AICA-USA Announces New President

September 12, 2024

Dear Members,

I am both honored and thrilled to write to you as your new President of AICA-USA. The trust and support you have shown in me is deeply appreciated, and I am committed to serving this organization with enthusiasm, with many thanks to Norman, Judith and the rest of the AICA-USA board. During my 2025 - 2027 term, I will focus on several key areas that many of you have highlighted in member surveys as important. Among those areas:

Outreach and Engagement: I will prioritize enhancing our connections with critics and organizations across the United States. Many members have expressed that AICA-USA is too focused on the New York Metropolitan Area, and as a resident of Atlanta, I agree. Supporting and elevating regional art communities guarantees a more sustainable landscape for all artists and writers to thrive, and strengthens our ability to fairly advocate for all the writers represented by AICA-USA.

Collaboration on Pay Transparency: We are a vital part of the arts ecosystem and yet we are often excluded from discussions about pay and equity, which makes us extremely vulnerable. In collaboration with organizations like W.A.G.E. – who have been working for years around issues of pay and transparency in the arts – we will work together not just to advocate for better pay, but to continue to assert that a healthy arts ecosystem requires writers to sustain it.

Member Communication: Communication and connection is a priority. Dormant since acute pandemic, many have requested a return of a members forum where we can easily share work, exchange resources, and support each other’s endeavors. As a professional membership organization, member feedback is the best way for us to serve you. Along with a return of a members forum, our revamped website — that will launch in the coming weeks — will include more ways to file a comment or concern about your membership cards, censorship, or any other matters that need to be addressed by the United States organization or AICA International and ways to submit your work that you would like highlighted on our website.

Return of Programming: Not only do members want to talk to each other more, but we want to do things together again. Beginning in January 2025, our Critics Fellowship will begin a new cycle of creating relationships between working established critics and those working to break into the field. Six Fellows will work over six weeks with six mentors to produce a piece of writing that will be published by AICA-USA, along side a series of lectures from diverse and leading writers about their craft, editing, and what joys and concerns face us today. The application for this fellowship will open September 24th, and the program will launch on January 7, 2025. This program is generously supported by the Al Held Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. If you are interested in supporting more work like this, please email me or donate here.

I believe this is one of the most interesting and vital times to be an arts writer, a time where our work is needed not just for the creative community, but the world at large. When a student or a new acquaintance expresses confusion over what it is exactly I do or write about, I always quote Anton Ego, one of the most fearsome fictional food critics on screen. Ego says,

But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.

I look forward to discovering new creations and befriending new talent through your work this term.

Please email me directly with any suggestions, ideas, or feedback.

Best,

Jasmine Amussen
AICA-USA President