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Interview with Paula Baxter
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Title
Interview with Paula Baxter
Contributor
Baxter, Paula ; Gashurov, Irene
Description
Paula is a practicing design historian. She is the author of three books on Native American jewelry, along with numerous magazine articles on American Indian arts and design. Before that, she was a professor in the humanities at Berkeley College in Westchester County, New York. Previously she worked as an art librarian and curator at the New York Public Library for 22 years.
Date
2019-03-01
Rights
In Copyright
Identifier
Paula Baxter.mp3
Date Modified
2019-03-01
Is Part Of
Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni
Extent
58:14 minutes
Transcription
Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Paula Baxter
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 1 March 2019
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(Start of Interview)
IG: 00:00
Now we are live.
PB: 00:02
Okay. Hi, I am Paula Baxter. I graduated from Binghamton in 1975 I stayed on for two more years and got a master's in 1977. We are sitting in my backyard in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I am at this point, retired from the New York Public Library, but I am also a former adjunct professor and a professional writer, and I am working on the magnum opus of my career at this moment. I am the daughter of a man who took a long time to become a college professor. My dad was in World War Two. He was one of those 16-year-old who lied about his age and went off, and he spent three years in the South Pacific. He came home, he went to NYU on the GI Bill, and he first worked as a liquor salesman, but he wanted to teach first high school and then college. This meant my childhood involved a lot of moving around, and we finally ended up by junior high school in Oneonta, New York, upstate, where he was a professor of Spanish at the college here at Oneonta State. He did not have his PhD, however, he had a master's from University of New Mexico, where we lived for a couple years in the early (19)60s. And he very slowly- he liked to joke that he was the world's longest running PhD candidate, but there were many more, and he went to Binghamton. And so, Binghamton was firmly lodged in my mind as a place to go. I did; however, I was the only child I did not like Oneonta to grow up in. I did not have a good time. There was illness in my family. Only child students were very cliquey and laugh at me now, but one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Binghamton was that none of my classmates in high school whatsoever, planned to go to Binghamton. And when you ask these kids why, they said, too many drugs. So luckily for me, I ignored them and went to Binghamton and became a real person.
IG: 02:15
Okay, so that is wonderful, a wonderful introduction. We will explore how you became a real person in Binghamton. Okay, so what were some of your first impressions of the college, Harpur College, and when did you arrive there?
PB: 02:39
Yeah, I arrived in January of 1973 I had graduated a semester early from high school, and Binghamton had accepted me, but they had deferred me for a year, and this is very embarrassing, but I could not pass 11th grade math. I blame this inability to do math entirely on the fact that I moved around a lot as a kid, and every time I arrived in a new school system, they were doing a different form of math. They were very sympathetic at Binghamton because my English, my language and my history grades were top of the line, high region scores also, but that poor old math problem dragged my GPA down, so they had me go to Oneonta State for a year, where I did very well and got my feet, let us say, and arrived at Binghamton in January, 1973 and my first impression walking through the Student Union and smelling the pot. [laughter]
IG: 03:41
That is a great that is a great sensory image. And so how did you respond to that? Did you-
PB: 03:50
Did not bother me in the slightest. I was assigned to it this time. It was pretty new College in the Woods for my dorm residents, and the dorms were nice. They were new and fun, and I did not have the world's greatest roommates, but that all got sorted out initially, and I was overwhelmed. It was huge. And the first thing that came in very strongly to me is that I for the first time in my life being a sheltered Wasp who received her letter from the DAR at age 18. I was a minority, because a large majority of the students there were from down state, New York or the Metro New York area, and they were Jewish, and so here I was a little Wasp girl in the middle of this large college he had a kosher kitchen in the student union, which I found rather amazing, and you kind of could not miss the ambient tea. But you know what? It turned out to be wonderful. And I credit Binghamton for teaching me how to enjoy and coexist and live with diversity. And there were plenty of other upstate students there, somehow, we all found each other. And what was a very fascinating thing is that we integrated well into our fellow students’ lifestyles. And many times, when we made buddies, a couple of us would be upstate non-Jews, and then we would have one or two Jews in our in our little group.
IG: 05:20
So, but the diversity was largely upstate, downstate Jewish-
PB: 05:25
Right at this time, there was very small black--I did know a few black students and very small Asian. I knew one, and ironically, that was not unlike Oneonta, where I went to high school with no black, or I went to high school with no ethnic students at all, and there were three Jewish families in town, so I had had a very sheltered existence in terms of the world at Oneonta get to Binghamton, and it is a whole other ball game.
IG: 05:57
So how do you remember, what are your first impression of the campus physically? I mean, did you, I mean, you are from upstate New York, so-
PB: 06:09
It was much bigger than Oneonta. The architecture was very diverse, which I found interesting. At Binghamton, things were built at different times. As I said, I went into new dorms, but they had an older residential area called Dickerson, and there were lots of different campus buildings that were all architecturally different. It was a hodgepodge. There were nice outdoor sculptures, and there was a quad, and there was the library, which I gravitated to at once because I lived at my library in Oneonta, at the town library, which was a nice old library.
IG: 06:47
Can you describe the library for us in the early (19)70s? What was that like?
PB: 06:53
I am trying to remember. It was not as it is now. It was largely floor by floor on a lateral rectangular layout, but there were some underground areas that were reached by bridges, and the art library was down in an underground part of the library that had its own spaces, shared with the music division. And so architecturally was interesting, a little foreign. You have to remember, this is the pre computer age. The only machinery we had there were microfilm machines and the early photocopiers, which always seemed to break down every five minutes.
IG: 07:34
But you had slides. I mean, we will talk [crosstalk] we will talk about that. And was the art museum-
PB: 07:44
That was active. It was over in the building. It was on the quad. I think I cannot remember what they called the building. There are things there I am stubbornly forgetting. But it had the large statue of Pegasus on it, which was a big joke about Pegasus. And we shared quarters. The art department was there. The first thing I have to tell you, however, is I did not go right to the art department. I came in in (19)73 planning to be an archeologist. So, I was an anthropology major. And I really do not they were in separate buildings, and I do not remember much about them, except for the physical Anthro lab.
IG: 08:21
What drew you to archeology?
PB: 08:24
Okay, this is an interesting story. It was Native American. I wanted to be at that time Binghamton's degree was called the anthropology of the North American Indian. I wanted to be a field archeologist. I did my field work in my first at the end of my first year in Binghamton, and we discovered that I could not work in the field. I had a million allergies, and I was a bug magnet, and they would and we, there might be 25 of us on the dig, and none of them would get bit, and I would be bit to the point that I was bloody. The professors, the field supervisors, they told me, do not shower, do not use soap, do not use shampoo. I did all those things, and at the end of the term, they said to me, “You just cannot do field work.” And I felt like my heart was broken, but-but because they were intellectually astute at Binghamton and the professors in anthropology, not one of whom do I remember their names, by the way, but they were good. They recommended I look at the Art History program, and I did, and I was welcomed in. And the professors were top of the line. They were all refugees from Ivy League, and many of them left after I finished my master's, to go back to Ivy League, and that is what I did. I ended up taking an art history BA and MA.
IG: 09:52
And what drew you to Native American culture?
PB: 09:59
We had a Native American in our family that we did not know anything about.
IG: 10:04
A relative?
PB: 10:04
A relative, you have to remember this is from the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. You have to understand that my mom and dad's family grew up upstate New York, rural, and they were prejudiced, like many people, and they attempted to hide the identity of this relative, and I became very intrigued by that. I found photos and I found data, and I was only able to determine that he was a Seneca Indian whose family were wiped out by a typhus-typhus epidemic in the early 1900s and he was adopted by a Baptist missionary family whose last name was Baxter. How interesting. And they hid his identity, so we had the- my mother had an interest in this, even though it was not her family, it was my father's. We had virtually no information about him. This is my problem here. [coughs] But anyway-
IG: 11:08
He has been a great grand uncle?
PB: 11:12
Great grandfather, as far as and the other thing, however, you need to understand, because I did try to look into it to see if there was a connection that I could prove historically. Because, if you may not know, in the United States, Indian tribes are regulated by the blood quantum level. They are the only ones that are of all minorities in the country. However, the Senecas are matrilineal, and this was a paternal relative, so I did not qualify. I am probably 1/64 Iroquois, Seneca, as they would say, how Dasani. I have no family-
IG: 11:36
Have you done DNA test?
PB: 11:47
No, I did not. I did not do that. So that was I felt with that background, I was officially interested. My mother was interested. She kept some books on anthropology around the house. But I also was interested in classical Greek and Rome. And a matter of fact, my MA thesis now my BA thesis was on Roman painting. So, you see, I sidelined the Native American interest in and it became a dual interest with first, initially classical Greece and Rome. And then I became, my master's was expertise in English and American 19th century decorative art, which led me ultimately to the jewelry. And I had very good training for that.
IG: 12:42
Do you remember the professors you studied?
PB: 12:44
I remember every one of my professors and-and then I want to mention one who was not one who was a professor, but not in art history, because I was mindful of your questions. My-my undergraduate advisor was Vincent Bruno, very distinguished expert in underwater archeology, and he had written a book on the Parthenon. And I wrote my master's thesis. Sorry, I am sorry. Ba thesis under him on Roman painting. But two of the professors were very good to me, and I did the dangerous thing. And when I stayed on for the MA, I switched over to-
IG: 13:22
Why do you say the dangerous thing?
PB: 13:23
Well, because you can alienate your professor. However, Bruno and I managed to stay friends, and I used to see him after college, I stayed in touch with these three professors I am mentioning now after college, who were delighted by the career turn I did, because they wanted me to stay on for a PhD, and I left them to go to Columbia University and get my MLS in art librarianship. But Kenneth Lindsay and Albert Boime were my MA advisors. Ken was very good to many students, mentored a lot of them. And Albert Boime is brilliant 19th century scholar, but lots of thing, and he was a Marxist art historian at that time. Marxist art history is a little old fashioned. You have to understand that I went to college so far back that a lot of the current methodologies did not develop. But Marxism is really social history, which is what I wanted, and that is the methodology I adopted.
IG: 14:19
It is, it is, it is a critical lens through which to see art.
PB: 14:25
How art is developed-
IG: 14:27
Is Terry Eagleton, one of the Marxist I mean, he is a literature critic.
PB: 14:34
Was he at Binghamton at the time?
