Green, J.American Photography: A Critical History 1945 to
the Present. New York: 1984.
Turrell, Julia Brown, ed.Lewis Baltz: Rule Without Excep-
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querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991.
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lications, 2001.ALFRED H. BARR, JR.
American
Widely regarded as an eloquent writer on the sub-
ject of modern art, Alfred H. Barr Jr. became the
first director of the Museum of Modern Art, New
York (MoMA) in 1929. This appointment was the
product of the labors of the so-called ‘‘adamantine
ladies,’’ wealthy patrons Abby Rockefeller, Lillie P.
Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan, who began plan-
ning for the first museum devoted to contemporary
art the previous year. After preliminary meetings,
the women enlisted the expertise of Harvard Uni-
versity Fogg Art Museum Director Paul J. Sachs,
who in turn recommended 27 year-old Barr, a for-
mer student from Sachs’s famed ‘‘museum course’’
at Harvard.
Though initially Alfred Barr deferred, contend-
ing that Sachs himself would make a better inau-
gural director, Barr was excited at the prospect and
ultimately convinced of his own readiness to direct
the Museum, which quickly became a reality in the
months immediately preceding the devastating
stock market crash of 1929. In fact, Barr was
both well prepared and well compensated for his
newly awarded position, which commanded the
then giant salary of $10,000 per year with a
$2,500 stipend.
Prior to taking the position for which he is so
associated, Barr taught at Vassar College in Pough-
keepsie, New York, before going to Europe in 1924.
For the 1925–1926 academic year Barr was a-
warded an associate professorship at Wellesley Col-
lege in Massachusetts where he taught the first-ever
official course in Modern Art, a subject first cano-
nized in the aftermath of the Armory Show of 1913
held at the 69th-regiment armory in New York
City. One of the most historic American exhibi-
tions, the Armory Show aroused a great deal of
emotion—much of it outrage—for the avant-garde
artwork it displayed.
After pioneering the Vassar course in modern art,
Barr again headed to Europe. He visited married
artists Alexsandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepa-
nova in Russia and then the Bauhaus in Dessau,
Germany, before returning to Vassar with a wider
range of reference for modern art scholarship,
which would be his lifetime vocation.
Besides being a popular young professor at the
women’s colleges, Barr was introduced to the Ame-
rican public when he was asked to write an article
forVanity Fairmagazine based on tests incorpo-
rated into his modern art curriculum: his 50-ques-
tion ‘‘Modern Art Questionnaire’’ was published
in August 1927. While Barr noted in the intro-
duction that ‘‘there are no spellbinders such as:
Name four important artist-photographers whose
names begin with St---,’’ the questionnaire
included items on Saks Fifth Avenue, James
Joyce, and The BarnesCollection of Pennsylvania.
This article can be seen against the backdrop of
philistine criticism of abstract art. With his pench-
ant for formal analysis, Barr is perceived as having
had a one-man mission to convert the public into
modern art believers.
Born the eldest son to a prolific Presbyterian
preacher’s family and reared in Baltimore, Mary-
land, Barr received his B.A. in 1922 and his M.A.
in 1923 from Princeton University in New Jersey.
His rigorous and analytical art historical training,
largely under the tutelage of Professor Charles
Rufus Morey, cultivated his interest in the disci-
pline, and provided an antecedent for the way
Barr would configure the institution of the
MoMA. While in school, Barr made frequent trips
to New York City, where he saw exhibitions of late
nineteenth-century French painting at the Metro-
politan Museum of Art, consisting of works repre-
sentative of the seeds of modern art. Barr also
visited the 291 Gallery, also known as the LittleBARR, JR., ALFRED H.