Dear Arlisans,
I wanted to remark before the year is over that 2009 saw two breakthrough
art exhibitions curated by colleagues in the art library world: Douglas
Dodds' "Digital Pioneers," one half of a diptych pair of exhibits exploring
the history of cyberart still on view at the V&A, and Rosemary Furtak's
Texts/Messages, which she co-curated with Siri Engberg at the Walker Art
Center. Both exhibitions were/are extraordinarily important presentations
of modern media that have not heretofore been given such commanding
attention at major venues, and both received international press. Douglas is
a longtime member of ARLIS/UK and the IFLA Art Section, and Rosemary will be
a familiar face to most of you in ARLIS/NA. Personally I've always found
the lines that presumably distinguish librarians, scholars, and curators to
be quite murky, possibly because I trained under people who failed to see
any distinction at all. And so I am delighted to see art librarians not
only mounting important exhibitions at world-class institutions, but
actually widening perceptions in the museum world concerning what
constitutes modern art. In so doing they also widen perceptions, and perhaps
raise the bar, concerning what we do and who we are. Congratulations and
thanks to both of you.
--
Thomas E. Hill
Art Librarian,
Vassar College
[log in to unmask]
http://library-cafe.org
http://artlibrary.vassar.edu
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=name&id=8401816
__________________________________________________________________
Mail submissions to [log in to unmask]
For information about joining ARLIS/NA see:
http://www.arlisna.org/join.html
Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc)
to [log in to unmask]
ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance:
http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html
Questions may be addressed to list owner (Judy Dyki) at: [log in to unmask]
