Colin B. Bailey

For other people named Colin Bailey, see Colin Bailey (disambiguation).

Colin B. Bailey
Born	London
Nationality	British
Citizenship	American
Education	Oxford University
Occupation	Museum director
Organization	Morgan Library & Museum
Website	www.themorgan.org

Colin B. Bailey is the Director of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. He has previously held positions at a number of museums in North America, including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Frick Collection and the Kimbell Art Museum. A scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art, he is a specialist in Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and has been responsible for many exhibitions and publications.

One of his books, Patriotic Taste: Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris, was awarded the Mitchell Prize for best art history book of 2002-2003.

External videos
Renzo Piano in conversation with Colin B. Bailey, 7:12, The Morgan Library & Museum

Education

Bailey received his doctorate in art history from Oxford University. Shortly thereafter he was awarded a fellowship at the J Paul Getty Museum's Paintings Department, an experience he found so transformative that he decided to pursue a career in museum work rather than academia.

Career

Bailey started his curatorial career as Assistant Curator for European Painting and Sculpture before 1900 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he worked from 1985 to 1989. In 1989, he was appointed Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Kimbell Art Museum and the following year became the Kimbell’s Senior Curator. In 1995, Bailey began working as Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and was appointed Deputy Director and Chief Curator in 1998. In 2000 he became the Chief Curator of The Frick Collection where he would later be promoted to Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator.

Alongside his curatorial posts, he has taught graduate seminars in art history at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, Columbia University, and the City University of New York Graduate Center.

While at the Frick, Bailey was an inaugural fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership beginning in 2008. Bailey credits this program with shifting his aspirations from the curatorial to the directorial. The Center exposed him to his first formal training in management techniques and to the idea that active curators with skills in management, finance, strategy, and diplomacy could play important roles in the future of their institutions. Near the end of his program at the Center, Bailey held at a residency at the Louvre, closely observing its director, Henri Loyrette.

From 2013 to 2015, Bailey was the director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, overseeing both the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor. In August 2015, Bailey was appointed the sixth director of the Morgan Library & Museum, a position he continues to hold.

Bailey continues to write for The Art Newspaper, The New York Review of Books and The Burlington Magazine and regularly contributes to a variety of scholarly publications.

Awards and honors

• Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1994)
• Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (since 2010)
• Foundation for Italian Art and Culture Excellency Award (2013)
• Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises (2020)

Selected publications

As author

Bailey, Colin B. (1992). The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David. New York: Rizzoli. ISBN 9780847815210

— (1997). Renoir's Portraits: Impressions of an Age. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300071344

— (2002). Patriotic Taste: Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300089868 (Winner of the Mitchell Prize for the History of Art)

— (2006). Building the Frick Collection: An Introduction to the House and Its Collections. New York: Frick Collection in association with Scala. ISBN 9781857593815

— (2009). Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection. New York: Frick Collection. ISBN 9780912114453 (co-author with Susan Grace Galassi)

— (2011). Fragonard's Progress of Love at The Frick Collection. New York: Frick Collection. ISBN 9781904832607

— (2012). Renoir, Impressionism and Full-Length Painting. New York: Frick Collection. ISBN 9780300181081

As editor

Bailey, Colin B., ed. (2003). The Age of Watteau, Chardin and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada. ISBN 9780300099461

—, ed. (2007). Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, 1724-1780. New York: Frick Collection. ISBN 9780300099461