ATSR Business Meeting

4 October 2006

Spanish Council of Scientific Research, Madrid.

PRESENT

Ad Stijnman, Rocío Bruquetas Galán, Maartje Witlox, Mark Clarke, Jo

Kirby, Cecilia Rönnerstam, Ron Spronk, Phoebe Dent-Weill, Elena

Cenalmor Bruquetas, Arie Wallert, Stefanos Kroustallis, Jilleen

Nadolny, later joined by Witold Nowik.

AGENDA

1 ICOM-CC Membership

2 ICOM-CC Website

3 ICOM-CC Triennial

4 AOB

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OPENING REMARKS

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AS: On 25-29 August there will be a meeting of ICOM-CC coordinators and

directory board (at the Getty) so various ICOM-CC issues need to be

discussed now.

1 ICOM-CC MEMBERSHIP

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The requirement or otherwise of ATSR members to belong to ICOM was

debated.

Last year ICOM-CC said there should be a clear distinction between who

pays and who does not pay an ICOM-CC subscription; the directory board

say we should look at who is/is not an ICOM member. However, when it

was said that officially it is not possible to belong to an ICOM-CC

working group without being a member of ICOM-CC, some groups lost up to

half their members.

AW noted that this requirement is in practice un-enforceable.

JK said non-members simply pay more at ICOM conferences; and that it

*was* the case that you had to have at least one ICOM member as author

of a submitted paper.

JN wondered if a two-tier membership might be a partial solution, (with

ICOM and non-ICOM members of ATSR) but it was agreed that it was

correct that this had been rejected at earlier meetings, as such a

system caused a disproportionate amount of bad feeling.

SK said he had reduced the registration fee for ATSR members for the

ATSR Madrid symposium to enhance cohesion of the group.

EC will coordinate a survey on what proportion of ATSR members are

ICOM-CC members. The present estimate is 50% to 70%.

It was agreed that at present we are and should remain a network that

anyone can join; any member of ATSR gets full informaton etc - there is

no two-tier system or second-class-membership. All ATSR members are

*encouraged* to join ICOM and register as a voting member of ICOM-CC,

but ATSR do not *require* it.

The meeting expressed concern that if an ICOM member must choose the

-CC group this might exclude curators, art historians etc.

MC noted that ICOM membership is somewhat irrelevant, as in practice

anyone, ICOM member or not, may attend ICOM, ICOM-CC or ATSR meetings,

and may present papers.

JN says that in France it is hard to join ICOM and that ICOM France

said non-members had been told they could NOT present papers.

The meeting discussed this, and formed the opinion that exclusion of

papers was in practice down to the coordinators of individual working

groups: ATSR could therefore choose to be more inclusive.

PW Regarding a point raised by Paul W. at the Cambridge meeting, it

turns out ICOM *does* allow retired members.

AS said he was under pressure from ICOM-CC to send a standard ICOM

letter to new ATSR members asking them to join ICOM-CC, and that he was

unhappy about having to do this. This was debated and it was remarked

as it is not mandatory to join, and as AS's covering letter explains

this, then ICOM's requirement should not pose real problems. AS

repeated that he was unhappy nevertheless. No clear decision was

reached.

The usefulness of ATSR being part of ICOM was debated.

EC noted that no money was contributed by ICOM Spain or any other part

of ICOM for the ATSR Madrid conference.

JK noted that ICOM national committees vary in usefulness.

AS noted that at present there is very little money available in

ICOM-CC at all, just enough to pay for certain high-level meetings.

EC noted that the ICOM logo/name did, however, act as a "seal of

quality" when attracting sponsorship.

AS reminded us that ATSR decided, repeatedly, to provisionally be part

of ICOM-CC; especially as no alternative umbrella organisation

suggested itself.

EC said that at present ICOM was not really working for benefit of

ATSR, and that therefore we should make suggestions to the coordinators

and directory board. EC to brief AS for the DG meeting.

The question was put to the meeting: Why do we want to be part of a

larger organisation? The concensus was "to receive help in some way".

This to be discussed at the ICOM-CC DB meeting.

The question was put to the meeting: How to encourage art historians to

join?

SK said he made considerable efforts to attract them including direct

invitation of art history professors throughout Spain. He remarked on

the disappointing response.

JK reported that after ATSR Amsterdam, the Art Historian Lorne Campbell

expressed similar disappointment at how few Art Historians were

present. It was remembered that similarly few attended the Trade Routes

conference last year.

MC expressed concern that publicity by ICOM would not reach or attract

this audience. MC was worried that ICOM did not the publicise ATSR

symposium: however apparently it did appear in a number of ICOM

newsletters and on the ICOM website.

ICOM-CC WEBSITE

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It was suggested that ICOM-CC should/will [?] have two levels: open

access and member-restricted.

AS wishes to put up more material and added value on the ICOM website:

actual content, didactic and educational material etc.

