YEAR IN REVIEW 2000: LIBRARIES-AND-MUSEUMS

Libraries and Museums Libraries While conducting business as usualmaking information available and preserving knowledge and culturesome libraries around the globe were buffeted in 1999 by violent conflicts, careening technological change, human frailty, and nature's paroxysms. Although virtually all libraries faced computer problems as the year 2000 approached only the Bibliothque Nationale de FranceFrancois Mitterrand suffered all these unlikely problems in the same year. In January researchers' frustrations at flawed computerized retrieval systems at the F 8 billion (about $1.4 billion) legacy commissioned by former French president Mitterrand exploded into violence. A pregnant staff member was seriously injured and lost her unborn child. Some 2,500 staff members went on strike, returning only when management agreed to close the library on Mondays to lessen stress. The decrease in operating hours further outraged library users. Floods threatened rare materials housed on lower levels, and three eminent scholars writing in Le Figaro dubbed the facility a sinister farce. There were more strikes later in the year, and the National Assembly opened an inquiry into the debacle. Researchers at the Russian State Library, affectionately known as the Leninka (because it had formerly been named after V.I. Lenin), were hoping for a more user-friendly computer system. A project sponsored by the European Union invested 1 million (about $1,150,000) to digitize some of the Leninka's 84 million handwritten catalog cards. Russia's financial woes created a crisis in the country's libraries. Although Prime Minister Sergey Stepashin called for more funding for the Leninka in July, he was out of office a few weeks later. Service was halted at the British Library in London when employees who retrieved books for users went on strike over wages and working conditions that they likened to those of miners. Libraries also suffered as a result of violent conflicts. The Yugoslav army occupied the National and University Library of Kosovo in Pristina, believing that NATO would not bomb a library. Previously, all of the Albanian library staff had been fired, a sixth of the 600,000-volume collection destroyed, and ethnic Albanians denied admittance. The ban was later lifted, and the new director was one of the fired employees. The public library in Kuks, Alb., which four years earlier had been confiscated and turned into a bar, was by April sheltering hundreds of refugees. Library service there was later restored. All three U.S. Information Agency libraries in Yugoslaviain Pristina, Belgrade, and Podgorica, Montenegrowere damaged in protests against NATO bombings, and the Pristina facility was burned to the ground. In India students enraged over a caste insult ransacked the library at the Bangalore University. Elsewhere, Israeli air strikes against suspected Hezbollah targets in Lebanon damaged a library in Zibquine, and students in Liberia and Nigeria were injured while protesting inadequate library and other educational resources. Government uncertainties about the societal impact of the Internet continued to affect libraries. China and Australia tightened restrictions on Internet use and content, but Guyana lifted its restrictions, citing its access to information commitment. In the U.S. the debate over preventing children from accessing inappropriate material continued to escalate. Legislation was introduced in Congress requiring schools and libraries receiving federal e-rate subsidies for Internet connections to install filtering software to block access to World Wide Web sites containing sexually explicit content. At least a dozen states introduced or passed similar filtering mandates. Scandal struck the Vatican Library after officials learned that in 1989 the library director, who was subsequently dismissed, had sold the rights to digitally reproduce 150,000 Vatican manuscripts to two financially suspect Americans. The Vatican voided the contract and was involved in litigation. In other news, the German Bundestag (parliament) was considering the establishment of a Holocaust library in Berlin. In July staff at Florence's Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale rediscovered a bag containing a small amount of the powdered remains of Dante Alighieri, considered Italy's greatest poet. The remains, donated to the library 500 years after Dante's death, had disappeared in 1929. In Uglich, an ancient town in the Upper Volga region of Russia, the Library of Russian Vodka was established. Separate earthquakes damaged libraries in Mexico and Colombia, and a hailstorm pelted an Australian academic library. The September earthquake in Taiwan inflicted serious damage to libraries in a six-county area surrounding the epicentre. The National Taichung Library suffered a partial collapse of its seventh floor and damages to its air-conditioning and water systems. Some 17 public libraries in the area either were demolished or suffered significant structural damage; 18 others were slightly affected. The Choctaw branch of the Oklahoma City, Okla., library system was demolished May 3 when a tornado ripped off its roof and destroyed more than half of its collection. A September 18 fire at the Louisville (Ky.) Free Public Library's downtown branch caused more than $1 million in damage and incinerated as many as 10,000 books, most of them new. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions met in August in Bangkok. Some 2,200 librarians gathered to share ideas about technology, resource sharing, and funding. To commemorate the centennial of Andrew Carnegie's donation of $5.2 million to build branch libraries in New York City, the Carnegie Corp. awarded $15 million to 25 urban libraries. Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys professional football team, and his wife donated $1 million to the Library of Congress to purchase replacement volumes originally held in Thomas Jefferson's personal library. Museums Many new museums were established throughout the world in 1999. In Japan the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum opened on the site of the artist's studio in Mure, and the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts took its place as the first Asian sister museum of an American institution. Portugal's first contemporary art museum, the Museu Serralves, opened in Oporto. Scotland added two new museums during the year; the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh doubled the size of the existing National Gallery of Modern Art, and Contemporary Arts in Dundee combined exhibits with art education. In Australia the opening of the National Portrait Gallery in Sydney focused on the nation's growing emphasis on its multicultural identity. The new National Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, opened in January. The newly expanded Van Gogh Museum reopened in Amsterdam. Funding for the expansion came from a Japanese company in exchange for the Van Gogh to send five exhibits each year to the Yasuda Museum in Tokyo. The Prado in Madrid unveiled newly restored galleries housing its Velzquez masterpieces. The paintings had narrowly escaped water damage caused by leaks during the renovation. The Horyu-ji Buddhist art gallery of the Tokyo National Museum, which had been closed for five years, was rebuilt and was now open throughout the year. Museums in the U.S. continued to ride the wave of economic good times during the final year of the 1990s. From information made available by museums, the American Association of Museums (AAM) estimated that approximately $2.2 billion was spent on expansions and new institutions in 1999. AAM also noted a significant increase in the popularity of museums, from 600 million visits per year in the late 1980s to 865 million in 1999. As engines of cultural tourism, museums also contributed to the economy. The Van Gogh exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, for example, drew more than 821,000 visitors and brought $121.9 million to the county. While museums had long placed education at the forefront of their public service missions, a landmark report by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in 1999 quantified those efforts. According to the report, museums in the United States spent $193 million annually on K12 programs and provided to the public nearly four million hours of educational programs, including guided field trips, staff visits to classrooms, and traveling exhibits in schools. Nations and their museums continued to address the fact that some artworks in their collections may have been looted by the Nazis from Holocaust victims. Following the passage of legislation in Austria allowing works of art seized by the Nazis and later incorporated into state museums to be returned to their rightful owners, the Austrian government dealt with two high-profile claims, receiving criticism for the partial rejection of one of them. The U.S. government showed increasing willingness to step in with powerful tools used in law enforcement and seize disputed objects on behalf of claimants in disputes normally handled by private civil litigation. In one case the U.S. government seized from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City an Egon Schiele painting on loan from Austria, allegedly misappropriated during the Holocaust era. The Israel Museum worked toward verifying a claim from the heir of a collector who died in a concentration camp. After moving to ease the return of Nazi-looted material in its museums, Germany returned paintings that once belonged to the same collector. The Louvre in Paris and the Muse des Beaux Arts in Caen, France, returned paintings to Jewish heirs. The Russian Ministry of Culture continued publishing catalogs of art that had been stolen from museums near St. Petersburg during the Nazi occupation. Russia continued to refuse to return any of the so-called trophy art looted by the Soviet army from Germany and other countries, viewing it as compensation for its losses during the war, though its Constitutional Court struck down part of the law that prevents the return of such material. The year was also marked by some high-profile thefts. Nine years after they were taken from the Archaeological Museum in Corinth, Greece, 200 ancient objects were recovered by the FBI from a storage area in Florida. Paintings by Rembrandt and Bellini stolen during the year from the Nivaagaard Collection in Denmark were recovered after the reward was quadrupled. Pakistani customs officials discovered 25,000 antiquities destined for London, Frankfurt, and Dubayy that had been plundered from poorly guarded museums and excavations in Afghanistan. Russian museums were noting a dramatic rise in thefts, many believed to be to order for private collectors. Also, in an act reminiscent of the culture wars of the late 1980s, in the fall New York City's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani cut off city funding to the Brooklyn Museum of Art after the museum displayed a controversial exhibition of contemporary art. The museum responded with a lawsuit, and a federal judge ruled that the city's action violated the First Amendment and ordered the funds restored. Some museums sustained damage during the year from both natural and man-made causes. Collections in Greece's National Archaeological Museum were heavily damaged during a strong earthquake that shook Athens. An escaped mental patient slashed a Picasso painting in Amsterdam's Stedelijk Gallery. A second protocol intended to strengthen a 1954 international treaty designed to stop the destruction of cultural property during armed conflict was finalized during the year. The treaty and new protocol, which included protection for museums, was immediately signed by 27 nations. Helen J. Wechsler; Barry G. Szczesny