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FOMO case studies: loss, discovery and inspiration among relics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2016

Anne H. Simmons
Anne H. Simmons*
Affiliation:
Co-coordinator, ARLIS/NA Artists Files Special Interest Group, Reference Librarian for Vertical Files and Microforms, National Gallery of Art Library, 2000B South Club Drive, Landover MD 20785USA Email: [email protected]
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In 2009, I was two years into my tenure as a museum employee, managing a collection of small exhibition brochures, pamphlets and gallery announcements at the National Gallery of Art Library. That summer, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith reported on a phenomenon I had also observed in my capacity as Reference Librarian for Vertical Files: the decline of the printed gallery post card. Smith's ArtsBeat blog post, ‘Gallery Card as Relic,’ is a breezy elegy surveying recent “final notice” cards mailed from commercial galleries that were “going green” by eliminating paper mailings. I, however, was feeling less light-hearted about the demise of what Smith describes as a “useful bit of art-world indicator…[and] an indispensable constant creatively deployed by artists, avidly cherished by the ephemera-obsessed and devotedly archived by museums.”

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viewpoint
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 41 , Issue 2: Art Ephemera , April 2016 , pp. 72 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © ARLIS/UK&Ireland 2016 

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References

1. Smith, Roberta, “Gallery Card as Relic?” New York Times ArtsBeat, June 23, 2009, http://www.artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/gallery-card-as-relic.

2. Further discussion of the activities of the Artists Files SIG, Deutch, Samantha, and McKay, Sally. Forthcoming. “The Future of Artists Files: Here Today Gone Tomorrow,” Art Documentation, Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 35, no. 1 (Spring 2016)Google Scholar.

3. https://www.library.nga.gov.

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6. https://www.cartermuseum.org/library/research-databases/bio-files.

7. Ricky Erway et al., Shifting Gears Gearing up to Get into the Flow (Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Programs and Research, 2007), 3. Also available online at http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2007-02.pdf.

8. College Art Association of America et al., Code of Best Practices in Fair use for the Visual Arts: February 2015 (2015), 13Google Scholar. Also Available online at, http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/fair-use/best-practices-fair-use-visual-arts.pdf.

9. ARLIS/NA Artists Files SIG, https://www.archive-it.org/organizations/783.

10. New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), https://www.archive-it.org/organizations/484.

11. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries, Digital artists’ file, https://www.archive-it.org/collections/3607.

12. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Contemporary women artists on the web, https://www.archive-it.org/collections/2973.

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17. Eleey, Peter et al. , Sturtevant: Double Trouble (2014), 59Google Scholar.