At the 1996 Annual Meeting of the ANS, held October 26, five incumbent members and two new members were elected to terms as ANS Councillors, completing the Council roster at eighteen members.
The names were placed in nomination by Kenneth L. Edlow, Chairman of the Society's Governance Committee and the Nominating Committee. Those elected as members of the Council for the term ending October 1999 are Mr. Harry W. Bass Jr. of Dallas, Chairman of the Harry Bass Research Foundation, who served as President of the ANS during 1978-84, and continues as a member of the Executive Committee; Dr. Martha Carter, a civic and cultural leader from Madison, Wisconsin, recently appointed as Chairman of the Society's Education Committee; Mr. Jonathan H. Kagan of New York City, a general partner of Lazard Freres in New York and Managing Director of Corporate Partners, a member of the Finance Committee; Mrs. Marion G. Russell of Sidney, Ohio, former Editor of Coin World newspaper, a member of the ANS Executive Committee; and Dr. Arnold-Peter Weiss of Barrington, Rhode Island, an orthopaedic surgeon who also holds appointment as Associate Professor at the Brown University School of Medicine, a member of the Society's Finance Committee.
Two new members were elected to the term expiring October 1998: Dr. Stephen K. Scher, CEO of Scher Chemicals and past Chairman of the Dept. of Art History at Brown University. A specialist in Renaissance medals, he conceived and supervised all phases of the extraordinarily successful exhibition, "The Currency of Fame," which was seen at the National Gallery, The Frick, and in Edinburgh. With his wife, Dr. Scher recently endowed the Stephen K. Scher Lecture at the ANS, presented on the occasion of the Saltus Award Meeting. Also, Mr. Ben Lee Damsky, an engineer who serves as Manager of Power Electronic Systems of the Electric Power Research Institute in San Francisco, CA. An advanced student of Roman imperial coinage, he has lectured to the ANS Graduate Seminar students and elsewhere and has published in the Society's journal.
The Society's current Council is organized as follows:
Term ending October 1997: Kenneth L. Edlow, Arthur A. Houghton III, Allen F. Lovejoy, Eric P. Newman, Donald G. Partrick, and Landon Thomas.
Term ending October 1998: Jere L. Bacharach, Ben Lee Damsky, James A. Hayes, Roger A. Hornsby, John H. Kroll, Thomas R. Martin, and Stephen K. Scher.
Term ending October 1999: Harry W. Bass, Jr., Martha Carter, Jonathan H. Kagan, Mrs. Marion G. Russell, and Arnold-Peter Weiss.
Through the generosity of an anonymous donor, an endowment of $75,000 has been contributed to establish the Margaret Thompson Memorial Lecture, to be delivered at the Huntington Award Meeting by the honoree. Several years ago, the ANS public meeting schedule was expanded to devote separate dates to the recognition of the recipients of the Society's two prestigious medals - the Saltus Award for signal achievement in the art of the medal and the Huntington Medal awarded to scholars in recognition of a distinguished body of numismatic research. Happily, both these meetings now incorporate endowed lectures - the Stephen K. Scher Lecture at the Saltus meeting, as reported in the summer Newsletter, and this newly-endowed lecture at the Huntington Award convocation.
In addition, the January meeting, once the venue for the Annual Meeting, has been designated as the Graduate Seminar meeting, with short talks by recent alumni on their current work, funding for which is provided by ANS Fellow and Benefactor, Catherine Bullowa-Moore, in memory of David Bullowa; and last but certainly not least in the current schedule of public meetings, the Stack Family continues its support, now in the third decade, of our Spring Meeting which features talks on Western Hemisphere topics.
Parvaneh Pourshariati has been selected as the first recipient of the Shaykh Hamad Bin Abdullah Al-Thani Fellowship in Islamic Numismatics at the American Numismatic Society, for the academic year 1996-97. The Fellowship has been made possible by a generous donation to the Society's Islamic Department from Shaykh Hamad of Qatar, a Gold Circle member of the ANS. Shaykh Hamad was recognized as the International Honoree of the Society at the Tribute Dinner for Eric P. Newman on October 25.
Dr. Pourshariati received her Ph.D. in medieval Middle Eastern history from Columbia University's Department of History in 1995. Her thesis, "The Iranian Tradition in Tus and the Arab Presence in Khurasan," which dealt with the early Islamic period of eastern Iran, won Honorable Mention in the Foundation for Iranian Studies "Best Dissertation Award" competition. She has taught history at Fordham, Hofstra, and Columbia. Pourshariati is married to a mathematician and lives at present in Cliffside Park, NJ.
The Fellowship is intended to combine service to the Society with training in Islamic numismatics and museum practice. Dr. Pourshariati will work at the Society every Tuesday until May 1997. The Fellowship includes a stipend of $3000.
ANS President Arthur A. Houghton III confirmed the following Officers and Past Presidents as members of the Executive Committee: Arthur A. Houghton, Chairman; Harry W. Bass, Jr.; Roger A. Hornsby; Allen F. Lovejoy; and Landon Thomas; and appointed as additional members: Mrs. Marion G. Russell; Kenneth L. Edlow; Eric P. Newman; and Donald G. Partrick. Mr. Elam serves as Secretary of the Committee.
Houghton also appointed the following to serve as members of the Finance Committee: Landon Thomas, Chairman; Kenneth L. Edlow; Arthur A. Houghton III: Jonathan H. Kagan; Donald G. Partrick; and Arnold-Peter Weiss. Mr. Elam serves as Secretary of the Committee.