IG: 14:36
No, but he is a Marxist.
PB: 14:39
Yeah. Al was Albert was probably, I was that way too. Yeah-yeah. And he wrote unabashedly, Marxi- Marxist theory. He is famous for a number of books. His most famous book is about the academy the in both England and France, the idea of the Parisian Academy in the 19th century. But he was very diverse. He wrote an article about the pre-Raphaelites, and had other interests as well.
IG: 15:08
Okay.
PB: 15:08
I was his grad assistant in, um [crosstalk]
IG: 15:12
How-how was your thinking personality shaping through all of these courses, and the attention that you were getting in class, and um-
PB: 15:24
I was growing and I was developing as a person. I was very repressed in high school. I was repressed because of my family situation. I actually had almost no boyfriends. I did not fit into all the cliques in Oneonta and kind of went from one to one to one, which we turned out to be my personality. I am the kind of person that breaks through all the cliques and is a friend and I and interestingly, my father was that way as a faculty member too. They could all be fighting with each other, but everybody liked my father, and he united them, etc. I could go from clique to clique in different group, perhaps because I was a solitary girl child, but as an adult, critical thinking adult, Binghamton was excellent for me, and the library did play a role, because I had always been bookish. I always read a lot. I am a speed reader, by the way, which is something we found out in high school, [crosstalk], and it is just a natural speed reader who retains and I still I read a lot of books. Now I read, I read all kinds of fiction and genre and nonfiction. So, the library answered a lot of needs, but socially, I bloomed and I developed. And probably the most critical thing of all, I should tell you, although we could save it for the end, is that I met the love of my life in Binghamton, although I was wise and kept him as a friend, and he was a friend, and we did not start dating and become a couple until I was in grad school. He graduated (19)76. And-
IG: 16:54
A Grad school in Binghamton?
PB: 16:56
No, he graduates undergraduate. He graduated in 1976 from Binghamton, English major with a Medieval Studies Certificate, and-
IG: 17:04
So, he probably knows Kenneth Lindsay.
PB: 17:07
Well, his professors were you will know him. I am blanking. If you gave me some names, I would know Charmack, Paul Charmack, Robin Oggins, and a few others whose names I have forgotten. He had a medieval certificate. He and I, next month, in February, in March, will be celebrating our 40th winning anniversary.
IG: 17:33
What is his name?
PB: 17:34
Barry Katzen.
IG: 17:37
Well, congratulations. [crosstalk]
PB: 17:39
There used to be a joke in my mother's time about how girls would go to college to get their Mrs. In the 70s, we totally spat upon that idea, and we are not into it. I naturally had to become a feminist at this time period, and that is partly why I kept my-my maiden name, but also because I had student loans due, and I just did not want to do the paperwork to change to a married name. But what was the point I was going to make? That it was a byproduct. He was a friend I made. And I also think that it was very good that we stayed friends for a couple years before we became romantically involved. I think that is why our marriage is endured. We know a number of couples in Binghamton who married while in college, and every one of those couples is divorced now. So, we waited, and it was very good. Now, one thing I wanted to say, because you want to talk about life experiences, and I have to laugh, Barry and I took a course together, an English course under Alvin Voss, who we were very fond of in the English Department. And it was on Shakespeare. And I used to, I remember I was naughty. I used to slip notes to Barry sometimes during class, but to this day, he and I will quote lines from Shakespeare. Will have memories of a line like when I was at NYPL and they were getting ready to have layoffs at the during the recession of 2008-9. I remembered a quote from As You Like It, when I was at home I was in a better place, or when I began writing magazine articles, I would remember brevity is the soul of wit and things of that nature. And I have to say to this day, Barry and I laughed, but we feel like that. Shakespeare class gave us an unknown at the time, but lasting connection. And of course, nowadays, well, Shakespeare can endure, and does endure, but it is funny and that we remember Voss and his lectures and his talks, whereas I have forgotten all my anthropology professors’ names, and not my art history, but a lot of other professors, and we both still remember that class.
IG: 17:41
Why do you think that is? Why do you think that you have such a clear memory of that class with Barry and-and sort of, you know, a foggy memory of the other classes?
PB: 18:27
I think Vos [Alvin Vos], who actually physically was kind of an unassuming, modest man, youngish at that time, spoke in a very sometimes dreamy tone of voice, very meaningful. And he had us read, not always the obvious parts from Shakespeare, but when he did, he would actually allow us into that world. And I remember that one of them we read, and that is still my favorite. And then as I began to understand that there were some possible Native American Connections in that, the tempest became my favorite play. And with the line, oh, Brave New World, this is the one where Miranda and prospect [crosstalk] exile, and it had to be his teaching, and it had to be our willingness to be receptive. And what is interesting is it was not a course that was really going to line up with what we did in our day to day lives, but it stayed with us. And I cannot explain it. I feel that there was an intellectual rigor about Binghamton's programs and all the courses that you took that was excellent, and my BA was hard earned, particularly my senior year. I should say another thing too, Barry and I were on pipe dream. So, we were connected with some of the politics on campus. We knew people in student government. Barry roomed with the President of the Student Council. And=
IG: 21:50
What was his name, the-
PB: 21:51
Bill Gordon. And so, we knew the student council. I do have to say, though, that compared to what was going on in the (19)60s, by (19)73, (19)74, (19)75 things were relatively calm, although there was one sit in over tuition increases that everybody was involved with.
IG: 22:07
You were involved in the sit in?
PB: 22:08
Well, I did not go right in, but Barry was and we knew people that were doing the sit in. We were on pipe dream. So, we sent our-
IG: 22:16
Student newspaper?
PB: 22:17
Yes, and I became Features Editor in (19)74 I should also say that is another connection. I was on my high school newspaper. I was on the Oneonta state newspaper. I guess I was thinking about journalism alongside or as a way of earning money, because anthropology and art history can be difficult to break into. And I got onto pipe dream. And Barry got onto pipe dream. He started out as a photographer for pipe dream, and eventually became managing editor. I was Features Editor there for the year of 1974 which is pretty cool. And I stepped out, though in (19)75 because I was a senior and my courses and my BA thesis were tough. I could not give the time and attention to pipe dream that I could previously. Barry became editor in chief of pipe dream in 1976.
IG: 23:10
What kind of features article were you running at the time? Do you remember?
PB: 23:14
I would report on concerts. I also had, I had writers under me. I would report on art exhibits, what was going on in the art museum, concerts, and even sometimes major concerts that came to Binghamton, to the arena, things like that. There would be people that would come to play. I remember that we had Harry Chapin, or maybe I am confusing that with Oneonta, but he would come by a few times, and other singer songwriters and features, as I can remember, that really related to art and music and cultural activities.
IG: 23:41
I see.
PB: 23:51
Plays.
IG: 23:57
Plays. Remember any titles that were-
PB: 23:59
No-no, I have to tell you, I really do not remember, and I think that it was because of the senior year. They were very demanding in the art history program, very demanding, which was good for me later in life. And then, of course, I went right into the MA which was grueling back at that time, there was a thought that I could teach college without my PhD. That changed a lot by the end of the decade. So, they were very rigorous in preparing me to teach introductory art history, which meant I had to know every image in Janssen, and part of my exam-
IG: 24:25
Janssen being the textbook?
PB: 24:37
Being the history, the famous history of art had 3000 images in it, and part of my master's degree in order to qualify for it were two exams. One was a written thesis, which I did with Boime, and the other were my orals. And my oral exams is I would go into an into the classroom, and they would show 12 slides. With no identification. And I had to be able to identify them. And they could be from pre-history to now and then talk about their context. And they would do sly and clever things. Renaissance closely mimicked Hellenistic Greek and Roman sculpture. You could get confused. They put something in. It was modeled on something at and the cruelest thing they did, because I missed this one. If I missed more than two, I failed. So, I could not fail. The son of the guns, and I will say it to the day this day, put up the Bury Edmund's cross without the Christ on it. And I and several colleagues were taking our orals missed that one. So, when I said it was rigorous, it was rigorous.
IG: 25:48
Was it ever it- was it ever constructed without the Christ on the cross? Or did they just take it off?
PB: 25:55
They take it off. I think it could be removed for cleaning. So, they had slides of it removed for cleaning and whatever. Yeah, they wanted us to be able to recognize that cross form and pin it to the time period because it was significant. The beauty for how it hand helped me in later life is to this day, if you show me a page full of various different images, I can identify right away differences and similarities and things of that nature. That is a rigorous visual training that does not happen today in current art historical training, and I do not think any students in the last 10, 20 years could handle that.
IG: 26:36
Why do you think that that has changed?
PB: 26:38
Because I think the entire academic picture has changed within the (19)80s, (19)90s, 2000s with No Child Left Behind. The Switch to stem as you know, there has been a movement away from liberal arts training and art history has also been a very, very rigorous, demanding field, every one of my professors was male, and yet most students, not just the Binghamton but elsewhere Columbia elsewhere, are female. Men do get ahead. I noticed you had a question about, did men do better? The few men that were interested in art history, I remember always kind of did better in terms of getting to speak more with a professor, or being called on first, or things like that. So yes, there was some mild sexism going on in there, but all of these men that I studied under undergrad and grad were themselves products of ivy league training, and they all invariably went back to Ivy League. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why I did not go on for a PhD is that I knew Al was going to jump to UCLA, a lot of them, except for Lindsay, who stayed and was faithful, all of them went to other places and-and Bruno came down to New York, so I was able to see him there, and he And I kept up a relationship, and it was tough, but it also induced the same academic-academic snobbery in me, snobbery in me, when I talking about the library at Binghamton, because I know this is important, I got a job right away working in the library. All the art librarians, from Betty Lincoln to Thomas Jacoby were very nurturing, and I was very, very good working there. I mean, did not do anything super professional, and they encouraged me when I began to think, I am a girl from a family with no money, and they want me to stay on for a PhD, and then I am going to have to go on and move around the entire country, taking little jobs, just like my dad had to do to get to where he wanted to go, and make very little money and often be adjunct. And maybe I should do something practical. And they say I am good as a librarian. So, I went down and applied to Columbia. I was not going to go anywhere but the finest program in the country. This is what Binghamton had done to me. And I went down and I interviewed with them, and I said, “I want you to know I want to come in. I only plan to be an art librarian. I am very ambitious. I want to run one of the best art libraries in the country.” And they like that because they were very arrogant thought and knew they were the finest [crosstalk] I am blanking on the names, so forgive me, all of them, and it is just today right now, or it is an issue I have with my age, but I can remember them, and they were good. They were they were kind of arrogant there, too. And by the way, this is a digression, that department was eliminated.
