>> 2000 Town Meetings >> San Francisco
Speaker Biographical Sketches
Wednesday, April 5, 2000
Visual Resources Association Conference
San Francisco, CA
Robert A. Baron
Robert A. Baron is an independent art historian and consultant specializing in museum and art historical information studies, in automated museum collection management systems and in computerized scholarly cataloging. Currently he is the subject specialist for the Academic Image Cooperative, a program sponsored by the College Art Association and the Digital Library Federation. In addition, he publishes and arranges conference sessions in the field of intellectual property in the fine arts (see his website), chairing or co-chairing NINCH Town Meetings at Toronto (1998), Los Angeles (1999), and New York (2000). For Visual Resources, Robert Baron edited a special double issue on copyright and fair use (Copyright and Fair Use: The Great Image Debate), (Vol. XII, No. 3/4). His edition of the papers presented at the NINCH-Kress town Meetings in Portland, Oregon and Toronto is being edited for publication. He is current chair of the Committee on Intellectual Property of the College Art Association, and in that capacity has co-authored the CAA position paper on Distance Education legislation and is preparing the CAA guidebook on copyright for artists and art historians. His latest paper, excerpts from his web-site version, is titled "From Romance to Ritual: Mona Lisa Images for the Modern World," Visual Resources, Vol. XV, No. 2 (1999). Robert Baron's paper will be posted after the Town Meeting at his web site.
Howard Besser
Howard Besser is an Associate Professor at UCLA's School of Education & Information; consults for libraries, museums, and arts organizations; and is a frequent speaker at professional conferences. He is internationally renowned for his work on digital images, has published more than 20 articles on the subject, and has been the head of information technology for two museums.
Besser is a specialist on the social and cultural changes resulting from new information technology, and is a frequent speaker on policy issues, including intellectual property. He was part of a National Academy of Sciences panel that recently completed a lengthy published report on intellectual property in the digital age (The Digital Dilemma). He was one of the few people chosen to testify before the US Copyright Office hearings on copyright law and distant education. And he maintains a website focused on intellectual property issues and new information technology. Dr. Besser is a strong advocate for fair use, and is concerned about the disappearance of various forms of public spaces, including the public domain.
Kathleen Butler
Kathleen Butler received her B.S.S. in 1976 and her M.A.T. in 1979 from Northwestern University and her J.D. in 1989 from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she was an articles editor on the law review. She practiced law, mostly civil litigation, for six years in Indiana and in Illinois and was an adjunct law professor at the University of Illinois (1992-1994) and a visiting assistant professor in 1995-96. She joined the faculty at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in May 1996. She is an associate professor, teaching torts and commercial law. She is the author of "Keeping the World Safe from Naked-Chicks-in-Art Refrigerator Magnets: The Plot to Control Art Images in the Public Domain through Copyrights in Photographic and Digital Reproductions," 21 Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal (Comm/Ent) 55 (1998).
Dave Green
Dave Green advises Corbis principally on intellectual property. He previously represented the University of Washington on intellectual property issues, serving as an Assistant Attorney General, and he currently serves on the board of Washington Lawyers for the Arts, a pro bono organization devoted to artists' rights.
Dakin Hart
Dakin Hart is Assistant to the Director at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), where he was hired to provide idealistic and unencumbered opinions on the museum's mission, goals and activities. He spearheaded the creation of the museum's website www.thinker.org (which now exhibits 75,000 of the museum's 115,000 objects in large format, zoomable images in its Imagebase) and represented FAMSF as a founding member of AMICO. Dakin also serves on the Board of Trustees of Villa Montalvo, a community arts organization in Silicon Valley.
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