GARY E. BAKER

Appraiser and Consultant in Decorative Arts, P. O. Box 9562, Norfolk, VA 23505

Email: Telephone: 757-343-1883

Web site: www.bakerdecarts.com

Member Certificated Appraisers Guild of America

SUMMARY OF CURATORIAL EXPERIENCE

The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia, September 13, 1982 - January 23, 2007

Curator of Glass, 1990-2007 and Acting Curator of Decorative Arts and Historic Houses, 2002-2007; Associate Curator of Glass, 1985-1990; Assistant Curator of Glass, 1982-1985.

Responsibilities: research, interpretation and cataloguing of major glass collection, acquisition, writing for publication, lecturing, training docents, planning educational programming, and supervising interns, designing exhibits and coordinating related construction. In 1988/89 planned and supervised the complete reinstallation of over 4,000 objects in the Museum's glass collection. In 2002 designed and installed a permanent contemporary glass gallery. In 2005 planned and implemented the Norfolk History Museum. Exhibitions organized have included such topics as 19th-century American glass, George Washington in art and decorative arts, Louis C. Tiffany decorative arts, 20th-century Italian glass, and contemporary glass ranging from small-scale sculptures to extensive installations (including the premiers of two by William Morris). Oversaw the Chrysler’s restoration of the ca. 1797 Moses Myers House in Norfolk.

Oglebay Institute-Mansion Museum, Wheeling, West Virginia, June 1976 - July 1980

Curator. Responsibilities: collections management, writing for publication, museum education (ranging from docent training to lecturing and teaching classes), programming seminars and lectures, publicity appearances on local radio and television stations, and routine supervision of maintenance staff, part-time help, volunteers and interns, booking of traveling exhibitions, exhibit design and installation, and all related registration work.

EDUCATION

University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, 1980 - 1982

M.A. in Early American Culture. Winterthur Fellow. Studies at Winterthur Museum in American furniture and other decorative arts and at the University of Delaware in art, architecture, literature, history, and museum administration. Thesis: "The Flint Glass Industry in Wheeling, West Virginia: 1829-1865."

College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1972 - 1976

B.A. dual major in History and Art History. Studied American and English history, American and European art and architecture, classical studies, and decorative arts (at Colonial Williamsburg).

Boston University Graduate Seminar, Summer 1979 "Neoclassical New England", Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Studies: art, architecture, decorative arts, and literature in Federal New England.

Missouri Auction School, July 2007

Certified Personal Property Appraiser, Certified Appraiser’s Guild of America.

SELECTED CLIENTS – INSTITUTIONAL AND GOVERNMENTAL

The United States Navy; The St. Louis Museum of Art; The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Valentine Richmond History Center; The Maymont Foundation, Richmond, Virginia; and Trinity Episcopal Church, Portsmouth, Virginia.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

Director Neustadt Foundation, 2007- present; Director, Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, 2002-present; Fellow of the Corning Museum of Glass, 2001-present; Chair, Curators’ Panel, Glass Collector’s Weekend, Millville, New Jersey, 2001; Director, National Early American Glass Club, 1991-1997; Panelist on glass and ceramic bibliography, Library of Congress; Steering Committee, Commonwealth of Virginia, Year of American Craft 1993; President Wheeling Area Historical Society, 1979-1980.

LECTURES

Lectured extensively on glass throughout the United States. Speaking venues have included the National Glass Seminar (seven times at various locations), the Decorative Arts Forum of Northern California, Bard Graduate School in New York, the Corning Museum of Glass (twice for the Annual Seminar on Glass), the Dallas Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art (twice), the Glass Art Society, the American Craft Museum, the Allentown Art Museum, the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga, the Bennington Museum, the Mount Washington Art Glass Society (twice), the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania (several times), the Sandwich Glass Museum, the Morse Museum of American Art (twice), the Decorative Arts Trust, the Montgomery Museum of Art, and the Jones Gallery of Ceramics and Glass.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

“Glass” and “Other Decorative Arts ” in Collecting with Vision: Treasures from the Chrysler Museum of Art: (London: Dan Giles, 2007) pp. 122-157.

“Chrysler Museum of Art — Statement” in William Morris: Cinerary Urns Installation (Seattle, Washington: Marquand Books, 2002) p.9.

With Tina Oldknow and Jo Lauria, “Glass and / or Art: Museums and Collecting,” The Glass Art Society 2001 Journal, pp. 54-60.

“Chrysler Museum of Art — Statement” in James Yood, et al., William Morris: Myth, Object, and the Animal (Stanwood, Washington: William Morris Studio, 1999), p. 41.

“Kenneth M. Wilson’s American Glass: 1760-1930, a Review,” The Glass Club Bulletin, Fall 1995, pp. 17-19.

"The Wheeling Flint Glass Works and the North Wheeling Flint Glass Works," in Wheeling Glass: 1829 - 1939: Collection of the Oglebay Institute Glass Museum, Oglebay Institute, 1994, p. 21-38. (Note: book distributed by Antique Publications of Marietta, Ohio)

"On the Cover" [New England Glass Company Sugar Bowl, ca. 1825-40], The Glass Club Bulletin, Winter 1989/90, pp. 1-3. Reprinted in Reflections on Glass: Articles from the Glass Club Bulletin, The National Early American Glass Club, 1993, p. 62-63.

"The Little Cavalier Reconsidered," The Glass Club Bulletin, Spring 1988, pp. 9-10.

"Hobbs, Brockunier & Co. Glass Factory Burned," The Glass Club Bulletin, Fall 1987, pp. 14-16.

“William Warmus, Emile Gallé: Dreams into Glass," [book review] Winterthur Portfolio. Spring 1986, pp. 88-90.

"He That Would Thrive Must First Ask His Wife: Franklin's Anthony Afterwit Letter," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania) Jan. 1985, pp. 27-41.

"Patrick J. Sullivan: Allegorical Painter," The Clarion (New York: The Museum of American Folk Art) Winter 1980, pp. 34-42.

Sullivan's Universe: The Art of Patrick J. Sullivan, Self-Taught West Virginia Painter (Wheeling, West Virginia: Oglebay Institute, 1979). Catalogue / Monograph.