2024 ACASA Curatorial Excellence Award
Call for Submissions – Due January 15, 2024

The submission window is now open for the 2024 Awards for Curatorial Excellence. Submissions must be received by January 15, 2024. The awards will be presented at the 19^th ACASA Triennial, to be held in Chicago from August 7-11, 2024.

The Awards for Curatorial Excellence recognize the important contributions to the dissemination and understanding of African and African Diaspora Arts made through exhibitions. Exhibitions related to permanent collections, loan shows, commissioned works or community interventions organized by museums, galleries, cultural centers, and exhibition spaces of all sorts are eligible. Up to two awards for curatorial excellence will be given. Runners up may also be recognized.

Eligibility

The exhibition should have opened between Sept. 1, 2019 and Sept. 1, 2023.

Exhibition eligibility: Both nominator and nominee(s)—if different–must be ACASA members in good standing. Join ACASA

Incomplete or late submissions will not be considered.

Submission Process and Materials

Eligible exhibitions should be uploaded by the nominator to this online folder with the submission materials listed below. All submission materials must be received by January 15, 2024.

All submissions should include the following materials:

1. Cover page indicating title of exhibition, dates, venue(s), curator(s) names
2. Synopsis of exhibition (one-page)
3. Sample publication where applicable. This can include PDFs of take-away brochures, exhibition preview article or other means of documentation and distribution of project. If no publication was possible, please submit a bibliography of 5 key sources germane to the show’s thesis or points of departure.
4. Sample didactics (labels or other interpretive materials, such as on-line description, that demonstrate the exhibition’s intellectual content and curatorial vision. Not to exceed 3-pages)
5. Visual documentation: up to 5 still digital images, at least one of which must show installation, context or performance space; up to 2 videos or links, not to exceed 3 minutes in length to document performance or time-based projects.
6. Link to or documentation of innovative uses of technology or interactive engagement
7. Description of institution, organization or entity originating the exhibition (for example museum, independent art space, pop-up…, including mission, history, collection (if applicable), size, staff, budget, audience and other information pertinent to understanding the context in which the exhibition emerged.
8. Documentation of community response. Up to three (3) examples that demonstrate various perspectives. These might include emails, sample entries from audience response books, or social media postings and not just critical or press reviews.

Assessment Criteria

For consideration for this award, the awards committee will consider exhibitions that:

1. Generate new scholarship across the humanities or beyond
2. Open new perspectives on the field
3. Collaborate with and/or contribute to local or stakeholder communities
4. Demonstrate innovative approaches to exhibition design and presentation
5. Expand understandings or uses of technology

Please contact Caroline Bastian, ACASA Project Manager, for any questions or comments at bastian@acasaonline.org.

The Getty Research Institute is pleased to announce themes for residential grants and fellowships for pre-docs, post-docs, and scholars at the Getty Center and Villa for the 2024/25 academic year.

Applications will open on July 1, 2023. Applications are due by October 2, 2023.

AFRICAN AMERICAN ART HISTORY INITIATIVE GRANTS
The African American Art History Initiative (AAAHI) will support two fellows to generate new knowledge in the expanding field of African American art history. As part of the larger scholar year cohort, AAAHI Fellows have opportunities to present their research and receive feedback from an interdisciplinary group of peers. While proposals do not have to address the concurrent annual theme, they may highlight any salient intersections with it.

This residential program provides financial support and housing to scholars who are expanding critical inquiry of African American art and its frameworks. Projects that propose engagement with Getty’s growing collections of archival and primary source material related to African American art history—particularly post-World War II—are welcome. However, relevance to Getty holdings is not a project requirement. We invite applications from scholars who focus on African American art and visual culture in all time periods and media and in a broad range of theoretical and methodological traditions. Applicants should indicate how their project would align with AAAHI’s aim to make African American art history more visible to the public and accessible to the scholarly community worldwide.

EXTINCTION GRANTS

In this moment of extreme environmental decay and monumental epidemic loss, the Getty Scholars Program invites applications on the pressing topic of extinction and its bearing on the visual arts and cultural heritage. Scholars are asked to contemplate how representational practices are deployed to cope with the precarious survival of plants, animals, and humans; the ever-present specter of species-level extinction and resource exhaustion; and, at the most extreme pole, the brutality of mass atrocity. On another level, atrophy, decay, and obsolescence constitute the temporal dimensions of certain artistic practices, especially as creative approaches, technologies, media, formats, and ideals become outmoded or superseded. The finality of disappearance may also portend a certain amount of hope for rebirth, innovation, or recovery. We invite proposals on these topics from art historians and those from related to disciplines.

Please find the full call for applications and theme text on the Scholars Program webpage: gty.art/scholars