IG: 29:38
Oh, I know I went-
PB: 29:39
[crosstalk] and that had to do with real estate. They did not play their cards, right?
IG: 29:45
But it is also, it is also, I mean, this is another conversation, but it is also that they were in keeping up with all of the technological development,
PB: 29:52
Right. And they did not do a good job on that. The other thing they did not do is they did not forge ties with departments like communications, journalism, because something happened out in Florida with one of their major universities there, and they eliminated the library school, and all the faculty were able to go to other positions in the college. But at that time, Columbia was on the top and they allowed me to construct a master's in library science there that was completely art oriented. I even took government documents and did the art documents from the National Endowment of the Arts. And it was also a big in for getting jobs. Why I had to work all the time. I mean, I did not say this at the beginning, but there was not money in my family. I had taken out student loans, which I paid off, or things like that, but I got scholarships there at Columbia. My workplaces, I worked at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and then I worked at, this is a stretch American Institute of Physics, in their photo archives working and they paid for my second year of library school.
IG: 30:59
How wonderful.
PB: 31:00
I did not stay with them. They did not mind. They paid obviously, this is a long time ago, and I got my MLS in 1979 so the Columbia connection, I would not have gone there. I would not have done as well as I did, if it had not been for the rigor of the background in both my undergraduate and then my first graduate training in Binghamton, and I did very well in library school there, and I got very great jobs, except the one thing is, I was offered a job at SUNY Purchase, straight out of library school, and Barry announced that he wanted to get out of New York. He was having existential angst, and he applied to grad school at UCLA and Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin, and we got married, and I went with him, so I deferred that job.
IG: 31:50
Where did you end up going?
PB: 31:51
I ended up not getting a good job. I ended up getting a parent. Oh, you guys love this. I ended up working in the agriculture college, in their library in their land, tenure library in Madison-Madison, Wisconsin, because nobody I- okay, this is a good story.
IG: 32:10
Okay, tell us a good story.
PB: 32:11
It is a good story. And coming from Binghamton, you can see that I already have a little intellectual snobbery, well-earned and well deserved. I applied for a job at the Madison County Technical College. So, I go in for the interview, and he looks at my resume, and he looks at my resume, and he said, “Columbia University. I do not know where that is or what that is.” He said, “I only hire University of Wisconsin graduates get out of my office.” There was a very strong- this was 1979, (19)80. There was a very strong anti- well, no, they had had a blow up. They had had the ROTC building was blown up during the (19)60s, and they blamed outside agitators from New York. However, it did not take me very long to find out that the kid who blew up the ROTC building and killed a math professor was a local Madison boy. But I would be in the student I would be in the staff lounge and just over here, well, you know him. He is a con artist. He is from New York, and I would get this. I had a great work study student who worked for me, and I am talking to her, and she was really bright. And I said, “Oh, you know, I would hire you or something like that right away, or, you know, or but I had trouble getting hired here.” And she said to me, I and she loved me, by the way. She said, “I would not hire you. You are not a UW grad.” I actually, I heard that the woman they hired instead of me at Purchase left after a year, and she was Dr. Stan. She taught at Columbia before it closed, and got a PhD from there. So, I wrote to them, and I said, “I lied.” I said, “Oh, I am coming back and I will be living right in the area. Any chance that you would interview me for the job,” they hired me right back in so I left my husband behind for a year in Madison. He finished his master's degree, and I came and lived by myself in White Plains, where I lived for 31 years and worked at SUNY Purchase. From SUNY Purchase, I was lured to the Museum of Modern Art, where I became head of reference.
IG: 34:30
Marvelous.
PB: 34:31
And it was quite an amazing job. I got to meet all kinds of wonderful people. I partied with Andy Warhol. I had-
IG: 34:40
Tell us about that.
PB: 34:41
Oh, well, that would be, that was a good joke I would tell my students about because we were both drunk at a at a reception, and-
IG: 34:49
Where was the reception?
PB: 34:50
I was working at MOMA. MoMA was the child of the Rockefellers, who were the trustees, and they also, of course, Rockefeller Center. They had redone all of. Restaurants. This is back in (19)84, I believe. And yeah, it is (19)84 or so, and they had redone all the restaurants around the skating rink in Manhattan. They had the statue and all that. So, they closed the area off and they did a large reception. I saw Donald Trump there with his first wife, and all I could think of was she has five inches of makeup on.
IG: 35:22
She has what?
PB: 35:23
Five inches of makeup on. But it was one of those looks (19)80s parties you hear about. And they had stations where you could go get your sirloin burger, your pate this and that. They had open wine and liquor bars. So I was with all the librarians, you know, all the library people at MoMA. We were sitting together big table across from Keith Haring, who stuck his foot out and let me trip over it, and then laughed outrageously. That was Keith. And so, this is a really good story. This is the really and I think Binghamton was at the root of my being able to take all this very well. So, I- we drank liberally. I was a young woman at this time. I was really young. I was 24 when I got my second master's in Columbia. So, I had started college age 16. So, I had, I did all my training together in this, you know, seven, eight-year period, and-and then had it. So, we all been drinking very nicely, and my seat mates came back to me said, "Oh, Paula, there is a chocolate mousse station down there." And they describe where it is. "Oh," I said, three sheets to the wind, or whatever you call I want. I want chocolate mousse. So, I jumped up in the table, and I run over there, and I find out there is a big line, and at the end of the line there is this very handsome man. mind you, I am drunk, and he is wearing a gray bespoke suit, a beautiful lavender necktie. He has snow white hair, and it is tied back like a 19th century man with a velvet ribbon in the back, and he smells of some fantastic cologne. So, I go running up to him, and I say, "Oh, I love chocolate mousse, do not you" And he looks at me, and he sees me, and he smiles his beatific smile. And I said, “What a handsome guy, I am going to flirt with him.” And we start having this amazing, stupid, superficial conversation about chocolate mousse and chocolate mousses we have loved, and chocolate mousses we would like. And we had to wait about 10, 15 minutes on the line, or maybe, I know it was around 10 minutes, and then he was ahead of me in line, so they fixed his plate, but like a gentleman, he stayed with me, and then he helped advise me, because he had, like, white chocolate mousse, and this, I mean, this is the Lux 80s. You would never get that now. And-and help me fill my plate, and then, and I am chatting away at him, and he is chatting back at me, and then we get ready to part, and he is sitting in different areas, so we are standing and we are talking to each other like we are kind of like enamored of each other. And I said, “That was a wonderful talk we had. Thank you very much.” And he looks at me. He says, “I had a great time. Thank you.” So, he walks away. So here is the best part. Here are all my librarian friends. They are jumping up and down on their tables, on the chairs, because they are drunk too, screaming. They look just like the monkeys in 2001 with the monolith. "Paula. Paula. Paula. That was Andy Warhol." And I said, "That was Andy." And they said, "Yeah, what the hell were you doing with him?" It looked like he was going to pick you up and take you for a date. Well. I said, "Well, that would not be bloody likely, but I did not know it was him." And then I told the story to one of my students in college years later, and one of my little students said, she said, "You know what I think happened? He loved that you did not recognize him, and he probably did not get that that much." And then I just talked to him like he was a human, like he was another guy, and I was flirting with him and everything. Later on, I had to teach Warhol in college, because I taught this creative mind course I read, and it turned out he had a famous quote, I am a very superficial person, and it was part of his whole, you know, raise on debt and all that. And I realized that that interlude, my 15 minutes of fame with him, or 10 or whatever, because he is the one that made that quote. You know, we probably were having a wonderful time. Because if I know who he was, I would have changed my behavior immediately and been whatever. And he had the joy of a young woman who did not know he was gay and did not know he was who he was, and just true human beings having fun at a party. And I met some other great people too. So, MoMA was wonderful, but I was very ambitious. Ancient Chinese curse, you sometimes will get what you want. So, I applied for the curatorship of the Art and Architecture Department at New York Public Library. I did not do research, number one mistake, but I knew that that was one of the premier positions, and I was very ambitious, and I had competition that took six months to hire, and then I was hired, and I stayed there for 22 years. But it was a terrible place, a terrible, terrible workplace, terrible.
IG: 40:35
Why?
PB: 40:36
Because there was no appreciation of the employees and no trust, no appreciation. For example, I curated exhibitions, but I was not allowed to talk to the President of the of NYPL. Did not want staff talking to trustees. I- my boss and I had to give a little show and tell to Oscar de la Renta, his wife, Annette and Bill Blass. They love me. Bill Blass started up a friendship with me. He wanted to do stuff. I had to actually go to the director of the NYPL and tell him that Bill Blass was talking to me directly. And he put an end to that at once, it was terrible.
IG: 41:21
How terrible.
PB: 41:22
One time, if you know about development-
IG: 41:24
Who instituted those rules?
PB: 41:27
I do not know, but that was a culture, that was a culture. And I came in. At-
IG: 41:32
Do you think that that has changed?
PB: 41:34
I think it has gotten worse.
IG: 41:36
You think that it is- but Tony Marks was president.
PB: 41:40
And at, yeah, he was at, oh, God, what is it? I have a friend of mine works, worked there for him.
IG: 41:47
But no longer.
PB: 41:48
Yeah, Amherst College. Was Amherst, or was it the other one.
IG: 41:52
Who was the president at the time?
PB: 41:54
Well, I had several, actually, I do not even mean president, I mean director of the library. I see Bill Walker, and he was not a good person. Oh, I am seeing this librarianship, so, all right, I am getting a little too free here. All right, make sure you delete that and, you know, just leave it vague like that. It was not a good place to work. And one example of that is that they brought in new management around 2004 and the word got out, but then they took so long, because they were using lawyers, they were going McKinsey Company had come and done a survey. They blamed upper management. They found out, right? Who was responsible? Well, you know, upper management is not going to take the fall. So, they decided that all the middle managers who were over 40 would be gotten rid of. And that was me, along with some brilliant people. I had just done an exhibition there. Oh, and they made a gag order. We were not allowed to talk for three years about being turned down. And one of their motives where we were in the New York State Pension, and the ones who had been there who were over 55 and were in tier one, they cost them a fortune. I was in tier four, though, and which was the least one. But they just came and they just cleaned house. They tossed one of the beloved curators, who was considered to be the best map librarian in the country, out while she was still doing an exhibition, I had just done an exhibition that broke attendance records and had gotten raves in the New York Times, in New Yorker magazine, and they decided-
IG: 43:37
These articles, do these articles mention you?
