Was John Baldessari the 20th Century’s Most Important Art Professor?

John Baldessari, who died last week at age 88, is best remembered as a Conceptualist who inspired countless artists to take up new modes of art-making, whether in the form of absurdist performances or photo-based works about pictures themselves. But one could say that Baldessari’s influence owes the most to a different but related part of his career: his teaching practice. Starting in the early 1970s, Baldessari became one of the first professors at the California Institute of Arts, a scho