This is the first major traveling exhibition solely devoted to the work of this important contemporary realist, remains on view through February 15, 2009.

Don't miss Baeder on Baeder: Dishing on Diners
on February 7th — click here for more information.

Preview John Baeder's documentary on Utube

Tour the exhibition with Channel 5's Talk of the Town

Organized by Morris Museum of Art curator Jay Williams, the exhibition includes 60 of Baeder’s painstakingly rendered oils and watercolors, spanning the period 1974–2004. Baeder’s work documents the roadside eateries he reveres—diners, taco trucks, and barbecue dives. His depiction of them captures the pulse of America in a bygone era.

This exhibition is accompanied by a fully color-illustrated book, Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats Along the Way: The Paintings of John Baeder. Co-published by the Morris Museum of Art and the University Press of Mississippi, it includes essays by Dr. Donald Kuspit, one of the leading critical voices in contemporary American art, along with Williams, a preface by Morris Museum director Kevin Grogan, and a statement by the artist.

One of America’s most-admired realist painters, John Baeder was born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1938 and shortly thereafter, moved with his family to Atlanta where he was raised. He attended Auburn University prior to embarking on a career in advertising in 1960. He pursued a very successful career as an art director for ad agencies, both in Atlanta and New York City until the early 1970s.

During his years in New York, Baeder kept his technique sharp by drawing, painting, and taking photographs, while his day job as an art director kept him focused on American material culture. He also began to collect old postcards of roadside America, whose images were grounded in early modern realist photography and early color lithography, inspiring him to make the transition from the world of advertising to the world of art.

Baeder’s paintings can be found in the permanent collections of many noteworthy American museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Norton Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Newark Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Morris Museum of Art, to cite a few. His work can be found in numerous corporate and private collections in Europe and the United States.

The author of three popular books—Diners (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1978 and 1995), Gas, Food, and Lodging (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986), and Sign Language: Street Signs as Folk Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996)—John Baeder continues to live and work in Nashville, his home since 1981.

Image Credits: Top Right: John Baeder, Orange Circle Diner, 1996, oil on canvas
Above Left: John Baeder, Big Boy Bop, 1985, oil on canvas