Biting the Big Apple Curator Nicholas Baume talks to Fran Molloy lumnus Nicholas Baume has a new gallery space to curate: New York City. He has recently been art appointed Director and AChief Curator of the New York Public Art Fund, where he will guide the selection and installation of artworks by established and emerging artists in public spaces throughout the city. “The role does make me look at New York in a different way,” Baume says. “I’m really excited about it.” This is also the first time Baume has lived in New York, though his “Nicholas is like a son to me,” my lot in a professional direction, long association with the city’s cultural Kaldor says. “He is a brilliant young I felt that education for its own landscape started with a high school man who is very passionate about art.” sake was a very valuable thing.” art club trip in the early ’80s while an Baume and his two brothers were Baume has fond memories of his exchange student in Houston, Texas. similar in age and close friends with time at the University. “It was the first Graduating from the University Kaldor’s sons and spent a lot of time time I felt I was in an environment in 1987 with joint honours in Fine at the Kaldor home. But while his that nourished my intellectual Arts and Philosophy, Baume became brothers preferred the swimming and creative development. I loved an influential Australian curator, pool, Nicholas was drawn to Kaldor’s discovering the world of ideas.” exhibiting such artists as Andy extraordinary art collection. The Australian connection remains Warhol, Jeff Koons and Sol LeWitt at “John was one of the most a strong influence, with some of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary progressive and ambitious collectors Baume’s close New York-based Art. He moved to the US in 1998 of international contemporary art friends including Mark Hughes, to curate contemporary art at the in Australia,” Baume recalls. “He director of Galerie Lelong and was also a great patron, bringing Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Melissa Chiu, who is the director of artists out to do projects in Australia, Art in Hartford, Connecticut, where the Asia Society Museum and her he directed the well-respected so I had an avant-garde education husband, art critic Ben Gennochio. Matrix exhibitions that featured from a very young age.” And while Baume says he doesn’t new and emerging artists. Baume adds that attending the have the resources to be a collector, At the time, his father, Michael University was a natural progression Australian works take pride of Baume AO (BA ’50), was Australian for him. “The University of Sydney Consul-General in New York – which was the only option if you were place in his home: one by Michael made it much easier to make the serious about studying Fine Art Nelson Jagamara and another move to the US, Baume says. and Art History,” he says. “Most “wonderful piece” by Lindy Lee. From Hartford, he went to Boston Australian art schools were far more His mentor John Kaldor as Chief Curator of the Institute practically focused, and I was drawn recently donated his $35 million of Contemporary Art, working to the intellectual side of art.” collection to the Art Gallery of closely with the architects designing Baume’s final high school year NSW, a fitting reflection of Baume’s the new waterfront galleries that as an exchange student in the US own current focus on public art tripled the ICA’s exhibition space. encouraged him to embark on a rather than private collecting. Baume was strongly influenced liberal arts degree before making “Having the whole of New by a childhood neighbour, Australian a vocational commitment. York city as a potential space fabric designer and leading “It did strike me as being for art is an extraordinary contemporary art patron, John Kaldor. Photo: John Kennard premature at the age of 17 to cast privilege,” Baume says. SAM SAM Summer 09/10 19.