Asian Art Curator at Bowers Resigns

Janet Baker, curator of Asian art at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, whose tenure included last year’s controversial Vietnamese art exhibit and the current exhibit of treasures from China’s Imperial Palace, has resigned from her post at the Santa Ana institution.

Baker, who also serves as the museum’s director of public programs, has been with the Bowers since October 1992, arriving shortly before its reopening after four years of renovation and expansion.

She will begin her new job as curator of Asian art at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona on May 1.

Her departure will leave the Bowers with only one curator--Armand Labbe, director of research and collections and chief curator.

Baker, who speaks Chinese, earned a doctorate in Chinese art history from the University of Kansas in 1991 and was an assistant professor of art history at Baruch College in New York before coming to the Bowers. She said her decision to leave was prompted by “a great opportunity” at the Phoenix Art Museum.

“It’s been wonderful; it won’t be easy to leave,” said Baker, 45, who will put in her last day on the job Tuesday.

The new job is more narrowly focused, she said, and is “in exactly the field I have been trained in and it will offer me greater opportunities for research, exhibition curation and travel--to say nothing of more money.”

Baker said the Phoenix Art Museum has 25,000 members, compared to the Bowers’ 5,000, has six curators and a larger support staff. The museum also has an Asian Arts Council with 200 members who raise funds for programs and acquisitions.

Bowers’ Executive Director Peter Keller said Wednesday that “we couldn’t be happier for her after seven years here at the Bowers. We feel proud those seven years allowed her to get what I consider a plumb position at a great institution.”

Keller said a director of education and public programs will be hired to replace Baker, but the museum is not looking for a new curator. “Asian art was her expertise and we made use of her expertise in that way,” he said.

Baker said that about one-quarter of her time was spent as a curator.

“In essence, it was a job designed for me to make use of my different talents,” she said.

Several years ago, Paul Apodaca, a full-time curator of Native American art, left the museum and was not replaced.

Keller said he does not believe the museum will be short-handed.

“Our curators are not as much collection-based as traditional museums once were,” he said. “The focus is on major exhibitions and we have gone to bringing guest curators in that are usually world-renowned experts on that specific subject for each exhibit.”

In October, for example, the Bowers is bringing in Egyptian treasures from the British Museum, which will be accompanied by a curator from the museum who is a specialist with that exhibit.

Baker said she’s leaving the museum on good terms, “with the likely possibility of collaboration” between the Bowers and the Phoenix Art Museum.

She said her years at the museum were marked by a number of professional highlights, including the popular current exhibit, “Secret World of the Forbidden City,” which she co-curated in collaboration with the Palace Museum in Beijing.

She’s also proud of curating a major exhibit three years ago, “Seeking Immortality: Chinese Tomb Sculpture from the Schloss Collection,” for which she also wrote the catalog.

Then there was “Winding River,” the controversial exhibit of contemporary art from Vietnam which spurred many in Orange County’s Vietnamese community to protest the display of 75 paintings on loan from a Communist regime.

But Baker, who fielded countless queries from the press and public during the furor, said the controversy simply fueled attendance.

“It is thrilling as a museum curator to see the general public become involved and express its views about a museum exhibit,” she said. “What we don’t want to hear as a museum staff is, ‘So what? Who cares?’ They had very passionate responses. That’s what doing art exhibits should be all about--that they will inspire people to think, to feel and to learn.”