The Grapevine

FEL: Curatorial Fellow, African American Photography @ SAAM

 The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) seeks an outstanding emerging scholar of African American Photography for a three-year curatorial fellow position, with a possible one-year extension. The job offers invaluable professional experience for a scholar interested in an art museum career. The selected candidate will be fully integrated into SAAM’s curatorial team, working under the supervision of an experienced curator and in collaboration with staff from various departments. They will be active in acquisitions planning and development; collections assessment and research; project administration; gallery installation and interpretation; and public programming and publication. They will also participate in the intellectual life of the museum’s Research and Scholars Center, home of its research fellowship program and journal, American Art. 

The Curatorial Fellow for African American Photography will play a key role in an initiative to expand the representation of African American photography at SAAM. In 2020, SAAM acquired the L.J. West Collection of works by African American daguerreotypists. In 2022, it acquired the R. Drapkin Collection of photography used to represent, self-represent, and misrepresent African American history and culture. A third collection, in late 2023, will bring SAAM’s holdings to over 350 objects, with at least one further acquisition in the pipeline. This initiative seeks to fundamentally rewrite the American Art narrative at SAAM, with installations showing that African Americans immediately recognized the importance of photography, both as entrepreneurial makers and as consumers of images. 

With the supervisory curator, the fellow will survey SAAM’s holdings, conduct research to enhance collection records, and recommend appropriate terminology for metadata in order to make these works broadly accessible. They will also research artists and examine artworks being considered for acquisition. Lastly, the fellow will participate in the upcoming reinstallation of SAAM’s permanent collection galleries, working to support the robust representation of African American experience, perspectives, and artistic accomplishment through research and writing that will inform the selection of works, through the production of interpretive material and programming, and by overseeing the first convening of scholars and artists given access to these collections and the publication of their research. 

Applicants shall have expertise in photographic history, preferably with a nineteenth century focus, or African American art and history, and shall demonstrate scholarly excellence in addition to a strong interest in a museum career. A PhD in art history within the last five years is preferred, but the position is open to individuals with other academic backgrounds and specialties. Experience in some aspect of museum practice, including but not limited to collection management or exhibition development, is a plus. Strong technological capacity and experience developing digital humanities projects would also be highly valued. The successful candidate will be skilled in verbal and written communication, exhibit digital fluency, and be able to balance diverse tasks within the areas of research, collections management, and administration. Some research travel may be expected of the candidate. 

The position is classified as temporary, full-time Trust fund employment (IS-9, step 1), with a starting salary of $64,957 plus benefits that include vacation and sick leave, holidays, and health insurance. 

Closing date of this announcement: October 1, 2023 

How to Apply: Email enclosed resume, writing sample, and letter of interest to John Jacob, McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at jacobjp@si.edu with a subject line of “Curatorial Fellow for African American Photography” by October 1, 2023. 

The Smithsonian Institution is an equal opportunity employer 

CFP: “The Black Commonwealth” at CAA2024

The Black Commonwealth
Co-Chairs: julia elizabeth neal (University of Michigan), Janell Blackmon-Pryor (Bowie State University)
Submit:https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Session12517.html
Session will present: In Person

Investigations of place have prompted radical reconsiderations of social and artistic geographies of visual culture. It absorbs and reflects psychosocial views and cultural relationships between communities and sites. Place is discursive across the disciplines: Tim Creswell, an anthropogeographer, situates place as a “meaningful category,” whereas Lucy Lippard, a feminist curator, describes it as “the locus of desire,” and artist Renée Green discursively engages notions of place and site-specificity in “Peripatetic at ‘Home’.”

With the objective to contribute to increasing microhistories–local, transnational, and global–reframing art historical inquiry, this panel will convene around Pennsylvania and its role within Black art production. A colony, the second state to join the Union, and a commonwealth implicated by the myths of the nation, Pennsylvania is a microcosm of the United States. How does it shape histories of artists from Henry Ossawa Tanner and Meta Warrick Vaux Fuller to Raymond Saunders, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Benjamin Patterson, and more, from the past to now?

We invite submissions related to Pennyslvania’s role in the profiles, practices, networks, institutions, and histories, of artists of African descent from the 19th to 21st centuries. Graduate students, adjunct, tenure-track and tenured professors, curators and arts cultural workers are encouraged to present.

