The Grapevine

LEC: Curating Pacific Spaces @ Int’l Studio & Curatorial Program

URL for additional information: http://www.iscp-nyc.org/events/current/curating-pacific-spaces.html

On August 13th, the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) presents the panel Curating Pacific Spaces: Recent Developments in Contemporary Art from the South Pacific. New Zealand is home to one of the largest populations of Pacific people in the world, however Indigenous Pacific artists and curators have, until recently, rarely been featured in the art history of this nation. Today a new generation of indigenous artists endeavor to have their contribution to the contemporary art scene of the South Pacific fully recognized.

Curators of contemporary Maori and Pacific Islander art, Reuben Friend and Shelley Jahnke, will present their findings on recent developments in contemporary Pacific Art, from trends in the private gallery scene to the latest generation of emerging millennial artists. Reuben Friend’s findings highlight the types of contemporary Pacific Art currently being exhibited in public galleries in New Zealand and how these works translate to an international audience. Shelley Jahnke’s research examines the dynamics of selling and positioning contemporary Māori and Pacific Art within New Zealand and international markets.

Reuben Friend is an artist and curator of Māori and Pākehā lineage. From 2009-2013, he worked as the Curator of Māori and Pacific Arts at City Gallery and recently relocated to Brisbane where he works as the Exhibition Manager at Logan Art Gallery while developing contemporary Pacific art projects on a freelance basis.

Shelley Jahnke is a Māori curator with experience working within public and commercial galleries in New Zealand. Prior to taking up the role of curator, at Te Manawa Art Gallery, Palmerston North, she worked exclusively for an Asian-based private international art collector and contributed to the curation and project management of the international touring show Roundabout. This ambitious three year project debuted at the City Gallery, Wellington in late 2010 and later the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2012.

The presentation will be facilitated by ISCP artist-in-residence Shigeyuki Kihara.
Contact Email: ebees@iscp-nyc.org

WEB: Visual Culture of the American Civil War

Jessica Marie Johnson's avatar#ADPhD

New website:

The historical record of the American Civil War includes a vast amount of visual material—photographs, illustrated news periodicals, comic publications, individually-published prints, almanacs, political cartoons, illustrated envelopes, trade cards, greeting cards, sheet music covers, money, and more. The era’s visual media heralded an unprecedented change in the production and availability of pictorial media in everyday life and an innovation in the documentation of warfare. In the last decade, a remarkable amount of these materials, previously confined to libraries, historical societies, and museums, has become available on the Web, and in the last generation drawn the attention of humanities scholars.

In July 2012 the American Social History Project held a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on The Visual Culture of the Civil War. For two weeks, thirty college and university teachers from across the United States explored the array of visual media that recorded and disseminated information…

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JOB: Admin, African-American Fine Art @ Swann Galleries

Administrative Assistant, African-American Fine Art Department

Description:

Swann Auction Galleries, an art and rare book auction house, is seeking an administrative assistant for its African-American Fine Art department. Since its creation in 2006, this department is dedicated to the promotion and sale of fine art by important African-American artists from the 19th century to the contemporary.

This is a full-time position, working closely with the director in all department functions, including consignments, catalogue production and auction sales. Administrative assistant duties include but are not limited to answering inquiries, working with consignors and buyers, inventory management, exhibition planning, art handling and research. Assistants also support staff on Swann auction sale days.

Qualifications and Requirements:
• A minimum of an undergraduate degree in art history, fine arts, arts administration/education, or a related field.
• Excellent organizational, communication, visual and writing skills.
• Knowledge of art history and contemporary art.
• Knowledge of PC and Microsoft platforms. Familiarity with digital photography and Photoshop preferred.

Please submit a one page cover letter and a current resumé to Nigel Freeman, Director, African-American Fine Art, via email –  nfreeman@swanngalleries.com

 

SYMP: Midcentury Modernism Coference – (SeSAH) Annual Meeting @ UNC-Charlotte

Registration for SESAH 2013 is now open.

Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SeSAH) Annual Meeting
School of Architecture, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Charlotte, NC, September 25-28, 2013
 
Conference Theme: Midcentury Modernism
In recent years, architectural historians have begun to reconsider midcentury modernism with new eyes. These inquiries have ranged from an interrogation of the positive and negative consequences of CIAM modernism in Third World colonial territories, to local and regional histories of urban renewal and alternative modernisms that anticipated the shift toward postmodern heterogeneity. This reexamination has not only helped us to expand our knowledge of the legacies of midcentury modernism, but they also help us to contextualize the built environments that often mark cities that expanded during the postwar boom years. There are many cities in the Southeast that fit this latter description.
Charlotte is a paradigmatic New South City. It has continuously transformed its physical environment to emphasize the present – few older buildings survive in the Center City, and since the 1950s the architectural and urban focus has been distinctly modern. In recent years Charlotte has become increasingly aware of the importance of its mid-century heritage. The architecture of this era has become a critical topic of discussion among Preservationists in Charlotte and other cities, while at the same time the era of “Mad Men” has recaptured the imagination of the American public.
The SeSAH 2013 conference in Charlotte offers its participants a chance to engage in the critical exploration of the architecture and urbanism of the 1950s and 1960s as well as their historiographies.

