Colleagues,
I've been meaning for weeks to post my own tribute to Victor Margolin to
this list.
I first met Victor around 1998 or 1999, when he introduced himself after a
paper I gave at a College Art Association conference and suggested that I
submit it to *Design Issues*. I was so fresh out of graduate school in art
history that I had no idea who he was. Nor had I had ever heard of *Design
Issues. *So when I returned home* from the conference, I looked them both
up, which may have been the first time I truly grasped that there were
scholars who identified themselves as working in a field called design
history that was distinct from (albeit related to) the fields of art
history, material culture studies, and architectural history.
*(*I of course couldn't look Victor and *Design Issues* up *while* I was at
the conference, because it was the olden days: smartphones had not yet been
invented, state universities still invariably provisioned their faculty
with desktop rather than laptop computers, and pretty much everyone still
connected to their internet service providers via local land-line phone
numbers and dial-up modems.)*
It's no exaggeration to say that meeting Victor changed the course of my
career. He knew everybody in the field of design history, he was generous
about making introductions, and he solicited multiple articles and reviews
from me for *Design Issues*. Those essays played a crucial role not only in
my tenure case and thus in my continued employment in the field, but also
in my eventually becoming one of the fortunate few people in the USA who
holds a full-time faculty position in design history. I therefore count
myself very lucky that Victor took an interest in my work at the outset of
my career and helped me gain a foothold in the field.
I wrote to Victor shortly after he fell ill to wish him well and thank him
for taking me under his wing when I was just starting out. I'm really glad
I told him—before it was too late—how much his encouragement meant to me.
But what I didn't think to say to him then is that I've tried to pay him
back for the boost he gave me—and for his decades-long contribution to the
field by co-editing *Design Issues*—by following his lead. Though I am not
a naturally outgoing person, over the last decade or so I have made a real
effort to introduce myself to promising younger scholars at conferences,
and to connect them to people and opportunities that will help them thrive
in the field of design history. I hope Victor would see that as a fitting
way to honor his legacy.
Thank you for everything, Victor.
Carma
*CARMA GORMAN, Ph.D., *Associate Professor (she/her/hers)
The University of Texas at Austin | Department of Design
School of Design & Creative Technologies | College of Fine Arts
512-471-0901 | ART 1.218 | designcreativetech.utexas.edu
<https://www.utexas.edu/>
On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 11:20 AM Ken Friedman <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Friends,
>
> It is difficult to realise that we have lost such a central figure in our
> field as Victor Margolin. Victor is one of the key figures whose ideas and
> thinking helped to develop the fields of design history and design
> research, and he had a central role in the first conferences on doctoral
> education in design. It was at the first of these, the conference in
> Columbus, Ohio, that this list began.
>
> Victor’s broad learning and his understanding of the role of design in
> society made it a pleasure to talk with him, and a pleasure to correspond
> with him. Many of us have fond memories of Victor’s thoughts on topics that
> interest us outside of design — in my case, we occasionally exchanged ideas
> on different aspects of art and art history.
>
> Victor Margolin — and his work — remain a lively presence to anyone active
> in design research over the past few decades.
>
> Thank you, Victor, and farewell.
>
> Ken Friedman
>
> -
>
>
>
>
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