BOOK
DROP CONCERNS
I
wish to correct some statements and impressions from your article “Book
Drop” (May 19) about the pending Swasey-Rhees Library merger.
• “It has become impossible to
maintain the library’s $425,000 budget.”
The Ambrose Swasey Library’s budget
for Fiscal Year 2004 is $323,753, not $425,000. This represents 5.94 percent of
the operating budgets of the three supporting schools (Colgate Rochester
Crozer, Bexley Hall Seminary, and St. Bernard’s School of Theology and
Ministry). This is not to deny that CRCDS has had deficit budgets or cash-flow
problems.
• “The school will only keep
the 40,000 to 50,000 titles needed to maintain the standards required by the
Association of Theological Schools.”
The Association of Theological
Schools, which accredits seminaries, does not indicate how many volumes are
required for seminary accreditation. ATS dropped quantifiable measures for
accreditation in 1996 in favor of internally developed institutional
benchmarks. Its library standard reads: “Each school shall have the
resources necessary for the operation of an adequate library program. These
include human, financial, technological and physical resources.”
CRCDS, in other words, must develop
its own understanding and defense of the word “adequate.” The ATS
standard for libraries at other junctures refers to “appropriate
collections” and “sufficient human and physical resources.”
Again, it is the institution which must interpret the terms
“appropriate” and “sufficient” — to ATS’s satisfaction.
• The proposal to merge the Swasey
Library with Rush Rhees is not “similar to the one made between Union
Theological Seminary and Columbia University in New York City this past
March” (actually, 2003)
The merger differs in several
important respects: 1) the Union-Columbia model keeps all library resources at
Union Seminary; 2) the Union-Columbia model retains all Union public services
and administrative staff with a complex formula for gradually shifting Union
staff to the Columbia payroll; 3) Columbia University and Union Theological
Seminary are literally across the street from each other (not 2 miles apart, as
are CRCDS and UR), and 4) the Union-Columbia library merger is taking over 15
months to develop and plan before implementing. (The public announcement of the
agreement occurred in early 2003; the plan goes into effect this coming July).
• If “Divinity School officials
say the merger will give Colgate students the full library privileges shared by
UR students and staff members for the very first time,” they know better,
and deny having said this. Colgate and UR students, faculty, and staff have had
complete reciprocal borrowing privileges (our students are treated as their
students) for years.
Swasey has provided electronic
access to digitized resources from home for years. ASL offers patrons
self-initiated renewals, e-reserves, and other digitized reserves as well. ASL
library patrons know this; Rush Rhees staff members verify this. Perhaps the
phrase “full library privileges” refers to databases in the medical,
business, and other specialized fields subscribed to by UR. It is true Swasey
does not provide these; our theology patrons have little need for them, either.
It should be mentioned that Swasey
librarians, in addition to CRCDS students, drew up several alternate proposals
to the administration’s initial proposal, which was crafted without ASL
librarians’ input or knowledge. Some of our suggestions have been incorporated
into the administration’s current proposal; many have not. However, the
conversations around specifics continue in a climate of good will.
The eventual merger of the Swasey
Library with the Rush Rhees Library may be the only way to salvage this
remarkable collection more or less intact. Swasey itself is the product of
multiple mergers (of libraries from Rochester Theological Seminary, Colgate
Divinity School, Crozer Theological Seminary, Bexley Hall, St. Bernard’s
Seminary, and the Baptist Missionary Training School), and it knows the value
of mergers. Seminary students and library staff, myself included, do not
dispute that.
Disagreement has been around the
process by which this merger has come to be. The process has been
administratively “top down.” Swasey library staff (and perhaps Rush
Rhees staff as well; I don’t know), seminary students, and some faculty would
say their professional expertise and needs were excluded from deliberations, at
least initially. They would say the process has been less than effective: there
would be no occasion for articles in City if it had been.
Christine
Wenderoth, Director, Ambrose Swasey Library, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School
Editor’s
note: Colgate Rochester spokesperson Christine Doyle says that the $425,000
budget figure includes $75,000-$100,000 in the library’s share of overhead
costs: utilities, insurance, and similar expenses.
In an interview for City’s May 19 article, Colgate Rochester
President Thomas Halbrooks said that students and faculty at the divinity
school “do not have access to all of the materials that students and faculty at
the UR have.” The merger, he said, “would give us the same level of access that
their faculty and students have.”
