She chose a doctoral program in social and cultural history at UMass, she says, so she could continue as associate director of Amherst College's Mead Art Museum while pursuing her education. I couldn't afford to give up my job, nor could I afford Yale or Harvard. The UMass history program allowed her to focus her studies on the arts and, coupled with her master's degree in art history from the University of Illinois, prepared her well for her current domain. Returning home to Chicago, just a few miles from the city's western suburbs where she was born, Barter found a robust art scene and a dedicated community of art patrons proud of their institute. She also reduced the number of objects on display by 20 per cent, giving space to only the best in the collection and eliminating redundancy.
Visitors wander through the galleries apparently indifferent to the work in progress.
Nonetheless, in part because her favored subject was women and children, she has been treated as an art-historical lightweight. Barter sought to set the record straight. With help from her staff, she contacted surviving family members, researched nearly 1500 letters and other correspondence, and hopped from museum to gallery to private collector assembling ninety works for a major retrospective. As cur-ator of the exhibition Barter also prepared the massive catalogue, which has been hailed by critics as the definitive study of Cassatt's work. Indeed, Barter writes with informative grace, in a manner that educates without sinking into tedium.