Post Con

College Art Association (CAA) 103rd Annual Conference

The CAA conference drew more than 4,500 curators, professors, instructors, and students of art history to New York City.

EVENT DETAILS

Feb. 11–14, 2015
New York Hilton Midtown
New York City

OVERVIEW

Focused on education and career advancement, this year’s CAA conference drew more than 4,500 curators, professors, instructors, and students of art history to New York City.

CHALLENGES

The four-day meeting put new emphasis on professional development for attendees. Hands-on workshops on everything from grant writing to creating a syllabus to job hunting filled up quickly. Attendees were also invited to attend mentoring and roundtable sessions to receive career guidance and hear perspectives on balancing creative endeavors with their professional roles. “The quality of the presentations conference-wide was very attractive,” said Emmanuel Lemakis, CAA’s director of programs, “and the special events, such as the MoMA [Museum of Modern Art] reception, were very well attended.”

INITIATIVES

CAA hosted a pre-meeting attendee-directed conference called THATCamp that focused on using digital resources to teach the humanities. “THATCamp was a great success again this year,” Lemakis said. “For the first time, we broadened the subject to include digital art alongside digital humanities. We believe the techniques used to organize the ‘unconference’ are quite successful.”

2014
Chicago
~4,500
Attendees

2015
New York City
~4,500
Attendees

Convene’s Pre-Con/Post-Con series asks meeting planners about their challenges and how they intend to address them (Pre-Con), and then circles back around after the meeting has occurred (Post-Con) to see how well they worked out.

Kate Mulcrone

Kate Mulcrone is digital editor of Convene.