NYARC is a consortium of New York art resources, initially including the libraries of Brooklyn Mu... more NYARC is a consortium of New York art resources, initially including the libraries of Brooklyn Museum, the Frick Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. The Metropolitan was not part of the Arcade (integrated libraries system) programme funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and withdrew its designation as a NYARC entity in December 2010. This article gives a brief history of NYARC and examines whether it achieved its aims of sharing resources, making them more accessible to the public, and saving money.
Museum libraries came late to the digitization party - primarily because of perceived copyright i... more Museum libraries came late to the digitization party - primarily because of perceived copyright issues. Since 2010 the three libraries of the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) have embarked on a series of niche, boutique digitization projects, pushing the boundaries of fair use, but they have also embraced the born-digital, establishing a program to capture art-history-rich websites and to give access to them via an innovative use of a discovery layer which prioritizes web resources in the ranking of results.
Because artists’ books can be expensive to buy and to keep, institutions need to have a clearly a... more Because artists’ books can be expensive to buy and to keep, institutions need to have a clearly articulated rationale for collecting them. This could range from documenting the history of art, and contemporary art in particular, to a survey of how artists have used the book format to explore their ideas. This latter approach would support the use of artists’ books in practical workshops leading to the creation of yet further artists’ books.
‘A national art library’: if every one of these four words raises questions and demands qualifica... more ‘A national art library’: if every one of these four words raises questions and demands qualification, together they suggest even more. Art is so elusive and resistant to institutionalisation that no single library - ‘a’ national art library - could possibly have the omniscience and omnipresence (never mind the money) to collect everything: to take a UK example, how many libraries managed to collect the Freeze (1988) exhibition catalogue at the time? And who collected the ‘programme note’ from that one-off performance in a half-derelict warehouse in Penge? Co-operation and collaboration in collection development are needed to maximise the research resources available in any particular nation, to ensure the retention of last or archival copies - and any national art library must surely have a role in this. However, this just sets up a chain of secondary problems - with access and funding at the top of the list. Individual institutions ultimately have their own agendas and priorities: and this even applies to national institutions, where existing collection strengths may skew collecting priorities. Perhaps we have to accept an incomplete but vibrant mosaic: the librarian’s desire for comprehensiveness and universal bibliographic control cannot be achieved in the real world.
The artist and the book format towards a history of artists' books Mallarme and Broodthaers f... more The artist and the book format towards a history of artists' books Mallarme and Broodthaers futurist books fluxus books minimalist and conceptual books women and artists' books.
... illustrators: Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein contributed to Globe; the Dadaist Baroness Elsa von... more ... illustrators: Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein contributed to Globe; the Dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was the most frequently published contributor to The Little Review. Editors included Laura Riding (Epilogue) as well as Anderson, Monroe, Fauset, and Holt. ...
NYARC is a consortium of New York art resources, initially including the libraries of Brooklyn Mu... more NYARC is a consortium of New York art resources, initially including the libraries of Brooklyn Museum, the Frick Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. The Metropolitan was not part of the Arcade (integrated libraries system) programme funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and withdrew its designation as a NYARC entity in December 2010. This article gives a brief history of NYARC and examines whether it achieved its aims of sharing resources, making them more accessible to the public, and saving money.
Museum libraries came late to the digitization party - primarily because of perceived copyright i... more Museum libraries came late to the digitization party - primarily because of perceived copyright issues. Since 2010 the three libraries of the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) have embarked on a series of niche, boutique digitization projects, pushing the boundaries of fair use, but they have also embraced the born-digital, establishing a program to capture art-history-rich websites and to give access to them via an innovative use of a discovery layer which prioritizes web resources in the ranking of results.
Because artists’ books can be expensive to buy and to keep, institutions need to have a clearly a... more Because artists’ books can be expensive to buy and to keep, institutions need to have a clearly articulated rationale for collecting them. This could range from documenting the history of art, and contemporary art in particular, to a survey of how artists have used the book format to explore their ideas. This latter approach would support the use of artists’ books in practical workshops leading to the creation of yet further artists’ books.
‘A national art library’: if every one of these four words raises questions and demands qualifica... more ‘A national art library’: if every one of these four words raises questions and demands qualification, together they suggest even more. Art is so elusive and resistant to institutionalisation that no single library - ‘a’ national art library - could possibly have the omniscience and omnipresence (never mind the money) to collect everything: to take a UK example, how many libraries managed to collect the Freeze (1988) exhibition catalogue at the time? And who collected the ‘programme note’ from that one-off performance in a half-derelict warehouse in Penge? Co-operation and collaboration in collection development are needed to maximise the research resources available in any particular nation, to ensure the retention of last or archival copies - and any national art library must surely have a role in this. However, this just sets up a chain of secondary problems - with access and funding at the top of the list. Individual institutions ultimately have their own agendas and priorities: and this even applies to national institutions, where existing collection strengths may skew collecting priorities. Perhaps we have to accept an incomplete but vibrant mosaic: the librarian’s desire for comprehensiveness and universal bibliographic control cannot be achieved in the real world.
The artist and the book format towards a history of artists' books Mallarme and Broodthaers f... more The artist and the book format towards a history of artists' books Mallarme and Broodthaers futurist books fluxus books minimalist and conceptual books women and artists' books.
... illustrators: Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein contributed to Globe; the Dadaist Baroness Elsa von... more ... illustrators: Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein contributed to Globe; the Dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was the most frequently published contributor to The Little Review. Editors included Laura Riding (Epilogue) as well as Anderson, Monroe, Fauset, and Holt. ...
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