From professor to curator

Barberie has come full circle from his middle school days. He's back where it all started - in a museum - and he's arrived there quite flawlessly.

After graduating from the University of Connecticut at Storrs with a B.A. in art history, Barberie applied to Princeton for graduate school, hoping to learn from art history professor Peter Bunnell. Bunnell had been curator of photography at The Museum of Modern Art in New York before arriving at Princeton in 1972 and was director of the Princeton Art Museum until 1978. At that time, Bunnell's focus on historical photography at Princeton was unique, and his research approach intrigued Barberie. "I applied," he recalled, "and to my surprise and happiness, I got in!"

Barberie wrote his doctoral dissertation on the French photographer Charles Marville (1816-1879). Though the Italian Renaissance also captivated Barberie, who spent a semester in Florence in college, he ultimately decided that "photography was much cooler," he said.

"I like photography because it usually doesn't fit into the narrative of fine arts and I liked that messiness," he explained. "Photography allowed me to keep one foot in art history and one foot out."

From Princeton, Barberie traveled to the PMA, where he was the Horace W. Goldsmith curatorial fellow in photography from 2003 to 2007. Barberie's work at the PMA included a 2005 exhibition of Eugene Atget's photographs and a 2006 exhibition of Julian Levy's astounding photography.

Last year, Barberie returned to Princeton as a visiting lecturer. He taught courses in 19th-century European art and the history of photography as well as a junior seminar for art history concentrators.

His appointment as curator, however, came from his earlier success at the PMA. Art history professor Anne McCauley explained that "Peter's being hired [as a curator at the PMA] really had nothing to do with his teaching here last year, but more with the fact that he had a three-year post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Photography in the PMA, during which he did a great job."

Barberie succeeds Katherine Ware, who is now curator of photographs at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. Ware was the first full-time photograph curator at the PMA. Barberie said he admires how she "assessed the strengths and weakness of the collection and got to know the photography of Philadelphia."

Barberie has his own goals for the museum. He said that he hopes to add to the PMA's collection of photography from before 1870 and enhance the museum's contemporary collection, working closely with Carlos Basualdo, the curator of contemporary art.

"I find writing and lecturing and exhibitions comparable in my thoughts," Barberie said, reflecting on his role as both teacher and curator. He added that both occupations "involve building an argument and making that argument compelling."

"An exhibition is merely a visual argument by the curator about the artist or the period or moment in history," he explained.