Newsletter of the Section of Art Libraries (Web edition)

No. 40 (1997, No. 1)
ISSN: 0261-152X

Copenhagen 1997

IFLA Conference 31 August - 5 September 1997

The Section of Art Libraries will be meeting as follows. Exact times are not yet available for all events. Some general IFLA activities are also included.

Friday 29 August
Afternoon
Special Libraries Co-ordinating Board (for elected officers only)

Saturday 30 August
0800-1600
Art Libraries Pre-conference Workshop in conjunction with ARLIS/Norden, The Danish Museum of Decorative Art

1600-1700
Reception and opening of exhibition, The Danish Museum of Decorative Art

1800-1930
Reception at The Royal Library. A demonstration of their Image
Database will take place

Evening
Reception for IFLA Officers (invitation only)
IFLA Newcomers reception, the main conference venue - the Bella Center

Sunday 31 August
Morning
Orientation to IFLA for newcomers, Bella Center
UNESCO Open Forum

Afternoon
Council I

Evening
Opening of exhibition followed by reception, Bella Center

Monday 1 September
Morning
Art Libraries Open Forum Session, Bella Center

Afternoon
Conference Opening session followed by Plenary session

Evening
1997 Gala reception hosted by the Danish Minister of Culture

Tuesday 2 September
All day
Section and Round Table sessions
Poster sessions
Evening
City Hall receptions

Wednesday 3 September
All day
Study tours and library visits.
A special guided city walk has been organised by ARLIS/Norden for art librarians. The day will begin with a morning reception at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. After visiting Thorvaldsen's Museum, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and the Art Department of the Copenhagen Main Library, the day will end with a special reception by the Danish Design Council. Places are limited and you will need to register for this walk. A Registration form appears elsewhere in this Newsletter.

Thursday 4 September
0900-1700
Standing Committee meeting, Danish Museum of Decorative Art
NB - Committee members and other participants who wish to have lunch at the Museum (DKK 120) will need to register in advance with Anja Lollesgaard. A Registration form appears elsewhere in this Newsletter.

Evening
Library receptions

Friday 5 September
Morning
Co-ordinating Board meeting (elected officers only)

Afternoon
Council II
Conference closing session

Saturday 6 September
All day
Excursions

There will be many opportunities during the conference to attend sessions by other Sections of IFLA such as on:

• Acquisition and exchange
• Management
• Cataloguing
• Rare books and manuscripts
• Document delivery and interlending
• University and general research libraries
• Education and training
• User education library
• Theory and research

Registration

The cost of registration for the IFLA conference is DKK 2,350 before 1 May and DKK 2,500 after that. Registration forms can be obtained from IFLA Headquarters, PO Box 95312, 2509 CH The Hague, The Netherlands. Telephone +31 70 3140884, Fax +31 70 3834827, Email: IFLA@ifla.org

Completed Registration forms should be sent to IFLA General Conference 1997, Bella Center/Copenhagen Congress Center, Center Boulevard, DK-2300, Copenhagen S, Denmark. Telephone +45 32 472149, Fax +45 32 529636

Conference Hotel

Whilst normal practice is "first come, first served" the conference organisers recommend that you should mark your conference registration form at the Position/Title entry with "Librarian (ARLIS)". The conference organisers will use this information as their guide to place people in the Hotel Neptun. The cost will be round about 900 Danish Kroner for a single room and about 1,200 Danish Kroner for a double room per night. The conference organisers recommend that if we wish to stay together we should register as soon as possible because the rooms cannot be held specially. Please note that the shuttle buses from the hotel to the main conference center will be available only to those who have booked their hotel via IFLA.

Pre-conference Workshop

To be held in conjunction with ARLIS/Norden on Saturday 30 August at The Danish Museum of Decorative Art.

Theme: Art libraries as centres of culture and information

1. Introduction to the Workshop
   Jan van der Wateren, Chairman, IFLA Section of Art Libraries
   National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.
   

2. Internet and copyright regarding pictorial art - seen in an international perspective
   Margrethe Tøttrup, Danish National Library Authority, Copenhagen, Denmark
   

3. The Research Libraries Group and access to art information
   Katharine Martinez, Research Libraries Group, California, USA
   

4. Le rôle des bibliothèques dans la formation et l'information des jeunes artistes. Le traitement de l'actualité
   Jean-Paul Oddos, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
   

5. Art in the art library: small faces of "Library Products"
   Kyoko Tomatsu, Library Point Co, Tokyo, Japan

6. Redressing past cultural biases and imbalances
   Josephine Andersen, South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

7. Memory of the world: preservation and access
   Abdelaziz Abid, UNESCO, Paris, France

NB. Booking for this Workshop. There is limited space at the Workshop venue and those who wish to attend will need to inform ARLIS/Norden. A special Registration Form appears in this issue. Please forward it to the address shown and indicate whether you wish to have lunch at the Museum. Please note that this registration is not valid for the General Conference.

