Annual Report (2003)
ARLIS/Western New York

Chapter Officers

Susan Miller – President
Eric Schwab – Vice President/President Elect
Fran Scott – Secretary
Elizabeth Gulascy – Treasurer
Rebecca Simmons, Past President 

Chapter Meetings

May 9, 2003 
Brown Fine Arts Center
Smith College
Northampton, Massachusetts 

Barbara Polowy, Art Librarian and Eliza Lanzi, Director of Image Collections hosted the joint meeting of the New England and Western New York chapters of the Art Libraries Society and the Upstate New York chapter of the Visual Resources Association. It was very significant have the chapters (one of which was VRA) meet together.  It was a great opportunity to meet and share with other art librarians.  The one problem was that this lowered the number of people in our chapter who could attend.  For many it was a 7-8 hour drive to this meeting meaning an over night stay.  Even with this 7 members were in attendance of the business meeting, with 4 other members of ARLIS/WNY from the VRA/UNY who are also members of our group who were attending their business meeting. 

There was some discussion on the chapter’s donation to the ARLIS/NA conference welcome party and the fact that there was no acknowledgement in the conference brochure. The donation was sent in early December. Fran Scott (Rensselaer Polytechnic) will check with the Treasurer (E. Gulacsy) to see if the check was ever cancelled and if not, follow-up with ARLIS/NA national headquarters.

Carole Ann Fabian (University of Buffalo) is on the planning committee for next year’s conference in New York City together with Ross Day (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Margaret Webster (Cornell University). She mentioned some details on the planning process and encouraged everyone to submit proposals for consideration.  Margaret Webster and Eric Schwab are also major figures in the national Conference. Susan Miller is now the Moderator of the Visual Resources Division of ARLIS/NA and is writing the Visual Resources Division Column for. ARLIS Update.

An invitation was received from Kathy Corcoran (Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute) inviting the chapter to visit their new library space and view two exhibitions on American Landscape drawings and American art nouveau silver next spring. Carolann Fabian also submitted a proposal for the spring 2004 meeting. University at Buffalo Libraries, Anderson Art Gallery and Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy are co-hosting a grant-funded conference in Buffalo sometime next May. The title of the program is “Ownership and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage”.  The dates are not confirmed as yet but would include a Friday night dinner, all-day sessions on Saturday, and a Saturday evening reception at the Anderson Galleries.  The members present thought it would be a wonderful opportunity.

October 17, 2003 –
Rush Rhees Library
University of Rochester
Rochester, New York

The fall meeting was hosted by Becky Simmons of RIT, Kari Horowitz, of RIT, Stephanie Fronz of U. of Rochester and Kim Kopatz or U. of Rochester.  A very full schedule was planned for this meeting that went from 9:30 am to 6 pm. The day included a tour of the art library and the visual resources center with a demo of the image cataloging program.  There were a number of lectures on Olmstead’s park in Rochester providing and interesting and exciting program.  Twelve members were in attendance. At the business meeting a number of issues were discussed.  No Professional Development Award was given this year, as we had no applicants.  It was voted to increase the amount of the award next year and to encourage students working on degrees in art librarianship to join the organization and apply for this award.  The group also voted to increase our donation to national for the conference.  Plans for a spring meeting in Buffalo were cancelled since the dates for the program on “Ownership and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage,” which C. Fabian had discussed with the members last spring, actually takes place within a few weeks of the national conference.  The chapter will instead meet on Monday April 19^th at the NYC conference since the majority of our members will be there; a space has been reserved for such a meeting.  The fall 2004 meeting will be held at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute in Utica. In late spring of 2005 the members could meet at Cornell University.

Membership

ARLIS/WNY has 22 dues paying members in 2003.  The mailing list includes the names of 75 individuals who work in various local libraries, museums and graduate schools.  Although here are only 22 dues paying members we often have people coming to our meetings who are graduate students, support staff and faculty from these organizations.

Treasurer’s Report

                                       1/1/03/ - 12/15/03

Additional Comments

The chapter provides a Professional Development Award each year.  This is a scholarship towards going to the National Conference.  This year we had no applicants.    The Awards committee tried to find someone in need but at this point we were lucky that the majority of our membership were almost fully funded for the meeting.  This was discussed with the board and the decision was made not to give the award this year and save it in the treasury for other projects later on.

A nice touch to our web page was to add some pictures from our meeting at Smith College.

A donation was sent to Nation towards the conference.  Somehow the check was lost so it appeared as if we did not participate.  We were very sorry for that but did not find out until after the conference that this was the case.

Although we are a small chapter we are a strong presence in the national organization.  Margaret Webster is vice president and at least 5 other members are on committee or divisions involved with National.

One concern is that two major member in our local group are leaving.  Sue Miller has changed positions in her library and Eric Schwab is moving to a position in Canada.  Eric will still be involved Nationally but will no longer be in ARLIS/WNY.  Hopefully the people filling their positions will strengthen the group.

Respectfully submitted by

Susan Miller
1/29/04