Terry Belanger awarded MacArthur Fellowship

Describing him as "a rare book preservationist raising the profile
of the book as one of humankind's greatest inventions", the The John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has named Terry Belanger,
founder and soul of Rare Book school and teacher to a great many
book and paper conservators, one of 25 new MacArthur Fellows for
2005.

   "Each received a phone call from the Foundation this week
    informing them that they will be given $500,000 in "no strings
    attached" support over the next five years.

   "MacArthur Fellows are selected for their creativity,
   originality, and potential. By providing resources without
   stipulations or reporting requirements, the MacArthur Foundation
   offers the opportunity for Fellows to accelerate their current
   activities or take their work in new directions. The unusual
   level of independence afforded to the Fellows underscores the
   spirit of freedom intrinsic to creative endeavors.

   "MacArthur Fellows are selected for their creativity,
    originality, and potential. By providing resources without
    stipulations or reporting requirements, the MacArthur Foundation
    offers the opportunity for Fellows to accelerate their current
    activities or take their work in new directions. The unusual
    level of independence afforded to the Fellows underscores the
    spirit of freedom intrinsic to creative endeavors."

       <URL:http://www.macfound.org/programs/fel/announce.htm>

Quoting from

    <URL:http://www.macfound.org/programs/
        fel/fellows/belanger_terry.htm>

    **** Moderator's comments: The above URL has been wrapped for
    email. There should be no newline.

   "Terry Belanger is a historian, collector, and protector of one
    of humankind's greatest inventions: the book. To support the
    study of the book's long history, Belanger created a teaching
    and archive facility, the Rare Book School (RBS), in 1983 as
    part of Columbia University's School of Library Service; in
    1992, he moved it to its current home at the University of
    Virginia. The RBS functions as an independent, non-profit
    institute devoted to the histories of manuscripts, print,
    electronic text, and everything in between. It transcends the
    limitations of traditional degree programs by making its
    wide-ranging offerings available to a broad range of
    professionals interested in studying and preserving these
    cultural artifacts; historians, literary scholars, librarians,
    conservators, collectors, and book artists attend RBS courses
    each year. In the classroom, Belanger uses original tools and
    materials to provide students with hands-on experience and to
    emphasize the relationship between the physical and intellectual
    structure of the book. He assiduously collects items related to
    bookmaking, from the remains of incunabula (the first printed
    books of the fifteenth century) and their handwritten precursors
    to books demonstrating the range of bindings and structures, to
    samples of materials from which books have been constructed.
    With thousands of former students currently at work in the field
    and offshoots of his programs in California, France, Australia,
    and New Zealand, Belanger is making the world a more secure
    place for the irreplaceable legacy of the book.

   "Terry Belanger received a B.A. (1963) from Haverford College and
    an M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1970) from Columbia University. He was
    on the faculty of the School of Library Service at Columbia
    University (1971-1992), where he served as assistant dean
    (1980-86). He established the Book Arts Press (1971) at Columbia
    as a bibliographical laboratory for the training of rare book
    and special collections librarians and antiquarian booksellers.
    In 1983, he instituted the Rare Book School, also at Columbia.
    Belanger moved both the Book Arts Press and Rare Book School to
    the University of Virginia in 1992, where he now holds the
    position of University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special
    Collections."

See also <URL:http://www.virginia.edu/oldbooks/news/macarthur.html>

Terry is University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special
Collections at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (and I
can't resist adding that he has been a participant in the
Conservation DistList for 15 years)


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 19:16
               Distributed: Thursday, September 22, 2005
                       Message Id: cdl-19-16-001
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