Open Forum Programme

To be held at the main conference center, The Bella Center, on the morning of Monday 1 September.

Theme: Studying Scandinavian art and design at home and abroad.

1. Promoting Scandinavian design history
   Mirjam Gelfer-Jørgensen, The National Library for Art and Design, Danish Museum for Decorative Art, Copenhagen, Denmark
   

2. Bibliografía sobre arte y artistas de los paises Nordicos a traves de las monografías y catalogos de exposiciones en España
   Alicia García Medina, Instituto Patrimonío Historico Español, Madrid, Spain
   

3. The National Museum of Photography at The Royal Library, Copenhagen
   Ingrid Fischer-Jonge, The Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark
   

NB: The Royal Library Department of Prints and Photographs. There will be an opportunity to visit this Department during the conference week. This will only be possible by appointment with the Head of the Department, Ingrid Fischer-Jonge.

European Art Libraries Meeting "I cataloghi dei musei / Museum catalogues / Les catalogues des musées" in Trieste, December 2-5, 1996

At the opening session introductory speeches were given by an impressive selection of official representatives. Assembled on the podium were: Roberto Damiani, assessore alla Cultura del Comune di Trieste; Maria Masau Dan, direttore del Civico Museo Revoltella; Carla Bianchi, presidente di BiArte; Romano Vecchiet, presidente della sezione Friuli Venezia Giulia dell Associazione Italiana Biblioteche; Andrea Balanza, dirigente Cultura della Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia and Geert-Jan Koot on behalf of IFLA.
The late afternoon was devoted to a guided tour of the Museo Revoltella followed by a cocktail. The collection of the Museo Revoltella originated in the donation of the businessman Pasquale Revoltella in 1869. Since one of the clauses of the legacy envisaged the need to enlarge the section of contemporary art, the museum has recently undergone an extension of the building which houses the collection on a design by the architect Scarpa. After a closure of 20 years, the museum reopened recently and proved to be an ideal setting for a conference on museum catalogues.
The first day came to an end late in the evening after a classical concert given by the Scuola Superiore di Musica da camera del Trio di Trieste.

Moderated by Gillian Varley, the morning session of the second day was devoted to the main theme. The very first lecture entitled "Preliminaries for a bibliography of museum collection catalogues: some historical observations on a hitherto neglected aspect of museum history" can be considered as the most inspiring and provocative of the conference. The curator of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Frits Keers, stated that the private collection, so crucial in establishing the museum, and the local collection that serve the same goal, do both belong to the discussion of what should be considered a museum catalogue. With the French revolution, museum history entered a decisive phase in which we witness the birth of this new bibliographic phenomenon, and during the 19th century the foundations were laid for the structure of the museum catalogue. Finally, Frits made a passionate plea for a bibliography of museum collection catalogues which we need as acutely as we need Frits Lugt's "Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques".
Nicole Picot provided in her lecture "Les catalogues du Musée du Louvre: des livrets aux catalogues multimédia" an overview of the origins and the development of the Louvre catalogues since 1793. A clear distiction was made between the two types of catalogues: "le catalogue guide du visiteurs" (the visitors' guide) and "les catalogues-publications erudites" (the scholarly museum catalogue). Nicole ended with an online demonstration of the database Joconde. During the last 15 years one of the greatest projects on automated museum documentation has been realised by the Direction des musées de France of the Ministry of Culture. Joconde is composed of extensive ranging from the 7th century until today, intended to give access to all the public collections of France. Already included are all the paintings of the Louvre. (Internet address: http://www.culture.fr/cgi-bin/mistral/joconde )
Accessing the visual resources of the National Library of Ireland in Dublin was the subject of Elizabeth M. Kirwan, noting that if museums are buildings used for the storage and the exhibition of objects illustrating antiquity, natural history, the arts and so on, then libraries are also museums. The objects of the library are living cultural objects when they are in use, being consulted, being handled. Describing the process of cataloguing, automation and digitization of the library's collection of prints, drawings, watercolors, oil paintings, photographs, maps and heraldry, Elizabeth pointed out that the concept of the virtual visual resources library is not part of the library's vision of the future. "After all, what thirsty person in Ireland who tasted the excellent wines of Friuli would be happy with a virtual bottle of wine?"
The last speaker of the morning session, Silvana Barni, provided an impression of the nature, the objectives, and the activities of the Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci CID/Arte Visive in Prato. The main objective is to collect and to distribute information about exhibitions and events on contemporary art, and to compose bio-bibliographic records of the main protagonists. The database consists already of 7,000 records on artists, 30,000 bibliographic and event records, and a thesaurus of 2,000 words. The presentation pages and the events calendar of CID/Arte Visive are accessible by Internet (http://www.comune.prato.it/pecci/home.htm).

