Good morning all,
My morning was significantly disturbed by a Tweet posted to
https://twitter.com/museummedia, "Museum jobs: a summary http://bit.ly/7pKto ."
This shortened URL takes you to Jennifer Trant's blog on the
conference.archimuse.com website. Attached to the blog post by Ms. Trant is a
4 page .pdf document listing various museum jobs from Director to Membership
Clerk, including staff positions as varied as Planetarium Director, Studio
Manager and Projectionist. There are NO Visual Resources professionals
included on the list. Zero. Unless we're somehow invisibly included with
Digitizing Technician/data entry clerk, Librarian or Archivist. I've made a
comment to Ms. Trant's blog and hope to receive a response from her which I
will share with the VRA and MCN listservs.
Coming on the heels of the announcement regarding the elimination of Leigh
Gate's Visual Resources position at the Art Institute of Chicago, and
compounded by the knowledge that Melody Ennis (Museum of Art, RISD), Jane
Ferger (Indianapolis Museum of Art) and Cheryl Vogler (St. Louis Art Museum)
also lost jobs to the elimination of their staff positions within the past
year, this blog post is extremely troubling. Clearly there is some lack of
awareness and understanding about the role of Visual Resources professionals in
the museum environment that needs to be addressed. In light of overall
concerns about the future of our profession, this may be a timely and pertinent
topic for discussion at the Museum VR SIG (special interest group) meeting at
the next Visual Resources Assn. conference in Atlanta--for those of us museum
VR professionals who still retain jobs and will be in attendance.
Back to my still vital & hopefully valued work.
Heidi
Heidi S. Raatz | Visual Resources Librarian
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55404
(612) 870-3196 |
(612) 870-3029 - permissions |
hraatz at artsmia.org |
permissions at artsmia.org|
www.artsmia.org ( http://www.artsmia.org/ )
