For the second year in a row, the Georgia Museum of Art has received an award from the Mary Ellen LoPresti Publication Award Competition.

The museum received a Mary Ellen LoPresti Publication Award for the scholarly publication for “Belonging: Georgia and Region in the National Fabric: The 9th Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts,” edited by Dale L. Couch. (Submitted photo)

The LoPresti award was created by the Art Libraries Society of North America Southeast Chapter to honor design librarian Mary Ellen LoPresti. The LoPresti awards can be given in any or all categories including books, exhibition catalogs, serials, artist’s books and other categories when warranted. This year awards were given in limited edition, scholarly publication and exhibition catalog. The museum received the award for scholarly publication for Belonging: Georgia and Region in the National Fabric: The 9th Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, edited by Dale L. Couch.

Couch, the museum’s curator of decorative arts from 2009 to 2021, has been responsible for many books on the decorative arts, including multiple Henry D. Green Symposium books. This book publishes many of the papers from the 9th Henry D. Green Symposium, “Belonging: Georgia and Region in the National Fabric.” The symposium spotlighted diversity in material culture in Georgia. The book was hailed by the judges as “a thoughtful and well-designed symposium publication. The work addresses the rich material culture and decorative arts heritage in Georgia and the south. Each chapter includes many full-color photographs that are well incorporated into the text.”

The book was judged against 13 submissions and eight authors reviewed by judges Patricia Gimenez, Emily Decker-Bess and Virginia Seymour. The ARLIS/NA Southeast Chapter covers Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee and the U.S. Virgin Islands. All submissions had to have a 2020 copyright and were judged by their usefulness to general library visual arts collections, scholarship, scholarly apparatus, image and design quality and appropriateness of content.

The Art Libraries Society of North America was founded in 1972 to support art information professionals from fields such as architecture and art librarians, visual resources professionals, artists, curators, educators, publishers, students and others throughout North America interested in visual arts information. This year marks the 37th Annual Mary Ellen LoPresti Art Publication Awards.

In 2020, the museum received LoPrestis in scholarly publication and exhibition catalog for the books “Material Georgia 1733 – 1900: Two Decades of Scholarship” and “Deborah Roberts: The Evolution of Mimi” (published with the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art). The museum previously received a LoPresti in 2017 for Asen Kirin’s book “Gifts and Prayers: The Romanovs and Their Subjects.” All winning publications are housed in the Duke University East Campus Library.