Board of Directors Election
2010 Candidates
Peter Barnet, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peter Barnet, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Statement: For nearly one hundred years CAA has played a central role in art and art history in the United States, bringing together artists, scholars, and critics in the worlds of academia and museums. As an art-museum curator for more than twenty-five years, first at the Detroit Institute of Arts and now as head of the Medieval Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I seek expanded collaboration among artists, teachers, and scholars in the study, presentation, and preservation of works of art. Creative installations of permanent collections and well-focused loan exhibitions can revitalize the study and appreciation of art. Related forums for new research are traditional exhibition catalogues organized in conjunction with new online resources. Having been a founding trustee of the Association of Art Museum Curators, I am convinced that I can contribute to CAA as it continues to engage the full range of its membership in advocating for the visual arts in this era of economic crisis.
Biography: Peter Barnet has been Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of the Department of Medieval Art and the Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1998. He did his graduate work in medieval art history at Yale University, and prior to his appointment in New York he was assistant and associate curator of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts from 1982 to 1998.
Barnet has organized numerous exhibitions, including Clothed in Majesty: European Ecclesiastical Textiles from the Detroit Institute of Arts (1991); Decorative Arts 1900: Highlights from Private Collections in Detroit (1993); Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age (1997); and Lions, Dragons, and Other Beasts: Medieval Aquamanilia, Vessels for Church and Table (2006). He has contributed substantially to the catalogues of these exhibitions and is the author of numerous articles and book reviews on medieval art. He has overseen the reinstallation and reinterpretation of the major galleries at the Cloisters as well as a large portion of the medieval galleries in the museum’s home on Fifth Avenue in New York.
Barnet has been an active member of numerous organizations in addition to CAA. He has served as both advisor and director of the International Center of Medieval Art and was a founding board member of the Association of Art Museum Curators. He was subsequently treasurer of the latter organization. Barnet currently serves on the Art Advisory Council of the International Foundation for Art Research and chairs the Buildings and Collections Committee of the Forum of Curators, Conservators, and Research Scientists at the Metropolitan Museum.
