Announcing the Recipients of VRA Awards!
VRA is proud to announce its two highest honors presented at the 41st annual conference in San Antonio, Texas on September 27th, 2023!
Distinguished Service Award
Each year, VRA honors an individual who has made an outstanding career contribution to the field with the Distinguished Service Award (DSA). The 2023 DSA was proudly presented to Greg Reser, University of California, San Diego’s Art Library Image Cataloger/Metadata Specialist (retired). Reser richly deserves the DSA for his metadata expertise, technical vision, advanced research, innovative developments, generous collaboration, and dedication to the field of Visual Resources
As nominators Jackie Spafford and Sonja Sekely-Rowland remarked, “It is hard to imagine where our field would be today were it not for Greg’s innovations, energy and generosity. His are the definition of ‘career contributions,’ with an ongoing impact and a legacy that others will continue to learn from and build on for years to come.”
Nomination Speech Transcript, Jackie Spafford and Sonja Sekely-Rowland
Honorary Life Membership Award
Special Honorary Life Memberships (HLM) are awarded to individuals by the Executive Board in recognition of eminent distinction in the field. The tenth ever HLM was presented to Jenni Rodda in recognition of her diligent leadership, generous mentorship, and outstanding, career-long dedication to the field of visual resources. Rodda was the Manager of Digital Media and Computer Services at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University for 36 years, only having recently retired. In her acceptance speech, Jenni said, “speaking, writing, leading, mentoring, learning. These are the skills I honed through VRA. I hope the Association benefitted from my work; I know I benefitted from being a VRA member.”
Congratulations to the very deserving 2023 VRA Awards recipients and sincere thanks to their thoughtful nominators!
A full report of all the 2023 awards is scheduled for the next issue of the VRA Bulletin, Fall/Winter Vol. 50 No. 2 (2023).