bob moog foundation

Did anyone else get this... does anyone have any insight as if this is anything?

Dear Friend,

The Bob Moog Foundation takes seriously its role as the only non-profit organization dedicated to preserving, protecting and promoting my fathers work for future generations. In was in this capacity that the Foundation made significant investments over the past seven years to rescue the majority of my fathers archives, and to protect and preserve them to prevent further deterioration from occurring.

Our efforts have included re-housing the collection in archival quality storage materials, securing climate controlled storage, cataloging thousands of items, cleaning and restoring a breadth of materials including almost 100 reel-to-reel tapes in the collection, and most recently securing state-of-the-art archival storage and processing facilities where researchers from around the world could acess the archives.

We have also worked to share the archives through many exhibits from California to our local region, exposing tens of thousands of people to the unique information and insights that the archives contain.

We did this based on a verbal understanding that these documents would eventually be donated to the Foundation.

Yesterday, an annoucement was made that Cornell University will be receiving Bob's archives. The announcement was made by Bob's widow, Ileana Grams-Moog, with whom we have been working closely for the past seven years, up until as recently as February 18, 2013.

The decision to abandon a pending agreement, which ignores the Foundations stewardship of my fathers archives, and move them out of Western North Carolina is disappointing and, we believe, not in keeping with my fathers intent. Asheville was my fathers home for 25 years and, in the end, his spiritual home. It is important that his archives remain in Asheville and that they are administered by the Bob Moog Foundation, where they can be considered within a wide musical and technological context and where they will benefit from being interpreted by the unified network of experts that surround the Foundations work.

The Moog Family is saddened and surprised not to be part of the discussion to move our fathers archives away from the organization where they would receive the most well-rounded care, and away from the area where the Bob Moog Foundation, Moog Music, and Moogfest are located.

Over the years, you have been witness to all of the dedicated work we have done for the archives. Many of you have visited our exhibits and complimented our efforts. At this time, we ask that you support us on Facebook and other outlets by reposting and commenting in ways that are reflective of our work.

With or without Bob's archives, the Bob Moog Foundation Archives remains a robust collection of historic materials that we have obtained, or that have been donated to us. We remain a repsitory of materials that represent the evolution of electronic music history. We are excited to be sharing some of the incredible material that we have obtained with you over the coming months. Please keep your eyes open for that.

I may be reaching out soon with other ways that you can help. Until then, I remain

Devotedly yours,

Michelle

Michelle Moog-Koussa

Executive Director

Bob Moog Foundation

P.S. Should you have any concerns about this topic, please be in touch at info@moogfoundation.org.

After reading this and another news article it's basically down to a dispute between his widow Ileana Grams-Moog and The Moog Foundation, which his daughter Michelle Moog-Koussa directs. For one thing, which is might be an emotional aspect of this dispute, IIeana is not Michelle's mother. Bob split with his first wife Shirleigh at some point before 1996, when he married IIeana, who has legal ownership of the archive.

They've been actively digitizing and carefully storing his archive since his death. Grams-Moog has disagreed with the focus of the Foundation lately, which is partly what prompted her to donate the archive to Cornell, who have more funding, more facilities, and more employees. So it's basically become a war over who will provide the better permanent collection. I really hope some kind of collaborative compromise can come out this. I have no idea if IIeana has any financial gain to make from this, and she probably means well, but I personally would align with the Foundation. They stepped up to tackle the archive to begin with.