HELENE E. ROBERTS

EDUCATION

University of Washington, Seattle, WA

• B.A. – 1951
• M.A. – 1957
• M.L. – 1961

PROFESSIONAL WORK EXPERIENCE

Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (1957-1970)

• Assistant Cataloger
• Art Cataloger
• Art Librarian
• Slide Librarian

Harvard University, Fine Arts Library, Fogg Art Museum (1970-1994 [retirement])

• Curator of Fine Arts Photographs and Slides
• Curator of Visual Collections

Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (1994-2008)

• Visiting Scholar

PUBLICATIONS

“Pre-Raphaelite Ideals in America-The Knight Errant," Dartmouth College Library Bulletin 5, new series (March/April 1962): 4-6

American Art Periodicals of the Nineteenth Century, ACRL Microcard Series, No. 141 (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 1962)

“British Art Periodicals of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Victorian Periodicals Review 9 (July 1970), complete issue

“Marriage, Redundancy or Sin: The Painter’s View of Women in the First Twenty-Five Years of Victoria’s Reign,” in Suffer and Be Still, ed. Martha Vicinus (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1972; reissued, London: Methuen, 1980), 45-76

“Art Reviewing in Early Nineteenth-Century Art Periodicals,” Victorian Periodicals Review 19 (March 1973): 9-20

"The Dream World of Dante Gabriel Rossetti,” Victorian Studies XVII (June 1974): 371-93

“The Inside, the Surface, the Mass: Some Recurring Images of Women,” Women’s Studies II (1974): 289-307

“The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothing in the Making of the Victorian Woman,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society II (Spring 1977): 556-569

“Submission, Masochism, Narcissism: Three Aspects of Women’s Role as Reflected in Dress,” in Women’s Lives: Perspectives on Progress and Changed, ed. Virginia Lee Lusier and Joyce Welstedt (Newark: University of Delaware, 1977), 91-105

“’Trains of Fascinating and Endless Imagery’: Associationist Art Criticism before 1850,” Victorian Periodicals Review, Special Issue in Honor of Walter Houghton X:3 (September 1977), 25-32

“The Image Library,” Art Libraries Journal 3:4 (Winter 1978): 25-32. Reprinted in A Reader in Art Librarianship, IFLA Publications 34, edited for the Section of Art Libraries by Philip Pacey (Munich:K.G. Saur, 1985), 155-61

“Slide Sources for Prehistoric and Ancient Art,” Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation I:1 (Spring 1980): 107-11

“Slide Sources for Aegean and Greek Art,” Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation I:2/3 (Fall 1980/Winter 1981): 259-67

“Victorian Medievalism” Revival or Masquerade?” Browning Institute Studies VIII (1980): 11-44

“The Sentiment of Reality: Thackeray’s Art Criticism” in Studies in the Novel (Thackeray Issue), ed. Robert Colby, VIII (1980): 21-39

“Exhibition and Review: The Periodical Press and Victorian Exhibition System,” in The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings, ed. Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolf (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982), 79-107

“The European Magazine,” in British Literary Magazines, The Augustan Age and the Age of Johnson 1698-1788, ed. Alvin Sullivan (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 106-12

“The Album”; “Quarterly Review of Science, Literature and the Arts,” British Literary Magazines in the Romantic Age, 1789-1835, ed. Alvin Sullivan (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 307; 354-358

“Visual Documentation: Engraving to Videodiscs,” Drexel Library Quarterly 19:3 (Summer 1983): 18-27

“Visual Resources: Proposals for an Ideal Network,” Art Libraries Journal 9:3 (Autumn 1985): 32-41. Also published in a slightly revised form in INSPEL: Official Organ of the IFLA Division of Special Libraries 2:2 (1986):90-7, with summaries in German, French, Spanish, and Russian

Iconographic Index to Old Testament Subjects Represented in Photographs and Slides of Paintings in the Visual Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1987)

“Clothing and Fashion”; “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood”; in The Victorian Encyclopedia, ed. Sally Mitchell (Westport CT and London: Garland Press, 1988), 172-6; 625-6

