College Art Association – Chicago

I had the unique opportunity of receiving the inaugural Beidler Neiditz Travel/Conference Awards 2026 during my final semester at Agnes Scott. Alongside 3 other Visual Practices students I had taken countless classes with, I traveled to Chicago for the 114th College Art Association conference, and because of the grant, I was not held back by hotel, flight, or food expenses. I cannot emphasize enough how impossible this opportunity would have been without the support by the Agnes Scott Creative Arts department. Being raised in a low income household, I have worked hard to pay my own way through college and there has been little opportunity for travel. With this award, I was able to visit a city I have never explored before, attend museums and galleries I have only heard of on publication pages, and connect with hundreds of professionals in my field.

While at the conference, I was able to attend sessions geared towards my interests with a wide range of topics. It was often hard to chose which on to attend! From Non-Normative Bodies and Sculpture to A Day With(out) Art History: Art History and the AIDS epidemic, CAA allowed me to dive deeper into areas I have previously researched while adding resources and connections to my repertoire. Usually, I was the youngest person in the room since most were educators or PhD candidates, and the CAA community rejoiced when I would say it was my first conference. The range was wide, the research was engaging, and the arms were open. I would highly recommend CAA being an undergraduates’ first encounter with academic conferences.

The city itself was everything I was promised. The busses arrived on time, the variety and quality of food astounded me, and the museums were well kept and bursting with some of the most recognizable pieces from every intro art history course. Art was important here, a sentiment I had learned to appreciate coming from a small town in Texas with zero murals and two Walmarts. Between sites, store, and bites to eat, making a plan for the day with my fellow undergraduate students from Agnes was nearly impossible. It was rare enough to find a time slot that nothing we were interested in was being presented, but then to have to agree on where to go and how to get there felt like a real world applied version of the group project. Even still, I wouldn’t have chosen to go with anyone else. They truly made this trip for me, and I am beyond grateful to be selected in this year with this group of people. I hope Agnes can continue to provide these types of experiences to their students in the arts as I can easily say this was one of the most impactful moments of my past four years.