News

To help the NYC art libraries' community keep informed and in communication  as we enter this autumn, ARLIS-NY has created a resource dedicated to local library reopening services.  If your library is not yet listed here and you would like to participate, please contact Michael Carter at michael.carter@metmuseum.org.  

Thank you,
The ARLIS-NY Board

• ACRL African-American Studies Librarian Interest Group: “Provides the resources—ideas, programs, discussion forums and networking opportunities—to support the development of African American Studies librarianship and resources in academic and research libraries.”
  
  

• Black Beauty Archives: "Curated from the hearts and minds of Black women, the Black Beauty Archives encompasses the history of our past, documents the present while imagining the future. Our Mission is to preserve, document, and celebrate the history of Black Beauty through cosmetics and beauty culture." 
  
  

• Black Caucus of ALA (BCALA): "an advocate for the development, promotion, and improvement of library services and resources to the nation’s African American community; and provides leadership for the recruitment and professional development of African American librarians."

• Art Leaders of Color Emergency Fund: Set up by the Arts Administrators of Color Network to “support of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) artists AND administrators (consultants, facilitators, box office staff, seasonal/temporary employees, etc.) who have been financially impacted due to COVID-19.“

• aSHE Fund for Black Women Creatives: a fund set up to support Black Women Creatives affected by COVID-19
  

• Black Art Futures Fund (BAFF): “a collective of emerging philanthropists promoting the elevation and preservation of Black arts & culture.”
  

• Black Art in America (BAIA): “a multifaceted media company based in Columbus Georgia” with a mission “to document, preserve and promote the contributions of the African American arts community.  This group also has a Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/blackartinamerica)

• Building Capacity for Humanities Special Collections at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: “a five-year program designed to build capacity for the long-term preservation and conservation of humanities collections at HBCU Library Alliance member libraries.”
  

• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: A research division of NYPL that’s “one of the world’s leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.” 
  

• Shades Collective: Fundraising campaign to support BIOPIC Creatives.  

• Studio Museum in Harlem: Support page for an institution that is  “the nexus for artists of African descent locally, nationally, and internationally and for work that has been inspired and influenced by black culture.”
  

• “We Here”: a support group for librarians of color.  They also have an active Twitter presence at https://twitter.com/librarieswehere

Dear ARLIS/NY Chapter Members, 

We hope that you and your loved ones are staying well during this difficult time. In order to help us better understand the impact that the COVID-19 crisis is having on our community, the ARLIS/NY Executive Board has created this short survey to gather some information related to the impacts COVID-19 is having on our work and home lives. 

Please fill out the survey linked to below at your convenience. All answers are anonymous and will only be used for the purposes of helping the Executive Board to better meet your needs during this time. 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfAqgGpPrmr-Xn37p0Bfq6HZ8xROdSul444-bs_2GndDL9SRw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Many thanks, 

The ARLIS/NY Executive Board

Due to the developing circumstances related to current public health precautions, The Art Libraries Society of North America New York Chapter (ARLIS/NY) and the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) have made the difficult decision to postpone the Forum on Equity and Inclusion in Art Librarianship to the Spring of 2021.

Unfortunately, this includes delaying our planning and committee selections as well. We hope to resume work on this event in the fall of 2020 and will reissue our open call at such time. We sincerely thank you for your your flexibility and patience during this process.

Sincerely,

The ARLIS/NA New York Chapter Executive Board

Dear members,

We wanted to write to you briefly with our thoughts and plans.

The ARLIS NY Board strongly encourages the use of social distancing to deal with this crisis; at the same time, we want to help keep our members engaged, connected, and enthusiastic about their work and studies. Naturally, we will schedule no physical gatherings for the near future. Still, we want to use our organization and network to provide a venue for virtual presentations, meetings, and other types of connections. We very much welcome your input and ideas for these. Please feel free to contact Gianna Ricci for programming suggestions at giana.ricci@nyu.edu.

This is a challenging time for all of us, and we know that the degree of these challenges will vary greatly depending on our family commitments and other personal situations. We also know that the cultural institutions in the city—as well as the world—are being affected by this crisis. We look forward to returning to them, and using this moment as a reminder that, in many ways, they are why we live in this place. Our museums, galleries, musical venues, independent bookshops, and neighborhood cinemas will need our commitment more than ever. We hope to see them restored to their full strength, and in turn, let them restore us to our health as an inspired, invigorated community.  

Sincerely,

The ARLIS/NA New York Chapter Executive Board

The Art Libraries Society of North America New York Chapter (ARLIS/NY) and the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) are extending an open call for applications to join the planning committee for the upcoming event: Forum on Equity and Inclusion in Art Librarianship. This forum will take place in November of 2020 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. We are looking for applicants who are dedicated to the goals of inclusion and equity and look forward to the challenge of planning an ambitious event. You do not need to be a member of ARLIS/NY to apply for the Forum planning committee. 

