PRESS RELEASE: September 24, 1998

ART MUSEUM IMAGE CONSORTIUM ANNOUNCES THREE NEW MEMBERS

Art Museum Image Consortium announces three new members:

 * The Frick Collection 
 (including the Frick Art Reference Library) New York, NY
 * The Library of Congress, Washington, DC
 * Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

"We're delighted to welcome these new members into the Art Museum Image Consortium", said Robert P. Bergman, Director of the Cleveland Museum of American Art, and Chairman of AMICO's Membership Committee. "Developing membership in AMICO is key to our success. The AMICO Library draws its strength from the quality and diversity of the collections of AMICO's members."

These prestigious institutions join the twenty-three art museums from Canada and the USA that founded AMICO in the fall of 1997. "This is an unprecedented collaboration among art museums," said Maxwell L. Anderson, Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. "Working together, through the use digital technology, we're able to provide a level of access to our collections that hasn't been available to anyone before." Harry S. Parker, Chairman of AMICO, and Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco concurred: "It has been less than a year since we formed AMICO. In that time, we've made tremendous strides towards achieving our goal of creating the best source for digital information about works of art."

AMICO is a not-for-profit consortium, dedicated to enabling educational use of the multimedia documentation of museum collections. Its members are together creating a digital library that documents their collections, and making it available for educational use. Samuel Sachs, II, the Director of The Frick Collection said, "moving within the consortial structure enables the Frick to forge ahead on its own projects secure in the understanding that our work will mesh with that of other institutions." Patricia Barnett, the Andrew W. Mellon added, "We'll be able to see much more clearly the inter-relationships between the works of art that we hold and the text and image research collections that document and support them.

Already, in a beta testbed, university campuses in the USA, Canada and The Netherlands are using the AMICO Library. Almost 20,000 works from 22 AMICO Members are being made available by the Research Libraries Group (RLG) to 18 select university campuses; on each campus, teams of faculty, librarians and students are engaging in research about the changing nature of art and image collections in the digital age.

Musing on the impact of the beta AMICO Library, Jeffery Howe of the Boston College Fine Arts Department, said "This resource is going to change our perspective on the practice of teaching art history, and although I can't foresee all the effects, it will be interesting to see how it affects us during the coming year. · the selection of images and artists is extensive and well chosen, and with enough unfamiliar works to keep me browsing for hours at a time. I can foresee this collection serving my students well for paper topics and personal enrichment as well as giving them the chance to study the required material."

Background information about the AMICO Consortium (including copies of its agreements, technical specifications), sample AMICO Library records, and a catalog of thumbnail images of all the works in the testbed Library, can be found on the AMICO web site at http://www.amico.org/

AMICO MEMBERS: FALL 1998

 1. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
 2. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario
 3. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
 4. Asia Society Gallery, New York, NY
 5. Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ
 6. Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
 7. Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley, MA
 8. Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
 9. The Frick Collection (including the Frick Art Reference Library), NY
 10. George Eastman House, Rochester, NY
 11. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA
 12. The Library of Congress, Washington, DC
 13. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
 14. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
 15. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
 16. Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA
 17. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, MontrŽal, Quebec
 18. MusŽe d'art contemporain de MontrŽal, MontrŽal, Quebec
 19. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
 20. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
 21. National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
 22. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
 23. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
 24. San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
 25. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN
 26. Whitney Museum of American Art

Membership in AMICO is open to institutions with collections of art. Please see www.amico.org for full details.

The AMICO Library is available through the Research Libraries Group (RLG). If you are a not-for-profit interested in distributing the AMICO Library for educational use, please contact info@amico.org.

MORE INFORMATION:

For further information about the Art Museum Image Consortium, please contact:

Jennifer Trant David Bearman Executive Director Director, Strategy and Research

Email: jtrant@amico.org	Email: dbear@amico.org

 Art Museum Image Consortium
 2008 Murray Ave, Suite D
 Pittsburgh, PA 15217, USA
 Phone: 412 422 8533
 Fax: 412 422 8594