How the Chapter Memorializes Its Members

In Spring 2006, the Chapter voted to memorialize its late members by donating at least $50 to the most significant institution in the person's career for the purchase of a book. The chosen institution shall identify an appropriate book and a Chapter bookplate will be laid in.

If you would like to contribute funds to supplement the Chapter's donation, please contact the Chapter Treasurer, Alyssa Resnick.

If you would like to add your remembrances, including photos, of the members below, please contact the Chapter Chair, Trish Rose.

  

ARLIS-L Notice

7 February 2006

Joan Hugo, a founding member of ARLIS/NA and the Southern California chapter, passed away on Tuesday 7 February. She was the librarian of Otis College of Art for 25 years, having a prescience for that which was important in contemporary art far ahead of most archivists and librarians. She collected the contemporary art ephemera that has now become the resources of major research in the field including artist books, artist periodicals, multiples and so much more. She also was an art critic for Artweek and other publications. She then went to work as assistant to the Provost at Cal Arts for several years, always writing critical essays about performance art, contemporary art and California art. She was a Francophile and spoke French as a native, translating articles, translation interviews, and forwarding the cause of connections between French artists and California artists. More information about a memorial will be forthcoming. I think the Southern California chapter should participate in some way of honoring her.

At ARLIS/NA Conferences, she forwarded the cause of single librarian libraries and art school libraries and created sessions on the subject.

I had the great pleasure of counting her among my colleagues and friends, and wrote about her for Library Journal as one of the most prescient contemporary art librarians in the country. Her clairvoyance made the Otis Library a stellar partner in the preservation of the record of contemporary art in the second half of the 20th century.

Judith A. Hoffberg
Founding Executive Secretary of ARLIS/NA

 

ARLIS-L Notice

31 Jan 2006

Sunday I lost a friend and so did you. L. Clarice Davis, librarian extraordinaire and book dealer even higher in standards, passed away after a long struggle with cancer. She was a smoker--please, please do everything you can to stop smoking. She couldn't until it was too late. But she was a friend to so many of us. She was an assistant to Jean Moore in the UCLA Art Library when I first met you 50 years ago. She then became the Art Librarian at that institution, and then the Los Angeles County Museum of Art director of the library. She was a very, very good librarian and art historian.

And then she decided to open up a bookstore--and it was a great art bookstore in Westwood Village, the home of UCLA and other wonderful people too. The openings, the parties, the launchings, and the art gallery promoted what she believed in--the best art books, the best art, and the best parties.

And then she closed the shop and worked out of her beautiful home which seemed to accommodate a book collection beyond imagination, as well as many cats, dogs, and a few people. It was in San Fernando Valley.

She took me out to see the poppies in the spring one year, she was one of the first members of ARLIS/NA because she always believed in what I was doing, independent and aggressive as I was. She supported me through all the ups and the downs of ARLIS in its first years, and I hear her deep voice even now--which turned into a rasp, a scratch, and then silence, because of so much radiation.

She stood out and she stood up for independent bookstores, for careful and meticulous expertise in describing antiquarian books and used books, she taught me high standards and scruples.

Tonight, if you could, raise a glass to Cal--and perhaps we shall honor her at UCLA with some kind of gesture that will memorialize her presence in our lives.

On the eve of my own sister's memorial,
Judith A. Hoffberg