One of the nicest things about AJF members is your willingness to share your opinions and views with us which is exactly what many of you did recently in response to our first membership survey. (We learned a lot about online surveys and next time we will make it easier to participate.)

You are now reading one of our first responses to what we learned from the survey. This AJFconnection, which will be sent to you twice monthly starting in January, is designed to increase the flow of information to you, give you reasons to take another look at our website and to provide our members a way to share information with each other.

• Mission, goals, and programs rated well in terms of being in alignment with our mission, although results were uncertain about our sponsorship of speakers at SOFA.
• There was strong support for growing the organization and continuing to expand our website.
• For most of you, AJF plays a vital role in the field and you would recommend us to your friends, it was also clear that we can do more to enhance the value of membership.

The richness of the survey, however, comes through in your response to our open-ended questions. The single biggest improvement you requested is more regular communication, which we are already tackling, and expanding our membership which we will be addressing as we evolve our organizational structure to support the growing needs of the Art Jewelry Forum and the larger art jewelry community.

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston recently announced that Yvonne Markovitz, an expert on ancient and modern jewelry, has become the first Curator of Jewelry, a position endowed by museum trustee Susan B. Kaplan. This is the first jewelry curatorship at the MFA Boston as well as the first at any art museum in the country.

In her new position Yvonne will oversee the MFA's sizable and comprehensive jewelry collection. With the recent gift to the Museum of The Daphne Farago Collection, comprised of 600 pieces of contemporary jewelry, the MFA now holds the most comprehensive collection of 20th century studio jewelry ever assembled.

2007 is shaping up to be a very interesting year. We can look forward to large-scale contemporary jewelry shows in two of the country's most prestigious museums, MFA Boston and Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Our website will continue to grow and our programs will continue to evolve. We'll share gallery news, artists of note, developments in the field. We plan to send AJFconnection twice a month to keep you in the know. If you have news you would like to share please let us know. We welcome your suggestions Handy email links are just a click away.

Coming in your next AJFconnection

• 2007 Trip Previews
• News from the Board Planning Session
• Mint Museum Acquisition News
• New Feature! "You Tell Us"