“A Productive Life, Full of Learning and Living”
No Boundaries for TMA Volunteer Jason Hose

TYLER, TX (November 20, 2009)—“I have never let anything get in my way of trying to live a productive life full of learning and living,” says Jason Hose, a volunteer to the Tyler Museum of Art who was born with a non life-threatening form of muscular dystrophy. Jason uses both a manual wheelchair and a scooter to get around, and several days a week he can be seen at his workstation, cataloguing books at the TMA. When Jason approached the Museum about this lengthy and complex project, members of the TMA staff were overwhelmed at the significance of Jason’s promised contribution. “If we were to hire a professional to perform the service Jason has volunteered to do, it would cost the Museum thousands of dollars,” says Ken Tomio, TMA Curator. “What Jason is doing for the TMA is invaluable.”

Jason is a native of Dallas, but he moved to Tyler with his mother in 1989. His first interaction with the Tyler Museum of Art was through the School Tour Program; he visited the Museum as a TISD fourth grader and again in the fifth grade. Of course, Jason was already an avid museum-goer. “Growing up in Dallas, my mother and father would take me to the Dallas Museum of Art on a monthly basis,” he says. “I started going to museums at a very early age; I’d say around by age 4 or 5 I was begging to go to the museum. When we traveled to other cities, we always visited other institutions, and by age 15, I had already visited a roster of over 20 institutions.” Jason says that the visual arts can improve a person’s quality of life and provide a rich source of enjoyment, and so he continues to pursue the arts by traveling to new museums, participating as a volunteer, and even loaning certain pieces of his own collections to exhibitions across the country.

Jason graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches with a Bachelor of Science in Family and Consumer Sciences, with a minor in Art History. While there, he worked in the reference department at the Steen Library. “I assisted patrons and faculty with queries and gained experience in using web-based research products such as WorldCat and other online journal databases,” says Jason. After graduating from SFASU, Jason moved to Houston, Texas where he became a docent at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. “Jason has pursued an academic quest with all the energy and fearlessness of an adventurer, and he continues to impress his colleagues with his zeal for information, design and the visual arts,” says Tomio.

Jason is working through the thousands of rare and out-of-print books owned by the Tyler Museum of Art, and in doing so, creating a database that will make these titles accessible to scholars and museum staff. “Currently, I am digitizing the entire museum library with a web-based cataloging program that receives data from the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.,” he explains. “This requires converting the books from the Dewey system (most commonly used in public libraries) to the Library of Congress system (predominantly used in universities and museums) and adding provenance notes and ‘tags’ to entries. The goal is to be congruent with the standards set by other American Association of Museums and institutions of higher education.”

Jason’s work will provide a foundation for the TMA’s growing collection of books. Included in the current library is the original collection of books donated by the Junior League of Tyler when the Museum opened its doors in 1971. Plans for a new TMA building include a library that will be open by appointment to the public and visiting scholars. Visitors to the Museum will be able to enjoy the rare collection of publications in large part because of Jason’s hard work and unique abilities.

The Tyler Museum of Art, accredited by the American Association of Museums, is located at 1300 S. Mahon Ave., adjacent to the Tyler Junior College campus off East Fifth Street. Regular hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. (The Museum is closed Mondays and major holidays.) Lunch is available in the Museum Café from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and the TMA Gift Shop is open during Museum hours. For more information, call (903) 595-1001 or visit www.tylermuseum.org.