After an excellent lunch, Jacqueline Viaux hosted the afternoon session focussed on recent developments in art libraries in Eastern Europe. Jarmila Okrouhlíková gave a survey of the 10 main art libraries in the Czech Republic, noting cooperation on acquisition policy, automation and art bibliography. Among new tasks and present activitities Jarmila mentioned the Czech art thesaurus, the directory of Czech art libraries, the translation of the Anglo-American cataloguing rules, and the Czech and Slovak Information Network (CASLIN).
New developments in art libraries and museum catalogues in Hungary was the subject of the lecture by Tibor Csík and Katalin Varga, discussing the question of unified data structure and vocabulary control as the main problems in the creation of a central database for 11 museums. Because of translation difficulties, the decision was made not to translate Getty's Art and Architecture Thesaurus, but based on its ideas, to create a new Hungarian Art Thesaurus to fulfill the requirements of an controlled indexing language for both objects and book collections.
Mikica Mastrovic spoke about the information model of the print collection in the National and University Library in Zagreb with special reference to the processing of drawings and prints as well as its library materials.
Giovanna Lazzi gave a presentation on the digitization project of the miniatures at the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, where a file of 5,000 images of illuminations in 325 manuscripts was created. Giovanna introduced the concept of virtual restauration, which actually happens to be a misleading name since it has nothing to do with real restauration. Instead it aims to reveal hidden details like the filigrane by means of advanced digitization techniques.
Jacqueline Viaux concluded this afternoon session with an appeal to our Czech collegues to organise the next European meeting of art librarians in Prague so the art libraries community will be able to experience the progress made in the exciting projects in the Czech and Slovak Republics.
Most papers on the third day adressed various aspects of online catalogues and search tools as sources of art information. Conversely, the first speaker Geert-Jan Koot demonstrated in his bookhistorical lecture the gradual evolution and from time to time the rather eruptive development of the catalogues of the collection of paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam from 1808 to 1992. He showed how the changing policy regarding the management of the museum and the display of the pictures had an immediate effect on the contents of the catalogues. And the more differentiated the information became, the more the typography developped into intricacy. Although the typography appears to become more and more extravangant during the 19th century, the overall design was not experimental at all, but strictly following the content of the catalogues and the rules of the bookdesign in this period.
A stimulating vision of the future was given by Jean Paul Odos in his lecture entitled "Mutation technologique à la documentation du Musée national d'art moderne: enjeux et perspectives pour le XXIème siècle". He stated that a completely new attitude on the documentation databases of the museum should be developped, based on a new utilization of the collection. Some of the aims are the unified access to all kinds of different databases and digitization of all reference works on 20th century art with an integration of sound, images and text. Jean Paul sketched the framework for this future information system although he admitted that the needed technological solutions are not yet available and the management of the system would be a problem.
Another future tool for art historical research, the "Van Eyck Project", was introduced by Jan van der Starre. Van Eyck is the acronym for Visual Arts Network for the Exchange of Cultural Knowledge, a research project partly funded by the European Commission. The aim is to realise a workstation which will allow uniform access to several art historical databases at the same time. All participating databases will appear to form one virtual database. During the present phase of the project, a working prototype will be built which eventually will be marketed in 1997. After his remark that a lot of work still had to be done, Jan immediately left the conference to fly back to The Hague in order to hurry on with his research.
The final lecture of the morning session by Pierre Piccotti was about the integration between multimedia systems in museums and bibliographic and documentary research. Departing from the users' information needs, he considered the static CD-ROM more suitable for the basic questions posed by the visitor of the museum, while the up-to-date Web site appeals more to the dynamic scholarly approach. At great pace Pierre explained the main characteristics of the very promising Easy Web and Easy Pac software, specially designed to make the integration between different multimedia systems possible. (http://marcie.iuav.it/~pierre/)
Since three of the lecturers spoke about the integration of multimedia databases, the discussion moderated by Rosella Todros focused on the necessity of unified access to collections. Representatives from different countries gave detailed impressions of recent developments in their national institutions.

