EDUCATION CONFERENCES SPONSORED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WATCH AND CLOCK COLLECTORS -- CREATED AND ORGANIZED BY BOB FRISHMAN
In 2014, Bob was honored to be named Chairman of Time Symposium Committee of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC). Bob opened a new chapter for these annual three-day events by determining to host them at world-class cultural institutions with significant horological collections. The first, in October of 2016, was at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. These were followed in 2017 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and in 2018 at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In 2019, he assisted in creating and running an international symposium in Nuremberg, Germany, in collaboration with the horological association in that country. The 2021 symposium was in Philadelphia at the Museum of the American Revolution, exploring timekeeping at the time of our War of Independence. The 2022 conference was in New York City on the theme of important horological collectors of the past.
GORDON COLLEGE HOROLOGY-RELIGION SYMPOSIUM AND EXHIBIT
In 2025, Bob curated, with Professor Damon Di Mauro, a groundbreaking exhibit and related symposium at Gordon College, in Wenham, Massachusetts, titled "What Has Greenwich To Do With Jerusalem?" Never before have the centuries-long close connections between horology and religion been explored in this way. Eighty artworks, vintage prints and photographs, rare books, and important early American clocks were displayed and described. The February 1st symposium, attended by more than eighty students and audience members, featured four eminent speakers on this unique theme - Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt, Dr. Sara Schechner, Rev. Dan Benson, and William J.H. Andrewes. See review by Dan Benson in AWCI Horological Times.
Back when Bob was a leader of NAWCC New England Chapter 8, he initiated and organized these conferences: "When Old Clocks Were New," Peabody Essex Museum, November 1999. "Educational Symposium," Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, September 2000. "Clockmaking in Rhode Island," Rhode Island School of Design Museum, October 2004 "The Willis Michael Clock Collection," National Heritage Museum, Lexington MA, September 2006.