Alfred Barr Quotes

Alfred Hamilton Barr, Jr. known as Alfred H. Barr, Jr., was an American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Barr graduated from the Boys' Latin School of Maryland. Barr received his B.A. in 1923 and his M.A. in 1924 from Princeton University, where he studied art history with Frank Jewett Mather and Charles Rufus Morey. In 1924, he began doctoral work at Harvard, but left after completing PhD course requirements to pursue teaching. He would not be awarded the PhD until 1946. Barr was hired as an associate professor to teach art history at Wellesley College in 1926, where in the same year he offered the first-ever undergraduate course on modern art, "Tradition and Revolt in Modern Painting."