FY2016 remarks of Andrew M. Burnett, Second Vice-President

Andrew M. Burnett, Second Vice-President

October 29, 2016

Thank you very much to the  fellow Trustees and indeed the Members more generally for allowing me to eventually play a much greater role in the affairs of the Society.  I have known the Society for over thirty years, since I first came here in the early 1980’s as a visiting scholar with the Eric P. Newman Graduate Summer Seminar. The role of visiting scholar, is a role I’ve admired for all that time and followed its history at the ANS with great interest.  The position of Second Vice-President traditionally has been held by someone with an academic background.  And I see very much that my role on the Board in this position as being a guardian of the academic and curatorial values of the Society. Not that those values need any real defense or guarding, as they are much appreciated by everybody on the Board.  And I hope that given my own life-long career at the British Museum to be able to bring something of an international perspective .  It is important to remember where we sit in a broader world.  We all heard this afternoon how the ANS is becoming less of a U.S. and more of an international organization.  Well, being as it where, a guardian of the academic values of the Society is not a difficult role to play.  As the wonderful resources available for us  – the fabulous collection, one of the best in the world; frankly the best numismatic library in the world; and as you have been hearing, increasingly more and more wonderful electronic resources whose usage is being taken up by scholars and more just people generally interested in coins, again, all over the world.  All of this of course is the work of the wonderful staff who work at this organization.  The Trustees can do a little bit, but it is up to the role of the staff that makes things happen.  And that makes the role that I will have as Second Vice-President, a very easy one.  Because, I think it is easily, without exception, all of the staff who are very skilled and have achieved enormous things, that contribute in a very real way.  I have known few organizations that have such a sense of supportive spirit among the staff as this one.  So I look forward to hopefully, a sightly longer association with the ANS, and wish it well long into the future.  Thank you.

Return to FY2016 Annual Report