored by the Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art (HGSCEA). They especially welcome submissions from ACRAH members.

Critical Race Art Histories in Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe

Chair: Allison Morehead, Queen’s University

Critical race theory, which entered art history through postcolonial analyses of representations of black bodies, has remained relatively peripheral to art historical studies of Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe, whose colonial histories differ from those of countries such as Britain, France, and the United States. At the same time, art historical examinations of white supremacy in the Nazi period are frequently sectioned off from larger histories of claims to white superiority and privilege. Centering critical race theory in the art histories of Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe, this panel will consider representations of race in the broadest of terms — including “white makings of whiteness,” in the words of Richard Dyer. We invite papers that together will explore the imagination and construction of a spectrum of racial and ethnic identities, as well as marginalization and privilege, in and through German, Scandinavian, and Central European art, architecture, and visual culture in any period. How have bodies been racialized through representation, and how might representations of spaces, places, and land — the rural or wilderness vs. the urban, for instance — also be critically analyzed in terms of race? Priority will be given to papers that consider the intersections of race with other forms of subjectivity and identity.

Please send 250-word proposals, a completed session participation proposal form, and a short academic CV to Allison Morehead at morehead@queensu.ca by 14 August 2017.

Please consult the guidelines at the end of the CAA Call for Participation (http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/call-for-participation.pdf) for further details.

CFP: ‘Curating Difference: Race and Ethnicity in the US Museum” ACRAH @ CAA2018

The CFP for the 2018 College Art Association Annual Conference has been posted online.

CAA2018 will be held in Los Angeles, California running from Wednesday, February 21st through Saturday, February 24th, 2018.

ACRAH will be holding the following session at the conference and invite submissions to participate on the panel:

Curating Difference: Race and Ethnicity in the US Museum

Chairs: Bridget Cooks, University of California, Irvine & Camara Holloway, ACRAH

This session is intended as a conversation addressing how to implement a critical race visual studies-informed practice in a museum setting. Topics for consideration include: how mainstream and/or culturally-specific institutions in the US have embraced such an approach; case-studies about exhibitions devoted to art made by US-based artists of color and/or art made about American communities of color; and strategies promoting greater racial and ethnic sensitivity amongst extant museum professionals as well as diversifying their ranks in terms of the ethno-racial backgrounds and/or awareness of future hires. Submissions from Los Angeles-area and West Coast-based curators and museum professionals are especially encouraged, as are topics focused on this region.

Deadline: August 14, 2017

A 250-word presentation abstract, a short CV, a statement of interest, and completed Session Participation Proposal Submission Form should be sent to both Camara Holloway at camara.holloway@icloud.com and Bridget Cooks at b.cooks@uci.edu

Please note that CAA now requires that all session participants be an active individual CAA member through February 24, 2018, and must register for at least the session in which you participate. Early conference registration at the discount rate opens in early October. Please refer to the CFP for additional details and instructions.

FEL: Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry @ Washington University, St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis announces the eighteenth year of Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry, a postdoctoral fellowship program endowed by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, designed to encourage interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching across the humanities and social sciences. We invite applications from recent PhDs, DPhils, or D.F.A.s (in hand by June 30, 2018, and, no earlier than June 30, 2013) for a position as Fellow. In September 2018, the newly selected Fellows will join the University’s ongoing interdisciplinary programs and seminars. The Fellows will receive a two-year appointment with a nine-month academic year salary beginning at $54,150 per year. Postdoctoral Fellows pursue their own continuing research in association with a senior faculty mentor at WU. During the two years of their tenure, they will teach three undergraduate courses and collaborate in leading an interdisciplinary seminar on theory and methods for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.

Applicants should submit, through Interfolio, a cover letter, a description of their research program (no more than 1800 words and accessible to reviewers in other fields), a brief proposal for an interdisciplinary seminar in theory and methods, and a curriculum vitae. Applicants who have not completed their doctoral work should indicate, in their cover letter, how many chapters of their dissertation are complete and how complete the remaining chapters are. Applicants should arrange for the submission of three confidential letters of recommendation, also via Interfolio. Further information on Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry is available on the web at http://mii.wustl.edu/. Please email us at mii@wustl.edu with additional questions.

