Association of European Printing Museums

Annual general meeting 2015

The annual general meeting of the AEPM was held at the Tipoteca italiana, Cornuda, Italy, 1 October 2015

Excused:

– Deutsches Zeitungsmuseum, Wadgassen, Germany (Roger Münch)
– Grafiske Centrum Gröningen (Hans Horn)
– Nationaal Museum van de Speelkaart, Hasselt, Belgium

The following organisations were present:

– Central St Martins School, London, United Kingdom (Phil Baines, Catherine Dixon)
– Estonian Printing Museum, Tartu, Estonia (Mana Kaasik)
– Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, United Kingdom (Edwin Pickstone)
– Gravemaker & Scott Letterpress, Amsterdam, Netherlands (Thomas Gravemaker)
– Imprenta Municipal-Artes del libro, Madrid, Spain (José B. Bermejo)
– Museum of typography, Chania, Greece (Elia Koumi)
– Les mille univers, Bourges, France (Frédéric Terrier)
– MIAT, Gent, Belgium (Robin Boone)
– Museum Joh. Enschedé, Haarlem, Netherlands (Johan de Zoete)
– Museum Meermanno, The Hague, Netherlands (Rickey Tax)
– Museum Plantin-Moretus (Guy Hutsebaut)
– Offizin Haag-Drugulin, Dresden, Germany (Eckehart SchumacherGebler)
– The type archive, London, United Kingdom (Susan Shaw)
– Tipoteca Italiana, Cornuda, Italy (Sandro Berra)

The following individual members were present:

– Soledad Aguirre, Rome, Italy
– Robert Clerebaut, Brussels, Belgium
– J.T.W.A. Cornelisse, Philippine, Netherlands
– Patrick Goosens, Antwerp, Belgium
– Alan Marshall, Lyon, France

The following members were represented by procuration:

– Rolf Demmerle, Heidelberg, Germany
– Friends of Lyon museum of printing and graphic communication, Lyon, France
– Lyon museum of printing and graphic communication, Lyon, France
– Maison du patrimoine industriel et des arts graphiques, Geneva, Switzerland

The quorum being met, the meeting began.

Approval of the minutes of the 2014 meeting at the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz

Minutes were approved and adopted.

Chairman’s report

After almost 15 years of operation as an informal organization the AEPM now has an official status as an ASBL in Belgium. This status is necessary for any future funding applications. Our accountant has pointed out that, normally, the annual general meeting should be held in the Spring,and that we should consider organising future annual general meetings earlier in the year. Given our good standing a final autumn meeting in 2016 will not however raise any problems.

An official bank and Paypal account have been opened. Since 2014 AEPM has a new website which allows us better administration of our members whose contact information is kept regularly up to date.

The annual membership drive remains an important point of attention. As of today we have 59 members (as compared with 45 last year) from 14 different countries. Our distribution list also includes non-members and private individuals interested in the activities of the AEPM. At our last annual meeting it was agreed to open membership beyond printing museums, to anyone interested in printing heritage, an opening which was already visible in the name of the Association: AEPM, a network for printing heritage. Symposia organised by the AEPM are also open to non-members.

Discussion of the chairman’s report

Gravemaker: We should consider the possibility for opening up to non-European members. SchumacherGebler: A main focus for AEPM should remain preserving skills, not only material. Bermejo: Unesco recognizes preserving non material heritage. De Zoete: Preserving skills was the original intention of AEPM, but young people were not interested.

The chairman’s report was officially approved.

Treasurer’s report

(In the absence of the treasurer it was read by Rickey Tax.)

We started the year 2014 with 6.740,75 € credit in our bank account at Sparkasse Mainz and ended the year with a credit of 3.670,61 €.

From 36 members we collected 2.050,00 € during 2014.

Design cost for our new website was our major expense at 4.743,75 €, followed by 1.000 € for our legal fees and 181,38 € for registering in Bruxelles as an Association sans but lucratif (ASBL), a not-for-profit association or gemeinnützige Organisation. Other minor routine expenses were incurred for bank accounting and web-hosting and registering.

The Mainz AEPM Conference (23-25 October 2014) was attended by 27 members and guests and produced income of 2.220,00 €. Thanks to the generous hospitality and support from the Gutenberg-Museum-Mainz and the fact that speakers are not paid, we could achieve 829,20 € net income on the operation.

Under Belgian law we now annually have to submit all our financial accounting documents for tax auditing to our commisaire aux comptes, Céderic Bergamini of the firm of Bureau Darville SCPRL, 1050 Brussels. On 28 April 2015 he confirmed our 2014 balance sheet.

