Viewing page 129 of 166

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

ALFRED BARR: NEW YORK FORECASTER OF TRENDS
[Image]

ANYONE WHO SEES Alfred Hamilton Barr, Jr., patiently straightening paintings in the galleries after the cleaners have finished their work may find it hard to reconcile this tall, scholarly gentleman with the crusader who helped to make the Museum of Modern Art in New York the cyclone center of today's art world. How Barr has kept his towering serenity is a mystery to those who recall the tempests in fur-lined teacups he has weathered, the manifestos that have thundered around his head and the onslaughts of outraged critics. He has stayed on his course while artists picketed because the museum showed too much abstract art, or too little, or art that they thought was not art at all. Bar has never allowed such distractions to interrupt his work, which has been recognized as monumental in quality, quantity, and variety. He has produced 98 shows at the museum, written or edited 40 museum publications and at least 30 catalogues. 
Barr's record as a forecaster is even more formidable. With the help of A. Conger Goodyear, then president of the museum, he bartered a Degas oil for Picasso's epoch-making Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Some of the paintings and works by such artists as Ernst, Arp and Schwitters, which he bought for a few dollars in the mid-1930's, have increased a hundred times in value. The Picassos are considered priceless. Guernica, before which Barr is photographed above, is on extended loan from Picasso. 
BY CHARLOTTE WILLARD

[Image]
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, GIFT OF MRS. DAVID M. LEVY