The Conference Planning Committee has been successful in attracting some excellent and varied papers for the conference. I look forward to hearing them and wish to thank everyone who is contributing. It looks absolutely fabulous! And congratulations to the Melbourne team who are already planning for the next conference in 2012.

Early bird deadline for Registration is July 15!

Thank you to the Victorian Chapter members who attended the meeting yesterday at RMIT. And, to Gwen for hosting. We began preliminary discussions re planning the ARLIS/ANZ conference to be held in Melbourne in 2012. Please post further ideas, thoughts, brainwaves here.

The National Gallery Research Library welcomes Adrian Reid as the Special Collections Officer. Adrian is from Adelaide and begins on 4th of January 2010.

Present membership of the Society is 128, with 57 institutional and 71 personal members. Membership of the discussion List is 230. The National Executive strongly urges all members of the discussion list to become personal members. It is inexpensive and the benefits include tours of gallery exhibitions by enthusiastic curators, discounted attendance at conferences, visits to art libraries and many more fun events. You will also be part of information and resource sharing forums on
our lively website.

With regards to the IFLA change in program and with Australia withdrawing as host, we now need to turn our thoughts to our ARLIS/ANZ biennial conference in 2010. We will discuss this in detail at our AGM in October 2009. Our thoughts were going in the direction that perhaps we could have 'a conference with a difference'. Possibly Darwin? I will keep you posted.

Joye

Dear all

The Special Collections team at National Gallery of Australia Research Library have been compiling a site for the James Gleeson Oral Histories. This can be viewed at http://nga.gov.au/Research/Gleeson/Default.cfm

In the late 1970s Dr James Gleeson AO, Australia’s leading surrealist painter, interviewed 98 Australian artists in their studios to discuss their works that had been acquired by the National Gallery of Australia. As an artist, curator, writer and administrator, Gleeson brought a unique perspective to these conversations. The recorded interviews form the basis of a significant resource on Australian visual arts.

In 2007 the Research Library digitised the interviews with the assistance of the National Library of Australia and we are making them available on our website. We currently have 22 interview excerpts available with full pdf transcriptions. More will be added over time.

In 2008 the James Gleeson Oral History Collection was inscribed into the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register 2008.

We welcome any comments, feedback and questions about the webpage.

Yours sincerely

Jennifer Coombes
Special Collections Archivist
Research Library
National Gallery of Australia

... some of the Auckland chapter of ARLIS NZ met for coffee today and agreed that Joye will be an excellent President and conference advocate - she has our warm good wishes from her friends in Auckland. Jane (and Catherine and Caroline and Tom)

The Special Collections team at the National Gallery Research Library have recently compiled a FlickR site featuring photographs from the Library's Helene Kirsova archive, and rare Ballet Russes programmes dating from the 1930's and 1940's. Helene Kirsova danced with the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo on its 1936 Australian tour, and settled in Australia where she established her own ballet school in Sydney.

We will be adding more material in the coming months and additional caption information for the photographs.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nga_researchlibrary/

We welcome all comments and feedback.


Melissa

Special Collections Documentations Officer
Research Library, National Gallery of Australia.

A proposal for a Satellite Meeting needs to be placed with the Chair of IFLA Art Libraries Section for submission to the IFLA Professional Committee for approval.

Some suggestions for a them which would embrace Asian art, indigenous art, but would also welcome papers from the rest of the world are needed:

So far the suggestions include:

The exquisite line: balancing the old and the new in art libraries.


Where East Meets West: embracing cultural diversity


Art Libraries embracing cultural diversity

Joye

Some of you will be aware that NAS has been in a state of limbo for the past few years and our director departed in September last year.

Last week two announcements were made simultaneously that could see a very interesting year ahead for us. Our new director Professor Anita Taylor (from the University of the Arts, London) will join us in April and the NSW government has committed to funding us for the next five years under the joint management of the Ministries for Education and the Arts.

There's more info here on our school blog.