AJF President Pat Rodimer announced the approval of the new 2008 Board of Directors. Susan Cummins, a founding member of AJF will serve as President, the Treasurer position is to be filled by Sally von Bargen, Susan Kempin becomes Secretary, and communication duties will be handled by Jane Shannon.

The incoming board assumes responsibility in January. Pat, who has served as AJF president for the past 7 years, commented: "We look forward to exciting new plans when the new board takes over, until then we'll work together on a smooth transition." Outgoing board members Pat Rodimer, Elizabeth Shypertt, Jo Lauria and Rika Mouw have done an masterful job and leave AJF better for their service, job well done.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, features "One of a Kind: The Studio Craft Movement," through Dec. 2, 2007. The exhibit, shown in the Modern Art, Design, and Architecture Gallery on the first floor, showcases approximately 50 works from the Met's collection, including furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, jewelry, and fiber. The Met's calendar bulletin notes the studio craft movement developed in the U.S. in the post-World War II years. The bulletin continues, "By the 1970s in both Europe and the United States, a shifting political climate and an 'anything goes' art scene encouraged a new freedom in artistic expression. Artists working with traditional materials began to experiment with new materials and techniques, producing bold, abstract, and sculptural art."

We conclude Susan Cummins' conversation with MFA Boston curator, Kelly L'Ecuyer in this newsletter.

Susan: What are your plans for the Farago collection in the future?

Kelly: The exhibition was organized quickly, in museum terms, opening just about a year after we acquired the collection. We are in the unusual position of opening the exhibition sooner and publishing the catalogue later, so that we have more time to do research for the catalogue, which will be published in 2010. The book will place this jewelry in a broader art historical context and trace the history of studio jewelry in the twentieth century.

In the meantime, the MFA's entire collection, including the Farago jewelry collection, is accessible on the Museum's website, www.mfa.org. You can go to Collections/Advanced Search and put in an artist's last name to see our cataloging records at any time. Not all the images are available yet, but they are published on the web as quickly as objects are photographed and our rights and licensing department can get permission from the artists and copyright-holders.

The jewelry from the collection will be displayed in the future in several different ways. The MFA is building a new American Wing, to open in 2010, and selections of modernist jewelry will appear in our gallery of art of the 1940s and 1950s. This will put the work of jewelers Betty Cooke, Paul Lobel, Art Smith, and others in a gallery with abstract paintings and sculpture, Eames chairs, and other art and design from the period.

An exciting development occurred last fall, several months after we acquired the Farago collection, when one of our trustees (AJF member Susan Kaplan) endowed a jewelry curatorship. Yvonne Markowitz, who has been with the MFA for many years in the ancient Egyptian department, was appointed curator of jewelry. She has general oversight of jewelry across all departments of the Museum, and in 2011, when the MFA's west wing is renovated, she will install a new gallery devoted to jewelry from all cultures and time periods. Some of the Farago collection will be featured in that gallery along with jewelry from other areas of our collection.

With the current exhibition and its extensive brochure, our website, the Farago lecture series, and the future gallery installations, we feel that we are presenting studio jewelry to the widest possible audience -- and that is what Daphne has wanted all along.

This year AJF took a bold step. We offered our members two trips instead of one, first to Boston for the opening of the Farago collection at the Boston MFA; and this month 25 AJF members will gather in Houston for the premier of the Helen Drutt collection at the MFAH. Organizing one trip is a complex endeavor; organizing two in one year verges on insane. What would have us go to such effort? The fundamental answer, simply put is, "the giving of gifts." Helen Drutt and Daphne Farago gave gifts, and we honor them and the jewelry art form through our visits to the museums.

Many of us may not have the means or inclination to collect on the scale these gifts represent. Yet, there are many other ways to give. As you think about your collection or ways you might give consider the many options listed below. Due to the sometimes complex technical nature of tax law or estate planning, you should explore the intricacies of these types of gifts with your attorney and tax advisor. Our list is designed to stimulate your creativity by revealing the possibilities.

• Grants and Sponsorships
• Gifts of Life Insurance
• Gifts of Real Estate
• Gifts of Retirement Funds
• Charitable Trusts
• Bequests of Works of Art
• Gifts of Cash

Lastly, consider the gift of your time: take a curator out to lunch, become a docent specializing in jewelry exhibitions or share your collection with students at a local college art department. The ways of giving time are endless. Your time is the most precious gift of all.

"The combination between jewelry and art is not always obvious. Jewelry means service to a defined function, realized in a suitable material, with extremely good taste. Art is first an expression, and cannot be motivated only by aesthetics. In art story and plot are interwoven with something hiding. But a jewelry piece can, like art, be narrative, abstract, socially moving or rebellious, reactionary or simply tender. Real jewelry is real art. The jewelry wearer is expected to think about the vision of the artists and furthermore propagate it."

Jan Walgrave, quoted from "20 Jahre -- Galerie Spektrum" 2001

IMAGE CREDITS from top to bottom

• Portrait of AJF Member Rika Mouw.
• Maria Philips, 'Spires', Neckpiece, 2001, enamel,sterling silver, promised to the Tacoma Art Museum, photographed by Doug Yaple.
• Portrait of Kelly L'Ecuyer, Assistant Curartor of Decorative Arts, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
• Kelly Nedderman, 'Double Pendant', Necklace, sterling silver, optical lenses, handmade paper.
• Snapshot of Rika Mouw with artists and friends: Nancy Worden, Ron Ho, and Ramona Solberg.
• Sophie Hanagarth, Untitled, Necklace, formed sheet iron beads strung on steel cable.