Spotlight Award: Terry Brown

Terry Brown, volunteer archivist for the Houston Symphony and an archives volunteer for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is the 2013 recipient of the Spotlight Award.  The Spotlight Award recognizes the contributions of individuals who work for the good of the profession and archives collections—work that does not typically receive public recognition. Brown led the effort to establish an archives for the Houston Symphony after seeing the devastation Tropical Storm Allison wrought on the group’s historic records in 2001 and to salvage records damaged in the storm. Volunteering on an almost-daily basis, Brown has cultivated donations from the Symphony’s supporters and musicians, created an institutional records management program, and designed the archives’ website. Brown also was instrumental in obtaining a $200,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to digitize the Symphony’s recordings held at the University of Texas at Austin.

On the one weekday that she is not at the Symphony archives, she can be found at the MFAH Archives, where she has volunteered for more than two decades.

Brown’s recommender from the Houston Symphony noted that Brown “is not only a unique asset to the Houston Symphony, but is an exemplary contributor to the archivists’ profession.”