Jeremy E. Adamson, formerly senior curator at the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery, took office May 7, as the chief of the Prints and Photographs Division.
Jeremy Adamson - Christina Tyler Wenks
Associate Librarian for Library Services Winston Tabb said, "Jeremy Adamson's decades of scholarship, leadership and involvement in programs in the field have provided him with a combination of management and technical experience that will serve the Library well in this critical management position."
Diane Nester Kresh, director of Public Service Collections, said, "His broad and varied experience with pictorial materials will be invaluable to the Library and to the Prints and Photographs Division in our continuing efforts to build the collections and to enhance access for the growing constituency for visual materials."
Said Mr. Adamson: "I am pleased to join the Library at this exciting time. Unparalleled for their range and depth, the collections in custody of the Prints and Photographs Division are truly among the world's treasures, fundamental not only to understanding the American experience in all its diversity, but to appreciating more fully the history and cultures of other societies.
"As chief, I look forward to working closely with a highly professional and dedicated staff to continue to meet arrearage reduction goals and to ensure the preservation and security of the Library's pictorial materials under my supervision," Mr. Adamson continued. "While increasing digital reference access is a personal goal, I also hope to attract more scholars and other researchers to the reading room. As a user of the division's reference services since the early 1970s, I know how important the collections are for generating new scholarship and insights."
Mr. Adamson joined the Renwick Gallery in 1991 as associate curator, then became curator and was senior curator there at the time he came to the Library. He earned a B.A. in fine art (1967) and an M..A. in art history (1969), both from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in the history of art in 1981 from the University of Michigan.
A graduate of the Museum Management Institute, his career highlights include serving as a curator of collections of pictorial materials at three major museums: the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Glenbow Museum (where he also served as the head of the Art Department) in Calgary; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Mr. Adamson has extensive experience in outreach and other special programs, having organized 15 museum exhibitions at six institutions, including the Library of Congress ("Contemporary Bulgarian Printmakers") and the Smithsonian, drawing on a range of materials.
The Prints and Photographs Division is responsible for acquiring, preserving, securing, processing and serving the Library's unique and vast collection of visual materials, which includes more than 12 million photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters and architectural and engineering drawings.
