President’s Report on the AICA International Congress
AICA International Congress, October 20-23, 2010, Paris, France
This year’s Annual AICA International Congress differed from previous ones. After the Turkish section of AICA had withdrawn last year from organizing the AICA Congress in Istanbul, Paris became the sole possible venue for it, simply because AICA International’s bureau is located there. Rather than having a typical congress that consists of the symposia on selected themes, plus visits to local museums and art institutions, this year’s congress was devoted to a discussion of the future of the organization. I was given the honor to preside over a “Brain Storming” session on October 21. The participants of that session discussed a more coherent program for the future than the one that has been adopted in the last few years, a program that would allow better planning of events and equal participation in various international programs of all sections of AICA.
The next Annual Congress is planned to take place in Paraguay and Brazil in October 2011. An international team was selected to work on the Congress’s theme. (Germany is supposed to host the 2012 Congress in Berlin.). AICA International welcomed my proposal of a conference on censorship to be organized in Cincinnati, OH, sometime in the next two years; the initiative came from our member, William Messer.
At the General Assembly on October 23, Brane Kovic (Slovenia) was elected new General Secretary for the period from 2010 to 2014. Adriana Almada (Paraguay), Burcu Pelvanoglu (Turkey) and Lisbeth Rebollo (Brazil) have become Vice-presidents for the period between 2010 and 2013.
The International President of the Association Yacouba Konaté announced the first winner of the Association’s new Incentive Prize for Young Critics to be: Franck Hermann Ekra for his review “L’Envol du Sankofa” (“The Flight of the Sankofa”) of the 9th Dak’Art Biennial of Contemporary African Art in 2010. The Prize has been established early this year and will be given on a bi-annual basis. In addition to that Prize, AICA is planning to award the AICA-UNESCO Prize to a distinguished critic. A commission (Marek Bartelik (Chair), Yacouba Konaté, Lisbeth Rebollo, Henry M. Hughes, and Thomas Wulffen) is working on finding sponsors and coordinating the launching of the Prize with UNESCO.
The Former President of AICA International Henry Meyric Hughes (UK) briefed the Congress on the activities of the Archives de la Critique d’Art, a non-profit association devoted to collecting archives and other materials related to art criticism. The Archives were established in partnership with AICA International, AICA-France and the Université Rennes 2-Haute Bretagnein 1989; they are located in Rennes in the east of Brittany in north-western France. The association has working relationships with numerous archives in Europe, such as Documenta, Zadig (Archives of the Art Market, Cologne) and beyond (Getty Research Program, Los Angeles).For details visit: http://www.archivesdelacritiquedart.org/outils_documentaires/
http://www.archivesdelacritiquedart.org/files/english_version.pdf (in English)
Forty new members of AICA-USA were accepted as members of AICA International. It is my great pleasure to officially welcome them all to AICA-USA and AICA International.
Marek Bartelik
President AICA-USA
Vice-President of AICA International