“Visual Resources: Reflections on an Ideal Network,” AICARC: Bulletin of the Archives and Documentation Centers for Modern and Contemporary Art 2 (1986) and 1 (1987): 27-30

“The Visual Document,” Art Libraries Journal 13:2 (1988): 5-8

"'Do You Have Any Pictures of...?': Subject Access to Works of Art in Visual Collections and Book Reproductions," Art Documentation 7:3 (Fall 1988): 87-90

"Periodicals and Art History," in Victorian Periodicals: A Guide to Research, ed. J. Don Vann and Rosemary T. Van Arsdel (New York: Modern Language Association, 1989): 58-66

"Naming, Defining, Ordering: An Evolving and Never-Ending Process," in Terminology for Museums: Proceedings of an International Conference Held in Cambridge, England, 21-24 September 1988, ed. D. Andrew Roberts (Cambridge: Museum Documentation Association, 1990): 219-32

"The Medieval Spirit of Pre-Raphaelitism," in Pre-Raphaelitism and Medievalism in the Arts, ed. Liana De Girolami Cheney (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992): 15-27

The Iconographic Index to New Testament Subjects Depicted in Paintings Represented in Photographs and Slides in the Visual Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University, vol. 1: Narrative Paintings of the Italian School, with Rachel Hall (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992)

"Second-Hand Images: The Role of Surrogates in Artistic and Cultural Exchange," Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation IX:4 (1994): 335-46

"Cardinal Wiseman, the Vatican, and the Pre-Raphaelites," in Pre-Raphaelite Art in European Context, ed. Susan P. Casteras and Alicia Craig Faxon (Cranbury NJ and London: Associated University Presses, 1995), 143-59

"Periodicals, III:5(vi); Great Britain," in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Shoaf Turner (London: Macmillan Publishers, Ltd., 1996), vol. 24, 445-47

"Metaphors of the Self in the Paintings of Dorothea Tanning," VRA Bulletin 34:4 (Winter, 1996): 79-83

"The Persistence of Mythological, Religious, and Literary Narratives as Subjects of Works of Art," in Images and Belief: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Index of Christian Art, Department of Art and Archaeology in Association with Princeton University Press, 1999)

"A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Art Indexing in Electronic Databases," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 53:11 (September 2001): 911-16

1968-

National Secretary, 1986-88

Art and Architectural Thesaurus Advisory Committee, 1988-90

Executive Board, 1987-96

MARC Format Working Group, 1989-93

On Saturday, March 22, 2008, a memorial service was held for Helene Emylou Roberts at Kendal in Hanover, New Hampshire, where Helene and her husband, David, lived for the past few years. The program was as follows:

Memorial Service

for

Helene Emylou Roberts

*****

Presiding: Fred Berthold

Cellist: Rebecca Haynes

*****

Prelude from Suite #1 in C major, J. S. Bach

Speakers

Genevieve Williamson: Head of Collection Development at Dartmouth's Baker Library for many years

Jeff Horrell: Dean of Libraries at Darthmouth College and from 1991 to 1998 Librarian of the Fine Arts Library at Harvard

Christine Sundt: Co-editor with Helene of Visual Resources for 20 years, and chief Editor since 2006

*******

Interlude - Allemande from Suite #1 in C Major, J. S. Bach

*******

Peggy Sullivan: An art historian who taught at the University of Montana at Boseman and at the University of Vermont

Pamela Crossley: Professor Chinese History at Dartmouth College for 22 years

Gene Garthwaite: Professor Middle Eastern History at Dartmouth for 40 years

These were my remarks:

Helene E. Roberts

Thank you for including me in this gathering to celebrate the life of Helene Roberts. I am honored to be here among her family, close friends and colleagues.