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

* Placemaking
* Politics of Identity and Blackness
* Gender Politics
* Respectability Politics and Whiteness Studies
* Andrew Carnegie and Institutions
* Labor Histories and Art
* Philadelphia, Pittsburgh
* Deindustrialization
* Archives and Documentary Histories
* Museums, Galleries and Race

Deadline is August 31, 2023

CFP: Blackness, Race, and Racism in Nineteenth-Century Studies

Special Issue of Nineteenth Century Studies: 

Blackness, Race, and Racism in Nineteenth-Century Studies

deadline for submission: August 15, 2024

full name(s)/name of organization:

Wendy Castenell and A. Maggie Hazard co-editors/Nineteenth-Century Studies

contact email(s): wcastenell@wlu.edu; ahazar1@saic.edu

This special issue will explore how Blackness was constructed and problematized by a hegemonic global structure across national boundaries during the long nineteenth century. The issue will pay particular attention to emerging concepts of Black identities during this period.  Critically, majority narratives have driven these constructions, propagating mediated histories that subjugate Black people, yet the full impact of these narratives has not been thoroughly explored and needs additional interrogation. Essays might consider topics related to images, texts, other forms of media, and more. Possible topics could include expressions of Black autonomy in white supremacist cultures; colonialism/decolonization; trauma studies; slavery/emancipation; Black soldiers; Black artists/photographers/writers; the development and expression of stereotypes; the practice of lynching; the transatlantic migration and the Black diaspora; and other relevant subjects. Nineteenth Century Studies publishes studies of nineteenth-century world cultures in all humanistic fields, including literature, art history, history, musicology, and the history of science and the social sciences. It is an interdisciplinary journal issued annually by the Nineteenth Century Studies Association. One exciting aspect of Nineteenth Century Studies is that the journal encourages authors to enhance their contributions with pertinent artwork.

Please submit manuscripts for scholarly essays of 6,000-10,000 words, pedagogical essays of 2,000-4,000 words, or book reviews of 600-1000 words formatted in Chicago Manual Style to guest editors Wendy Castenell and A. Maggie Hazard at wcastenell@wlu.edu and ahazar1@saic.edu. Additionally, we welcome suggestions of books for review relevant to the theme of this special issue. Please send your suggestions to the editors. Early expressions of interest and proposals of topics are also welcome. The initial deadline for submission of full manuscripts will be August 15, 2024, but earlier submissions are encouraged.

FELLOWSHIPS: The Center @ National Gallery of Art

Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Fellowships, 2023–2024

The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts is a research institute that fosters the study of the production, use, and cultural meaning of art, artifacts, architecture, and urbanism, from prehistoric times to the present. The resident community of scholars includes the Kress-Beinecke Professor, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, the A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts, and approximately 18 fellows at any one time, including pre- and postdoctoral fellows, senior and visiting senior fellows, and research associates.

The Center is now welcoming applications for the following fellowships: 

Visiting Senior Fellowships

Award period: one two-month period between March 1 and August 15, 2024

Applications due September 21, 2023

Senior Fellowships

Award period: academic year 2024–2025, or a single semester therein 

Applications due October 15, 2023

A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship

Award period: September 2024–August 2026

Applications due October 15, 2023

Center/YCBA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

Award period: September 2024–August 2026

Applications due October 15, 2023

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellowships

Award period: one to three years beginning September 2024

Applications due November 15, 2023

Fellows have access to the notable resources represented by the art collections, the library, and the image collections of the National Gallery of Art, as well as other specialized research libraries and collections in the Washington area.

For more information, please visit the Center’s website, or email us at TheCenter@nga.gov.  

CFP: “Blackness, White Liberalism, and Art” @ CAA2024

Call For Papers

Blackness, White Liberalism, and Art

College Art Association Annual Conference session

Chicago, February 14–17, 2024 

This panel will address the “soft racism” of white liberal artists who have inadequately tried to address white supremacy and anti-Black racism in their work. Whether in the guise of multiculturalism, color blindness, or particular strains of post-racialism, these artists have often perpetuated what cultural theorist Stuart Hall called “a kind of difference that doesn’t make a difference of any kind.” We seek papers that take up case studies of neo/liberal representations of race produced within the United States across media from the nineteenth century until today. 

Chairs: Bridget R. Cooks, University of California, Irvine, and John Ott, James Madison University.   