PB: 43:40
Yes. Oh, not always.
IG: 43:44
Not always.
PB: 43:44
The New York Times is funny about not necessarily mentioning curators and things like that. Although I did get mentioned in the early exhibitions later on, I might have-
IG: 43:56
What was the name of the exhibition that you were-
PB: 43:59
I have the poster in the home. It is called Art Deco design, rhythm and verve. That was the attendance breaking one, but it did not matter, and I knew the collection. I had a master's. I had been there 22 years and but they had brought in a manager, and he was actually a colleague, friend of mine, and they decided they would not have two non-union managers, so I was the one to go, and he had just come in a few years ago. Previously-
IG: 44:36
When did that happen?
PB: 44:37
2002 because I was going out for brain surgery. I had a brain tumor. I am a brain tumor survivor, and we did not know if I was going to make it, but that is not why they hired him. They did not even know all this was coming down until I let them know, and he came on board like the week before I went for my surgery.
IG: 44:58
Okay, so that-that is really a life changing event,
PB: 45:02
Yes, and-
IG: 45:03
You survived.
PB: 45:04
Yeah.
IG: 45:05
How did that change your life?
PB: 45:06
Well, I began to see I began too again. Maybe we can even think my critical thinking skills were good from my early 20s on, I knew a lot of us stayed there. I was very highly paid. I was one of the highest paid art librarians in the country, which is what I wanted. But that made me a target. I had a big target on my back. [crosstalk] Yes, they did not care. I mean, the people that they let go, they let go of the curator in the Slavic division, the curator-
IG: 45:38
I know, I know-
PB: 45:40
[crosstalk] They let John Lundquist. They let go of Alice Hudson, everybody who was over 40. And mind you, they were not necessarily as well-well paid as me, because they have been there longer. I came in and I had-
IG: 45:53
What was, what was their what was the premise? I mean, what was, what was their explanation for doing away. For example-
PB: 46:02
They were going, they wanted to integrate. It was going to be one library they did away with the research libraries. They had started a remote storage facility at Princeton that they did in Tandem with Princeton and Columbia put your books into stories, you probably had a 60 percent chance of never seeing them again. It all went black. It went black.
IG: 46:31
It was such a-
PB: 46:32
And I had a gag, I had a gag order on me. For me, they had to be careful, because Alice and John and Ed. They were, they were older than me, 10 years older than me. I was just in my mid 50s at that time, I came in as a tier four, the bottom tier, and they really did not have a reason. And if they had been asked, why did you take the one with all the experience and credentials over the one that is just come in as a library manager, they would not have a leg to stand on. So, this is what they did, which was illegal, but believe me, they had all their lawyers on it. They knew I would turn 55 in October, 2009 so they kept me on for a year. They let me know in July, 2008 that I was out, my position was eliminated. That is how they got around it legally. My position as curator, they retired. Almost all except for a couple curator positions just eliminated them. That was a legal thing that they did to protect themselves and with me they came. They said, “This is totally illegal by New York State law.” Why am I doing this as a recording here? Well, I do not mind. I am past the date now. They told me, “Oh, Paula, you are going to be 55 next September.” Illegal-illegal-illegal. Why do not we have you retire then, and we will give you health benefits for life, for right up through Medicare, and even help you with which is what they did with retirees. But they did not have to give them to me, and they did not give them to a lot of other people who they laid off. They laid off 65 people at the time I was let go, and 64 of them were called into the auditorium and told you have 10 days to pack up and leave. I was the 65th but they waited on me. The director had me in his office, and I come in, and I knew I am in trouble because the labor relations guy is there, and he said, coldly to me, I am the one that had done all these things. Got articles in New York Times and that, as did all my colleagues. And he said, “Things are changing here at New York Public Library, we no longer have any need of your experience or services.” And it was mean as could be Now, there are ways to handle it. And this guy, who is now head of the National Archives, by the way, you know, was very mean to me. I guess he was told he had to be that way. I am sure he did not enjoy it, but he enjoyed his very lux salary as director. I think he was brought in. We all agree, he was brought in as a henchman, and there was a reward waiting for him down the line, which there was, and he, you know, there is so many ways to tell somebody they are not wanted anymore. He could have done it and still got rid of me and said, “You know, this is great, but we are changing to more stem version, and we are going to downplay our liberal art.” He just basically made me feel like a creep. And then when I am like, really creep, and I am thinking, gee, maybe I have a lawsuit here, and they were terribly afraid of that, he said, “But you know what, we are going to keep you. You are still a year away from being 55 we are going to keep you for a year, and we are going to second you.” He did not use second. I mean, using that term to the Education Department, where you will work till next year, and maybe you can stay on and but at least when you get retired, you will be 55 and you will be in the state pension system, and you can get a pension. Well, first of all, illegally. That is illegal-illegal-illegal. You do not talk to an employee about their age. And yet, they did, I and they did it, you know, and I think that they were measuring lawsuit versus, you know, the carrot to get someone who had had a brain tumor and had to get checked every few years and take an MRI, and I also had both my knees replaced in 2006 and then had radiation because the tumor grew again. They knew I needed health benefits, so that was my bribery, and I went for it. And as soon as I was retired, nobody in the New York area would touch me because I was retired, so I am desperate, and so I decided to write books again, and I taught a little course back at Purchase and continuing ed and on the next to second, last second to last night of the course I was teaching, one of my students raised her hand, said, "My husband's a dean at Berkeley College. They are looking for someone to teach art history and critical thinking. Can I recommend you?” They hired me like a flash.
IG: 51:29
That is wonderful.
PB: 51:31
And I worked for them for nearly eight years. But Binghamton, I am in you know, I think Binghamton-Binghamton opened my eyes to the world, but also taught me what intellectual integrity was, and about hard work and about various things. I have another story for you, which will tell you about the upstate downstate I worked various jobs and jobs I worked most often when I was an undergraduate, because I had school, but I needed that money. I had no spending money. I worked as a night guard in the dorms because I was a night owl. But one summer when I was not taking many courses, they hired me in the cafeteria of the Student Union, and I like it was my second day there, and they said, “You know what, we are going to put you on the cash register?” Well, it turned out to be a call celeb, and all of Binghamton was talking about it, because they had never, ever put a student, an undergraduate student, on the cash register, because they figured, or, steal, and I was in nine days wonder, I think the radio station had a big thing about it, pipe dream had a little article about it. People would come up to me and say, they put you on the cash register. And I Yeah, but they-they knew they talked to me and I talked upstate. They knew where I came from. They even knew part of my family through Cooperstown and stuff like that. And so, I always thought that that was a marvelous statement about Binghamton. And this is (19)74, (19)70 sometimes (19)74 or late (19)73 and this was the upstate downstate divide, because all of us were firmly agreed, and they would not say anything in the cafeteria. But I knew it was true that because I was an upstate girl, they could trust me on the cash register.
IG: 53:29
That is a great story. We are running out of time.
PB: 53:34
I knew it.
IG: 53:34
And so, I usually conclude these interviews by asking, what lessons did you learn from this time in your life? And you said “Intellectual integrity and a rigor.”
PB: 53:48
Being able to work hard. I was not able to write five books without being very disciplined. I had to make decisions like, I am not watching television, I am writing. I cannot write books if I watch television. And I think that some of the arrogance of my professors in that program, you know, that we are the best, and this and that rubbed off on me, because I wanted to go to the best college for librarianship when I decided to be a professional librarian, art librarian. And I also think that Binghamton took a sheltered little girl from a very white bread, you know, not diverse community, grew up that way, and exposed her to lots of different students, lots of different situations. Socially, I did well. Romance wise, I went from being a little girl who did not go to the prom to, you know, popular, and I became a person. But all my critical thinking, because I was very informed when I came to Binghamton, developed there, and I had to learn to grow up fast. There were things that we do not need to talk about Binghamton, that you learn to grow up fast. Asked about and you had to have faith in your faculty. And I certainly did. And I, you know, I did two master's degrees willy nilly, and got by them quite well, straight out of there. And to this day, because I still intellectually, you know, I was hurt by the NYPL experience deeply hurt, and probably will be, you know, Barry says, you know, remember, that is past old news and all that, but writing all those books and doing all that was my way, and I have a lot of published articles-
IG: 55:36
Books, please tell our audience are on-
PB: 55:39
Native American jewelry. I am an expert in that area, particularly Southwestern Navajo and Pueblo jewelry, because the Southwest is the marketplace for all Native American jewelry. Jewelers from South America, Central America and Canada, come to the southwest to sell their jewelry.
IG: 56:02
And just tell us how many books you have written and some of the titles. And-
PB: 56:07
The first book I wrote was a tribute to my library background. I wrote the Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry. It is the first and only such encyclopedia of its kind. NYPL keeps it in their main reading room still, which is a source of pride to me that I have a book in the main reading room at NYPL at 42nd street. I then went on to write four more books. My magnum opus is a two-volume definitive 150 years of Navajo Pueblo jewelry design, 1870 to 2020, it is an expansion of my first full book, southwestern silver jewelry. And I have is going to be combination reference book, picture book. It will be the resource in the field jewelry, because and has often got short hand. You know, short treatment in academia and other areas, because it is decorative arts or whatever, and Native American art in general has not always had a literature that serves it well. A lot of people wrote were enthusiasts or collectors, and not necessarily academics. So, I am able to write in an academic but accessible, shall we say, accessible, scholarly man- manner, thanks to my education and my training as a professional.
IG: 57:33
Thank you so much. It has been a delightful interview, an extremely interesting life story.
PB: 57:41
I think Barry would be angry that I talked about the NYPL. But since this is a library and it is a center, and you know, they did us wrong, I do not mind being on record with this, they cannot do anything to me. Statute of limitations is long over, and you know, if you are going to be a librarian, you need to be alert. I saw many red flags in my time there. And, yeah, this is not being required.
IG: 58:10
All right. Thank you very, very much.
(End of Interview)
Interview with: Paula Baxter
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 1 March 2019
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(Start of Interview)
IG: 00:00
Now we are live.
