Visual Resources Association - History

History

From 1968, visual resources curators had been meeting during the College Art Association's annual conferences to discuss issues of particular interest to those involved with the management of art slide collections. During the next few years, the group remained essentially an ad hoc committee.

By the late 1970s, regional and international activity had begun. The Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA) recognized the visual resources subgroup as an important part of that international association. Visual resources sessions were provided during its conference in Bologna in 1979, and continued for almost 20 years. The Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) and the Mid-America College Art Association (MACAA) included visual resources sessions at their conferences.

Visual resources curators within the MACAA group, led by Nancy DeLaurier of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, met during MACAA’s annual conferences. In 1972, this group began to meet independently, creating workshops and sessions on various aspects of visual resources maintenance. For the workshops, members developed several kits for the benefit of attending visual resources managers. These kits included information on slide room management, standards, and other practical aspects of the profession. This group also created a newsletter, Slides and Photographs Newsletter, which contained news and information on issues of concern to members. This newsletter was supported by CAA and later by MACAA and eventually became known as the International Bulletin for Photographic Documentation of the Visual Arts.

In 1982, after almost a decade of informal association, visual resources curators active in CAA, MACAA, SECAC, and ARLIS/NA, formalized an independent association and held the first official meeting during the annual CAA meeting in Philadelphia in February 1983.

In the 1990s, the explosion of the Internet and the consequent expansion of the visual resources field to include digital media expanded the role of the association. It led in the effort to develop public understanding of intellectual property rights, protocols for dissemination of digital material, standards of cataloging, and the importance of broad public access to digital cultural information. As an organization, it participated in the Copyright Town Meetings organized by the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) which were held across the country between 1997 and 2004, and were open to the public.

The annual conferences began attracting non-members, while vraweb.org evolved into a source of information for students, professionals, free-lance photographers, even IPR rights managers. Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) gained national recognition as an attempt to standardize the cataloging of visual information, and its workshops, web site, and outreach efforts began educating a broad audience.

The Education Committee sponsored conference workshops on topics of broad interest at the VRA conference and also at other professional conferences. The Digital Scene, a feature of vraweb.org, featured information on collaborative projects, new standards in imaging and metadata, digital preservation issues, consortial projects, training opportunities, and reports from the field. In 2004, the VRA, in conjunction with the ARLIS/NA, began offering a Summer Educational Institute to provide in-depth educational to new professionals.