Annual Report (2003)
ARLIS/NA Wittenborn Award Committee


March 1, 2004

The 2003 Wittenborn Award Committee members were: Faith Pleasanton (Neue Galerie and the Department of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum), Ken Soehner (Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum), Eileen Markson (Bryn Mawr College Library) and Kraig Binkowski (Delaware Art Museum Library), Chair. Robert Kaufmann (Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum) was forced to withdraw due to health reasons.

There was no budget for the FY 2003

2003 Committee Schedule/Activities

The Committee met in July 2003 for a brief meeting to discuss the timetable and to divide tasks. The Call for Submissions (in English, French and Spanish) was mailed from Headquarters during the first week of October and was received by over 300 publishers.  The Call for Submissions was posted to ARLIS-L, Museum-L, and list-servs for the Association of American University Presses as well as the Association of American Publishers, Inc.

An Access Database of publishers in the United States, Canada and Mexico was created to facilitate the mailing of the call for submissions. (Access database created from an existing Word Document)

127 submissions were submitted to the Committee. 2 submissions were disqualified because they did not meet the submission requirements (one was not published, authored, or edited in North America, and one was submitted nearly 1 month past the deadline).

The Committee met twice in January and selected one winner with one honorable mention:

Winner:

A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University*

Honorable Mention: 

The Furniture of Charleston, 1680-1820*

*The award winners are to remain confidential until presented at the conference convocation.

The Chair has contacted both the winning editor and publisher. The committee continues its work on publicity for the award by writing a press release for dissemination by Headquarters and by preparing a PowerPoint presentation for the award ceremony. An interview with the winning editor (and exhibition curator) will appear in a subsequent issue of Art Documentation.

Submitted by:  Kraig A. Binkowski, Chair  
Delaware Art Museum  
800 S. Madison  
Wilmington, DE 19801