After an excellent meal, the participants were taken by bus to the Castle of Miramare. Already from a distant the white shape jutting out of the sea, appeared as an inchanted castle in a legend, almost unreal. This princely home, built and entirely decorated in 1858 was the work of Maximilian, younger brother of Franz Joseph, the Habsburg Emperor. In 1955 the complex including the park covering 22 hectares, was turned into a museum. It is now an intact stately home which has survived without any alteration.
In the late afternoon, the last session chaired by Carla Bianchi started with a highly original dialogue between Rosella Todros, librarian at the Biblioteca Marucelliana, and Carlo Sisi, director of the Galleria d'arte moderna di Palazzo Pitti, both in Florence. Several questions were postulated, all based on the theme of the cooperation between arthistorians, curators and librarians. According to Carlo, the primary objective of this cooperation concerns especially the fields of restauration and didactics. For the foreign participants it was astonishing to realize how difficult the Italian situation is in order to produce museum collection catalogues, mainly because of the dependency of the centralized management as well as the banks, regions and communities as the main and often only financers. The conclusion of the dialogue was that the wider challenge of both the arthistorian and the librarian should be the stimulation of the culture of one's country.
Roberto Macellari spoke about the publishing activities and the exchange programme of the Biblioteca di Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte dei Civici Musei di Reggio Emilia, noting the importance of the interdependency of both activitities.
Concluding this session, Anna Tonicello showed how the catalogues of the Archivio Progetti dello Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia were made accessible through Easy Web. This software tool make it possible to connect all different material typologies by means of the same data format with multilevel descriptions. One of the great advantages of Easy Web is the integration of different databases within the same and for the searcher transparant system.

The last day was devoted to a visit to Ljubljana, the capital city of the Republic of Slovenija, which opened the doors to its most important museums and indeed of the city itself to the conference members. Even despite the snow the story of the history and development of the city, the appearance of which was modified during the 1930s by Joze Plecnik, were revealed to us by our excellent guide, the architect Peter Krecic. As well as seeing the changes which have been made to the ancient structures of the city (such as the walls, the ancient buildings belonging to the Order of the Knights Templar and the bridges) it was particulary interesting to visit the buildings designed by Plecnik, especially the University's National Library, his most succesful and renowned project in Ljubliana.
The first museum visited was the Museum of Modern Art, where the librarian, Katja Kranjc provided us with much interesting information. As well as the permanent collection, the museum holds temporary exhibitions and we saw one for the future Museum of Modern Art of Sarajevo. The permanent collection concentrates on the art of Slovenia and its contribution and relationship to the most important movements during this century.
The exhibition currently being held in the National Gallery (Narodna Galerija) was of particular interest to the librarians. A large number of bibles owned by both the National Library and the library of Ljubljana Seminary were displayed. The director of the Seminar took us around the exhibition which ranges from ancient manuscripts to the first printed editions, including the earliest Protestant bibles and Hebrew editions of the old testament. As well as the books themselves, the exhibition included paintings and frescoes with biblical subjects and concluded with a large selection of bibles in the Slovanian language.

Despite the short preparation period, this European meeting of art libraries was a great succes, thanks to the diversity and the quality of the contributions, the hospitality and the splendid organization by our Italian hosts, the attractive and comfortable conference venue at the Museo Revoltella, and the charm of the city of Trieste. The organizers are planning to publish a compilation of the presented papers, while the lecture by Frits Keers will be published in Art Libraries Journal.

Geert-Jan Koot
Library Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Rosella Todros (Visit to Ljubljana)
Biblioteca Marucelliana,
Florence, ITALY

From Havana: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes under transformation

In spite of being closed to the public the Museum has continued to carry out its normal operations, organising exhibitions in other venues and abroad. In 1996 seven national exhibitions were inaugurated and this year three other exhibitions have been organised in Cuba and four in Japan, Madrid, Salvador and Valencia. A Museum Bulletin has been launched with the intention of keeping all interested institutions and individuals informed of the activities, events and projects of this Cuban institution.

The Museum library, the Centro de Información "Rodriguez Morey", has not been left out of all these developments. An inventory of all collections has been carried out (books and pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, serials, photographic negatives and photographs). They have been stored in labelled boxes and will be moved to other premises with sound storage standards (concerning environmental conditions, conservation, security and lighting). During the restoration work we will continue with the processing of all our collections (books, catalogues, serials and special collections material) and with their automation. At the same time we will continue our public service directed at the specialists and scholars of the Museum. Particular attention will be given to the professional development of our staff (both national and international) in order to achieve and sustain high standards of performance and deal with technical advances in information.

Veronica Lavin Isax
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
Havana, CUBA

Access to Network of Japanese National Museums through Internet

Kyoto National Museum

http://www.kyohaku.go.jp/

Nara National Research Institute of Cultural Properties

http://www.nabunken.go.jp/

National Museum of Art, Osaka

http://www.nmao.go.jp/

National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

http://www.momak.go.jp/

National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

http://www.nmwa.go.jp/

Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties

http://www.tobunken.go.jp/