The session will convene in person in Chicago and the deadline for submissions is August 31, 2023. Submission Link: 

https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Session12755.html

CFP: “Critical Race Art History and the Archive” @ ACRAH/CAA2024

ACRAH will be at College Art Association Annual Conference in 2024.

We are having a virtual session, “Critical Race Art History and the Archive” that is soliciting papers.

Abstract:

In Subject to Display (2009), Jennifer A. González asserts that “the collection and display of bodies, images, and artifacts in museums and elsewhere is a primary means by which a nation tells the story of its past and locates the cultures of its citizens in the present.“ In this session, contemporary archivists’ discuss their approaches to telling the narratives of racial identification and racialization—past and present. What has been collected and how has that material been interpreted? What questions do they bring to institutional systems of classification? How do they create space and cede power so that marginalized communities can access resources that support their created and managed archives? In what ways have the concerns of the humanities—analysis, interpretation, argumentation—been mainstreamed into digital humanities practice in the scope of critical race art history?

Submit your proposal here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Session12882.html

Deadline: August 31, 2023

Check out the full CAA conference call for participation and guidelines to submit here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html

Zoom: “Revisiting the Spiral Group”

Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/revisiting-the-spiral-group-tickets-677473781317

“Revisiting the Spiral Group,” will be hosted by the Romare Bearden Foundation on Thursday, July 27th, at 6pm EST on Zoom. The event commemorates the 60th anniversary of the founding of Spiral, an African American artists’ collective co-founded by Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff. 

A conversation with Richard Mayhew, the oldest living member of Spiral, and Courtney J. Martin, the director of the Yale Center for British Art will be moderated by Camara Holloway, project manager for the Romare Bearden catalogue raisonné at the Wildenstein Plattner Institute and ACRAH co-director.

JOB: Mellon Prof @ University of Pittsburgh

Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Histories of Art and Architecture

Overview of Position

The Department of History of Art and Architecture (HAA) announces a search for the next Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Histories of Art and Architecture. Mellon Professors at the University of Pittsburgh serve as intellectual thought leaders within the department, the university, and the field(s) in which they participate. We seek a colleague who will use the prominence of this endowed professorship to advance HAA’s mission of expanding and diversifying the histories of art and architecture through their teaching, research, mentorship, and leadership. Applications are invited from tenured professors at the Associate and Full Professor ranks, i.e. those who have attained prominence within their own specialization, and whose intellectual trajectory offers evidence that they are already, or soon will be, considered a leading voice in the discipline and more broadly in the humanities.  

Our department has recently completed a strategic planning process during which we have reaffirmed our commitment to studying the depth and complexity of humanity at the graduate and undergraduate levels. This position is open to candidates with expertise in all subjects and methodologies of the history of art, architecture, and related fields. We seek a colleague who will lead our department in new directions, which need not be contingent on geography or chronology, and who will help us advance the following intellectual and ethical priorities of the department:  

1.      Constellations: Initiated in 2011, HAA’s Constellations serve as cross-subfield thematic and critical frameworks for research exchanges and collaborations within and beyond our department. They also inform our mentoring and teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels. We seek a colleague whose scholarship and teaching can help us maintain and build on the intellectual and pedagogical excellence of our Constellations in fresh and innovative ways.  

2.     DEIA: HAA is committed to centering diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in its curriculum, research, outreach, and departmental governance. We seek a colleague who will help advance the projects of anti-racist and decolonial pedagogy, research, and community building.  

3.     Graduate program: The continued growth and vitality of our Ph.D. program is a key priority of the department. We seek a colleague who will help broaden the department’s existing methodologies and research foci by way of graduate-level curricular offerings, languages, thematics, skills, etc., in support of our strong commitment to attracting talented graduate students and preparing them to be leaders in the field. 

4.     Undergraduate program: The Mellon Professor will introduce undergraduate students to new ways of thinking about the histories, meanings, and values of art and architecture. We are committed to encouraging students from diverse backgrounds to consider our courses and programs as integral to their intellectual and professional growth.  

5.     Engagement with Publics: This endowed professorship is a high-profile appointment in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Pittsburgh, and the city of Pittsburgh. We seek a Mellon Professor prepared to use the prominence and resources of this position to engage with the public within and beyond Pittsburgh.  

