Oral History Interview with Victoria Barr, 1977 January 11-February 18
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Oral history interview with Victoria Barr, 1977 January 11-February 18 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Victoria Barr on 1977 January 11- February 18. The interview took place in Barr's studio in New York, NY, and was conducted by Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview PAUL CUMMINGS: It is the 11th of January 1977. It is Paul Cummings to Victoria Barr in his studio on 14th Street in New York City. I discovered you were born in 1937, but I couldn't find out in what city. So, could you start at the beginning? VICTORIA BARR: Yes. I was born in 1937 in New York City. PAUL CUMMINGS: Ah. So you were born in New York? VICTORIA BARR: Yeah. PAUL CUMMINGS: Where were your parents living then? VICTORIA BARR: On Beekman Place. PAUL CUMMINGS: On Beekman Place? VICTORIA BARR: Yes. PAUL CUMMINGS: Before they— VICTORIA BARR: Moved to 96th Street. PAUL CUMMINGS: —moved to 96th Street. VICTORIA BARR: Right. PAUL CUMMINGS: Did you live there for a long time? VICTORIA BARR: No. I didn't. And I don't know how long they lived there before I was born. But I think that we moved to 96th Street when I was two. PAUL CUMMINGS: When you were two? VICTORIA BARR: Yeah. PAUL CUMMINGS: So that you really grew up on 96th Street and not anyplace else. VICTORIA BARR: No, not anyplace else in New York, except that we spent many summers in Greensboro, Vermont. PAUL CUMMINGS: Um-hm. [Affirmative.] VICTORIA BARR: And I went away to camp a lot. PAUL CUMMINGS: What kind of camp? VICTORIA BARR: A rather ordinary camp in Cape Cod first, then in Vermont. Then when I was 11 and again when I was 13, I went to a very spectacular camp in Colorado called Perry-Mansfield, which was basically a theater camp, where I got very interested in set design and lighting design and really fell in love with the theater at that particular time. PAUL CUMMINGS: How did you get to those two? VICTORIA BARR: Well, I tell you. When I had been—when I was living in New York, I did a lot of things the way New York children do. One of the things that I did was I went to a theater school called King-Coit, which was a terrific place. We were very inspired, as I remember it. It was a very inspired place. And that was my sort of first contact with the theater. PAUL CUMMINGS: Now, how old were you, roughly? VICTORIA BARR: I haven't been able to figure that one out, but I think maybe about nine. PAUL CUMMINGS: Oh, so you were in grammar school, a student, approaching high school? VICTORIA BARR: Yes. But not—I mean, I was nine. I mean, it wasn't like I was 13. PAUL CUMMINGS: Right, right. VICTORIA BARR: So that I was at the end of my childhood. And at King-Coit they were going to do a production of The Tempest, in which I was going to act, although I don't remember what part. But there was also a whole section of painting at King-Coit. I did a lot of paintings, which I feel that I am still influenced by now. PAUL CUMMINGS: You mean painting and not theme painting, regular painting then? VICTORIA BARR: Regular painting, yes, where I painted, you know, the characters from The Tempest, like Miranda and Trinculo. And that whole play influenced me very, very strongly, not only in terms of the paintings that I made at that time, but also to the extent that I think it's one of the reasons that I went to Bali, one of the very first reasons, even though I know that The Tempest takes place in the Mediterranean. But the idea of this, you know, sort of mysterious group of people on an island and all sorts of mysterious happenings, I think lodged in my imagination very strongly. PAUL CUMMINGS: Um-hm. [Affirmative.] Well, so we have jumped nine years already. What kind of a grammar school did you start? Do you remember? VICTORIA BARR: I'll give you a list of the schools I went to. [They Laugh.] VICTORIA BARR: Brace yourself. The first school that I went to—I mean King-Coit was not a school. PAUL CUMMINGS: It was an after-school activity, right? VICTORIA BARR: Yes, right, right. I started out at a French kindergarten which may