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
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http://library-cafe.org
http://artlibrary.vassar.edu
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