FEL: Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow for African American Art @ Birmingham Museum of Art

Title:                Andrew W. Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow for African American Art

Reports to:         Deputy Director & Chief Curator

Status:               Full time, two-year appointment

Job Purpose:       The Mellon Fellowship offers the opportunity to gain professional curatorial experience in a mid-size museum setting.  The Fellow is primarily responsible for collection- and exhibition-related research focusing on African American art and artists and related issues, with an emphasis on developing engaging exhibitions and publications, researching and identifying acquisitions through purchase and gift, audience development, fundraising and public relations, and additional duties as appropriate to specific projects.  The Fellow also oversees educational and social events, travel and acquisitions for the Sankofa Society, an active Museum collection support group.

MUSEUM DESCRIPTION

Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art is one of the premier museums of the southeast, with a collection of more than 25,000 objects that represent a rich panorama of international cultures, past and present.  Six curators oversee the collection in the areas of European Art, Modern and Contemporary Art, Decorative Art, Asian Art, Arts of Africa and the Americas, and American Art.  The Museum’s educational programs are designed around the collection and special exhibitions, and provide opportunities for all ages and levels of experience to connect with art. Visit www.artsbma.org for more information.

AFRICAN AMERICAN ART COLLECTION AT THE BMA

The Museum boasts impressive holdings of African American art in a wide variety of media by artists such as Henry Ossawa Tanner, Robert S. Duncanson, Bill Traylor, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Ernest Withers, Thornton Dial, Jack Whitten, Lorna Simpson, Kerry James Marshall, Carrie Mae Weems, Glenn Ligon, Odili Donald Odita and numerous others.  In addition to this impressive foundation, there exists an avid local collector base and a concentrated commitment on the Museum’s part to further acquisitions of African American art, especially the work of emerging and mid-career artists. The Birmingham Museum of Art aims to amass a world-class collection that illuminates the range of motivations, creativity and aesthetics of black artists working in all artistic media, with the eventual goal of being a center and requisite destination for anyone with an interest in viewing, studying and researching the art of 20th– and 21st-century African American artists.

QUALIFICATIONS:

The successful candidate must hold a Ph.D. in art history or related discipline, with demonstrated expertise in African American art, and strong collaborative and organizational skills. In addition, the Fellow must be a passionate and energetic person with the ability to manage, research, exhibit, and develop an important collection. S/he must have the interest and ability to share the collection with diverse audiences and to build a positive image and lasting relationships for the Birmingham Museum of Art. S/he must be an innovative thinker and a great communicator with the ability to present exhibitions of African American art  and works in the permanent collection to all internal and external Museum constituencies.

SALARY/APPLICATION PROCESS:

As a two-year, full-time commitment, the Fellow is exposed to all aspects of curatorial operations and participates in the daily activities of the Museum’s curatorial department.  The fellowship carries a yearly salary of $44,000 plus selected benefits. Additional operating resources are designated to support the research and implementation of programs and exhibitions devised by the Mellon Fellow.

Candidates should submit via email a curriculum vitae, contact information for three references, and a statement specifying: 1) the applicant’s research goals; 2) how these goals relate to or will benefit the Birmingham Museum of Art and Birmingham community; 3) how resources at the BMA might be used to accomplish these goals.

The application deadline is July 19, 2013, however review of applications will be ongoing and applications received after the deadline may be considered. Position start date is September 9, 2013.

The Birmingham Museum of Art is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Application materials should be sent to:

Jeannine O’Grody, Deputy Director & Chief Curator

jogrody@artsbma.org

 

 

CFP: Visual Activism Conference @ San Francisco

The International Association of Visual Culture (IAVC) invites proposals for its third biennial conference in San Francisco, March 14-16, 2014.

The conference is centered on the concept of Visual Activism.  How can we better understand the relationships between visual culture and activist practices?  There are ways in which art can take the form of political/social activism and there are also ways in which activism takes specific, and sometimes surprising, visual forms that are not always aligned with or recognizable by art-world frameworks.  How can we engage in conversations about abstract or oblique visual activism, for instance as is demanded in conditions of extreme censorship?  How can we approach the complexity of governmental or commercial ‘visual activism’ to better address hegemonies of visual culture (for example, in advertising and the mass media)?  What becomes of the temporal lag that attends such images, when the politics of visual production are only made legible in retrospect, with historical distance?  How does the past become a form of ‘visual activism’ in the present?  To what degree do forms of visual activism travel, and in what ways are they necessarily grounded in locally specific knowledge and geographically specific spaces?