The meeting was largely in agreement with this.

EC said we should send suggestions for content to AS by 24th Oct so he

can present them at the DB meeting.

(JN suggested bibliographies of ATS documents arranged by period so as

to be likely to interest art historians.)

It was debated briefly how it might be appropriate to divide material

between the ICOM webiste, ICOM-CC website, and ATSR website.

AS proposed that ATSR should set an example by providing a large amount

of good content on the ICOM-CC website.

MW disagreed, remarking that ICOM CC www should be more equal between

groups, and that information on ICOM-CC website should be fairly

general, and should only *point* to substantial content.

It was agreed that members would submit suggestions for ICOM-CC WWW

content to AS by 24 Oct and that he would present these to ICOM DB, as

ways of making ICOM-CC WWW more attractive. Questions for him to ask

included: wh will do the work? what editorial control will ICOM require

and how is that to be managed?

AS informed that currently working group coordinators should contact

the DB with requests to place material on ICOM CC WWW, currently this

is coordinated by Thea van Oosten, who also coordinates the www pages

themselves.

A concern expressed was that of the isolation of working groups, e.g.

in different sessions at triennials, and that this might be exacerbated

by separate subsections of the ICOM-CC WWW.

JK noted that a search engine on the ICOM site could be configured to

search the entire ICOM site, and would thus retrieve references to

material regardless of working group.

MC asked what support ICN might offer to eg web hosting. AS replied

that while ICN was happy to provide a level of unofficial support, more

would be difficult.

TRIENNIAL DELHI SEPT 2008

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AS: The directory board wants ideas on what to do in Delhi. AS says

that at the Den Haag triennial there was a lot going on, but that it

was uncoordinated/undirected. [?...sorry, not sure here...]. There were

lots of individual workinggroup activites, but in his opinion he felt

the lack of *plenary* sessions devoted to *content*, and a lack of

*multidisciplinary* activities and lectures. Further there was a

general complaint that too many papers could not be accommodated,

despite excellence (in some WG's only 10% were accepted!).

The meeting agreed wholeheartedly with these opinions.

AS suggested that Delhi should aim to show ICOM-CC as a *group* not

simply as a series of small groups.

AW agreed that this had been a problem for a long time, and that the

fragmentary nature was always there: he remarked that in Dresden

[when?] they had tried a day of plenary lectures but this was not

siccessful as the lectures had either insufficient general appeal or

were *too* general.

AS expressed a desire to see more content-driven plenary sessions

JK said that certainly half-day general lectures would be good, e.g.

general sessions on e.g. 'colour', or 'documentation'.

AS said that a good theme for Dehli would be "find common goals".

PD-W liked this idea. She said that in Lisbon a good collaboration

between disciplines was seen.

AS and PD-W said it would be good to show such examples of successful

collaborations at Delhi in such plenaries (and to remark on

probelms/issues of communication between people in multidisciplinary

projects). (e.g.,JK remarked, certain disciplines are trained NOT to

share, and RS agreed that for academic tenure single-authored books

were required.)

JK suggested: How to teach conservators but also art historians

especially with respect to the nuances of using sources.

RS remarked that projects typically fail when they have inadequately

defined questions - a good collaborative project requires a good

research question.

AS suggested another plenary theme: how to present yourself as a

workgroup. (But the meeting passed over this).

JK suggested the plenary theme "how best to use/request scientific

analysis"

AS noted that next year he would be in Wolfenbüttel, probably for the

first half of the year. He suggested holding there a masterclass in

sources for 20-25 people (especially e.g. considering the important

Theophilus MSS there).

JN asked what the audience would be: among ATSR or external?

AW suggested anyone who was serious about mediaeval textual source

research including from other disciplines

MC suggested e.g. mediaeval medical texts

SK noted that the study of medical texts was more institutionalised

with a mature methodology from which we could profitably learn

AS suggested alchemy was in a similar situation.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

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ATSR 3 likely 2008.

2 days considered a good size - while it would be nice to have longer,

delegates commitments would be unlikely to allow more.

SK said that for Madrid they received enough proposals for papers for 4

days!

RS favoured more on source research per se.

JK, AW said more papers could be accommoded if only 20 minutes each -

which should be sufficient.

The meeting alll agreed that for ATSR3 there should be an open call for

papers, to see what is offered, rather than imposing a theme.

MW pointed out that papers that could not be accommodated in ATSR2 or 3

could be offered at the ATSR working group sessions in Delhi.

AS asked for a suggested theme for ASTR3

MW suggested "Interdisciplinarity". JK suggested that this might go

better at ICOM Delhi.

Other suggested titles were "Between the Lines" [MW], and "On Divers

Arts" [MC] but the decision was made not to decide just now.

JN remarked that 'Art' in the title of ATSR might deter eg

archaeologists. The meeting noted that this had been recognised as a

problem from the outset, but for now the decision was to let it remain.

Meeting closed.