Traditions in Dialogue: Remembering Bob Andresen

Remembering Bob Andresen: A Praise Song for a Proto-Archivist
Traditions in Dialogue lecture by Jim Leary

Free and Open to the Public

Tuesday, September 12, 2017
5:30pm – 6:30pm
Memorial Library, Room 126, 728 State St.

Descended from Norwegian immigrants, Bob Andresen (1937-1995) was a graphic designer, musician, radio producer, record collector, and self-taught folklorist from Duluth, Minnesota. His substantial documentary collections–historic sound recordings, ephemeral publications, rare images–encompass the Upper Midwest’s musical ferment, sustain the development of regional/traditional/ethnic collections at Mills Music Library, and persist as a resource for researchers and musicians. Professor Emeritus Jim Leary, who was responsible for bringing the Robert Andresen Collection to Mills Music Library, will speak about his friend.

The talk is free and open to the public, and the first event in a series of lectures and how-to workshops regarding the significant impact that private collections and archives can have on the community at large presented by Traditions in Dialogue: Nordic-American Communities and Their Arts in Local and Transnational Contexts.  Traditions in Dialogue is a part of the Borghesi-Mellon Interdisciplinary Workshops in the Humanities, sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with support from Nancy and David Borghesi and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Fall 2017 schedule:

• September 12: Remembering Bob Andresen: A Praise Song for a Proto-Archivist, with Jim Leary
• September 19: Recording Your Own Story [Workshop], with Troy Reeves, Head, Oral History Program, University Archives
• October 3: From Disc to Digital: Sharing a Private Collection with the World, with Jeanette Casey, Head, Mills Music Library
• October 24: Collecting, Hoarding, and Sorting: Creating Personal Archives [Workshop], with Nathan Gibson, Ethnic American Music Curator, Mills Music Library
• November 7: Presenting Your Own Story [Workshop], with the DesignLab*
• November 14: Language as History: Nordic Sound Recordings from the Upper Midwest, with Joe Salmons, Mirva Johnson, and David Natvig

All events are free and open to the public, and will be held from 5:30pm-6:30pm in Memorial Library, Room 126, except for *November 7 event, which will be hosted in DesignLab Media Studio A, College Library.