CAA 2025 presentation and VP for Diversity and Inclusion election in New York
CAA 2025 Annual Conference
February 12 – 15 at the New York Hilton Midtown
New York, New York
CAA includes among its members those who by vocation or avocation are concerned about and/or committed to the practice of art, teaching, and research of and about the visual arts and humanities. Thousands of artists, art historians, scholars, curators, critics, collectors, educators, publishers, and other professionals in the visual arts belong as individual members. Departments of art and art history in colleges and universities, art schools, museums, libraries, and professional and commercial organizations hold institutional memberships.
On Saturday, February 15, with faculty members from the Kentucky College of Art + Design, I presented the session Setting the Stage: Reinforcing artistic technical skills while concurrently developing postmodern approaches in studio art foundations. Here is the abstract:
First-year undergraduate art students demonstrate diverse skills and experiences when they enter college. Some have refined creative expertise as they begin foundations studies. Others may have taken a few art classes in high school and have just begun practicing. The latter group frequently needs instruction on basic technical applications that derive historical contexts from the 19th Century French art academies.
Adding complexity to these situations: A postmodern, contemporary pedagogical mandate that lays out conceptual frameworks for art education. Today, many programs emphasize the ideas that drive artmaking, asking students to find threads – whether formal or theoretical – that underpin their work. As this contemporaneous emphasis ascends, art educators are tasked with managing multifaceted methods of instruction.
Via numerous illustrations from first-year classes at the Kentucky College of Art + Design, this presentation demonstrates how an interwoven approach facilitates student learning about both artistic concepts and devices. It explores how an interdisciplinary, research-driven academic program in foundations engages students’ skills and voices. As well, it offers studio art perspectives regarding concurrent encouragement of media-based learning and 21st Century thematic innovation.
In addition: On Sunday, February 16, during an in-person CAA board meeting, I was elected to the Executive Council as Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion (two-year term). Visit the CAA Website for a board overview.
Download the 2025 CAA Annual Conference program (and those for other years) here.
College Art Association (CAA), 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004
collegeart.org