Submit materials to Interfolio at the following link by December 4, 2017: apply.interfolio.com/42295 (Portal opens September 1, 2017.)

Washington University in St. Louis is committed to the principles and practices of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action. It is the University’s policy to recruit, hire, train, and promote persons in all job titles without regard to race, color, age, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, veteran status, disability, or genetic information.

Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary Art @ Whitney Museum of American Art

A full-time Curatorial Assistant position, reporting to the Nancy and Fred Poses Associate Curator, is available. The incumbent will work on some of the Whitney’s most exciting and challenging contemporary projects, including exhibitions, acquisitions, and publications. A strong interest in contemporary art is essential, and production-oriented experience a plus.

Responsibilities include: assistance in the planning and installation of exhibitions and projects, including management of checklists, schedules, and databases; daily administrative support (telephone, management of the Curator’s calendar; maintenance of records, drafting correspondence, preparation of presentations, travel arrangements, processing invoices, and other general office and clerical duties); scholarly research on artists and acquisitions; preparation and writing of didactic texts; serving as liaison with the Curator’s internal and external contacts, including artists, trustees, donors, scholars, and museum departments such as Conservation, Exhibitions and Collections Management, Publications, and Research Resources.

Job requirements: B.A. in art history (M.A. a plus) and 2 years institutional work history, or equivalent experience; skills related to TMS, Raiser’s Edge, Microsoft Office, Excel, and PowerPoint; outstanding organizational, writing, research, and communication skills, with attention to detail; facility in representing the Whitney at events at the Museum and beyond; ability to handle several projects simultaneously, work well as a member of a team, and meet deadlines.

Please send resume, cover letter and salary requirements to: hr@whitney.org and state “Curatorial Assistant Contemporary” in the subject line.

For more information see http://whitney.org/About/JobPostings

JOB: Curatorial Assistant Position, American Art @ Whitney Museum of Art

A full-time Curatorial Assistant position, reporting to the DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection, is available. The incumbent will work with the Director and his team on all matters related to the development and display of the Museum’s esteemed collection of modern and contemporary American art, assisting with scholarly projects as well as a variety of administrative tasks. Excellent research and writing skills a must, and a focus in American art before 1945 strongly preferred.

Responsibilities include: scholarly research on artists and acquisitions; preparation and writing of didactic texts; assistance in the planning and installation of collection displays, including management of checklists, schedules, and databases; coordination of gifts and support of Museum committees dedicated to acquisitions and loans; maintenance of object files; serving as liaison with the Director of the Collection’s internal and external contacts, including artists, trustees, donors, scholars, and museum departments such as Conservation, Exhibitions and Collections Management, Publications, and Research Resources ; daily administrative support (telephone, management of the Director of the Collection’s calendar; maintenance of records, drafting correspondence, preparation of presentations, travel arrangements, processing invoices, and other general office and clerical duties).

Job requirements:   B.A. in art history (M.A. a plus); 3 years museum/gallery experience; working knowledge of 20th- and 21st-century art history with a focus in American art before 1945; clerical and organizational skills, including experience with TMS, Microsoft Office, Excel, and PowerPoint; excellent writing, research, and communication skills, with attention to detail; ability to handle several projects simultaneously and meet deadlines.

Please send resume, cover letter and salary requirements to:  hr@whitney.org and state “Curatorial Assistant” in the subject line.

See http://whitney.org/About/JobPostings

About the Whitney

The Whitney Museum of American Art, founded in 1930 by the artist and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, houses the foremost collection of American art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From her vision arose the Whitney Museum of American Art, which has been championing the most innovative art of the United States for 86 years. The core of the Whitney’s mission is to collect, preserve, interpret, and exhibit American art of our time and serve a wide variety of audiences in celebration of the complexity and diversity of art and culture in the United States. Through this mission and a steadfast commitment to artists themselves, the Whitney has long been a powerful force in support of modern and contemporary art and continues to help define what is innovative and influential in American art today.

