Concerning the Spiritual In Art: Barbara Braathen

“Art is there and will always give you a lift.”

Barbara Braathen is an art historian, curator, dealer and writer.  She was a gallerist in New York from 1980-2005, programming an eclectic mix of contemporary styles and media.  Exhibitions included graffiti personality Rammellzee, language artist Guy de Cointet, abstract painter Joan Waltemath, sculptor Donald Lipski, Surrealist legend Charles Henri Ford, spiritual expressionist Hunt Slonem, magic painter Peter Grass, mystic John Wells, plus tombstone rubbings by the infamous Scott Covert. Group exhibitions included works by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and many others.  Barbara Braathen Gallery was reviewed in Artforum, Artnews, Art in America, Flash Art, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and a host of other publications.  She holds a PhDC in modern art history from UCLA.

Interest in spiritual subjects began while she was a college student in the 1960s at UCLA.  Experiences in Los Angeles included close interfacing with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Swami Satchidananda, Yogi Bhajan who brought Kundalini yoga to the west, and innumerable other spiritual leaders.  She participated in study groups with a close circle, to understand the principle readings being in Theosophy (Blavatsky, Besant, Leadbetter), plus Cayce, Gurdjieff, and Hindu and Buddhist writings. Barbara has experienced several miraculous healings. 

She returns to the art world now to engage in conversations around the spiritual in art, a topic finally embraced by the by institutions and the pubic, and is working on her next curatorial concepts. Listen to her interview on this episode of Concerning the Spiritual in Art: Laying the Groundwork with Barbara Braathen.

“In this episode Barbara shares some amazing stories and dives into how she was initially drawn toward spirituality and art throughout her life. We spoke about her journey becoming an art historian and her move to NYC where she became a well known gallerist and art dealer. We spoke about her experiences with spiritual giants like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,  Swami Satchidananda, and Yogi Bhajan.  We also dialogue about the current shift in the art world, the reasons why spirituality might have been taboo in the past, along with  the potential the spiritual in art holds for our collective future.” - Martin Benson, host of Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and watch on YouTube.