or may not have been attacked to the Lycee. And it was in the neighborhood, which leads me to believe that it might have been, although not the same building. Then after that I went to Fieldston. After that I went to Dalton. After that I went to Brearley. After that, in high school, I went to Milton Academy in Milton, Mass. Then I went to Radcliffe for a year, that would be '55–'56. Parsons for a year. Then I went to Yale Art School for four years. PAUL CUMMINGS: Hm, you didn't miss anything. [They Laugh.] VICTORIA BARR: Checkers. PAUL CUMMINGS: What intrigues me is, why all those schools? I mean, as a child, for example, why so many different? VICTORIA BARR: I don't know. I don't know about that. PAUL CUMMINGS: It must have just happened that way. VICTORIA BARR: Yes, it did. It made my education very complicated. PAUL CUMMINGS: Um-hm. [Affirmative.] VICTORIA BARR: I loved Fieldston and I rather liked Milton. The thing that I liked best about Milton was that by that time I had just come from my second summer at Perry-Mansfield. I plunged right into a lot of theatrical stuff that was going on at Milton. And there was somebody there that I found that I could work with, so to speak. Her name was Mrs. Ellery Sedgwick. She was a Boston Sedgwick. All through my years at Milton, I designed sets. Even when I was at Radcliffe, I did lots and lots of theater. I mean, that was sort of the sort of—more than painting that was what really occupied me and, ultimately, I could say, got me through my adolescence. I was always much more interested in all these out-of-school things than I was in the more conventional schooling that I had. PAUL CUMMINGS: Now, had you started drawing as a child? VICTORIA BARR: Um-hm. [Affirmative.] PAUL CUMMINGS: You had? VICTORIA BARR: Yes. I drew and painted also. PAUL CUMMINGS: Starting about when, would you think? VICTORIA BARR: I don't know. PAUL CUMMINGS: Pre-grammar school, grammar? VICTORIA BARR: Oh, yes. PAUL CUMMINGS: Pre-grammar school? VICTORIA BARR: Oh, yeah, yeah. And I did a lot of it. I also made sort of cut-out puppets, although I never put on plays or anything like that. I just liked the idea of having paper dolls that moved. I would make, you know, all the sort of joints so that they could move and so that I could dress them. Then I made up a lot of games, too, because in the country, my cousins were playing games, you know, like checkers and chess. PAUL CUMMINGS: And the country is? VICTORIA BARR: In Greensboro, Vermont, where we spent a lot of the summers. PAUL CUMMINGS: In Greensboro. That was somebody's house, wasn't it? VICTORIA BARR: That was a kind of—I hate to use this word, because it's so—it's a little overblown. But it was like a compound of houses, which actually my mother used to call a campus. [They Laugh.] VICTORIA BARR: What it was was there was the big house. This was a house that my father designed for his parents and was, as I remember it, a handsome wooden house, shingled, with a big slate fireplace and slanted roofs, because it snowed a lot. PAUL CUMMINGS: Right. VICTORIA BARR: Exactly. And then near—there were beautiful porches on either side with wide railings where you could sit. A lot of activities took place out on the porches. PAUL CUMMINGS: The summer entertainment. VICTORIA BARR: The summer—yes, exactly. PAUL CUMMINGS: Right. VICTORIA BARR: Then down below in the sort of stand of pine trees, there was my father's father's study. Then I lived with my parents in a house nearby, a more cottage-like house, but basically the same idea. It was a slanted roof, the shingles, the fireplace. And then eventually, my parents built a subsidiary building, which was my father's study. So there were these four houses, and lots of hilly land with cedar trees. Then we had access to a lake, which was called Caspian Lake because it looked like— [They Laugh.] VICTORIA BARR: —the same shape as the Caspian Sea. It was just so stupid to call it that. But anyway. PAUL CUMMINGS: Marvelous. VICTORIA BARR: It was very beautiful, very northern, same kind of light as Montreal. And the summers were quite beautiful. They were cold in June, cold again in September.