Baro, Gene

Biographical notes:

Born Eugene Baroff, in 1924 in New York City, to Benjamin and Zissell Baroff. Graduated with a B.A. from the University of Florida (1947), he remained at the University for approximately ten years as a graduate student, instructor, and curator of the University Library's Creative Writing Collection. During this period, he became close friends with the novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and lived in her home at Cross Creek from 1952 until he left Florida. He began calling himself Gene Baro about 1950. He taught English at Bennington College from 1958-1963. From about 1950, Baro was an active literary figure, publishing short stories and especially poetry in numerous journals, as diverse as Botteghe Oscure and The New Yorker . He was a regular book reviewer for the Book Review of the New York Herald-Tribune from 1951-1961 and edited two literary anthologies. His major poetry collection was published as "Northwind" in the anthology-series Poetry Today VI (1959).

In 1963 he removed from Bennington for several years to England, where he was a lecturer for the United States Information Agency, a broadcaster for the British Broadcasting Corporation, and a correspondent for several publications. By the time he returned to the United States in 1969 or 1970, he seems largely to have abandoned literary endeavors and spent most of the remainder of his life in the art world as a writer, educator, and museum and exhibition curator. He was especially noted for his work in arranging major museum exhibitions. Positions included curator of the Corcoran Gallery, consultantships with the Brooklyn Museum, the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, and teaching at Williams College. He died of cancer, November 15, 1982, in Old Bennington, Vermont. (Partially based on John Russell, "Gene Baro, 58, Organizer of Art Exhibitions," New York Times, November 16, 1982, D25.)

From the guide to the Gene Baro Papers, 1945-1982, 1950-1965, (Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida)