Memorializing Murray

The year and the weather may be on the wane, but there remain many bright spots to anticipate before the snow flies.

On Sept. 25, at 7 p.m., Dr. Anthony Bannon, director of the beautiful new Burchfield-Penney Art Gallery, in Buffalo, will speak in the Fireplace Room of the James Prendergast Public Library. The presentation is free of charge and open to the public.

The lecture will be the annual Murray L. Bob Memorial Lecture for 2012. The series of lectures was created in 2003, after the untimely passing of Murray Bob, who was both director of the James Prendergast Public Library and director of the Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Library System.

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The Murray L. Bob Memorial Lecture for 2012 will be given on Sept. 25 by Dr. Anthony Bannon. Bob, above, was director for many years of both the Prendergast Library and the Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Library System.

This week, I'd like to tell you something about Dr. Bannon, then about Mr. Bob, then finally about the Bob Memorial Lecture Series.

ANTHONY BANNON

Dr. Anthony Bannon assumed the directorship of the Burchfield-Penney Gallery in May of this year. The gallery expanded from its original location in a building of the State University at Buffalo, into a newly-designed, $36 million building in 2008. Before coming to Buffalo, he was the director of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, located in Rochester.

During his 16-year tenure at the Eastman House, Bannon led the creation of three postgraduate schools of film and image preservation. He negotiated alliances with museums, universities, and collectors' clubs in many U.S. cities, and he created many of the most well-attended exhibitions in the museum's 65-year history.

He also oversaw the digitalization of collections and aggressive social media campaigns to share Eastman House's unparalleled collections of images, and other materials, with the world.

This is the second term of directorship for Bannon at the Burchfield-Penney Art Gallery. He began his career as arts editor and critic for the Buffalo Evening News and then the Buffalo News, between 1969 and 1985. In 1985, he left the newspaper to become the director of the Burchfield Gallery at Buffalo State College. The gallery was dedicated to the art and vision of Buffalo resident Charles E. Burchfield, and to other artists who were born or lived in Western New York.

During his directorship, he received the donation of 1,485 works of art from collector Charles Rand Penney, inspiring the joining of Penney's name with that of artist Burchfield in the name of the museum. He also is credited with establishing key endowments and community partnerships which remain central to the gallery's programming. He left his first directorship at the Burchfield-Penney to become director at the Eastman House, in Rochester, and has now returned.

Anthony Bannon earned a bachelor's degree from St. Bonaventure University, followed by a Master of Arts in English, with a concentration in media study and a doctorate in English with a focus on cultural studies, both from the University at Buffalo. During his career, he has spoken several times on the lecture platform of the Chautauqua Institution, and he has curated and assisted with the creation of a number of visual arts exhibitions for the VACI Gallery and earlier incarnations of that gallery.

MURRAY L. BOB

Murray Bob was born in New York City in 1930. He attended City College of New York, and received his graduate degree in library science at the State University of New York at Albany in 1953.

He worked for two years as a reference librarian at the Free Library of Philadelphia, then was made manager of a branch of that library from 1955-60. His duties expanded to being chief selector for new acquisitions through 1961.

From there he moved to Richmond, Calif., as assistant city librarian from 1961-63. That year, he moved with his wife and three children to Jamestown, where he was named director of the two-county library system and of the system's central library, in Jamestown, where he remained until his death in April of 2003.

In Jamestown, Bob launched a long list of innovations, including the purchase and operation of a bookmobile to bring library services to rural areas and to library patrons who had difficulty reaching the various member libraries in the Chautauqua-Cattaraugus System for whatever reason. He spearheaded efforts to build two additions to the library building, which was built and donated in the 19th century by Mary Prendergast, daughter-in-law of the city's founder, as a memorial to her son.

During his administration, the library converted to an automated circulation system, with an online catalog, and created a computerized home page. Every library in the system achieved the status of Electronic Doorway with his encouragement.

He initiated the library's books-by-mail program, the film and video collection, and the radio broadcast program for reading to the blind and physically challenged.

Murray Bob was a past president of the New York Library Association and former chairman of the Public Library System Directors Organization of New York. He served on many boards and committees throughout New York and was sought as a consultant by libraries in Minnesota, Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Bob was listed in ''Who's Who in the East,'' and won the distinguished alumnus award from the School of Library and Information Science at SUNY Albany in 1984. He was selected to be a judge for the American Book Awards, and received the coveted Allie Beth Martin Award from the American Library Association. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Illinois and at the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Library and Information Studies.

He was a member of the New York Governor's Planning Commission for Libraries, a member of the Regents Advisory Committee on Libraries and a consultant on visual arts for the New York State Council on the Arts.

In addition to his work in libraries on all levels, he was actively involved in the intellectual life of our community. During his career in Jamestown, he published more than 120 articles and evaluations in more than 80 publications, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, on subjects such as the correct role for money in political campaigning, the measurement of intelligence in infants, and the appropriate balance between private and public support for culture and the arts. He also published a number of books.

He was a leader who believed in the mission of the library, both to entertain and inspire the public, as well as to be a bastion of fact and information, so that any person could advance and better himself through his own energy and efforts, without being handicapped by a lack of wealth, in acquiring truth. He recognized the importance of the library's staff in creating the kind of service the community needed, and he considered the staff's welfare part of his responsibilities, as director.

Bob and his wife, Renate, were the parents of two sons: Clifford and Daniel, and a daughter, Elisa.

THE BOB LECTURES

When Murray Bob died, while visiting his son in Japan in the spring of 2003, the Bob Family and the library came together to memorialize his life and his beliefs with a series of lectures, to be delivered at the library, free of charge to the public.

The subjects of the lectures are not particularly about library science, but rather about the many interests which the former director actively pursued during his life.

The first one was delivered in 2004; the Dr. Jules L. Lobel, professor of International and Constitutional Law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, spoke about "Prevention and Pre-emption in the War Against Terrorism."

In 2005, Dr. Carl Elliott, M.D., Ph.D., and associate of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, spoke on the intersection of American medicine and the American Dream.

In 2006, Clifford Bob, elder son of the Bobs and assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy at Duquesne University, spoke on the subject of ''Marketing Humanitarian Crises,'' regarding how some natural and political crises come to attract the attention of millions of people and inspire huge amounts of material and financial support, while others are virtually unknown more than a few miles from the scene of the event.

In 2007, Dr. Bruce Kuklick, Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke on the responsibilities of historians in times of war.

The 2008 speaker was Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, author of the book ''Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill.'' He spoke about his findings in the book.

In 2009, the Prendergast Library was closed due to the million dollar renovation program of the building and facilities, so the lecture did not take place.

In 2010, Dr. Raymond Belliotti, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Fredonia, spoke about the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and repeated the philosopher's question, ''Is God Dead?''

In 2011, the speaker was Connie Schultz, a nationally syndicated columnist for the Plain Dealer and Creators Syndicate, and regular essayist for Parade Magazine, who spoke about her career and her views of the media in contemporary life.

If you're thinking nobody could care about these serious topics, please be aware that the lectures have been very well attended, usually with overflow crowds listening through the open doorways of the beautiful Fireplace Room.

I knew Murray Bob, and respected him deeply. His lecture series is just one more way in which this fine man served humanity and our community, and created for us a place of beauty and intellectual growth.

If you'd like more information about Dr. Anthony Bannon, or about the Bob Lecture Series, phone the library at 484-7135, ext. 225.