Top 7 Quotes & Sayings by Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Alfred H. Barr, Jr..

Last updated on September 19, 2024.

Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. was an American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. From that position, he was one of the most influential forces in the development of popular attitudes toward modern art; for example, his arranging of the blockbuster Van Gogh exhibition of 1935, in the words of author Bernice Kert, was "a precursor to the hold Van Gogh has to this day on the contemporary imagination."

American - Author | January 28, 1902 - August 15, 1981

Source: Wikipedia

As a movement Cubism had consistently stopped short of complete abstraction. Heretics such as Delaunay had painted pure abstractions but in so doing had deserted Cubism.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

The historical museum has to be very conservative and careful in its choices. The modern museum, on the other hand, has to be audacious, to take chances. It has to consider the probability that it would be wrong in a good many cases and take the consequences later.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

The primary purpose of the Museum is to help people enjoy, understand, and use the visual arts of our time.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

The non-geometric biomorphic forms of Arp and Miro and Moore are definitely in the ascendant. The formal tradition of Gauguin, Fauvism and Expressionism will probably dominate for some time to come the tradition of Cezanne and Cubism.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

Except for the woman, nothing interests the eye of the American man more than the automobile, or seems so important to him as an object of esthetic appreciation.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

While majority opinion may not take kindly to forms of modern art, that same majority has also been hostile to most original and radical innovations, such as automobiles or airplanes or transatlantic cables or Protestantism or the theory that the earth is round and not flat.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

Sometimes in the history of art it is possible to describe a period or a generation of artists as having been obsessed by a particular problem.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.