Baer, Nancy van Norman

Nancy Van Norman Baer, (1944-1998) was a curator of theater and dance for Moscow and San Francisco museums. Born in San Diego, California, Baer started dancing at age 6 and studied dance at Mills College and University of California, Berkeley. After dancing professionally with Northern California companies, she earned a master's degree in museum management from Lone Mountain College in San Francisco.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Baer curated major exhibitions on dancers Loie Fuller, Anna Pavlova and Bronislava Nijinska for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. She was particularly interested in the Russian avant-garde, spoke Russian and traveled to Russia several times. In 1991, one of her exhibitions, Theater in Revolution: Russian Avant-Garde Stage Design, 1913-1935, traveled to Los Angeles' Armand Hammer Museum of Art. In 1994, she curated the exhibition Paris Seasons of the Ballets Russes for the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow.

Baer was a consultant to the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum and assisted Irina Nijinska, the daughter of the dancer and choreographer Bronislava Nijinska, in restaging Nijinska's ballets. At the time of her death, Baer had been working on a book about the Ballets Russes and an exhibition on Vaslav Nijinsky.

From the guide to the Nancy Van Norman Baer papers, 1924-1998, 1982-1998, (The New York Public Library. Jerome Robbins Dance Division.)