On the 70th Anniversary of Cubism and Abstract Art: Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

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On the 70th Anniversary of Cubism and
Redistributing the sensible: The culture industry
Abstract Art: Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s Legacy under the sign of post-fordism.
Sybren Renema
Eric M. Wolf
Emory University Eradicates its Visual Arts

Department, Portending an Ominous Trend in
University Education
This paper was originally written in 2006 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Lilly Lampe and Amanda Parmer
passing of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the 70th anniversary of the exhibition Cubism and
Abstract Art. The Social Impulse: Politics, Media and Art after
The twenty-fifth anniversary of the passing of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. coincides with the
the Arab Uprisings
Omar Kholeif
seventieth anniversary of his seminal exhibition and catalog Cubism and Abstract Art
[1] These two anniversaries taken together are a powerful reminder that “modern art” is
definitely no longer contemporary art or, in Barr’s words, “art in our times”. [2] These The Center for Land Use Interpretation’s “Theory
anniversaries further invite a retrospective look at Alfred Barr’s contribution to the of the Present”
shaping of the understanding and presentation of modernism and its context in Karen Rapp
contemporary museum practices, as well its broader reception by society at large.
The Nest
The Contents of a Modern Museum
Noam Segal
In less than a decade, starting in 1929 with the founding of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York City, Alfred H. Barr was able to establish not merely a museum dedicated Functional Beauty and Handmade Political Art
to modern art, but a canon of modernism that was coherent to a broad general public, Maria Alina Asavei
not only to an art world elite. This canon eventually became pervasive in museums
throughout the country and the world; so pervasive in fact, that sometimes how read more
profound its development was is all but forgotten. Inclusion of architecture, industrial
design, typography, photography and film in museums devoted to the art of the
twentieth century is now so orthodox that their absence would today seem like a
radical statement. Yet integration of these departments at MoMA was quite new when
Barr introduced them.
Eric M. Wolf serves as the director of the New York
Furthermore, Barr left out certain disciplines of art and design; a clear example of this School of Interior Design’s Library. As director, he co-
is the exclusion from MoMA of fashion. To this day, despite its lavish funding, the
teaches the BFA thesis preparation course and the MFA
Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is relegated to the basement and
directed thesis research course. Dr. Wolf previously
critics and the museum going public alike often question the curatorial judgment of this
department.[3] When considered analytically, this is not entirely logical. For in many worked at the Frick Art Reference Library where he was
ways, including fashion is far less problematic than including architecture, which Barr assistant cataloguer. He received an MA and Ph.D. in Art
was among the first to favor. Clothing, like furniture and industrial design can be History from Harvard University, and an MSLIS from the
displayed in a museum; architecture cannot be. Instead surrogates for architecture are School of Library and Information Science of Pratt
displayed: drawings, photographs and models. Seeing these items in a museum Institute. He has lectured on ancient Roman architecture
context is really quite odd, though we are so used to it that we rarely question it. Plans, at the University of Massachusetts, and was a teaching
sections and elevations are really merely coded instructions, like a musical score, not
fellow and library assistant at Harvard.
the actual work of an architect, which is of course, a building. Looking at such material
without professional expertise can be confusing. Yet we are now so used to this that
many art lovers have learned to read architectural drawings. Further, one could argue,
such museum practices has led to the invention of the profession of the “paper
1. Barr, Jr., Alfred H., Cubism and Abstract Art, New York: The Museum
architect”; could Zaha Hadid or Peter Eisenman really have such successful careers
of Modern Art, 1936.  The catalog accompanied the exhibition of the
without such ideas of architectural drawings as works of art? same name, held from March 2-April 9, 1936.
This discussion of architecture and fashion in the museum is not raised to challenge
2. “Art in our Time” was the title of the 10th anniversary exhibition of the
Barr’s decision. It is merely raised to remind us that his decisions were not as obvious
as they might seem today. Barr’s modernism was a modernism of gravitas; this Museum of Modern Art held in 1939 and its accompanying catalog. 
This coincided with the opening of the first building at the museum’s
gravitas is perhaps the through-line that connects all of the artists and movements
current location of 53rd Street.
represented in the famous diagram Barr published on the dust-jacket of Cubism and
Abstract Art. In this context it is not hard to leave out Coco Chanel. Such inclusions
3. For one such critical review of a recent exhibition at the Costume
and exclusions also belie what Barr saw as being the important and representative
Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, see Michael Kimmelman,
works of the art of his times. Fashion is an arena which is always engaged in change,
“Art, Money and Power”, The New York Times, May 11, 2005.
as suggested even by the word’s two definitions; for this reason, perhaps a term like
avant-garde fashion is even redundant. The exclusion of fashion from the museum’s 4. Barr, Jr., Alfred H., Art in Our Time, New York: The Museum of Modern
program is thus an important element in defining a very important aspect of Barr’s view Art, 1939, preface, p. 15.
of pre-World War II modernism.

