Art and Art History at CAA
Students, faculty, and alumni of the departments of Art and Art History presented their research at the 101st conference of the College Art Association in
New York, February 13–16. CAA is the primary professional association of artists and art historians in the United States. This year’s conference featured more than 200 sessions, a Book and Trade Fair, and numerous workshops, social events and professional networking opportunities. Department chairs Carolyn Henne and Adam Jolles hosted a reception for Florida State University students, faculty, and friends on Wednesday, February 13 from 4 to 6 pm at Nohra Haime Gallery, which is currently featuring a show by Art alumnus Adam Straus (MFA 1982), Looking for Nature and Singing the Paradise Blues.
On February 15, Art History professor Michael Carrasco co-chaired the session Precolumbian Ceramics: Form, Meaning, and Function. The papers in this session explore stylistic and iconographic properties of the ceramics of ancient Latin America from a variety of methodological, temporal, and regional vantage points. Also on Friday, Art History professor Paul Niell co-chaired the session Building for the “Common Good”: Public Works, Civic Architecture, and Their Representation in Bourbon Latin America. This panel examined civic architecture, public infrastructures, and their representation, built for the “common good” in the 18th and early 19th centuries in Latin America. The session included Niell’s paper “Civic Architecture, Public Patronage, and the Modern Self in Late Colonial Havana, Cuba.”
On Saturday, February 16, Art professor Owen Mundy presented “The Military Industrial Marketing Machine: Leveraging the Media Landscape” in the panel Military and the Landscape: Revealing and Reflecting; and Art professor Holly Hanessian continued her interactive project Touch in Real Time in a CAA/NCECA reception at Greenwich House Pottery. Art professor John Mann’s show Folded in Place was also ongoing at Daniel Cooney Fine Art during the CAA conference weekend.
Several FSU Art History alumni also presented their work at CAA this year, including Keri Watson (PhD 2010, now at Auburn University at Montgomery) and Timothy B. Smith (PhD 2002, now at Birmingham-Southern College) on Thursday, February 14. Watson’s paper was titled “The Southern Civil Rights Movement and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” and Smith presented “Queer Fragments: Sodoma, the Belvedere Torso, and Saint Catherine’s Head.”
