Baas, Jacquelynn 1948-

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Baas, Jacquelynn 1948-

PERSONAL:

Born February 14, 1948. Education: University of Michigan, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2625 Durant Ave., #2250, Berkeley, CA 94720.

CAREER:

Author, editor, and scholar. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, director, 1988-1999, director emeritus, 1999—, interim director, 2007—. Founder and director of the arts consortium "Awake: Art, Buddhism, and the Dimensions of Consciousness," 1999-2005. Has also served as director at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College and assistant director at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(With Richard S. Field) The Artistic Revival of the Woodcut in France 1850-1900, University of Michigan Museum of Art (Ann Arbor, MI), 1984.

(Editor, with others) Treasures of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hudson Hill Press (New York, NY), 1985.

(Editor, with Mary Jane Jacob) Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2004.

Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2005.

Contributor to books and museum catalogues, including The Documented Image: Visions in Art History, edited by Gabriel P. Weisberg and Laurinda S. Dixon, Syracuse University Press (Syracuse, NY), 1987; Conversations at the Castle: Changing Audiences and Contemporary Culture, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998; The Art of Joan Brown, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1998; Orozco in the United States, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2002; Ghosts: Paintings by Darren Waterston, Charles Cowles Gallery (New York, NY), 2003; Gwangju Biennale 2006: Fever Variations, Designhouse (Seoul, Korea), 2006; Measure of Time, University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA), 2007; Darren Waterston: Representing the Invisible, Edizioni Charta (Milan, Italy), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jacquelynn Baas is the director emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and founder of the arts consortium "Awake: Art, Buddhism, and the Dimensions of Consciousness." She has a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she served as registrar then assistant director of the university's art museum. Baas was also chief curator then director of the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College. Her academic interests include the history of prints, nineteenth-century French art, and twentieth-century art and architecture. She has also helped organize art exhibitions, including "The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty" in 1990 and "Transformation: The Art of Joan Brown" in 1998.

Baas has written, edited, and contributed to several art books. Among them are Treasures of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, The Art of Joan Brown, Ghosts: Paintings by Darren Waterston, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, and Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today. Reviewing The Art of Joan Brown in Library Journal, Mary Hamel-Schwulst asserted that Baas and Tsujimoto are able to "demonstrate the freshness and power of Brown's vision."

In Smile of the Buddha, Baas provides an overview of the work of twenty artists who were influenced by Buddhist perspectives. Among these artists are Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keefe, John Cage, and Richard Tuttle. H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online reviewer Gail Chin considered this book to be representative of "the growing interest in religion and spirituality in contemporary visual art" and would "recommend Baas' book as an important contribution to the field of modern Buddhist inspired art." Although Chin felt that some artists warranted more in-depth discussion and that the book failed to address "some of the deeper questions of what defines a Buddhist believer and artist," she predicted that Smile of the Buddha "will open the eyes of traditionalists and cause them to re-think the nature of Buddhist art." Reviewing the book for Commonweal, Donna Gustafson focused on Baas's articulate and insightful writing. Gustafson described Baas's interpretation of Monet as "fresh and well argued." She concluded that "filled with such welcome insights, Smile of the Buddha makes for an important addition to contemporary art writing. For those readers who already value the meditative qualities of contemporary art, there is much to savor in these individual spiritual journeys."

When asked who influenced her work, Baas told CA: "I was very fortunate in my teachers, who included the art historians Elizabeth Gilmore Hold, Marvin Eisenberg, Charles H. Sawyer, and Joel Isaacson."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 1998, Donna Seaman, review of The Art of Joan Brown, p. 718.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April, 1999, M. Kren, review of The Art of Joan Brown, p. 1449; February, 2006, L.C. Duhon, review of Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today, p. 1000.

Commonweal, August 11, 2006, "Say Cheese," p. 22, review of Smile of the Buddha.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, February, 2007, Gail Chin, review of Smile of the Buddha.

Library Journal, April 1, 1999, Mary Hamel-Schwulst, review of The Art of Joan Brown, p. 93.