Visual Media Center

Al Ghurfa, Yemen 2004

August 2009

The Visual Media Center at Columbia University celebrates the life and work of our beloved Director, James Conlon, who died after a short illness on July 17, 2009. James joined the Department of Art History and Archaeology to work in the Media Center in the late 1990s; The Media Center had recently been established at a time of exciting change in image technology and in the way we teach Art History. James’s first mandate was to work closely with the archaeologists to develop field missions that would apply newly-gathered digital images to teaching and research projects fostered by members of the faculty – he was particularly active in Africa, Yemen, and Venice, and he participated in the Summer School for Medieval Architecture in the Bourbonnais. He played a key role in our relations with outside agencies like the World Monuments Fund and Save Venice.

With the reorganization of the Media Center after 2003, James Conlon began to assume a critical leadership role, soon becoming its director. This was not a situation where the incumbent could simply follow existing protocol: given the newness of the institution and the continuing bewildering changes in the field, it was necessary to apply ingenuity and vision to the continuing reinvention of the job. In his daily work the director must move seamlessly amongst four disparate groups: members of the faculty who need digital images for teaching and a great deal of technical support; the Columbia University Libraries with whom we work on the establishment of sustainable database systems; outside agencies like ARTstor and Luna, and the various research groups whose projects are served by the Media Center. This is not to mention the extraordinarily difficult task of maintaining physical plant – all the projectors and computers and other electronic systems that serve the Department – as well as organizing and participating in image-gathering expeditions.

James Conlon moved through this challenging set of tasks and responsibilities with extraordinary ingenuity, wisdom, wit, and personal grace. Always poised and courteous; infinitely resourceful, he retained a lively sense of the excitement involved in reshaping the environment in which images are collected, stored and used as tools for teaching and research, as well a sense of pleasure in his interactions with colleagues, faculty and students. He was passionately engaged in his architectural conservation program in Yemen.

James Conlon’s extraordinary contributions and his presence among us were deeply appreciated by his staff, colleagues, and friends in the Department of Art History and Archaeology. He is sorely missed.

• Community and the Built Environment: The Tarim Documentation Poject
• Nature, Heritage, and Spatial Technologies of Fear
• Shaping the Earth: Photographs of the Earthen Building Traditions of Mali and Yemen

http://learn.columbia.edu/index.html

On Monday October 19, 5-7pm, a memorial for James will take place in the Art History Department Lounge and Study Center, 825 Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University. All are welcome to attend.