An Assemblage of Creativity

Every populous profession seems to be represented by a national organization that stages conventions for its members. Those who work in the visual arts are no exception, and their group--the 15,000-member, New York-based College Art Assn.--is a whopper.

So are the association’s annual conferences, billed as “the only national forum for the visual arts and art history.” This year’s version, the group’s 87th conference, will take place Wednesday through Saturday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. More than 5,000 art historians, artists, educators, curators and art administrators from across the country are expected to attend.

They will have their choice of about 120 art history and studio art sessions presenting academic research papers, lectures, panels, interviews and performances. As usual, this program is the core of the meeting, but it’s far from all that goes on. Along with giving members a place to exchange ideas, the conference serves as a forum for honoring distinguished achievements in the field, a career-placement service and a marketplace for art books and educational products. In addition, participants have an opportunity to visit cultural attractions in the host city and meet members of the local art community.

John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, will deliver the conference’s keynote address at the opening convocation, Wednesday at 5 p.m. at the Convention Center. The program, which is free and open to the public, includes an awards ceremony that will honor 10 individuals for their contributions to the arts. Among them, Los Angeles-based Conceptualist John Baldessari will be presented with the association’s Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement, and New York-based Nam June Paik, who is perhaps best known for making sculptural environments from television sets, will receive the Artist Award for a Distinguished Body of Work.

The conference spotlight also will fall on Los Angeles-based art historian Samella Lewis, who will be honored by the association’s Committee of Women in the Arts at a breakfast Friday at the Regal Biltmore Hotel. The first African American to obtain a PhD in art and art history, in 1952, and the winner of fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford foundations, Lewis has taught at many colleges and curated dozens of exhibitions of works by Caribbean, South American, African and African American artists.

The conference is held in New York every third year and elsewhere on alternate years. Boasting more museums than any other city in the world, along with a large community of artists, Los Angeles is an obvious site for the meeting, said Susan Ball, executive director of the association. But the association hasn’t convened in L.A. since 1985. Part of the reason for the long lapse is a political controversy that blew up several years ago over California legislation, she said.

In 1995, when Los Angeles was a hot contender as a conference site, a California contingent of association members lobbied against the proposal because they disapproved of the adoption of Proposition 187, which denies undocumented immigrants access to state-funded education, health care and social services. The association’s board of directors subsequently took a stand as well, voting unanimously not to hold meetings in either Los Angeles or San Francisco.

But the boycott was lifted the following year, after an intense debate. Announcing the reversal of its earlier position, the board stated that refusing to host meetings in California did a disservice to the organization’s Western membership and that issues raised by Proposition 187 could be best addressed at a conference in California.

As a result of the flap, the overarching themes for this year’s program address issues concerning national borders, cultural differences and immigration, Ball said. The theme for the art history sessions is “From Another Place: Difference, Encounter, Acculturation, Identity, Resistance.” Studio art sessions are organized under the umbrella of “Ring of Fire” and focus on cultural differentiation and alienation, especially in Latin American and Asian art and cultural traditions.

Perusing the preliminary printed program, one finds various sessions related to the themes. “Fridomania and Fridismo: Migrating Imagery of Frida Kahlo,” for example, explores how the reputation of the phenomenally popular artist has changed as her work has traveled from her native Mexico to the United States and Europe. Among other related topics is “Immigration, ‘Americanization’ and Labor in U.S. Visual Culture.”

But a mind-boggling array of additional topics is listed as well, ranging from “Luxury Arts in the Ancient Mediterranean” and “Monks and Nuns as Artists, Patrons and Subjects in Buddhist Art” to “Digital Aesthetics” and “The World Wide Web and the New Art Marketplace.” Along with the usual research papers on the fine, dry points of art history, there are sessions with provocative titles, such as “Porn Queens, Perverts, Jailbirds, and Bad Mommies: Cultural Confrontations With the Law and Academia” and “ ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’: Sexual Harassment Policies and the Teaching of Art.”

Those who favor impenetrable artspeak may be attracted to “Post-Lingua: The Interraciality of Tongues” or “The Construction of the Deterritorialized Self and Representations of the Other in the Borderlands.” Participants looking for practical advice may find it at “Making Sense of Copyright and Intellectual Property” or “Making Your Book or Article Ready for Publication.”

In keeping with this year’s emphasis on California’s ethnic politics, as well as an ongoing effort to diversify the association’s membership and programs, a local host committee--chaired by Ruth Weisberg, dean of the School of Fine Arts at USC, and Steven Lavine, president of CalArts--has planned tours to a broad spectrum of cultural institutions and neighborhood attractions in Southern California.

Attendees can join group visits to the Getty Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or tour Grand Central Market and Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, take the Blue Line train to Watts Towers or a bus trip to see murals in East L.A.

Nonmembers of the association may attend the conference if they pay a registration fee of $185. Tickets for single sessions cost $25 ($15 for students). A large display of art books and materials in the Concourse Hall of the Convention Center also is open to the public; admission is $5.