Alfred H. Barr Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art

Growing up with the twentieth century Alfred Barr (1902-1981) founding director of the Museum of Modern Art harnessed the cataclysm that was modernism. In this bookpart intellectual biography part institutional historySybil Gordon Kantor tells the story of the rise of modern art in America and of the man responsible for its triumph. Following the trajectory of Barrs career from the 1920s through the 1940s Kantor penetrates the myths both positive and negative that surround Barr and his achievements. Barr fervently believed in an aesthetic based on the intrinsic traits of a work of art and the materials and techniques involved in its creation. Kantor shows how this formalist approach was expressed in the organizational structure of the multidepartmental museum itself whose collections exhibitions and publications all expressed Barrs vision. At the same time she shows how Barrs ability to reconcile classical objectivity and mythic irrationality allowed him to perceive modernism as an open-ended phenomenon that expanded beyond purist abstract modernism to include surrealist nationalist realist and expressionist art. Drawing on interviews with Barrs contemporaries as well as on Barrs extensive correspondence Kantor also paints vivid portraits of among others Jere Abbott Katherine Dreier Henry-Russell Hitchcock Philip Johnson Lincoln Kirstein Agnes Mongan J. B. Neumann and Paul Sachs.