Last Thursday during their annual conference, College Art Association (CAA) announced the recipients of their 2011 Awards for Distinction. Among the honorees were three titles published by Yale University Press:

The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award went to Molly Emma Aitken for The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting, a comprehensive study of Rajput court painting from  India’s Rajasthani region, providing an innovative look at the overall tradition and its evolution between the 16th and 19th centuries.

The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Award went to editor Darielle Mason for Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection and the Stella Kramrisch Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Published in association with the  Philadelphia Museum of Art, these innovative essays by leading scholars explore the domestic, ritual, and historical contexts of kanthas and trace their contemporary reinterpretation as emblems of national identity and significant works of art.

The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections and Eshibitions was presented to  Yasufumi Nakamori for Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture: Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro, a critical new look at the collaboration between Tange Kenzo and Ishimoto Yasuhiro, who originally published Katsura—the most significant photographic book about the relationship of modernity and tradition to postwar Japan—in 1960. YUP is distributing this title for The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Congratulations to the recipients and all the nominees for their excellent contributions to the field!