2013 College Art Association Conference

Midtown

Manhattan

My boyfriend and I are in the middle of moving. This is the primary cause for the dearth of posts for the past two months. After living in Brooklyn for twelve years, we are making the change to Manhattan. Inwood, to be exact. So only sort-of Manhattan. Like Manhattan for beginners.

We had been contemplating this move for several months, and I had hoped to visit and blog about all of the lesser-known cultural institutions in Brooklyn. I was doing pretty well until Sandy slowed me down by drowning out many of the coastal sites—so much for making it to the Waterfront Museum located on a barge in Red Hook…. On the plus side, I will be much closer to everything the Bronx has to offer, so I’ll finally be able to make it back to the Van Cortland House Museum.

I have tired of putting books in boxes. Actually, we’ve run out of books to place into boxes, which is pretty amazing if you knew how many bookshelves there are in our home (17). For a much-needed change of pace I have decided to write about the 2013 College Art Association Conference which took place in the Hilton on 57^th Street in Midtown Manhattan.

This was my first time attending the annual CAA conference, but it was my second time attending a conference at the Hilton. The first one was for the National Art Education Association. Obviously, both conferences are for major art nerds, though the CAA conference was far more pretentious than the NAEA one. This is because CAA attracts art historians who take themselves way too seriously and who use words like “simulacrum” in everyday conversation while NAEA is a place for grade school art teachers who get excited about Model Magic and pedagogy.

Here’s what I learned after attending CAA: the Hilton hosts tons of conferences and, while you are supposed to register for them and receive a badge to attend the lecture sessions, you don’t actually need the badge to get into the lecture sessions. These conferences are expensive—the average 3-day conference will cost you a good $150+ to attend. However, the only time anyone actually asks to see your badge is when you enter the trade fair section filled with free samples of art supplies and highly discounted books and materials. No one asks to see your badge when you walk into a room where a panel of academics are discussing map-making as an art form.

My point is, if you have a free weekend and nothing to do, try heading over to the Hilton to see what’s doing. They post their events on a board in the lobby, so you can see if an interesting group is holding a conference. True, without registering you won’t know the schedule, nor will you have a map of the rooms where the events are happening, but you can easily ask someone for directions or locate someone’s discarded map or schedule. You’d be surprised how sloppy and lazy academic types are about properly disposing of their paper trash.

Or you could just wander around the conference rooms on the second and third floors and hope to find something good. The sessions are often posted outside the rooms and the keynote speakers in the Grand Ballroom tend to be pretty big name art world individuals, like Chuck Close.

Something else you might stumble upon is free food. These events often host reunions for individuals associated with certain institutions, like the Smithsonian or George Washington University. These reunions are generally in a largish room and are filled with people. If you walk in and act like you belong there, you can easily saunter up to the buffet table and snag a bagel or some tacos.

Just don’t try to get into the trade fair rooms. Seriously, there are four large black security guards standing at the doors waiting to stop you. So don’t even think about it. 

I’m not doing too much this summer. Mostly painting the apartment. But I think I’m going to stop by the Hilton every now and then to see if anything of interest is taking place. 

http://www.newyorkhiltonhotel.com/