Presentations should respond to these questions or related topics and may take the form of scholarly papers (20 minutes), artist talks (20 minutes), short performances (5 to 30 minutes), or lighting-round interventions (5 minutes).  Proposals should include a 400-word abstract, links to websites with additional publications or relevant images and information, and a CV. Please send proposals to edu@sfmoma.org (with ‘visual activism’ as the subject line) no later than October 1, 2013.

The conference is convened by Julia Bryan-Wilson (Associate Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art, UC Berkeley), Jennifer A. González (Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, Contemporary Art, Race and Representation, UC Santa Cruz) and Dominic Willsdon (Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs, SFMOMA) and will take place at the Brava Theater Center and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA.

Please email edu@sfmoma.org to be added to the mailing list to receive updates about the conference such as registration, the calendar of events and participants.

CFP: “Colour Me Queer” Session @ AAH Conference, London

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Colour Me Queer

Association of Art Historians (AAH) 40th Annual Conference
Royal College of Art, London
​April 10-​12, 2014

While art history as a discipline has adopted a queer postcolonial gaze to trouble the canon, most ground-breaking scholarship on art and visual culture from queer racialized perspectives has been accomplished outside its borders—albeit with some notable exceptions, such as work by Kobena Mercer and Amelia Jones.

This session specifically aims to explore how art history might develop a vocabulary and methodology that speaks to better understand transnational, diasporic, indigenous and decolonial bodies alongside their gendered and sexualized lived experiences. Colo u​r Me Queer does not signify fixed/specific otherness, but rather functions as a politics that interrogates epistemological limits of race, gender and sexuality.

If art history has been largely resistant to exploring queer racialized visualities, what are the tools necessary to dismantle the conventions of knowledge production around art? How can a queer racialized gaze affect the relationship between visual analysis and knowledge production? Do newer forms of art such as performance, film, video, and installation (rather than older forms more burdened by western art history like painting and sculpture) lend themselves more easily to queer racialized visualities?

Overall, this session considers the stakes involved in queer racialized methodologies in visual analysis as well as the opportunity to interrogate canonical formation. Papers will not only assess what a queer racialized lens affords art history but correspondingly, what visual analysis provides queer racialized lived experiences.  What tropes and themes are incited when queer racialized visualities come to the fore? And finally, what might a queer racialized lens still occlude from critical analysis?

By November 11, please email a 250 word abstract of a proposed paper of 30 minutes, including your name and affiliation, to co-chairs:

  • Natasha Bissonauth, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, nb337@cornell.edu
  • Alpesh Kantilal Patel, Florida International University, Miami, alpesh.patel@fiu.edu.

 

Meschac Gaba in Conversation with Chris Dercon @ Tate Modern

africanartinlondon's avatarAfrican Art in London

Beninese artist Meschac Gaba talks to Chris Dercon, Director of the Tate Modern.

The occasion: To mark the Tate’s largest acquisition and display of Meschac Gaba’s work, Museum of Contemporary Africa Art 1997-2002.

The conversation:
An opportunity to hear Gaba speak about his work and its journey to the Tate Modern. The talk will also feature personal anecdotes of Dercon and Gaba’s friendship. They’ve been buddies since 1996/7. In 2000 Dercon interviewed Gaba as Director of the Museum Bojimans Van Benunigen, Rotterdam, and later that year acted as a witness at his wedding. Documentation of the wedding features in the Marriage room of Gaba’s exhibition.

Meschac Gaba in Conversation with Chris Dercon

Starr Auditorium
Wednesday 3 July 2013,
Time: 18.30 – 21.00
£12, concessions available
Ticket holders’ private view of the display after the talk from 20.00–21.00

Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG

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NYC Draft Riots and Bastille Day Inspire Walking Tours By Eric K. Washington

SYMP: “American Art in Dialogue with Africa and its Diaspora” @ Smithsonian American Art Museum, Oct. 4 & 5, 2013

“American Art in Dialogue with Africa and its Diaspora”
Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and G Streets NW, McEvoy Auditorium, Washington, D.C.

Friday, October 4, 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 5, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

This two-day symposium examines the role of Africa and its diaspora in the development of art of the United States, from nineteenth-century portraiture to American modernism; from the Harlem Renaissance to the contemporary art world. Speakers include Chika Okeke-Agulu of Princeton University, Krista Thompson of Northwestern University, Jeffrey Stewart of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Celeste-Marie Bernier of the University of Nottingham, James Smalls of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and artist and distinguished scholar David C. Driskell.

The full schedule is available at AmericanArt.si.edu/research/symposia/2013/terra.

Register at www.America-Africa.eventbrite.com.

This is the fourth of five Terra Symposia on American Art in a Global Context, which are supported by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.