A Letter from Lane Phillips,
President, Inuit Art Society

Greetings to all our members & visitors:

As I begin my term of office as the President of the Inuit Art Society, I will set forth some of the goals I hope to focus our efforts on in the coming year. Gabe Rosenberg set forth an ambitious agenda for his term as President; with your help, I can only hope that I can achieve as much as he was able to.

With the transition of our organization to a 501(c)(3) corporation, we are committed to making contributions, directly or indirectly, to benefit the artists and their communities in the Arctic. I have asked board member Chuck Hudson, with the assistance of other members, to chair a Charitable Contributions Committee to determine what options are legally available to us and how we can develop a funding mechanism that will allow us to provide some regular and ongoing support for Inuit artists and their communities.

I believe we need to make some decisions about our annual meetings that might simplify our decision making process. Historically, the Traverse City area has provided a large number of our members and the Dennos Museum at Northwestern Michigan College has been an encouraging and supportive partner for our meetings. It may be appropriate to consider regular commitments to holding the IAS annual meeting in Traverse City at the Dennos Museum and at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis (another strongly supportive institution which regularly invites visiting Inuit artists), and to schedule meetings at other appropriate venues as suggested by members. We have held very successful meetings in the Chicago area, and in Minneapolis, although registrations have not always been comparable to those we have achieved in Traverse City. As discussed at our 2009 annual meeting, and as approved by the board, we will hold our 2010 meeting at the Cranbrook Academy north of Detroit – they hold a small collection of sculptures from James Houston & Eugene Powers which is rarely displayed and have agreed to share their collection with our members next year. It may be held later in the fall to coordinate with the November Inuit art auction at Waddington's in Toronto, but a firm date has not been set. I would ask that you share your ideas for the meeting with the board through any of its members.

We will be formalizing the board nominations and elections process under our current bylaws. We have a board of 11 members, serving staggered three year terms, with three members who have terms expiring in 2010 (myself, Chuck Hudson, and Betty Lou Cooke). We will, in 2010, in accordance with our bylaws, use a mail (or e-mail) election process that allows all members, not just those in attendance at the annual meeting, to vote for new or renominated directors, based on a ballot with a short statement from each of the nominees. To that end, if any member has an interest in serving on the board, letting us know sooner rather than later is always appreciated. I anticipate that ballots for the 2010 board elections will be sent out next September to members. I hope for a day when we have more nominees than positions and we are not forced to use guilt and moral suasion to persuade members to join the board (yes, I confess, I was hauled kicking and not quite screaming onto the board and thence into the presidency!). It's a commitment, but not a huge one, folks.

Membership is always a concern in a small organization. We hover around 100 members, with modest annual dues that primarily serve to cover the costs of our web site and ongoing communications and membership activities. I believe that a modest increase in dues, which are now fully tax deductible, may be appropriate to cover ongoing expenses and to start to provide a base for IAS charitable giving. We have tried to keep annual meeting registration charges low to encourage attendance, but as costs for speakers and artists increase, we may have to adjust those registration charges so that the annual meeting is not subsidized by our dues nor by member contributions in excess of dues. Programming for our annual meetings is always challenging. Several members expressed disappointment that we did not have an Inuit artist in attendance at the 2009 meeting, although the substantive presentations by members Lorne Balshine, Sheila Romalis, and Bob O'Hara (a gracious last minute fill-in for Waddingtons director Duncan McLean) were exceptional. We have found the costs of bringing in Inuit artists can be quite high, especially if we can't share those costs with a sponsoring institution or with support from the Canadian government. Several members also spoke to me about the need to develop a younger membership base – I am open to any suggestions members may have that would expand our numbers.

We have a commercial membership category, but no one has joined at that level. I believe we should actively recruit galleries and their owners to join, either as individuals or on a commercial basis, and should specify what benefits we will provide to commercial members (limited use of our membership list for mailings, resale rights on some of the remaining prints, etc.).

Our website is fully functional and provides valuable information about the IAS and its activities, but we are currently limited by finances to updating the site only about three or four times a year. The Board will consider some low or no cost alternatives (a blog or facebook page) to supplement the official website and allow information to be posted in the interim between updates to our website.

I know that Gabe wished the IAS to move to semi-annual meetings in the spring and fall, but I am not sure that we have the capacity for planning and holding more than one major meeting each year. I suggest that we consider regional meetings in members' homes, more in the nature of informal gatherings of collectors, with some focus on IAS membership and Inuit issues. I know of a number of collectors in the Twin Cities who joined for the 2004 meeting and let their memberships lapse thereafter, and I am planning to invite a variety of local collectors over in the spring to discuss our collections and the IAS. The Dennos & Eiteljorg are ideal settings for informal meetings of collectors in Traverse City & Indianapolis, and we have strong membership bases in the Chicago and Detroit areas too. Again, this is a topic for future discussion by the board and other members.

I've thrown a lot out there for consideration, and am looking forward to vigorous discussions with the board and members as we work our way through this list and anything else you wish to bring forward.

Lane Phillips