ARLIS/NA 43rd Annual Conference

Speakers:

ʺMove to the Light”: Humanism and the Art Museum Libraries of Louis I. Kahn: The Kimbell Art Museum and the Yale Center for British Art — Kraig Binkowski, Chief Librarian, Reference Library and Archives, Yale Center for British Art

Learning from Hunt Library: The Use of High-Tech Spaces — Karen DeWitt, Director, Design Library, North Carolina State University

New Library Architecture: Innovative Buildings = New Ways of Working? — Margaret Smithglass, Registrar and Digital Content Librarian, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University

Moderator:
Catherine Petersen, Library Director, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Libraries are continually ascending from the basements of Beaux-Arts mansions, embracing light-filled study rooms, and supporting the needs of creative researchers. This session’s speakers offer creative solutions and exciting possibilities for 21st century learning spaces.

The libraries of the Yale Center for British Art and the Kimbell Art Museum along with the museums that house them were designed by the great American architect, Louis I. Kahn. Kraig Binkowski will look closely at the unique humanistic experience that Kahn created for these learning spaces.

Design faculty and students at North Carolina State University fully embrace the visualization spaces at the innovative Hunt Library. Karen DeWitt will talk about spaces and technologies in Hunt Library, how design students and faculty use them, and offer suggestions for technologies that could be added to enhance existing libraries to support design faculty and students.

The physical spaces of academic, public, and special libraries have all experienced enormous changes in user needs and behaviors in the last decade. Margaret Smithglass will present highlights of recent international design work that not only supports these changes but facilitates new methods of research and communication for all patron types.