On June 25, 1968, at the age of fifteen, James R. Bakker opened the doors to his first antiques shop. He was an exhibitor at major antiques and art fairs throughout the country and a frequent advertiser in the American Art Review, Art & Auction and the Magazine Antiques. Over the next thirty years, Bakker had galleries in Littleton, Boston, Provincetown and Cambridge.
James R. Bakker is an auctioneer, private art dealer, appraiser, consultant and independent curator specializing in American paintings and prints. He is a member of the Antiques Dealers' Association of America. Bakker graduated from Phillips Academy at Andover and attended Harvard University where he developed an interest in the fine arts. Bakker is a trustee and past President of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Executive Director of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, and sits on the Town of Provincetown Art Commission.
For many years, Bakker specialized in the discovery and sale of furniture and pottery of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Together with Arts and Crafts historian and scholar Robert Edwards, Bakker mounted an important exhibition, " Arcady to Byrdcliffe: The Whiteheads' Circle of Artists " featuring important furniture and related objects at the Newbury Street gallery in 1999.
He has curated numerous exhibitions including Provincetown Portraits- The First Eighty Years, 1995; Teachers- Artists with Schools in Provincetown,1996; Frank Carson-1881-1968: A Retrospective, 1997; Jewels in the Collection, 1998 and Bernard Simon-1896-1980: A Retrospective, 2004 at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. He also curated Memories of Provincetown- The Helen and Napi Van Dereck Collection at the CMFA, 2003 and Picturing Provincetown at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, 2004, Provincetown: A Creative Colony at the New Bedford Art Museum,2005 and two retrospective exhibitions on the artist William H. Littlefield at the Cape Cod Museum of Art and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 2006.