PB: 00:02
Okay. Hi, I am Paula Baxter. I graduated from Binghamton in 1975 I stayed on for two more years and got a master's in 1977. We are sitting in my backyard in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I am at this point, retired from the New York Public Library, but I am also a former adjunct professor and a professional writer, and I am working on the magnum opus of my career at this moment. I am the daughter of a man who took a long time to become a college professor. My dad was in World War Two. He was one of those 16-year-old who lied about his age and went off, and he spent three years in the South Pacific. He came home, he went to NYU on the GI Bill, and he first worked as a liquor salesman, but he wanted to teach first high school and then college. This meant my childhood involved a lot of moving around, and we finally ended up by junior high school in Oneonta, New York, upstate, where he was a professor of Spanish at the college here at Oneonta State. He did not have his PhD, however, he had a master's from University of New Mexico, where we lived for a couple years in the early (19)60s. And he very slowly- he liked to joke that he was the world's longest running PhD candidate, but there were many more, and he went to Binghamton. And so, Binghamton was firmly lodged in my mind as a place to go. I did; however, I was the only child I did not like Oneonta to grow up in. I did not have a good time. There was illness in my family. Only child students were very cliquey and laugh at me now, but one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Binghamton was that none of my classmates in high school whatsoever, planned to go to Binghamton. And when you ask these kids why, they said, too many drugs. So luckily for me, I ignored them and went to Binghamton and became a real person.
IG: 02:15
Okay, so that is wonderful, a wonderful introduction. We will explore how you became a real person in Binghamton. Okay, so what were some of your first impressions of the college, Harpur College, and when did you arrive there?
PB: 02:39
Yeah, I arrived in January of 1973 I had graduated a semester early from high school, and Binghamton had accepted me, but they had deferred me for a year, and this is very embarrassing, but I could not pass 11th grade math. I blame this inability to do math entirely on the fact that I moved around a lot as a kid, and every time I arrived in a new school system, they were doing a different form of math. They were very sympathetic at Binghamton because my English, my language and my history grades were top of the line, high region scores also, but that poor old math problem dragged my GPA down, so they had me go to Oneonta State for a year, where I did very well and got my feet, let us say, and arrived at Binghamton in January, 1973 and my first impression walking through the Student Union and smelling the pot. [laughter]
IG: 03:41
That is a great that is a great sensory image. And so how did you respond to that? Did you-
PB: 03:50
Did not bother me in the slightest. I was assigned to it this time. It was pretty new College in the Woods for my dorm residents, and the dorms were nice. They were new and fun, and I did not have the world's greatest roommates, but that all got sorted out initially, and I was overwhelmed. It was huge. And the first thing that came in very strongly to me is that I for the first time in my life being a sheltered Wasp who received her letter from the DAR at age 18. I was a minority, because a large majority of the students there were from down state, New York or the Metro New York area, and they were Jewish, and so here I was a little Wasp girl in the middle of this large college he had a kosher kitchen in the student union, which I found rather amazing, and you kind of could not miss the ambient tea. But you know what? It turned out to be wonderful. And I credit Binghamton for teaching me how to enjoy and coexist and live with diversity. And there were plenty of other upstate students there, somehow, we all found each other. And what was a very fascinating thing is that we integrated well into our fellow students’ lifestyles. And many times, when we made buddies, a couple of us would be upstate non-Jews, and then we would have one or two Jews in our in our little group.
IG: 05:20
So, but the diversity was largely upstate, downstate Jewish-
PB: 05:25
Right at this time, there was very small black--I did know a few black students and very small Asian. I knew one, and ironically, that was not unlike Oneonta, where I went to high school with no black, or I went to high school with no ethnic students at all, and there were three Jewish families in town, so I had had a very sheltered existence in terms of the world at Oneonta get to Binghamton, and it is a whole other ball game.
IG: 05:57
So how do you remember, what are your first impression of the campus physically? I mean, did you, I mean, you are from upstate New York, so-
PB: 06:09
It was much bigger than Oneonta. The architecture was very diverse, which I found interesting. At Binghamton, things were built at different times. As I said, I went into new dorms, but they had an older residential area called Dickerson, and there were lots of different campus buildings that were all architecturally different. It was a hodgepodge. There were nice outdoor sculptures, and there was a quad, and there was the library, which I gravitated to at once because I lived at my library in Oneonta, at the town library, which was a nice old library.
IG: 06:47
Can you describe the library for us in the early (19)70s? What was that like?
PB: 06:53
I am trying to remember. It was not as it is now. It was largely floor by floor on a lateral rectangular layout, but there were some underground areas that were reached by bridges, and the art library was down in an underground part of the library that had its own spaces, shared with the music division. And so architecturally was interesting, a little foreign. You have to remember, this is the pre computer age. The only machinery we had there were microfilm machines and the early photocopiers, which always seemed to break down every five minutes.
IG: 07:34
But you had slides. I mean, we will talk [crosstalk] we will talk about that. And was the art museum-
PB: 07:44
That was active. It was over in the building. It was on the quad. I think I cannot remember what they called the building. There are things there I am stubbornly forgetting. But it had the large statue of Pegasus on it, which was a big joke about Pegasus. And we shared quarters. The art department was there. The first thing I have to tell you, however, is I did not go right to the art department. I came in in (19)73 planning to be an archeologist. So, I was an anthropology major. And I really do not they were in separate buildings, and I do not remember much about them, except for the physical Anthro lab.
IG: 08:21
What drew you to archeology?
PB: 08:24
Okay, this is an interesting story. It was Native American. I wanted to be at that time Binghamton's degree was called the anthropology of the North American Indian. I wanted to be a field archeologist. I did my field work in my first at the end of my first year in Binghamton, and we discovered that I could not work in the field. I had a million allergies, and I was a bug magnet, and they would and we, there might be 25 of us on the dig, and none of them would get bit, and I would be bit to the point that I was bloody. The professors, the field supervisors, they told me, do not shower, do not use soap, do not use shampoo. I did all those things, and at the end of the term, they said to me, “You just cannot do field work.” And I felt like my heart was broken, but-but because they were intellectually astute at Binghamton and the professors in anthropology, not one of whom do I remember their names, by the way, but they were good. They recommended I look at the Art History program, and I did, and I was welcomed in. And the professors were top of the line. They were all refugees from Ivy League, and many of them left after I finished my master's, to go back to Ivy League, and that is what I did. I ended up taking an art history BA and MA.
IG: 09:52
And what drew you to Native American culture?
PB: 09:59
We had a Native American in our family that we did not know anything about.
IG: 10:04
A relative?
PB: 10:04
A relative, you have to remember this is from the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. You have to understand that my mom and dad's family grew up upstate New York, rural, and they were prejudiced, like many people, and they attempted to hide the identity of this relative, and I became very intrigued by that. I found photos and I found data, and I was only able to determine that he was a Seneca Indian whose family were wiped out by a typhus-typhus epidemic in the early 1900s and he was adopted by a Baptist missionary family whose last name was Baxter. How interesting. And they hid his identity, so we had the- my mother had an interest in this, even though it was not her family, it was my father's. We had virtually no information about him. This is my problem here. [coughs] But anyway-
IG: 11:08
He has been a great grand uncle?
PB: 11:12
Great grandfather, as far as and the other thing, however, you need to understand, because I did try to look into it to see if there was a connection that I could prove historically. Because, if you may not know, in the United States, Indian tribes are regulated by the blood quantum level. They are the only ones that are of all minorities in the country. However, the Senecas are matrilineal, and this was a paternal relative, so I did not qualify. I am probably 1/64 Iroquois, Seneca, as they would say, how Dasani. I have no family-
IG: 11:36
Have you done DNA test?
PB: 11:47
No, I did not. I did not do that. So that was I felt with that background, I was officially interested. My mother was interested. She kept some books on anthropology around the house. But I also was interested in classical Greek and Rome. And a matter of fact, my MA thesis now my BA thesis was on Roman painting. So, you see, I sidelined the Native American interest in and it became a dual interest with first, initially classical Greece and Rome. And then I became, my master's was expertise in English and American 19th century decorative art, which led me ultimately to the jewelry. And I had very good training for that.
IG: 12:42
Do you remember the professors you studied?
PB: 12:44
I remember every one of my professors and-and then I want to mention one who was not one who was a professor, but not in art history, because I was mindful of your questions. My-my undergraduate advisor was Vincent Bruno, very distinguished expert in underwater archeology, and he had written a book on the Parthenon. And I wrote my master's thesis. Sorry, I am sorry. Ba thesis under him on Roman painting. But two of the professors were very good to me, and I did the dangerous thing. And when I stayed on for the MA, I switched over to-
IG: 13:22
Why do you say the dangerous thing?
PB: 13:23
Well, because you can alienate your professor. However, Bruno and I managed to stay friends, and I used to see him after college, I stayed in touch with these three professors I am mentioning now after college, who were delighted by the career turn I did, because they wanted me to stay on for a PhD, and I left them to go to Columbia University and get my MLS in art librarianship. But Kenneth Lindsay and Albert Boime were my MA advisors. Ken was very good to many students, mentored a lot of them. And Albert Boime is brilliant 19th century scholar, but lots of thing, and he was a Marxist art historian at that time. Marxist art history is a little old fashioned. You have to understand that I went to college so far back that a lot of the current methodologies did not develop. But Marxism is really social history, which is what I wanted, and that is the methodology I adopted.
IG: 14:19
It is, it is, it is a critical lens through which to see art.
PB: 14:25
How art is developed-
IG: 14:27
Is Terry Eagleton, one of the Marxist I mean, he is a literature critic.
PB: 14:34
Was he at Binghamton at the time?
IG: 14:36
No, but he is a Marxist.
PB: 14:39
Yeah. Al was Albert was probably, I was that way too. Yeah-yeah. And he wrote unabashedly, Marxi- Marxist theory. He is famous for a number of books. His most famous book is about the academy the in both England and France, the idea of the Parisian Academy in the 19th century. But he was very diverse. He wrote an article about the pre-Raphaelites, and had other interests as well.
IG: 15:08
Okay.
