Dear ARLIS Colleagues,
Some of you have asked me to reply with
responses to this question I asked a few days ago. Most people
replied saying they wanted me to post the results! The only response
that is worth mentioning to all of you is the one by our colleague,
Anna Fishaut (Stanford University), who presented on this subject at
the 2011 ARLIS/NA conference in Minneapolis. I was not able to attend
that session. The link to her presentation is below.
And I am thinking in pretty much the same way
Stanford has handled their reference collection. Our Art and
Architectural History Department has changed curriculum wildly since I
arrived here in 1986. Rather than focusing on medieval and Renaissance
art history, we now focus on _global_ modern and contemporary
art and architecture. We have several new faculty members (since 2000)
in that area with graduate students and undergrads. This has greatly
changed our collection development policy and has made our reference
room rather obsolete.
We have sent very few things to storage from
reference, but will do so later in this coming academic year. It is a
matter of space and also making the reference collection more relevant
to what the greatest number of our faculty and graduate and undergrad
students are needing these days.
I have added the following because handbooks or
encyclopedias of contemporary art were so out of date. Our courses are
focusing on emerging art and artists. The following offer, at least, a
paragraph of biographical information about the artists and some
illustrations of their work. I know that emerging artists are
difficult to track down and are often only in brief journal articles,
if that, and many have their own web sites.
We have already added the following books to the
collection to assist in finding information on contemporary artists:
The Vitamin Series by Phaidon (A-Z arrangement
of artists’ names):
Vitamin D – New Perspectives in Drawing
Vitamin P – New Perspectives in Painting
Vitamin Ph – New Perspectives in Photography
Vitamin 3D – New Perspectives in Sculpture and
Installation
Art Now: The New Directory to 136 International
Contemporary Artists (2001, 2005, 2008 editions / volumes)
Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (2009)
40 Architects around 40
A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian
Artists – (working in India)
Jodidio, Philip – Architecture Now (7 volumes)
100 Contemporary Architects (2 vols.) – Philip
Jodidio
USA Today: New American Art from the Saatchi
Gallery
Women Artists in the Twentieth and 21st
Century
In the future I want to add something like the
most recent three occurrences of main biennials (to our faculty members
- no room to include all of them): Venice, Carnegie International,
Documental, Manifesta, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Whitney and three in China:
Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai (should I be so lucky as to acquire
more of the latter two).
Also to add a few of the important collection
catalogs for contemporary art
The series entitled Movements of Modern Art
In addition, our Architectural Studies program
has grown by leaps and bounds with a new faculty member and it now has
a larger enrollment than the History of Art and Architecture!! At this
time an undergrad program that plans to become a graduate program in
the future. So, I will be adding many of the AIA guides to the
architecture of cities.
These ideas are rather off the top of my head
right now. I would greatly appreciate any comments and/or additions to
my list.
Thanks so much and I hope the conversation now
begins in earnest!
Ray Anne Lockard
Bibliographer
and Public Services Librarian
Frick Fine Arts Library
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Voice-mail: 412-648-2410
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
"A
book should be a ball of light in one's hands." Ezra Pound