Past Events

Highlights from SCAH’s past events, showcasing dynamic discussions, topical scholarship, and opportunities for connection within the contemporary art history community.

2022

Semi-peripheries of Contemporary Art: Sarah-Neel Smith and Jacob Stewart-Halevy in Conversation

SCAH Program
April 1, 2022

A dual book talk and conversation between Jacob Stewart-Halevy (Tufts University, author of Slant Steps: On the Art World’s Semi-Periphery, 2020) and Sarah-Neel Smith (Maryland Institute College of Art, author of Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey, 2022), moderated by Natilee Harren (University of Houston). The authors will introduce their new books and discuss methodological parallels between their two projects, centered on divergent geographies but drawing from similar sociological and economic discourses of semi-peripheral development in the twentieth century. Their respective projects offer new pathways for charting the emergent terrain of global contemporary art.

Curating Video Art: Past, Present, and Future

SCAH Program

Hosted by Vuk Vuković and Ellen Tani
November 2022 • Zoom

A conversation with Barbara London, founder of the video exhibition and collection programs at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and Glenn Phillips, senior curator of modern and contemporary collections and head of exhibitions at the Getty Research Institute, on their practices of curating video art since the emergence of video art in 1960s to current practices of organizing internationally acclaimed exhibitions of video art.

The discussion centered on London’s work as a curator of video during the medium’s infancy at MoMA, and Phillips’s current work on video, in particular his upcoming publication, Encounters in Video Art in Latin America, which is set for release in February 2023. In addition, the program addressed questions related to the acquisition, display, and conservation of time-based media, its reception by different generations, and its ties to ongoing technological developments.

Un-CAA Panel: Fighting Back to Reclaim Institutions

2022 College Art Association Annual Conference • Free Public Conversation

Organized by John Tyson and Anna Mecugni, with panelists Nic Aziz, Tatiana Flores, Pablo Helguera, and Christine Y. Kim
Thursday, March 3, 2022 • 3:15 PM ET • Zoom

Over the past decade, layers of capitalist exploitation have continued to shape the ethos of the contemporary art-industrial complex, perpetuating its economic and racial inequities; nonetheless, artists and other art workers have been fighting back with increasing coordination and success. Key moments in these struggles have been the founding of Black Lives Matter and Decolonize this Place; more recently, the coronavirus pandemic outbreak and the viral video of George Floyd’s murder have further precipitated the urgent need to effect more ethical, sustainable communities. While institutional leaders’ responses to financial uncertainty and social unrest have been mixed, often prioritizing profit over equity in academia, museums, and other art organizations, art workers have mobilized in remarkable ways, comparable to the civil rights era. For instance, recent years have seen important revisions and a rethinking of museums’ purpose as well as a heightened sense of accountability to diverse publics. Thus, there have been calls for the resignation of leadership and board members, staff unionization, discrimination lawsuits, and artists removing their works from display in acts of solidarity.

The Society of Contemporary Art Historians’ un-CAA panel brings together Nic Aziz, Tatiana Flores, Pablo Helguera, and Christine Y. Kim to reflect on recent dynamics and share their experiences navigating our present neoliberal waters through different channels, in order to explore the field’s systemic crises alongside viable, collectivist modes of resistance, such as distributed self-organizing, resource sharing, and mutual-aid networks.

This panel is organized by Anna Mecugni, University of New Orleans, and John A. Tyson, University of Massachusetts - Boston.

Panelists
Nic Aziz, New Orleans Museum of Art
Tatiana Flores, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Pablo Helguera, New School; formerly Museum of Modern Art, NY
Christine Y. Kim, Tate Modern

Curating Biennials: The Politics of Mediation

SCAH Program
Organized by Paloma Checa-Gismero, featuring Elia Alba, Lauren Mackler, and Renata Cervetto
February 1, 2022