Barbara Braun

New York, NY 10003

Undergrad college/major: Arts and Sciences/English Literature.

Affiliations at Cornell: Sigma Delta Tau.

Advanced degrees: PhD, Columbia Univ., in art history and archaeology; M.A., Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.

Career/occupation: President, Barbara Braun Associates, Inc. literary agency, NYC, for the past 16 years.

Honors and awards: Title IV fellowship for graduate studies, Columbia Univ.; Kress Foundation and Dumbarton Oaks fellowships.

Important affiliations: Authors Guild, Association of Authors Representatives.

Published work: “Pre-Columbian Art and the Post-Columbian World (Harry Abrams, 1993, 1999); “Weekend with Diego Rivera” (Rizzoli, 1994), Arts of the Amazon (Thames and Hudson, 1995), plus dozens of feature articles in Art in America, Artforum, ArtNews, Connoisseur, The Village Voice, and Publishers Weekly, as well as numerous articles in scholarly books and journals.

Marital status: Married.

Spouse: John F. Baker.

Children: Miranda Baker.

Outstanding Cornell memory: Walking across the gorge in all its seasonal splendors to the quad and classes in Goldwyn Smith Hall.

How has your life differed from what you expected? It has been fuller, more interesting, varied and engaged than I could imagine at that time. While I have pursued a variety of jobs over the course of my career they have always centered on my interest and expertise in literature, writing and art, for which my Cornell education provided a sound foundation.

Cornell activities post-grad: Book Editor, Museum curator, College teacher, Journalist/art critic, Literary agent.

Personal reflections: While I pretended to deplore a conventional life, in fact I married my Cornell sweetheart, a medical student, after graduation, and went straight on to coupledom and graduate school in pursuit of culture with little thought to earning a living. When we divorced seven years later my life became more interesting. I pursued opportunities that arose - a position in a museum in another city, where I developed a passion for and expertise in an esoteric field of art history and archaeology, and got to travel extensively in Central America; a fellowship to earn a PhD in a subject that provided few academic opportunities except in places where I did not want to live. Determined to remain in NYC, I had a stint as an editor at the UN, then turned to art writing as a more satisfying (though financially unrewarding) pursuit, and ultimately decided to try my hand as a literary agent, where I have successfully combined my literary and editorial acumen with my cultural interests in a remunerative occupation. Along the way, I married a supportive and like-minded man, a journalist who was until his retirement the Editor of Publishers Weekly, and raised a daughter. Recently, I have been able to return to an early love of painting on visits to our weekend house in upstate NY, an area whose natural beauty recalls the Cornell landscape.