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On the 70th Anniversary of Cubism and Abstract Art: Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s Legacy | Art & Education

The Museum as Laboratory
Barr conceived the museum as a laboratory “The Museum of Modern Art is a
laboratory: in its experiments the public is invited to participate.” [4] He stated that
some works and artists that appeared important today might not seem so in the not too
distant future. He articulated this view particularly clearly when dealing with what he
5. Barr, Jr., Alfred H., Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, New York: The
Museum of Modern Art, 1936.
6. This evangelical analogy was vigorously developed by Alice Goldfarb
Marquis in her biography of Barr, Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary of the
Modern, Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989.

called the younger generation. Looking at Cubism and Abstract Art, however, it would
seem that his experiments had very positive results. Very few of the artists there
represented have been removed from the laboratory. The same can be said for the
work in his companion exhibition and catalog Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, also of
1936.[5] Barr’s laboratory was not intended merely for curatorial experiments however;
the public were also participants. Barr repeatedly challenged museum-goers to deal
with difficult works of art.
His catalogs and exhibitions were truly educational, designed to explain and, to some
extent, decode the very complex ideas underlying the artistic movements of the early
twentieth century. For this reason he has been labeled an “evangelist” for modern
art.[6] But he was more than this, for he did not want viewers to embrace modernism
through a sort of “justification through faith alone” as the religious analogy implies.
Rather Barr strove to rationally explain the sophisticated arguments contained in both
the rational and irrational strains of modern art through a rigorous study of form, history
and their interrelations. The subject of experimentation in Barr’s laboratory was as
much the museum-going public as it was the works of art on exhibit. He felt that if the
public open-mindedly experimented with modern art, they could gain at least some
level of understanding and appreciation of even the most complex abstract works.
The Narrative of Modern Art
As illustrated by the classic dust-jacket of Cubism and Abstract Art, Barr conceived of
the history of abstract art as a roughly progressive chronology of movements linked
together and effected by outside influences (“negro” sculpture, Japanese prints)
unfolding over time. Like the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, this begins in
the 1890s and runs through (though does not end) with the present. While lacking a
visual aid such as this diagram, Barr proceeds along similar lines in presenting the
development of modern figurative (or at least non-abstract) art in the companion
catalog and exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. What separates Barr’s narrative
from mere chronology is the fact that it is both quantitative and qualitative.
Furthermore, the qualitative aspects are explained in a way that nearly eliminates at
the same time it identifies the author’s prejudice.
A clear case in point is provided by Barr’s treatment of the very difficult subject of the
Italian Futurists. Barr clearly articulates the early dates of the first Futurist manifestos
(1909 for the movement, 1910 for Futurist painting), their investigation of the portrayal
of movement (Boccioni, 1912) before Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase
of Armory Show fame, and Marinetti’s inclusion in the first Dada exhibition. While the
warmongering, proto-Fascist rhetoric of the Futurists was as disturbing then as it is
now, it was an important movement in the development of both abstract art and in the
intellectual positioning of art in society by artists. Barr makes very clear that the
development of modernism at this time was not a simple battle between a leftist avant-
garde and a reactionary right. Barr takes seriously the theoretical writings of the
Futurists and investigates their often less satisfactory realizations in practice. This is
clearly articulated in his discussion of “lines of force” (linee di forza); yet this interest in
kinetic energy first shown by the Italian Futurists is an extremely important contribution
to the history of twentieth century art.
The above mentioned information Barr provides is factual and quantitative. Within this
framework he is then able to make qualitative judgments concerning the relative
success of the Futurist contribution. Here he can claim without ambiguity that
Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase is more successful a work than the earlier
Futurist attempts at addressing the problems of motion and time. Likewise he can
seriously address what the French Purists tried to achieve in painting and go on,
qualitatively to state that the only substantial contribution to come out of their efforts
was the tangent of the architecture of Le Corbusier.
Alfred Barr is clearly among the most successful of art historians in his ability to
synthesize history, theory and what can only be termed connoisseurship. Indeed, in the
latter category few of his choices are ever seriously questioned. However, his ability to
argue for the historical and theoretical importance of lesser work is what makes his
narrative truly educational and useful; it is not merely the greatest hits of modern art,
but an analysis of the course of modernism. He is able to articulate that important
thoughts that lead to dead-ends in the works of specific artists went on to inform the
successes of others. Further, in purely aesthetic terms, there is little separating
movements of the left from movements of the right (at least outside of Nazi Germany)
before the Second World War. The language of modernism and abstraction was far too
sophisticated to limit the socio-political compositions within it. Indeed, only a very close
analysis of an artist and his or her work can lead to an understanding of such
underlying themes; they are not to be found in the provenance of such notions as
abstraction versus figuration or geometric versus non-geometric composition.
While contemporary critical theory might challenge the linear progression of the
famous diagram, the diagram itself hints at the sophistication of the relationships under
investigation and reading the analysis within the two 1936 catalogs shows a much
deeper understanding of ambiguity and cross-pollination than could possibly be
illustrated following another graphic representation. Doubtless a bubble diagram
following Venn’s model of set theory might be less controversial; but it is the force of
the self-conscious arrows, “linee di forza”, that permeate the artists’ own theory and