PB: 15:08
I was his grad assistant in, um [crosstalk]
IG: 15:12
How-how was your thinking personality shaping through all of these courses, and the attention that you were getting in class, and um-
PB: 15:24
I was growing and I was developing as a person. I was very repressed in high school. I was repressed because of my family situation. I actually had almost no boyfriends. I did not fit into all the cliques in Oneonta and kind of went from one to one to one, which we turned out to be my personality. I am the kind of person that breaks through all the cliques and is a friend and I and interestingly, my father was that way as a faculty member too. They could all be fighting with each other, but everybody liked my father, and he united them, etc. I could go from clique to clique in different group, perhaps because I was a solitary girl child, but as an adult, critical thinking adult, Binghamton was excellent for me, and the library did play a role, because I had always been bookish. I always read a lot. I am a speed reader, by the way, which is something we found out in high school, [crosstalk], and it is just a natural speed reader who retains and I still I read a lot of books. Now I read, I read all kinds of fiction and genre and nonfiction. So, the library answered a lot of needs, but socially, I bloomed and I developed. And probably the most critical thing of all, I should tell you, although we could save it for the end, is that I met the love of my life in Binghamton, although I was wise and kept him as a friend, and he was a friend, and we did not start dating and become a couple until I was in grad school. He graduated (19)76. And-
IG: 16:54
A Grad school in Binghamton?
PB: 16:56
No, he graduates undergraduate. He graduated in 1976 from Binghamton, English major with a Medieval Studies Certificate, and-
IG: 17:04
So, he probably knows Kenneth Lindsay.
PB: 17:07
Well, his professors were you will know him. I am blanking. If you gave me some names, I would know Charmack, Paul Charmack, Robin Oggins, and a few others whose names I have forgotten. He had a medieval certificate. He and I, next month, in February, in March, will be celebrating our 40th winning anniversary.
IG: 17:33
What is his name?
PB: 17:34
Barry Katzen.
IG: 17:37
Well, congratulations. [crosstalk]
PB: 17:39
There used to be a joke in my mother's time about how girls would go to college to get their Mrs. In the 70s, we totally spat upon that idea, and we are not into it. I naturally had to become a feminist at this time period, and that is partly why I kept my-my maiden name, but also because I had student loans due, and I just did not want to do the paperwork to change to a married name. But what was the point I was going to make? That it was a byproduct. He was a friend I made. And I also think that it was very good that we stayed friends for a couple years before we became romantically involved. I think that is why our marriage is endured. We know a number of couples in Binghamton who married while in college, and every one of those couples is divorced now. So, we waited, and it was very good. Now, one thing I wanted to say, because you want to talk about life experiences, and I have to laugh, Barry and I took a course together, an English course under Alvin Voss, who we were very fond of in the English Department. And it was on Shakespeare. And I used to, I remember I was naughty. I used to slip notes to Barry sometimes during class, but to this day, he and I will quote lines from Shakespeare. Will have memories of a line like when I was at NYPL and they were getting ready to have layoffs at the during the recession of 2008-9. I remembered a quote from As You Like It, when I was at home I was in a better place, or when I began writing magazine articles, I would remember brevity is the soul of wit and things of that nature. And I have to say to this day, Barry and I laughed, but we feel like that. Shakespeare class gave us an unknown at the time, but lasting connection. And of course, nowadays, well, Shakespeare can endure, and does endure, but it is funny and that we remember Voss and his lectures and his talks, whereas I have forgotten all my anthropology professors’ names, and not my art history, but a lot of other professors, and we both still remember that class.
IG: 17:41
Why do you think that is? Why do you think that you have such a clear memory of that class with Barry and-and sort of, you know, a foggy memory of the other classes?
PB: 18:27
I think Vos [Alvin Vos], who actually physically was kind of an unassuming, modest man, youngish at that time, spoke in a very sometimes dreamy tone of voice, very meaningful. And he had us read, not always the obvious parts from Shakespeare, but when he did, he would actually allow us into that world. And I remember that one of them we read, and that is still my favorite. And then as I began to understand that there were some possible Native American Connections in that, the tempest became my favorite play. And with the line, oh, Brave New World, this is the one where Miranda and prospect [crosstalk] exile, and it had to be his teaching, and it had to be our willingness to be receptive. And what is interesting is it was not a course that was really going to line up with what we did in our day to day lives, but it stayed with us. And I cannot explain it. I feel that there was an intellectual rigor about Binghamton's programs and all the courses that you took that was excellent, and my BA was hard earned, particularly my senior year. I should say another thing too, Barry and I were on pipe dream. So, we were connected with some of the politics on campus. We knew people in student government. Barry roomed with the President of the Student Council. And=
IG: 21:50
What was his name, the-
PB: 21:51
Bill Gordon. And so, we knew the student council. I do have to say, though, that compared to what was going on in the (19)60s, by (19)73, (19)74, (19)75 things were relatively calm, although there was one sit in over tuition increases that everybody was involved with.
IG: 22:07
You were involved in the sit in?
PB: 22:08
Well, I did not go right in, but Barry was and we knew people that were doing the sit in. We were on pipe dream. So, we sent our-
IG: 22:16
Student newspaper?
PB: 22:17
Yes, and I became Features Editor in (19)74 I should also say that is another connection. I was on my high school newspaper. I was on the Oneonta state newspaper. I guess I was thinking about journalism alongside or as a way of earning money, because anthropology and art history can be difficult to break into. And I got onto pipe dream. And Barry got onto pipe dream. He started out as a photographer for pipe dream, and eventually became managing editor. I was Features Editor there for the year of 1974 which is pretty cool. And I stepped out, though in (19)75 because I was a senior and my courses and my BA thesis were tough. I could not give the time and attention to pipe dream that I could previously. Barry became editor in chief of pipe dream in 1976.
IG: 23:10
What kind of features article were you running at the time? Do you remember?
PB: 23:14
I would report on concerts. I also had, I had writers under me. I would report on art exhibits, what was going on in the art museum, concerts, and even sometimes major concerts that came to Binghamton, to the arena, things like that. There would be people that would come to play. I remember that we had Harry Chapin, or maybe I am confusing that with Oneonta, but he would come by a few times, and other singer songwriters and features, as I can remember, that really related to art and music and cultural activities.
IG: 23:41
I see.
PB: 23:51
Plays.
IG: 23:57
Plays. Remember any titles that were-
PB: 23:59
No-no, I have to tell you, I really do not remember, and I think that it was because of the senior year. They were very demanding in the art history program, very demanding, which was good for me later in life. And then, of course, I went right into the MA which was grueling back at that time, there was a thought that I could teach college without my PhD. That changed a lot by the end of the decade. So, they were very rigorous in preparing me to teach introductory art history, which meant I had to know every image in Janssen, and part of my exam-
IG: 24:25
Janssen being the textbook?
PB: 24:37
Being the history, the famous history of art had 3000 images in it, and part of my master's degree in order to qualify for it were two exams. One was a written thesis, which I did with Boime, and the other were my orals. And my oral exams is I would go into an into the classroom, and they would show 12 slides. With no identification. And I had to be able to identify them. And they could be from pre-history to now and then talk about their context. And they would do sly and clever things. Renaissance closely mimicked Hellenistic Greek and Roman sculpture. You could get confused. They put something in. It was modeled on something at and the cruelest thing they did, because I missed this one. If I missed more than two, I failed. So, I could not fail. The son of the guns, and I will say it to the day this day, put up the Bury Edmund's cross without the Christ on it. And I and several colleagues were taking our orals missed that one. So, when I said it was rigorous, it was rigorous.
IG: 25:48
Was it ever it- was it ever constructed without the Christ on the cross? Or did they just take it off?
PB: 25:55
They take it off. I think it could be removed for cleaning. So, they had slides of it removed for cleaning and whatever. Yeah, they wanted us to be able to recognize that cross form and pin it to the time period because it was significant. The beauty for how it hand helped me in later life is to this day, if you show me a page full of various different images, I can identify right away differences and similarities and things of that nature. That is a rigorous visual training that does not happen today in current art historical training, and I do not think any students in the last 10, 20 years could handle that.
IG: 26:36
Why do you think that that has changed?
PB: 26:38
Because I think the entire academic picture has changed within the (19)80s, (19)90s, 2000s with No Child Left Behind. The Switch to stem as you know, there has been a movement away from liberal arts training and art history has also been a very, very rigorous, demanding field, every one of my professors was male, and yet most students, not just the Binghamton but elsewhere Columbia elsewhere, are female. Men do get ahead. I noticed you had a question about, did men do better? The few men that were interested in art history, I remember always kind of did better in terms of getting to speak more with a professor, or being called on first, or things like that. So yes, there was some mild sexism going on in there, but all of these men that I studied under undergrad and grad were themselves products of ivy league training, and they all invariably went back to Ivy League. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why I did not go on for a PhD is that I knew Al was going to jump to UCLA, a lot of them, except for Lindsay, who stayed and was faithful, all of them went to other places and-and Bruno came down to New York, so I was able to see him there, and he And I kept up a relationship, and it was tough, but it also induced the same academic-academic snobbery in me, snobbery in me, when I talking about the library at Binghamton, because I know this is important, I got a job right away working in the library. All the art librarians, from Betty Lincoln to Thomas Jacoby were very nurturing, and I was very, very good working there. I mean, did not do anything super professional, and they encouraged me when I began to think, I am a girl from a family with no money, and they want me to stay on for a PhD, and then I am going to have to go on and move around the entire country, taking little jobs, just like my dad had to do to get to where he wanted to go, and make very little money and often be adjunct. And maybe I should do something practical. And they say I am good as a librarian. So, I went down and applied to Columbia. I was not going to go anywhere but the finest program in the country. This is what Binghamton had done to me. And I went down and I interviewed with them, and I said, “I want you to know I want to come in. I only plan to be an art librarian. I am very ambitious. I want to run one of the best art libraries in the country.” And they like that because they were very arrogant thought and knew they were the finest [crosstalk] I am blanking on the names, so forgive me, all of them, and it is just today right now, or it is an issue I have with my age, but I can remember them, and they were good. They were they were kind of arrogant there, too. And by the way, this is a digression, that department was eliminated.
IG: 29:38
Oh, I know I went-
PB: 29:39
[crosstalk] and that had to do with real estate. They did not play their cards, right?