ART,
REVIEWED
I
am writing to register my dismay over Alex Miokovic and Heidi Nickisher’s
review of the “Maternal Metaphors” exhibition at the Rochester
Contemporary (May 19). Their failure to discuss any of the art in the show
raises a real question about how they understand the role of the critic.
While potentially interesting, their
meditation on the curator’s statement does not substitute for a consideration
of the work itself. Any work deserves better than this, but it is an especially
disappointing way to treat art as serious, as interesting, and as substantial
as that appearing in the “Maternal Metaphors” show.
Rachel
Ablow, Weldon
Street, Rochester
I
was deeply disappointed in the tenor of the review of the “Maternal Metaphors”
group exhibition at RoCo.
The writers begin their piece with
the assertion, “Group shows are rarely about the artwork.” One could
make the same case about this review. The writers admit that “the work
itself plays a role as viewers decide what they like or what they don’t
like,” but this statement is tempered by their failure to mention one
single artwork. Although the reviewers mention two of the artists by name and
reference the varying media on display, they never once engage with any of the
excellent work that was the subject of the exhibition.
The writers sought to use their
review to consider questions of diversity and provocation, as well as notions
of the maternal. There is nothing wrong with this approach as a function of art
criticism. By failing to ground their questions in the artwork of the
exhibition, however, the writers failed to explore how the artists themselves
were likewise interrogating these questions in the very exhibition under
review.
The reviewers, in essence, supplanted
the artists. This represents a failure of the writers to fulfill their basic
contract with readers to review the work and its place in the contemporary
culture. Moreover, it stands as a disservice to the individuals whose work
should be the determining factor for “viewers [to] decide what they like
or don’t like.”
In focusing their review so much on
one sentence — indeed on one word (“diverse”) — of what was a
longer curatorial statement than the writers implied, they missed the
opportunity to participate in a valuable critical dialogue. Instead, they opted
to consider a complex topic from a strikingly limited perspective that negated
the context of the work on display.
I encourage readers to attend this
show to see the artwork and to engage with the questions that these artists
themselves pose through their work. I think they will find it compelling
viewing.
Stephen
Brauer, Browncroft
Boulevard, Rochester
Alex Miokovic and Heidi Nickisher
respond: In a lot of ways, all artwork is not just about the artwork. It is also about
tastes, agendas, and the politics of individuals and institutions that frame
them. Artists and their artworks are, of course, part of those frames, but they
are not necessarily what gives the viewer the “final answer” to what it’s all
about. How things are presented or, should we say, represented, includes the
frame, i.e., the institution, which is always an integral part of the work and
how it is seen.
We thought that if we addressed the
framework and the many good works in
the exhibition, it would be too much in an already small forum. We totally
encourage “readers to attend and see the art work” as well as to look not just
at the “pictures” but also into the details that surround them and make them
even more complex (e.g., social issues, language issues). These details, as
well as those that make up the “actual” work, are what make it all interesting
in the first place.
(There is also the issue that all
the works in the exhibit have been removed from their contexts to varying
degrees, and that has very little to do with the works of art themselves and
more to do with the institutional frame.)
As to our contract with the readers:
these reviewers hope to include the complex issue of how artwork is something
that always exceeds its visible frame. In other words, there is always more to
it than what meets the eye.
QUIET,
PLEASE
A
special thank-you to James F. Kaufmann, founder of the Rochester Soundscape
Society, for planning the conference titled “Noise: How it Affects Us and What
We Can Do About It” at the Franklin Academy. Presenters included psychologist
Arline Bronzaft of New York City; Dr. James Feuerstein, Department of
Audiology, Nazareth College; artists Adrienne Wilson and Dave Veslocki, who
provided unamplified sound programs, and Frank Champion, meditation workshop
facilitator. Mayor Johnson attended and issued a proclamation for Noise
Awareness Day.
Working together, we can improve the
quality of life by reducing the high decibels that are affecting all of us negatively.
Teresa
Marie Feller, Norton
Street, Rochester
WRITING
TO CITY
We
welcome and encourage readers’ letters for publication. Send them to:
themail@rochester-citynews.com or The Mail, City Newspaper, 250 North Goodman
Street, Rochester 14607.
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While we don’t restrict length, letters of under 350 words have a greater chance
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often than once every three months.
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2004.
