A small organization such as ARAS depends enormously on the hard work of a handful of people—staff, curator, Board members.  For the past several decades, Carol Herbert’s dedicated efforts on behalf of ARAS have been in a league of their own.  Literally, there isn’t anything you see from ARAS—our online site, our books, our presence in the world—that doesn’t have the stamp of Carol’s tireless work for ARAS.

She helped raised the funds to build ARAS Online and then she oversaw the incredibly complicated process of digitizing the images from the archive and building out the site with its commentary.  When we recently decided to redesign and upgrade the site after ten years, Carol once again stepped forward and took the lead in managing the process along with Allison Tuzo and an excellent team of technology experts.  The buck has always stopped with Carol when it comes to making sure that things are done correctly and well.  Trained as a lawyer with experience in running a small company, Carol knows how to manage, how to lead, how to advocate, how to simplify and clarify, and perhaps most importantly, how to navigate the tricky waters of getting a creative project done.  Carol is stepping down from the Board after invaluable service.  She will be sorely missed, although fortunately she is not removing herself from playing a role as a consultant to us in the future.  I, personally, have worked with Carol on all of these projects over the years, and put most simply, she is the best.  We are deeply grateful for her long service to ARAS and are very lucky that we have benefited from her love for ARAS all these years.

One of the projects that ripened during Carol’s tenure is The Book of Symbols.  We recently learned that it remains among the top selling books in Taschen’s collection, even four years after publication (which, in the book world, is a long time!)  It now appears in book stores around the world in seven different languages.  We are so proud that our long, quiet work has born such fruit in the world and continues to make a significant contribution to the cultures of the world.