Courtauld Considers Drastic Cuts to Archives
The Courtauld Institute in London is considering drastic cuts to its three archives of images, including the Witt Library, according to the
Art Newspaper. From September, they would only open one day a week and effectively cease to collect. This proposal is causing great concern amongst art historians, as well as the art trade, since it is a major resource.
Cost-cutting lies behind the proposal, and the Courtauld is concerned about the subsidy involved in administering and adding to the collections (Witt Library, Conway Library, and Photographic Survey).
More than three million images are kept in London’s Somerset House and are currently open to the public every weekday, for a modest sixteen dollars a year or three dollars a day. Although the internet means that much of the recently added material is now available online, web images cannot be searched in such a systematic way.
Courtauld staff who run the three collections are now under threat of redundancy. The plan is that the libraries would open only one day a week (with volunteer assistance) and further images would not be systematically added. An internal consultation with the librarians is underway, and is due to be concluded in August.
July 30, 2009
Arthur Okamura (1932–2009)
Arthur Okamura, a renowned painter and art teacher who enlivened the social and cultural life of Bolinas, California, for fifty years, died on Friday, according to the
Contra-Costa Times. He was seventy-seven.
Okamura, a prolific painter who also worked in screen printing and drawing, rose to prominence with the San Francisco Renaissance movement in the 1950s.
An abstract expressionist, his work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the Whitney Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Okamura taught at the California College of the Arts in Oakland for thirty-one years, retiring in 1997 as professor emeritus.
"He was a master teacher," said Ron Garrigues of Bolinas, a fellow artist and friend. "He knew more about painting than anyone I've ever met."
Three days before he died, Okamura taught his weekly art class at the New School at Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Bolinas. Involved in Commonweal since its inception in 1976, he served on its board of directors for more than a decade, and had several exhibits of his work in the Commonweal gallery.
"Arthur was an absolute central figure in the Bolinas community for fifty years," said Michael Lerner, Commonweal's cofounder and president. "He was universally respected and admired. He was an extraordinary artist and a beloved man."
July 13, 2009
Ben Mahmoud (1935–2009)
Ben Mahmoud, a widely exhibited painter known for idiosyncratic takes on realism, taught art at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb for more than thirty years. Mahmoud, seventy-three, died on June 12, reports the
Chicago Tribune. He had moved to Florida in 2004.
Mahmoud started teaching at NIU in the mid 1960s. Throughout his teaching career, he showed his work in Chicago, where for many years he was represented at Sonia Zaks Gallery. He retired from NIU in 1998. Active on the art scene nationally, he recruited many students for the university’s art school, said Larry Gregory, assistant director of NIU’s School of Art.
“He worked very hard to establish a large graduate program here,” Gregory said.
Mahmoud enjoyed socializing with students and was always available for counsel. “To Ben, art was a part of life. When you studied with him, your relationship wasn’t only in the classroom,” said Thad Settle, who did graduate work at NIU in the late 1980s.
July 05, 2009
