Barbara NesinPresident-elect of CAAPhoto Courtesy: CAA

Barbara Nesin is the new president-elect of College Art Association’s (CAA) Board of Directors for a two-year term beginning in May 2010. CAA counts 14,000 members internationally and is the biggest art organization in the United States. Its mission is to "promote the visual arts and their understanding through committed practice and intellectual engagement."

 

What does it mean to you to be the CAA Board President-elect?

 

It’s certainly an opportunity, and surely not just for me as an individual. I definitely think that who I am presents opportunities: I am a Haitian-American, an artist, and someone who has a real commitment to education. We have a 5-year strategic plan that we just finished writing and which the Board approved in October. It will be distributed to the membership at our conference in February in Chicago. The strategic plan addresses more services in support for artists and increased effort internationally. Based on those two strategic objectives (there are others, but those two are included), it represents a real opportunity for artists, particularly international artists. I am looking for ways that we can cement and bring those two objectives together through CAA.

 

Are there any projects that are being developed by CAA in support of Caribbean Art?

 

We have different committees that work on different things. We have, for example, an exhibitions committee. I don’t believe at this point in time that Caribbean art has been on their program. However, I can foresee that this would become a possible point of discussion. There is also a committee on diversity practices that is very interested in global perspectives about visual art. So again, I think that the Caribbean region is one that has probably been overlooked and not given enough attention.

 

What needs to happen for this to truly become an ongoing concern and area of activity for CAA, is for Caribbean artists and art historians to become involved. I think many of them are not involved with the College Art Association.

 

All of the work that CAA does, except for the staff that we have in New York, is done by our members through committees, through membership on the Board, through members who organize events, who conduct research and present them at our conferences, who produce artwork and exhibit them at CAA events. All of that come from our members.

 

We do not have enough people who are doing this work in the area of Caribbean art at CAA. The way for that to happen is for Caribbean art historians, artists, and art critics to get involved and to bring their wealth of knowledge, insight, and experience to the organization. It will then happen because they will be doing it as numbers. It’s not up to one person. It’s really driven by what our members do. Therefore, if you are not a member, you can’t really discuss your topic if you are not there.

 

Do you have any record of how many Caribbean artists are members of CAA?

 

That’s not a demographic that’s on our application form, so I don’t know. I can tell you that having been going to the conferences myself since 1995 that there are not many. Visibly they are not many.

 

Why is it important for Caribbean artists to be familiar with or to become a member of CAA? What is important for Caribbean artists to know about CAA?

 

I think they need to understand that this is an umbrella organization of 14,000 members that will research and present information about visual art that is of concern to its members. If they participate in it, it means that their concerns and interests will be represented at CAA.

 

If you are not a member, then you are not discussing the work that you do, and no one at CAA knows about it. At any given conference, we have in the neighborhood of 5000 people that attend. Plus, we publish two journals and separate CAA reviews that examine different publications, and we are looking to expand that in the future to include reviews of exhibitions as well. That’s something we are just beginning to talk about because of our new commitment to artists in particular. These are opportunities that are being missed by Caribbean artists and art historians who are not involved. They are simply not included.

 

If you are an artist and you want people to know about your work and the type of work that you do, you need to be involved in CAA. There are an increasing number of art historians who are starting to focus on Caribbean art, and some of them are under the heading of Diaspora art historians. Those are the people who really need to share what they are learning, what they are studying, what they are producing as artists at the College Art Association, or they are simply not at the table. As far as we know, this is the largest visual art organization in this country, possibly internationally, and we are becoming more international. This is the place where that knowledge, experience, and art production needs to be shared, otherwise, people simply won’t know about it. The question is, do you work in obscurity? This is a central place and it’s not one to be overlooked. It’s not the only place, but it’s certainly an important place to share what you do. On the other end, there are artists who are not part of CAA who are doing very well, historians too, but this is a central place.

 

Do you think CAA is a model organization that Caribbean artists could or should emulate?

 

I think there are a number of Caribbean art associations already. I am aware of at least a couple, and they are not plugged into the College Art Association. They are small, perhaps they are growing, I hope they are, but again, those organizations are not part of the conversation when all these 14,000 people get together, whether it’s on paper, print, or online or at our conferences. They are not part of the discussion. I think one possibility that they might consider is to become an affiliated society of CAA. We have many affiliated societies. These are smaller organizations, for the most part, who have connection to CAA. They believe that the work that they are doing in a specialized area is relevant to CAA and its members. And they want to be a part of the dialogue at CAA. For example, we have an affiliated society that focuses all of their work on African art. They have their own meetings, they have sessions at the College Art Association conferences, but they are also part of the CAA so everybody at CAA has the opportunity to go listen and to see what they are doing in their particular specialization. It would be wonderful if any of the Caribbean art associations also did that and became affiliate societies of the College Art Association. In that way, there would be this exchange--both of bringing information to CAA, and of taking information back and being part of the landscape of artistic production and scholarship.

 

What main areas of Caribbean art infrastructure that you think need work in?

 

There certainly needs to be a lot more documentation that allows for fair appraisals of Caribbean art. There certainly needs to be more books written about Caribbean art, more preservation, so that we don’t lose some of the masterworks that are out there. I think there needs to be more coordination, and again, support for the artists. I think in the Caribbean, in particular, it’s an example of a place where many artists are producing work and very often they are taken advantage of. Their work may not get distributed adequately, and if it does, the artist may receive a very small fraction of the benefit. They are being exploited often times. So I think organizing ways of supporting the artists is really critical.

 

Do you think the interest for Caribbean art is growing?

 

I think it is. I say that because, particularly in art history, there is an increasing number of scholars who study Caribbean art. It is still considered a fairly new, emerging discipline within art history, but that started with the interest in non-Western or non-European art in general. We have many more scholars now who study art of places like Africa and Asia and the Caribbean. So there is more of an interest in that, than there perhaps was a hundred years ago, let’s say. And CAA is celebrating its centennial this year and next.

 

What areas of the organization are you most interested in working on?

 

There are three areas that I consider high priorities. They are: services to artists, which are part of our strategic mission for the next five years; the connection between art history and studio art practice; and diversity. And for me diversity includes making more global connections, both for our members and for the scholarship; the study of the visual arts; and design. Design is included in anything I’m saying about the visual arts. To really look at artists from around the globe because there are regions that are under-recognized, under-studied, not given enough attention and scholarship and criticism. Or, artists which are not part of the mainstream perhaps that need to be more recognized. There are many ways to do that, and one way is to teach since we are the College Art Association. We do teach, whether we are teaching in colleges, or museums, or other kinds of institutions, but to teach about world art, historically and contemporary. I think that we need to be at the forefront of talking about and studying the art of people from all over the world, including areas that have not been given full recognition. Caribbean art is one of those areas that we can focus greater scholarship and dialogue about.

 

Do you think in 10-15 years, Caribbean art will be where Latin American art is at now?

 

Part of Caribbean art is part of Latin art. The language, the differences between the different Caribbean countries sometimes gets in the way, but I believe there had been conferences and colloquiums that actually were about Latin American art that included Caribbean art. Even within the Latin American art field, the question is how much of that is Caribbean, how much do we know about Caribbean as part of that. There is a Latin American art association, that’s one of those affiliated societies, that as far as I know, I haven’t heard a lot about Caribbean art as one of their areas of scholarship. But I know that there are other conferences, particularly internationally, that seem to recognize the Caribbean as part of the Latin American studies, more frequently.