JOB: Curator-in-Residence @ The Driskell Center/UMD Art Gallery

The University of Maryland Art Gallery at College Park is now accepting applications for its first Curator-in-Residence program: http://www.driskellcenter.umd.edu/about/employment_opp.php

Starting in July 2017, the successful candidate will participate in a one-year residency in which they will originate and present two exhibitions and related public programs. The Curator-in-Residence will work closely with the Executive Director of the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland as well as the Assistant Director of The University of Maryland Art Gallery.

The University of Maryland Art Gallery is pleased to launch its first Curator-in-Residence program with the main objective of engaging an experienced curator with The University of Maryland Art Gallery and the community it serves. The successful candidate will curate innovative exhibitions and assist The University of Maryland Art Gallery with developing programs that promote greater accessibility to both the university community and the general public. The Curator-in-Residence will serve as a professional resource for students, local artists, and arts professionals, both at the University of Maryland and in the local communities of Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, and must have a keen interest in understanding and working with university students and artists.

The Curator-in-Residence’s responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
• Curate two exhibitions of diverse mediums of professionally highprofile contemporary artists
• Provide content (e.g. checklist, introduction) for catalogues, brochures, press releases, and all related publicity material, etc., as well as prepare didactic text for exhibitions
• Write essays when required for individual exhibition publications
• Suggest and assist with selecting speakers for guest lectures, gallery tours, artist residencies, etc.
• Present a curator talk, at least one per exhibition
• Organize a two-hour seminar in curatorial practices and studies for undergraduate and graduate students, one per semester
• Write one or two critiques and reviews about a local art exhibition for publication in local, regional, and/or national platform
• Make recommendations for future gallery programming and assist with identifying a potential Curator-in-Residence for the following year
Minimum required qualifications:
• An MFA or MA in Art History, Museum Studies, or another relevant related field
• Demonstrated knowledge of a particular historical period, preferably modern and contemporary art
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills are essential
• Creative individual with the capacity to take initiative, work well independently as well as with a team, and adjust easily to an ever-changing, demanding, arts organization
• Minimum of five years’ experience as curator in an academic museum, non-profit or similar setting
• Proven records of publications
• Teaching experience is preferred

The Curator-in-Residence is a part-time, outside consultant position; his/her presence at the University is required for nine visits, four days each, over the one-year period. Payment as an outside consultant will be provide monthly, at $2,200 each month (total $26,400 for twelve months), based on completion of the tasks required. The Curator-in-Residence will be involved in all curatorial aspects during the residency and will have full administrative support from the The University of Maryland Art Gallery, the David C. Driskell Center, and the University of Maryland.

To apply:
Please send the following documents to:
driskellcenter@umd.edu with subject: Curator-in-Residence_LASTNAME

• A one-page cover letter outlining curatorial interests, professional experience, and what you hope to accomplish in a twelve-month residency at The University of Maryland Art Gallery

• A résumé

• Five JPEGS of previous exhibitions and public events organized by the applicant

• One academic or critical writing sample

• One didactic writing sample for “general” audience

• Contact information for three professional references.

EXH: Black Fashion Designers @ FIT until May 16, 2017

On view: December 6, 2016 through May 16, 2017 This sweeping exhibition showcases works of fashion designers of African descent created from the 1950s through now. Organized into themes including “Breaking into the Industry,” “Rise of the Black Designer,” “Eveningwear,” “African Influences,” “Street Influences,” “Activism,” “Menswear,” “Black Models” and “Experimentation,” the fashions are as varied as the designers […]

via Black Fashion Designers at FIT Museum — Fashion, Textile & Costume Librarians

REF: Race and Norman Rockwell

On the 6th of March 1943, iconic painter and illustrator of American culture Norman Rockwell, published Freedom from Want or The Thanksgiving Picture in The Saturday Evening Post, one of over 300 covers he produced for the Indianapolis publication during his lifetime. It was the third of four oil paintings known as the Four Freedoms inspired by […]

via White on White: Hidden Race in Rockwell’s ‘Freedom from Want’ — A R T L▼R K