Applicants are encouraged to articulate in their cover letters how they envision contributing to these departmental priorities through their scholarship, teaching, mentorship, and public-facing initiatives including curatorial, digital, and/or other projects. 

To apply, visit join.pitt.edu. The requisition number for this position is 23004371.  

Nineteenth Century Studies Association Awards

NINETEENTH CENTURY STUDIES ASSOCIATION
Award Submission Deadline July 1, 2023.
ncsaweb.net/
Submissions to the Emerging Scholars Award and the Article Prize are due July 1, 2023. Winners will each receive a cash award of $500 to be presented at the Annual NCSA Conference.

The Emerging Scholars Award
The work of emerging scholars represents the promise and long-term future of interdisciplinary scholarship in nineteenth century studies. In recognition of the excellent publications of this constituency of emerging scholars, this awardrecognizes an outstanding article or essay published during the author’s doctoral studies or within the six years following conferral of a doctorate. The winning article will be selected by a committee of nineteenth-century scholars representing diverse disciplines. The winner will receive $500 to be presented at the annual NCSA Conference in 2024. Applicants are encouraged to attend the conference at which the prize will be awarded.  Entries can be from any discipline and may focus on any aspect of the long nineteenth century (the French Revolution to World War I), must be published in English or be accompanied by an English translation, and must be by a single author. Submission of essays that are interdisciplinary is especially encouraged. Articles that appeared in print in a journal or edited collection in 2022 or between January 1, 2023 and June 30, 2023 are eligible for the 2024 Emerging Scholars Award; if the date of publication does not fall within that span but the work appeared between those dates, then it is eligible. Articles may be submitted by the author or the publisher of a journal, anthology, or volume containing independent essays.

More information and link to submit articles are HERE: ncsaweb.net/ncsa-emerging-scholars-award/
Inquiries can be directed to:  Dr. Claudia Martin, Chair of the Emerging Scholars Committee at  claudiam@binghamton.edu  OR EmergingScholarsNCSA@gmail.com .

The Article Prize
The Article Prize recognizes excellence in scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on any aspect of the long nineteenth century (French Revolution to World War I). The winning article will be selected by a committee of nineteenth-century scholars representing diverse disciplines. The winner will receive a cash award of $500 to be presented at the Annual NCSA Conference. Entries can be from any discipline, must be published in English or be accompanied by an English translation, and submission of essays that are interdisciplinary is especially encouraged. Articles that appeared in print in a journal or edited collection in 2022 or between January 1, 2023 and June 30, 2023 are eligible for the 2024 Article Prize; if the date of publication does not fall within that span but the work appeared between those dates, then it is eligible. Articles may be submitted by the author or the publisher of a journal, anthology, or volume containing independent essays.

More information and link to submit articles are HERE: ncsaweb.net/ncsa-article-prize/

Inquiries can be directed to: Dr. Scott Moore, Chair of the Article Prize Committee at mooresc@easternct.edu ORArticlePrizeNCSA@gmail.com

Articles submitted to the NCSA Article Prize competition are ineligible for the Emerging Scholars Award and vice versa; only one entry per scholar or publisher for one of the two awards is allowed annually. Nineteenth-Century Studies Association’s Officers, Board, Senior Advisory Committee, and Article Prize and Emerging Scholars Award Committee members are not eligible to receive the award until two years have elapsed since their service.

JOB: Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art @ SAAM

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is seeking a dynamic curator to oversee the museum’s collection of African American art, which includes more than 2500 artworks by 270 African American artists. The collection ranges from the 19th through the 21st centuries, with deep holdings by Edmonia Lewis, Bannister, Duncanson, Tanner, William H. Johnson, and work by self-taught and contemporary artists, as well as James Hampton’s Throne of the Third Heaven and an untitled verse jar by Dave Drake. The newly endowed position of Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art will develop collection strategies, exhibitions and publications, advise fellows and interns, and, notably, collaborate with the curatorial team to reinstall and reinterpret the permanent collection galleries.

The ideal candidate will have an M.A. (PhD. Preferred) in art history or a field related to African American studies, as well as knowledge of African American art, at least three years of museum experience, and a track record of innovative exhibitions and publications. The position is at the IS-13 level, with a salary range of $112,015-145,617.

To apply, go to: https://americanart.si.edu/about/careers/curator-african-american-art-13