For me this is a bittersweet moment because it marks the end of a long and fruitful friendship that was founded and later bound up with collaboration on a project - the journal Visual Resources - beginning in the early ‘80s and continuing without a break until her untimely death. The only distinction of note during this period was in who held the main title of Editor. For most of it, Helene was in charge and I remained quietly in the background assisting her as needed with the title Technology Editor. It was only when I retired from my full-time job at the University of Oregon at the end of 2005 that the pecking order changed. Helene asked for a lighter load and I took over as Editor, assuming the full title at the beginning of 2007. But to my delight she insisted on remaining involved and after much discussion and debate we settled on a new title for her: Senior Editor.

For those of you who are not familiar with VR, here’s a little background. Our collaboration started in 1984 when I was approached by a Vice President of the publishing firm Gordon + Breach who had just acquired a journal from its founders, Patricia and John Walsh. The Walshes were clever to spot a subject area in visual resources that was just getting started but still without a place for its scholarship to be disseminated. G+B agreed and were out recruiting a new editor. I was president of the Visual Resources Association at that time and in a position to act on their offer that ultimately led me to Helene who I considered perfect for the job based on her publication record and professional stature. The only question was would I be so lucky to convince her to take over. I guess my luck was with me because she agreed.

For more than 20 years, Helene was the Editor Extraordinaire of VR. Her connections through Dartmouth and Harvard and her wide scholarly network through Victorian Studies and Women’s Studies - literature, history, visual culture, iconography, art history, and more - attracted excellent authors, some newly minted, others quite seasoned, who were stepping into territory that was somewhat new and wide open, that featured images as visual documentation, reproductions as artifacts, and copying as a facet of culture. This territory is now considered 'hot real estate' by many who regard images and reproductions as the be all and end all of our time, temperament, study and pleasure. Because of this we have no shortage of submissions and an ever expanding list of topics in VR that have included studies of postcards, miniature model rooms, documentation of conflict and wars, and of course serious studies of how images are used or how they represent culture and history.

Since my time is limited, I will start wrapping this up with some personal reflections on who Helene was to me and why she was so dear. Let me say that it wasn’t until recently - 2000 to be exact - that she became Emylou to me. Until then her professional persona took center stage as Helene. I guess you can say that our friendship was cemented in that year thanks to a conference in London, which for all intents and purposes was one of the worst we had ever attended but where we became close friends in addition to cherished colleagues.

Emylou was a leader, a role model, an inspiration, a pathfinder, a dyed-in-the-wool Pacific Northwesterner with good Norwegian roots, and a connoisseur of fashion, style, and the theater. She was strong but always polite, witty and serious, concerned about the future and fully engaged with both the past and the present. She was also a marvelous fellow traveler and roommate. She taught me how to find my way around London without a map and on foot – oh, those countless miles we walked! She also instilled within me the value of happy hour - that martini or glass of wine that we always enjoyed before dinner in our travels. I will miss my friend, my sounding board, my brilliant colleague who was of like mind on important matters such as politics, the environment, and animals, especially cats.

Upon being told of her passing by our friend Peggy Sullivan, I sent an email notice to the various groups and affiliates who knew her. Her colleagues and friends responded with expressions of shock and dismay but also with fond reflections and memories of what she meant to them. I have collected these notes in a binder, which I will leave with David. Also included in the binder is the text from the website that I created in her honor that is attached to the web page listing all of the issues of Visual Resources (with titles of articles, reviews, and special issues) from the beginning of the journal in 1980. My purpose in doing this was to highlight her brilliant accomplishments and to share with the world why she was so beloved, respected, and treasured as a friend by so many of us.

I have also brought the gift that I was going to send her for her birthday (tomorrow) but which I now give to you her friends at Kendal. It’s nothing of great value - some DVDs of old Sherlock Holmes films - yet another link we had: our enjoyment of mysteries. Maybe that’s also a link that comes out of our profession as curators - looking for the missing bits, the lost elements, unearthing metadata, in faded photos and broken slides, and the hidden meanings that ultimately can be found and assembled into something of value. My friendship with Helene, later Emylou, came together by working together on VR, by putting together bits and elements about images and their documentation, solving puzzles and mysteries in scholarly discourse. Thanks to her VR is the success it is today.

Christine L. Sundt
22 March 2008