by Jon Lackman | 7 May 2008 | Conferences
The May issue of CAA News includes Donny George’s convocation address for the 2008 CAA Annual Conference in Dallas, “The Looting of the Iraq National Museum”; an interview with the next CAA president, art history professor Paul Jaskot (“It says a lot—and probably raises a few eyebrows—that the Board would choose as its president someone who proclaims he’s a Marxist art historian, is part of the Queer Caucus for Art, and is committed to activism”); and a note on the Dallas conference by Dale Kinney, who helped organize it:
During an intense day-long meeting in October [2006] … The sessions for the Dallas–Fort Worth conference were chosen … Eighty-three proposals were selected, exactly half of the 166 submitted. Reading the proposals is eye opening … Members did not want to hear about the chapter headings of traditional textbooks (Classical, Renaissance, Sculpture, etc.) but about such topics as utopias, failed exhibitions, food art, evolutionism, and one of our favorites, “cute.” … Trends—or at least balloons of interest—sprang out at us: money and markets, global or transcultural movements, art and politics, art and science, art and culture, and the use and optimization of technology in art practice and teaching. Once sessions are chosen, the process is turned over to session chairs to select the papers. As always, some sessions we picked never made it to the conference program (did they fail for lack of papers?); others changed titles and were unrecognizable (did we really approve a session called “The Fresh New Look of Sheepherding”?); others flourished and even expanded to two sessions (hooray for “Neuroscience and the History of Art”!).
CAA News is available in pdf form.