IG: 29:45
But it is also, it is also, I mean, this is another conversation, but it is also that they were in keeping up with all of the technological development,
PB: 29:52
Right. And they did not do a good job on that. The other thing they did not do is they did not forge ties with departments like communications, journalism, because something happened out in Florida with one of their major universities there, and they eliminated the library school, and all the faculty were able to go to other positions in the college. But at that time, Columbia was on the top and they allowed me to construct a master's in library science there that was completely art oriented. I even took government documents and did the art documents from the National Endowment of the Arts. And it was also a big in for getting jobs. Why I had to work all the time. I mean, I did not say this at the beginning, but there was not money in my family. I had taken out student loans, which I paid off, or things like that, but I got scholarships there at Columbia. My workplaces, I worked at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and then I worked at, this is a stretch American Institute of Physics, in their photo archives working and they paid for my second year of library school.
IG: 30:59
How wonderful.
PB: 31:00
I did not stay with them. They did not mind. They paid obviously, this is a long time ago, and I got my MLS in 1979 so the Columbia connection, I would not have gone there. I would not have done as well as I did, if it had not been for the rigor of the background in both my undergraduate and then my first graduate training in Binghamton, and I did very well in library school there, and I got very great jobs, except the one thing is, I was offered a job at SUNY Purchase, straight out of library school, and Barry announced that he wanted to get out of New York. He was having existential angst, and he applied to grad school at UCLA and Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin, and we got married, and I went with him, so I deferred that job.
IG: 31:50
Where did you end up going?
PB: 31:51
I ended up not getting a good job. I ended up getting a parent. Oh, you guys love this. I ended up working in the agriculture college, in their library in their land, tenure library in Madison-Madison, Wisconsin, because nobody I- okay, this is a good story.
IG: 32:10
Okay, tell us a good story.
PB: 32:11
It is a good story. And coming from Binghamton, you can see that I already have a little intellectual snobbery, well-earned and well deserved. I applied for a job at the Madison County Technical College. So, I go in for the interview, and he looks at my resume, and he looks at my resume, and he said, “Columbia University. I do not know where that is or what that is.” He said, “I only hire University of Wisconsin graduates get out of my office.” There was a very strong- this was 1979, (19)80. There was a very strong anti- well, no, they had had a blow up. They had had the ROTC building was blown up during the (19)60s, and they blamed outside agitators from New York. However, it did not take me very long to find out that the kid who blew up the ROTC building and killed a math professor was a local Madison boy. But I would be in the student I would be in the staff lounge and just over here, well, you know him. He is a con artist. He is from New York, and I would get this. I had a great work study student who worked for me, and I am talking to her, and she was really bright. And I said, “Oh, you know, I would hire you or something like that right away, or, you know, or but I had trouble getting hired here.” And she said to me, I and she loved me, by the way. She said, “I would not hire you. You are not a UW grad.” I actually, I heard that the woman they hired instead of me at Purchase left after a year, and she was Dr. Stan. She taught at Columbia before it closed, and got a PhD from there. So, I wrote to them, and I said, “I lied.” I said, “Oh, I am coming back and I will be living right in the area. Any chance that you would interview me for the job,” they hired me right back in so I left my husband behind for a year in Madison. He finished his master's degree, and I came and lived by myself in White Plains, where I lived for 31 years and worked at SUNY Purchase. From SUNY Purchase, I was lured to the Museum of Modern Art, where I became head of reference.
IG: 34:30
Marvelous.
PB: 34:31
And it was quite an amazing job. I got to meet all kinds of wonderful people. I partied with Andy Warhol. I had-
IG: 34:40
Tell us about that.
PB: 34:41
Oh, well, that would be, that was a good joke I would tell my students about because we were both drunk at a at a reception, and-
IG: 34:49
Where was the reception?
PB: 34:50
I was working at MOMA. MoMA was the child of the Rockefellers, who were the trustees, and they also, of course, Rockefeller Center. They had redone all of. Restaurants. This is back in (19)84, I believe. And yeah, it is (19)84 or so, and they had redone all the restaurants around the skating rink in Manhattan. They had the statue and all that. So, they closed the area off and they did a large reception. I saw Donald Trump there with his first wife, and all I could think of was she has five inches of makeup on.
IG: 35:22
She has what?
PB: 35:23
Five inches of makeup on. But it was one of those looks (19)80s parties you hear about. And they had stations where you could go get your sirloin burger, your pate this and that. They had open wine and liquor bars. So I was with all the librarians, you know, all the library people at MoMA. We were sitting together big table across from Keith Haring, who stuck his foot out and let me trip over it, and then laughed outrageously. That was Keith. And so, this is a really good story. This is the really and I think Binghamton was at the root of my being able to take all this very well. So, I- we drank liberally. I was a young woman at this time. I was really young. I was 24 when I got my second master's in Columbia. So, I had started college age 16. So, I had, I did all my training together in this, you know, seven, eight-year period, and-and then had it. So, we all been drinking very nicely, and my seat mates came back to me said, "Oh, Paula, there is a chocolate mousse station down there." And they describe where it is. "Oh," I said, three sheets to the wind, or whatever you call I want. I want chocolate mousse. So, I jumped up in the table, and I run over there, and I find out there is a big line, and at the end of the line there is this very handsome man. mind you, I am drunk, and he is wearing a gray bespoke suit, a beautiful lavender necktie. He has snow white hair, and it is tied back like a 19th century man with a velvet ribbon in the back, and he smells of some fantastic cologne. So, I go running up to him, and I say, "Oh, I love chocolate mousse, do not you" And he looks at me, and he sees me, and he smiles his beatific smile. And I said, “What a handsome guy, I am going to flirt with him.” And we start having this amazing, stupid, superficial conversation about chocolate mousse and chocolate mousses we have loved, and chocolate mousses we would like. And we had to wait about 10, 15 minutes on the line, or maybe, I know it was around 10 minutes, and then he was ahead of me in line, so they fixed his plate, but like a gentleman, he stayed with me, and then he helped advise me, because he had, like, white chocolate mousse, and this, I mean, this is the Lux 80s. You would never get that now. And-and help me fill my plate, and then, and I am chatting away at him, and he is chatting back at me, and then we get ready to part, and he is sitting in different areas, so we are standing and we are talking to each other like we are kind of like enamored of each other. And I said, “That was a wonderful talk we had. Thank you very much.” And he looks at me. He says, “I had a great time. Thank you.” So, he walks away. So here is the best part. Here are all my librarian friends. They are jumping up and down on their tables, on the chairs, because they are drunk too, screaming. They look just like the monkeys in 2001 with the monolith. "Paula. Paula. Paula. That was Andy Warhol." And I said, "That was Andy." And they said, "Yeah, what the hell were you doing with him?" It looked like he was going to pick you up and take you for a date. Well. I said, "Well, that would not be bloody likely, but I did not know it was him." And then I told the story to one of my students in college years later, and one of my little students said, she said, "You know what I think happened? He loved that you did not recognize him, and he probably did not get that that much." And then I just talked to him like he was a human, like he was another guy, and I was flirting with him and everything. Later on, I had to teach Warhol in college, because I taught this creative mind course I read, and it turned out he had a famous quote, I am a very superficial person, and it was part of his whole, you know, raise on debt and all that. And I realized that that interlude, my 15 minutes of fame with him, or 10 or whatever, because he is the one that made that quote. You know, we probably were having a wonderful time. Because if I know who he was, I would have changed my behavior immediately and been whatever. And he had the joy of a young woman who did not know he was gay and did not know he was who he was, and just true human beings having fun at a party. And I met some other great people too. So, MoMA was wonderful, but I was very ambitious. Ancient Chinese curse, you sometimes will get what you want. So, I applied for the curatorship of the Art and Architecture Department at New York Public Library. I did not do research, number one mistake, but I knew that that was one of the premier positions, and I was very ambitious, and I had competition that took six months to hire, and then I was hired, and I stayed there for 22 years. But it was a terrible place, a terrible, terrible workplace, terrible.
IG: 40:35
Why?
PB: 40:36
Because there was no appreciation of the employees and no trust, no appreciation. For example, I curated exhibitions, but I was not allowed to talk to the President of the of NYPL. Did not want staff talking to trustees. I- my boss and I had to give a little show and tell to Oscar de la Renta, his wife, Annette and Bill Blass. They love me. Bill Blass started up a friendship with me. He wanted to do stuff. I had to actually go to the director of the NYPL and tell him that Bill Blass was talking to me directly. And he put an end to that at once, it was terrible.
IG: 41:21
How terrible.
PB: 41:22
One time, if you know about development-
IG: 41:24
Who instituted those rules?
PB: 41:27
I do not know, but that was a culture, that was a culture. And I came in. At-
IG: 41:32
Do you think that that has changed?
PB: 41:34
I think it has gotten worse.
IG: 41:36
You think that it is- but Tony Marks was president.
PB: 41:40
And at, yeah, he was at, oh, God, what is it? I have a friend of mine works, worked there for him.
IG: 41:47
But no longer.
PB: 41:48
Yeah, Amherst College. Was Amherst, or was it the other one.
IG: 41:52
Who was the president at the time?
PB: 41:54
Well, I had several, actually, I do not even mean president, I mean director of the library. I see Bill Walker, and he was not a good person. Oh, I am seeing this librarianship, so, all right, I am getting a little too free here. All right, make sure you delete that and, you know, just leave it vague like that. It was not a good place to work. And one example of that is that they brought in new management around 2004 and the word got out, but then they took so long, because they were using lawyers, they were going McKinsey Company had come and done a survey. They blamed upper management. They found out, right? Who was responsible? Well, you know, upper management is not going to take the fall. So, they decided that all the middle managers who were over 40 would be gotten rid of. And that was me, along with some brilliant people. I had just done an exhibition there. Oh, and they made a gag order. We were not allowed to talk for three years about being turned down. And one of their motives where we were in the New York State Pension, and the ones who had been there who were over 55 and were in tier one, they cost them a fortune. I was in tier four, though, and which was the least one. But they just came and they just cleaned house. They tossed one of the beloved curators, who was considered to be the best map librarian in the country, out while she was still doing an exhibition, I had just done an exhibition that broke attendance records and had gotten raves in the New York Times, in New Yorker magazine, and they decided-
IG: 43:37
These articles, do these articles mention you?
PB: 43:40
Yes. Oh, not always.
IG: 43:44
Not always.
