We reach more than we know . . .

Welcome new interns!

Two new interns will be helping us out in the library this summer. Katie Griffin is a graduate student in the Library and Information Science program at USC with a concentration in archives. Lauren DeReese is an undergraduate at Queens Unversity. Please be sure to say hello when you see them in the library. Welcome to Katie and Lauren and hope you enjoy your summer here at the Mint!

Mint Wiki goes global!

Remember Helene Blowers at PLCMC's Learning 2.0? As she hoped, her program has been picked up and adapted and is in use all over the place. One place is the State Library of New South Wales (Australia) and one of the wikis they point to as an example is ours! How cool is that!

AND Joe is using Google Analytics on the Mint Wiki to see who views the page and from where. Just in the last month, the Mint Wiki has been visited by folks from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, (of course) North Carolina, but also Australia, the UK and Russia!! Plus, from the analytics, we can see that folks are actually looking at the site - not just clicking through - by the amount of time they spend there. This is so neat!

AND a professor at Kansas State University just wrote to ask permission to use a screen shot of the Mint Wiki in her new book! The screenshot will be used "in a guide for professionals at small museums who want to create an "eMuseum" . . . and would be presented as an example of a museum using a Wiki to communicate with the public." (Yeah!) The book is Developing Curriculum Materials for Teachers: Lessons from the Negro Leagues Baseball eMuseum. Proceeds from its sales will be donated to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, MO. We will get a copy when it gets published! All the way cool!

New titles/articles department:

• Each year, the Friends of the Mint donate a book in honor of the past president. This year, the book Queen Victoria and Thomas Sully, by Carrie Rebora Barratt has been donated in honor of Donald Freund. The Mint's painting The Student, Sully's lovely portrait of his daughter Rosalie, is one of Donald's favorite paintings, so this was a perfect gift in his name. Thank you Friends! and thank you Donald!
• Ripped from his still warm hands: The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957 from the V&A's exhibition. Thank you Charles!! It is absolutely to drool over. (and actually, the ripped from his hands part is not true - it was offered very graciously, but I just had to say it)
• The latest entire issue of Fiberarts is devoted to "Our Fiber Heritage". Subjects include Andean tapestries inspiring new forms, guidelines for the care of textiles, and a review of the Met's exhibition of ancient Peruvian featherwork called Radiance from the Rain Forest.
• New book - The Furniture of Sam Maloof - a great big volume with tons of pictures of his gorgeous furniture. But you'll have to get it from Allie 'cause she had first dibs!
• Latest issue of Charlotte magazine has a big feature article about what South Tryon will be like in 2010 - very different and very exciting! Great composite "what it will look like" photo.

Only a matter of time department: Artist's tees from the Gap! They are celebrating the 2008 Whitney Biennial by issuing artist designed t-shirts by former Whitney Biennial artists.http://www.gap.com/browse/category.do?cid=40760 There is also a full multi-page spread of ads for these in the latest issue of W - on the shelf in your library! Take a peek. (I especially like the Kenny Scharf and the Kiki Smith) Speaking of Kiki Smith, she's now doing a line with Steuben Glass - a collection of designs inspired by tatoos!

Favorite design ideas department: Metropolitan Home's annual top 100 designs issue is always fascinating but I didn't get to see it until I was at the eye doctor last week. I scribbled down some of my favorites while my eyes were dilating!(Don't you love this "you are there" aspect of the blog? I am kidding.) Anyway, a few I thought were particularly noteworthy (but in no particular order):

• Charles + Ray Eames postage stamps - Classic design for 42 cents!
• Jasper Conran's designs for Wedgwood - He's the son of . . . and the designs are gorgeous
• The Encyclopedia of Life - http://www.eol.org/ . Just check it out - it's just one of those things the Internet was made for.
• GreenForAll.org - Good work, good sense, for good.
• LocalHarvest.org - Like the web site says, "real food, real farmers, real community."
• And for fun, the Eiffel Tower Lego! Build your own in the comfort and safety of your own home.
• And last but not least, BIKES! Or pedal power with some really gorgeous examples from Puma. Of course, there is always my personal favorite - the Townie!

By the way, are we going to have bike racks uptown outside of our new building?? I'm trying to up my own personal pedaling percentage and know others are doing it too. So, I'm thinkin' it could be a really good idea.

A farewell and more

Thank you Emily!

We wish a fond farewell to Davidson intern Emily Boone who has been with us for three semesters! Her special project has been documenting the extent of our huge collection of back-issues of periodicals. The Mint Museum Library holds art magazines and journals going back to the turn of the century - the 20th century that is! Emily's efforts mean that we can begin cataloging these periodicals and make them more accessible for research. Emily also contributed to the Contemporary, Cool and Collected exhibition catalog, writing several artist entries under Carla's supervision. An art history major, Emily is graduating this month and plans to travel to France to work teaching English. Way to go Emily!! We will miss you!

Great new books and articles in the library (in no particular order

• How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness by Darby English - Called "groundbreaking" and a work that "expands the social and intellectual context for recent African-American art."
• A review of Scene in America: a Contemporary Look at the Black Male Image in the May 1 issue of The Charlotte Post - it is in the exhibition file!
• Do you like the "goose bowl?" Check out Art & Reform: Sara Galner, the Saturday Evening Girls, and the Paul Revere Pottery - the catalog by Nonie Gadsen for the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
• She's not here quite yet, but you can familiarize yourself with some of her work! Review Annie Carlano's Sleeping Around: the Bed from Antiquity to Now.
• From the North Carolina Arts Council, check out Creative Economy: the Arts Industry in North Carolina which documents the "economic impact of the arts as a significant industry" in NC.
• A collection to dream over! The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Collection is a nice big lucious look at an exemplary contemporary collection in an estate setting. Let's see . . . there's the Jean Arp in the TV room and the Jasper Johns and David Hockney in the library and the Alexander Calder in the garden and the Mark Rothko and the Anselm Kiefer in the living room. . . you get the idea!
• A mention of the Clayman show in the latest issue (May) of Sculpture magazine

And online . . .

• Art21's new blog Teaching with Contemporary Art which "will focus on why contemporary art in the classroom is important, the kinds of things that happen when it’s part of the curriculum, and ideas for approaching contemporary art from a variety of angles." Cool
• Thanks to Very Short List, my new favorite music video Happiness from Goldfrapp. Get happy (or is it hoppy?) (and thanks Em for sending)

Great visit from Curator's Circle! On Wednesday, May 7, members of the Curator's Circle (who support Dorie and the ancient American art collection) visited the library as part of their regular meeting. After refreshments, the main focus of the meeting was a "behind the scenes" with Katherine and everyone got to check out the pottery storage areas. Then, everyone came into the library for a viewing of some very significant resources we have including the Mayan and Aztec codex facsimiles, the 1877 first edition of Squier's Peru: Travels and Exploration of the Land of the Incas, and original printings of the 1908, 1910 and 1911 issues of Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University describing explorations in Peten, Guatemala. These journals are especially significant because of the high-quality of the photographs they contain. The photographs of stela, architectural elements and buildings at various archaeological sites are in many cases the only survivng record of the inscriptions and sculpture. Dorie provided recent photographs of many of these same ruins for comparison and the ravages of time, acid rain and poor (or nonexistent) conservation are evident. It highlighted the constant struggle between the need for conservation and the difficulty in obtaining funds and attention towards it. A great evening! Many thanks to Dorie, Katherine, Kimberly and all the members of the Curator's Circle who attended.