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On the 70th Anniversary of Cubism and Abstract Art: Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s Legacy | Art & Education

work of the time which give this narrative meaning.

In the introduction to Cubism and Abstract Art, Barr states that he is offering little which
is new; this is true: what he presents is synthesis. The narrative he proposes comes
largely from the criticism and theory of the very art movements he investigates; yet he
is able to put all of these cacophonous ideas into coherent and resonant whole. At a
time when many art historians strove to reveal the hidden sophistication of such
seemingly simple notions as iconography in old master painting, Barr was able to
achieve the much more difficult goal of revealing to a mass audience a relatively
coherent and understandable narrative of the seemingly exceedingly complex and
sophisticated world of modern abstract and fantastic art.
Barr’s Legacy in Contemporary Museum Practices
Twenty-five years after Barr’s death and seventy since the exhibitions Cubism and
Abstract Art and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism much has changed in the exhibition
and discussion of twentieth century modernism. Since Barr’s passing in 1981
seemingly countless museums have been built, renovated or re-hung. Some of these
museums follow Barr’s philosophies, some challenge them, but none are unaffected by
them. Perhaps the greatest threat to the legacy of Alfred Barr in contemporary
museum practice is endemic to our times at the beginning of the twenty-first century;
this is the model of the entertainment industry becoming the all-pervasive template
grafted onto virtually all enterprises.
Where modern art and Barr’s presentation of it sought to address the pressing issues
of its times, “post-modern” art all too often merely addresses itself and the micro-
culture from which it comes, while its display is designed to take the viewer into yet
another “alternative reality”. This problem is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that
most museums now feel the need to separate the “education” department from the
“curatorial” department. One of the strengths of Barr’s practice was the fact that these
two functions, the educational and the curatorial, were one and the same. The thrust of
an exhibition or installation was gleaned from looking at works of art and reading
relatively small amounts of text; it was not necessary to listen to an audio presentation
as you looked, nor was it necessary to watch a film before looking.
Emulation of the entertainment industry begins with museum buildings that, in the
desire towards spectacle, vie with the art contained within their walls. While this
tradition surely goes back at least to 1956 with the opening of Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the inexplicable need for large void
spaces in museums desperate for gallery space has more recently become ubiquitous.
Recent examples of this tendency can be seen in the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the recent expansion of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York. This article does not wish to engage in a
discussion of the architectural merits of these important works of contemporary
architecture by Mario Botta, Frank Gehry and Yoshio Taniguchi respectively. Rather a
criticism of the programs which led to such design decisions based on large central
voids is here offered. All these spaces are fundamentally theatrical, at best in many
ways like updated versions of the vestibule of the Opera Garnier in Paris; at worst they
can recall the theatrical corporate spaces of shopping malls and airports. They demand
that the museumgoer interact with them. This already begins to derail Barr’s notion of
the museum as laboratory. Such staging contextualizes works of art as much as their
arrangement within a gallery; it further limits a curator’s freedom and runs the danger
of reducing works of art to architectural decoration.
Yet not all recent museums have gone this route. One very notable exception is the
Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, designed by Renzo Piano and built between 1983
and 1986. Here a very intimate and human-scaled modernist building dissolves
externally into its suburban Houston context, while internally it beautifully subordinates
itself to the works of art on exhibition in its galleries. Further, the Menil collection is in
many ways a living tribute to Alfred Barr’s narrative of modern art. Not only does it
largely preserve the organization and progression of modern art described by Barr in
1936, but it further incorporates many of the historical pre-modern and non-western
works of art that Barr included in his exhibitions, but did not acquire for the Museum of
Modern Art. Chief among these works is the excellent collection of African art; this is
complimented by antiquities and medieval art that also can be seen as precedents for
the modern or which were documented by modernists as being influences and
inspirations; they include Cycladic idols and medieval icons.
The suburban context of the Menil Collection further allows for expansion and the
inclusion of contemporary art in a very satisfactory way: the actual building of separate
structure in walking distance of the main collection. In addition to the renowned Rothko
Chapel, pavilions were built housing the work of Cy Twombly and Dan Flavin. In all
these cases, it is the work which is central in a beautiful, but non-theatrical or
competing context. The main building provides very little limitations on the curators as
is evidenced by the radically different installations that have been mounted within it.
For this author, what is most compelling about the Menil Collection is the fact that
visiting it today is perhaps the closest one can come to visiting Alfred Barr’s two
exhibitions of 1936. Indeed, it does in many ways feel like a visit to a laboratory and
inside this laboratory the viewer can interact very intimately with a collection of
disparate works that is organized in a way which is very coherent. Seventy years after
Cubism and Abstract Art and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, such guided looking at
excellent representative modernist works still excites in the mind of a viewer the
debates that consumed art and society in the period between the wars through the end
of the twentieth century.
It is perhaps the case that the Menil Collection is an exception that proves a rule: a
museum that pitches its narrative on the level that Alfred Barr once insisted on cannot
make money in the twenty-first century world of attention deficit disorder. The Menil
Collection is free; its bookstore is across the street in an old bungalow, and there is no