Outlook for 2015. As of 2015 there are additional cost for auditing of our accounts as required by Belgian law, and for the everyday operation of our new bank accounts. Besides our Sparkasse Mainz bank account which will be closed in due course, we have opened a new account with ING Belgium in Brussels. In the future this will make our activities with our Belgian accountant and the tax-authorities easier. We also opened an account with PayPal in Belgium. This makes it easier for members to pay their membership fee. This incurs a minor additional cost, but the arrangement has already proven to be successful. We immediately transfer the net value of incoming money from PayPal directly to our ING account. We intend to close our Sparkasse Mainz bank account by the end of this year. As per 21 October 2015 we have received membership payments from 58 members. Conference fees received for the Cornuda conference will be passed on to Tipoteca italiana. Membership fee for 2016 remains 50 euros.

The treasurer’s report is officially approved.

Current projects

Publications

Early in 2016 all those who took part in the Cornuda conference will receive a printed copy of the proceedings. Les mille univers (Bourges, France) will print it (digital or offset with a letterpress cover) and AEPM will pay cost of the materials. If the budget allows, a copy will be sent to all contacts (250) for promotional purposes. Terrier: Les mille univers will make a calculation based on 300 copies. Pickstone: paper proceedings will be useful for future funding applications. Koumi: A few extra copies would be useful for further promotion and/ or to sell in our own shops.

Website

Compared to 2014, the number of daily hits (4000), files (2400), pages visited (1450) and visits have doubled in 2015. Members are invited to post information directly on the site themselves. Our Facebook-page currently has 120 followers.

Small additions to the website will be made next year, i.e. online form for registration.

Berra: suggests Pinterest/Instagram for more rapid communication and better connection to social networks, especially younger people. Compared to the website, Facebook makes it easier to build a reputation. If we are to spend money, we could use it to raise the number of likes (sponsoring likes) or to input in information (pictures), possibly even contract people to work on raising the visibility of the AEPM. Marshall: encourages members to actively use the website by posting information more frequently (both on the website and on our Facebook page).

Requests for European partnerships

Two Italian initiatives have requested the collaboration of the AEPM in European funding projects. A request for collaboration to the European project You are my type from the Children’s museum in Rome. We will put out information through the website and social media and the board will consider the project at future meetings.

The second request, comes from Typeshift, a European project on sharing information and knowledge (in our case preservation of skills) which presupposes 50% investment from partners. In the case of a possible participation by the AEPM this could only be an investment in time. Main administrator is the University of Venice. After more information from Berra on this project, AEPM will decide on further collaboration. The Typeshift deadline has recently been extended till the Spring of 2016.

Conference 2016

As decided in Mainz in 2014, a conference will be organised in October or November 2016 in collaboration with the IADM (Internationalen Arbeitskreises für Druck- und Mediengeschichte) in the Nederlands Steendrukmuseum (Dutch Lithography museum) in Valkenswaard. The theme of the conference is ‘From slab to chip. The theme will be Alois Senefelder and the invention of lithography in an international context. For the AEPM, the aim of the joint conference is to promote closer relations and exchanges with the IADM. For the IADM, one of the aims of the conference is to make the first steps towards the production of a travelling exhibition in 2018 to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Senefelder’s famous manual of lithography.

Conference 2017

For 2017 there are several suggestions. Following up on a suggestion made at the 2014 meeting at the Gutenberg Museum (Mainz, Germany) the Museum Plantin-Moretus (Antwerp, Belgium) has been contacted to see if they might be interested in hosting a conference after the opening of their new permanent exhibition. Three other candidates also declared their interest in hosting an AEPM conference: the Museum of typography (Chania, Greece), the Imprenta Municipal-Artes del libro (Madrid, Spain) and the Eesti trykimuuseum (Printing Museum, Tartu, Estonia).

It was decided to take up the offer of the Museum of typography and to hold hold the 2017 meeting in Chania, Crete. The theme is still to be decided. De Zoete: underlined the importance of the AEPM and the host museum deciding jointly on theme which should reflect the centres of interest of both the AEPM and the host.

Any other business

Marshall: recognizes that libraries with a particular interest in printing heritage should also be able to join AEPM and could also provide a location for symposia, though care should be taken when dealing with major heritage libraries (should the case arise) who do not necessarily have the same priorities as the AEPM’s constituency of mostly small, modestly budgeted organisations.

Baines: thanks AEPM for their written support concerning the St. Bride printing library (London, UK).

Berra: suggests that for future conference meetings, we could make a joint goody bag with members printed specimens or keepsakes.

There being no further business the chairman closed the meeting.

Rickey Tax
Secretary