PB: 43:44
The New York Times is funny about not necessarily mentioning curators and things like that. Although I did get mentioned in the early exhibitions later on, I might have-
IG: 43:56
What was the name of the exhibition that you were-
PB: 43:59
I have the poster in the home. It is called Art Deco design, rhythm and verve. That was the attendance breaking one, but it did not matter, and I knew the collection. I had a master's. I had been there 22 years and but they had brought in a manager, and he was actually a colleague, friend of mine, and they decided they would not have two non-union managers, so I was the one to go, and he had just come in a few years ago. Previously-
IG: 44:36
When did that happen?
PB: 44:37
2002 because I was going out for brain surgery. I had a brain tumor. I am a brain tumor survivor, and we did not know if I was going to make it, but that is not why they hired him. They did not even know all this was coming down until I let them know, and he came on board like the week before I went for my surgery.
IG: 44:58
Okay, so that-that is really a life changing event,
PB: 45:02
Yes, and-
IG: 45:03
You survived.
PB: 45:04
Yeah.
IG: 45:05
How did that change your life?
PB: 45:06
Well, I began to see I began too again. Maybe we can even think my critical thinking skills were good from my early 20s on, I knew a lot of us stayed there. I was very highly paid. I was one of the highest paid art librarians in the country, which is what I wanted. But that made me a target. I had a big target on my back. [crosstalk] Yes, they did not care. I mean, the people that they let go, they let go of the curator in the Slavic division, the curator-
IG: 45:38
I know, I know-
PB: 45:40
[crosstalk] They let John Lundquist. They let go of Alice Hudson, everybody who was over 40. And mind you, they were not necessarily as well-well paid as me, because they have been there longer. I came in and I had-
IG: 45:53
What was, what was their what was the premise? I mean, what was, what was their explanation for doing away. For example-
PB: 46:02
They were going, they wanted to integrate. It was going to be one library they did away with the research libraries. They had started a remote storage facility at Princeton that they did in Tandem with Princeton and Columbia put your books into stories, you probably had a 60 percent chance of never seeing them again. It all went black. It went black.
IG: 46:31
It was such a-
PB: 46:32
And I had a gag, I had a gag order on me. For me, they had to be careful, because Alice and John and Ed. They were, they were older than me, 10 years older than me. I was just in my mid 50s at that time, I came in as a tier four, the bottom tier, and they really did not have a reason. And if they had been asked, why did you take the one with all the experience and credentials over the one that is just come in as a library manager, they would not have a leg to stand on. So, this is what they did, which was illegal, but believe me, they had all their lawyers on it. They knew I would turn 55 in October, 2009 so they kept me on for a year. They let me know in July, 2008 that I was out, my position was eliminated. That is how they got around it legally. My position as curator, they retired. Almost all except for a couple curator positions just eliminated them. That was a legal thing that they did to protect themselves and with me they came. They said, “This is totally illegal by New York State law.” Why am I doing this as a recording here? Well, I do not mind. I am past the date now. They told me, “Oh, Paula, you are going to be 55 next September.” Illegal-illegal-illegal. Why do not we have you retire then, and we will give you health benefits for life, for right up through Medicare, and even help you with which is what they did with retirees. But they did not have to give them to me, and they did not give them to a lot of other people who they laid off. They laid off 65 people at the time I was let go, and 64 of them were called into the auditorium and told you have 10 days to pack up and leave. I was the 65th but they waited on me. The director had me in his office, and I come in, and I knew I am in trouble because the labor relations guy is there, and he said, coldly to me, I am the one that had done all these things. Got articles in New York Times and that, as did all my colleagues. And he said, “Things are changing here at New York Public Library, we no longer have any need of your experience or services.” And it was mean as could be Now, there are ways to handle it. And this guy, who is now head of the National Archives, by the way, you know, was very mean to me. I guess he was told he had to be that way. I am sure he did not enjoy it, but he enjoyed his very lux salary as director. I think he was brought in. We all agree, he was brought in as a henchman, and there was a reward waiting for him down the line, which there was, and he, you know, there is so many ways to tell somebody they are not wanted anymore. He could have done it and still got rid of me and said, “You know, this is great, but we are changing to more stem version, and we are going to downplay our liberal art.” He just basically made me feel like a creep. And then when I am like, really creep, and I am thinking, gee, maybe I have a lawsuit here, and they were terribly afraid of that, he said, “But you know what, we are going to keep you. You are still a year away from being 55 we are going to keep you for a year, and we are going to second you.” He did not use second. I mean, using that term to the Education Department, where you will work till next year, and maybe you can stay on and but at least when you get retired, you will be 55 and you will be in the state pension system, and you can get a pension. Well, first of all, illegally. That is illegal-illegal-illegal. You do not talk to an employee about their age. And yet, they did, I and they did it, you know, and I think that they were measuring lawsuit versus, you know, the carrot to get someone who had had a brain tumor and had to get checked every few years and take an MRI, and I also had both my knees replaced in 2006 and then had radiation because the tumor grew again. They knew I needed health benefits, so that was my bribery, and I went for it. And as soon as I was retired, nobody in the New York area would touch me because I was retired, so I am desperate, and so I decided to write books again, and I taught a little course back at Purchase and continuing ed and on the next to second, last second to last night of the course I was teaching, one of my students raised her hand, said, "My husband's a dean at Berkeley College. They are looking for someone to teach art history and critical thinking. Can I recommend you?” They hired me like a flash.
IG: 51:29
That is wonderful.
PB: 51:31
And I worked for them for nearly eight years. But Binghamton, I am in you know, I think Binghamton-Binghamton opened my eyes to the world, but also taught me what intellectual integrity was, and about hard work and about various things. I have another story for you, which will tell you about the upstate downstate I worked various jobs and jobs I worked most often when I was an undergraduate, because I had school, but I needed that money. I had no spending money. I worked as a night guard in the dorms because I was a night owl. But one summer when I was not taking many courses, they hired me in the cafeteria of the Student Union, and I like it was my second day there, and they said, “You know what, we are going to put you on the cash register?” Well, it turned out to be a call celeb, and all of Binghamton was talking about it, because they had never, ever put a student, an undergraduate student, on the cash register, because they figured, or, steal, and I was in nine days wonder, I think the radio station had a big thing about it, pipe dream had a little article about it. People would come up to me and say, they put you on the cash register. And I Yeah, but they-they knew they talked to me and I talked upstate. They knew where I came from. They even knew part of my family through Cooperstown and stuff like that. And so, I always thought that that was a marvelous statement about Binghamton. And this is (19)74, (19)70 sometimes (19)74 or late (19)73 and this was the upstate downstate divide, because all of us were firmly agreed, and they would not say anything in the cafeteria. But I knew it was true that because I was an upstate girl, they could trust me on the cash register.
IG: 53:29
That is a great story. We are running out of time.
PB: 53:34
I knew it.
IG: 53:34
And so, I usually conclude these interviews by asking, what lessons did you learn from this time in your life? And you said “Intellectual integrity and a rigor.”
PB: 53:48
Being able to work hard. I was not able to write five books without being very disciplined. I had to make decisions like, I am not watching television, I am writing. I cannot write books if I watch television. And I think that some of the arrogance of my professors in that program, you know, that we are the best, and this and that rubbed off on me, because I wanted to go to the best college for librarianship when I decided to be a professional librarian, art librarian. And I also think that Binghamton took a sheltered little girl from a very white bread, you know, not diverse community, grew up that way, and exposed her to lots of different students, lots of different situations. Socially, I did well. Romance wise, I went from being a little girl who did not go to the prom to, you know, popular, and I became a person. But all my critical thinking, because I was very informed when I came to Binghamton, developed there, and I had to learn to grow up fast. There were things that we do not need to talk about Binghamton, that you learn to grow up fast. Asked about and you had to have faith in your faculty. And I certainly did. And I, you know, I did two master's degrees willy nilly, and got by them quite well, straight out of there. And to this day, because I still intellectually, you know, I was hurt by the NYPL experience deeply hurt, and probably will be, you know, Barry says, you know, remember, that is past old news and all that, but writing all those books and doing all that was my way, and I have a lot of published articles-
IG: 55:36
Books, please tell our audience are on-
PB: 55:39
Native American jewelry. I am an expert in that area, particularly Southwestern Navajo and Pueblo jewelry, because the Southwest is the marketplace for all Native American jewelry. Jewelers from South America, Central America and Canada, come to the southwest to sell their jewelry.
IG: 56:02
And just tell us how many books you have written and some of the titles. And-
PB: 56:07
The first book I wrote was a tribute to my library background. I wrote the Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry. It is the first and only such encyclopedia of its kind. NYPL keeps it in their main reading room still, which is a source of pride to me that I have a book in the main reading room at NYPL at 42nd street. I then went on to write four more books. My magnum opus is a two-volume definitive 150 years of Navajo Pueblo jewelry design, 1870 to 2020, it is an expansion of my first full book, southwestern silver jewelry. And I have is going to be combination reference book, picture book. It will be the resource in the field jewelry, because and has often got short hand. You know, short treatment in academia and other areas, because it is decorative arts or whatever, and Native American art in general has not always had a literature that serves it well. A lot of people wrote were enthusiasts or collectors, and not necessarily academics. So, I am able to write in an academic but accessible, shall we say, accessible, scholarly man- manner, thanks to my education and my training as a professional.
IG: 57:33
Thank you so much. It has been a delightful interview, an extremely interesting life story.
PB: 57:41
I think Barry would be angry that I talked about the NYPL. But since this is a library and it is a center, and you know, they did us wrong, I do not mind being on record with this, they cannot do anything to me. Statute of limitations is long over, and you know, if you are going to be a librarian, you need to be alert. I saw many red flags in my time there. And, yeah, this is not being required.
IG: 58:10
All right. Thank you very, very much.
(End of Interview)
Date of Interview
2019-03-01
Interviewer
Irene Gashurov
Year of Graduation
1975
Interviewee
Paula Baxter
Biographical Text
Paula is a practicing design historian. She is the author of three books on Native American jewelry, along with numerous magazine articles on American Indian arts and design. Before that, she was a professor in the humanities at Berkeley College in Westchester County, New York. Previously she worked as an art librarian and curator at the New York Public Library for 22 years.
Interview Format
Audio
Rights Statement
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Keywords
Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni living in Phoenix, AZ; Harpur College – Alumni in Library Science; Harpur College – Alumni in Art & Design.
Files
Citation
“Interview with Paula Baxter,” Digital Collections, accessed January 17, 2026, https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1329.