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On the 70th Anniversary of Cubism and Abstract Art: Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s Legacy | Art & Education

café. Its generous endowment permits it to follow its own muse. The huge theatrical
museum-cum-entertainment centers demanded by today’s free market need to bring in
large sums of money to go on. Unfortunately, going on requires staying up to date
which requires more entertainment and theatricality, which requires more money and
creates a vicious circle. Within such a context compromises must be made. Novelty
and change are required to keep people coming back, and often times this leads to re-
hanging galleries and changing narratives in ways which lack the depth of vision,
knowledge, subtly and understanding that was present in Barr’s laboratory.
Concluding Thoughts
What is hardest to reconcile with an entertainment oriented museology is the fact that,
as Barr said, modern art can be difficult and puzzling. It requires an effort from the
viewer and a desire to struggle with its substance. Architectural theater and crowd
noise spilling in from atria do little to encourage the difficult concentration and
contemplation necessary to appreciate difficult works. Whatever narrative is to be
seriously explored, the earnestness of Barr’s program is necessary. Whether one
wants to continue Barr’s program or to challenge it, something of the seriousness and
thoughtfulness of the period of the art’s creation must be preserved in the spaces
created for its contemplation. While today Cezanne, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp are
perhaps better known names than Ingres or Corot, their work is no easier for the
uninitiated to understand now than it was seventy years ago. Understanding must
come from knowledge deeper than mere recognition.
Too much time is spent today flattering the knowledge of the informed or giving
blockbuster retrospectives of accepted great masters to the uninformed. What makes
Barr’s contribution so significant was his ability to educate; to make complex works
accessible to a broad public and to make that public ask interesting questions and
address serious works of art in a serious, thoughtful manner. Few would argue with the
works of art that Barr helped to bring forward. What can be debated is how these
works should be addressed and in what contexts. After seventy years Alfred H. Barr,
Jr.’s positions on these issues are still among the most compelling.

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