Goals of the planning committee members include: 

•  Design format of event and budget proposal
•  Send out open call for submissions or invitations in March 2020
•  Act as jury selectors for proposals, ideally a double blind process
•  Notify presenters of proposal acceptance or denial by May 2020
•  Disseminate and promote Forum details to various interested parties 
• Handle registration for the event (free)
• Design format of event and budget proposal
• Send out open call for submissions or invitations in March 2020
• Act as jury selectors for proposals, ideally a double blind process
• Notify presenters of proposal acceptance or denial by May 2020
• Disseminate and promote Forum details to various interested parties 
• Handle registration for the event (free)
• Coordinate logistics of event with Museum of Modern Art staff
•  Review final presentations August 2020
• Be available to answer questions about the Forum from presenters and attendees 

The anticipated time commitment for membership on the Forum planning committee will be 2-4 hours in March, 2-4 hours in April, and various hours as needed to coordinate logistics closer to the event. Committee members will receive support from Giana Ricci, Clerk of the Committee and Programming Coordinator of ARLIS/NY as well as Molly Seegers and Ashley Hinshaw as representatives of NYARC. A physical location for committee meetings will be provided by ARLIS/NY. 

Interested applicants should send their CV and a statement of interest (500 words) to equityinclusionforumcommittee@gmail.com. Please emphasize your experience with planning events, your research or presentations related to inclusion and equity, or other related endeavors. Students, new career professionals, and library workers of all levels are encouraged to apply. We are looking to recruit 4 to 6 committee members through this open call. Committee members will also be eligible to submit proposals for the Forum. 

Committee members will be gifted an individual chapter membership to ARLIS/NY as compensation for their efforts. If you are already an ARLIS/NY member, you will be gifted a chapter membership when your current membership expires. 

Selection of jury members will be made by the current Forum planning committee members:

Giana Ricci, Clerk 

Ashley Hinshaw

Tina Lidogoster

Samantha Deutch

Rebecca Clark

Molly Seegers

Upon selection of the primary committee members, ARLIS/NA New York Chapter Board Members Tina Lidogoster, Samantha Deutch and Rebecca Clark will serve as supporting members providing assistance and guidance as necessary. 

Thank you for your consideration, and if you have any questions please send them to equityinclusionforumcommittee@gmail.com 

ARLIS/NY is thrilled to announce the winners of this year’s Celine Palatsky Travel Award for attendance at the St. Louis conference, this year to be shared by two of the chapter’s members.

Janna Singer-Baefsky is a current MoMA Art Library Fellow and is on track to complete her MSLIS at Pratt this December and her MA in Art History from Hunter College in 2022.

Meghan Lyon is currently a NYARC Web Archiving Fellow at the Frick Art Reference Library and will also be completing her MSLIS at Pratt this year.

Both Meghan and Janna will be speaking at this year’s New Voices in the Profession session at the conference.

This year’s award committee was Amye McCarther, Phoebe Stein, and Michael Carter.

Please join us in congratulating Janna and Meghan, and thank you to all who applied. See you in St. Louis!

The Nominating Committee is pleased to nominate the following candidates for positions opening on the ARLIS/NA NY Board:

For Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect: Samantha Deutch. Samantha Deutch is the Assistant Director of the Center for the History of Collecting at the Frick Art Reference Library and a member of the Digital Art History Lab. She holds Masters Degrees in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University, and in art history, 18th and 19th Century Spanish Art, from Binghamton University. She is the creator and editor of the Center’s online Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America for which she was awarded the Worldwide Books Award for Electronic Resources 2011 by the Art Library’s Society of North America. Most recently, Ms. Deutch contributed an article “Transforming Research Methodologies: The Frick Art Reference Library’s Collaborative Approach,” for the publication Collecting and Provenance: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach, edited by Jane Milosch and Nick Pearce, published by Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. She is currently serving as Chair of ARLIS/NA’s Documentation Committee and as co-chair of the Society’s new publication initiative, an annotated Digital Art History Directory.

For Treasurer: Scott Davis. Scott Davis is the Cataloging & Reference Librarian at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He holds an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU and an MLIS from The Palmer School, LIU. He is a contributor to the Grove Dictionary of Art, has presented numerous concerts and performances at art and music venues throughout the United States, and has most recently co-curated the exhibition Jamie Isenstein: Universe of Logs at the Institute of Fine Arts (2018).

For Membership Coordinator (Member-At-Large): Meghan R. Constantinou. Meghan Constantinou has served as Librarian of the Grolier Club since 2011 and has been a club member since 2013. As the head librarian, she manages all aspects of the library and performs curatorial duties as well. She received her MLIS from Pratt Institute in 2012, MA in Art History from the University of Delaware in 2010, and BFA in Painting from Syracuse University in 2001. Her research interests include the history of private collecting, women’s book ownership, provenance studies, and the book arts. She joined ARLIS/NA as a library student at Pratt, participated in the ARLIS/NA mentor program, and served as Student/Professional Development Liaison for ARLIS/NY in 2012-2014. She looks forward to working with the New York chapter again!

Members of the 2020 Nominating Committee are Michael Carter, Anna Helgeson, and Eric Wolf. The slate is now open for review by the Chapter membership. Please submit any comments to Nominating Committee chair Michael Carter at Michael.Carter@metmuseum.org by November 27, 2019. Per the Chapter Bylaws (Article IV, section C--available here: https://www.arlisny.org/bylaws), if no comment is received, the slate will be considered elected by acclamation.

Thank you for your participation!