New director takes over at Mead

By Phyllis Lehrer
Staff Writer

Published on January 25, 2008

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Barker wasn't the child who tugged her parents away from the art on display in museums. "My parents were the ones who had to drag me away to the gift shop and cafe," she said.

Now she can look at art all day, since galleries are only a few step away when her office door that identifies her: director and chief curator of the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. She assumed the post in August replacing Jill Meredith, who resigned.

Sitting in her office, Barker spoke of her love of art, her career and goals for the museum. Ironically, there are no paintings on her pale green walls.

One reason: She does spend all day looking at art. "The bare walls are soothing, cleanse the palette like a sorbet course." The practical reason: The staff wing doesn't have the required climate controls for original art.

Barker, who grew up in Brunswick, Maine, recalled her first museum: the Peary MacMillan at Bowdoin College that had Inuit artifacts and stuffed polar bears. "I didnt know an art history major existed at the time."

But that became her major. A quick pit stop in New Haven, Conn., offered a chance to visit the Yale Center for British Art.

"I was knocked off my feet. It's a wonderful building with a great collection." As a result she said she only applied to Yale. Her specialty: 18th century British art.

She earned graduate degrees at the Institute of Fine art at NYU. "They have an art history program with an emphasis on museum work and grounds for future curators."

While in grad school, she started working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "And I never looked back," she said serving as an intern, helper and paid assistant.

While the Met is one of the premiere museums in the art world, Barker left to become the director of the Picker Art Museum at Colgate University, which surprised her colleagues. At the Met she said she worked with student interns and enjoyed it. "I liked the idea of a college museum. It was the best of both worlds," she said.

She was at the Picker for two years when she applied for the Mead post. "It seemed a perfect fit. I wanted to return to New England. Amherst College is filled with energetic enthusiastic students, wonderful faculty with wide range of interests and students who are non-art specialists. They see things with fresh eyes." A bonus: the Pioneer Valley is idyllic and is within driving distance of art centers in New York and Boston.

While the walls in her office may be bare, the built-in wooden bookcases are filled with art books, a testimony to her scholarship. She's coauthored seven books, and has written four articles, with three pending, including a book-length article on Joseph Wright Derby that will appear in the 2009 issue of the Journal of the Horace Walpole Society. She transcribed all the material, created a bibliographic index and annotated the works. Research was conducted in London, where she lived for two years.

The article is in conjunction with the Derby exhibit she curated, which is on display in Liverpool. It will be at Yale beginning in May. The Derby exhibit had a five-year gestation. That's another reason she likes a college museum, an exhibit can be mounted in less time. For example, the Charles Close exhibit took less than a year at Colgate. Ironically the exhibit is now at the Mead, a benefit from a gap in its travel schedule.

At the Mead, Barker oversees nine staffers (when two vacancies are filled), 10 guards, 50 student volunteers and two paid interns, and she does fundraising. She also teaches a January seminar on putting on an exhibit. "The theme is watercolor and it's student directed."

Barker said she wants to refresh the permanent collection and to reinstall three galleries to provide viewers with some sense of the holdings, since only one percent of the 16,000 items in the collection are on view. The standard is 10 to 20 percent.

The collection will become very visible when a new project - to photograph the almost 1,000 paintings and post them online - is completed. It will be a long process since only five to 10 can be done a day. "You need handlers, a computer system special lights to take high and low resolution photos. But with the new digital technology, they won't expire. It you do it right it will be forever," she said.

The Mead is a free resource that is being recognized with increasing attendance.

"We set an all time record in November. We were open the first time between Christmas and New Year and that was very successful. My goal I hope reach the point where every Amherst College student makes one visit to the jewel in Amherst College crown."