John H. Baur
Views on Art host, Ruth Bowman speaks with John Baur, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
John Baur is on the show to discuss the current exhibition: Contemporary American Sculpture: Selection 2, funded in part by the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation. The Lipmans were very involved with the selection process and funded many of the acquisitions for the exhibition. Baur emphasized the high level of teamwork between the museum's curators and the couple.
The curators and director traveled nationally and internationally to select works and develop variety within their collection. Baur describes why at first he believed there was little regionalism in the arts anymore, considering the proliferation of the arts through magazines and artist residencies around the country. However, he discovered otherwise during his travels and goes on to comment about the current art trends in places like Chicago and New Orleans.
Baur discusses the rather new Whitney building, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1967, two years before this interview, and how it was built without any impediments, creating a flexible space for exhibition. He also promotes the new outreach programs at the museum: one within Greenwich Village aimed at college students and another at Cheery Street intended for teenagers. The Greenwich Village location brought in students of both art and art history to study on a high academic level, while the Cherry St. program worked with disadvantaged kids by providing a space to work with artists or other in the field to create and build.
WNYC archives id: 8597
