Summertime is perfect for lovers of art. As the temperature climbs outside, the environment inside an art museum remains constant, protecting the treasures within it (and those there to view them). While the Greater Philadelphia area is home to a number of fine art museums, one special art collection stands out among the rest: the Barnes Foundation’s collection in Merion.
“The number one thing we hear from people is that the art collection is overwhelming,” said a key Barnes official, speaking of the treasures collected for almost 40 years by Albert C. Barnes, the Foundation’s founder.
The Barnes Foundation houses one of the finest collections of modern paintings in the world, including a large number of masterpieces by Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Pierre August Renoir, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Claude Monet, and others. But while known mostly for its late 19th-century and early 20th-century European paintings, the Barnes Foundation also has among its holdings many important examples of American paintings, African sculpture, Native American art, Asian art, Medieval manuscripts and sculptures, some Old Master paintings of artists such as El Greco and Peter Paul Rubens, and examples of ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art, as well as samples of American and European decorative arts and metalwork. Approximately 2,000 of these extraordinary works are currently on view.
Albert C. Barnes chartered the Foundation in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts [and the] encouragement of arboriculture and forestry”. Today, the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces and other numerous works of art owned by the Barnes constitute an exceptional, unique teaching collection for art students. Moreover, they provide enjoyment for the art-appreciating public. And art and aesthetics courses, horticulture courses, and various summer workshops continue to be offered by the Foundation.
“The collection is unique just in how the paintings are hung,” said one Barnes official. “They’re not shown in chronological order, but grouped by things such as themes of color. There’s often a bilateral symmetry in the way the paintings are hung. For example, a larger portrait is flanked by two paintings, perhaps two landscapes, of an equal, smaller size sharing a theme or a color. Then metalwork, such as metal hinges or axe heads, is mounted in between the paintings. These echo the line(s) in the painting(s).” This kind of hanging of the different works of art, among other things, allows observers to contemplate the art in more diverse and non-conventional ways, enhancing the artistic experience.
The 2010 Summer Workshops being offered in Merion include: Matisse Paper Cut-Outs (June 14-15), Art in the Garden (June 15; Rain date June 29), Building the Landscape: From Arboretum to Container Gardening (June 22), The Nude in 20th-Century Art: The Artists, The Figure, and Sexuality (July 12-13), About Looking (July 19-20), and Surrealism: Inner Visions, Outer Limits (August 2-3). For details, see http://www.barnesfoundation.org/; to register, call Nancy Rosner at (610) 667-0290, ext. 3825 or register online.
Albert C. Barnes was born in Kensington in 1872, attended Central High School, where he befriended William Glackens—who later became a member of The Eight, a group of realist painters committed to the advancement of Modernism in the U.S, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He attended the University of Berlin in Germany and then studied pharmacology and completed a dissertation at Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat in Heidelberg, Germany. He worked as a consulting chemist for the H.K. Mulford Company in Philadelphia for a while, and shortly before marrying, did some experiments on his own which resulted in his developing Argyrol, a silver-based compound used to fight infections. By age 30, Barnes was a multimillionaire.
In 1901, Barnes married Laura Leggett from New York. They settled in Overbrook and then moved to Merion in 1905. In 1908, Barnes established his A.C. Barnes Company to begin manufacturing pharmaceuticals, including Argyrol. He set up company factories in Philadelphia, London, and Australia and had the first successful marketing effort of medical supplies directly to physicians and hospitals. As a businessman, he prospered, and his love of art continued to grow.
Barnes began purchasing modern paintings, including Van Gogh’s Postman, Picasso’s Woman with a Cigarette, and Paul Gauguin’s Haere Pape, in 1912. He then started to hang paintings in his factory building, so his employees could study and discuss the works. In his first article on art: “How to Judge a Painting”, he outlined a “scientific” method of evaluating art. He then decided to attend a John Dewey Columbia University seminar in order to study the latter’s method of education, and the two men began a lifelong friendship.
In 1922, Barnes purchased the 12-acre Merion site where the Foundation is currently located. The property included a small arboretum, started in the 1880’s, with trees and flora from around the world. Barnes expanded it, and in 1940, Laura Barnes established classes in botany, horticulture, and landscape there, in the Foundation’s Arboretum School.
“She [Laura] knew every tree and bush by its Latin name,” wrote Florence McElroy, a later secretary to Mrs. Barnes.
Barnes had the current gallery, the residence (now the administrative building), and the service buildings all designed, in the Beaux-Arts style, by Paul Philippe Cret, the architect of the Ben Franklin Bridge and the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, and constructed in 1923 and 1924. The Gallery dedication ceremony was held on March 19, 1925. Leopold Stokowski, the legendary conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was one of the speakers, as was John Dewey, whom Barnes had named the Director of Education at the Barnes Foundation in 1923.
Barnes’s first book: The Art in Painting was published in 1925, and it is still used today as the basis for the art education courses offered by the Foundation.
Barnes had bought Henri Matisse’s Le Bonheur de vivre in 1922, and in 1925, he purchased Paul Cezanne’s The Card Players (Les joueurs des cartes). Barnes believed that Henri Matisse was the greatest living artist, and when Matisse visited the Barnes Foundation in 1931, Barnes commissioned the artist to paint a mural, The Dance, for the three lunettes above the windows in the Main Gallery in Merion. It was installed in the Gallery in May, 1933.
“Barnes was still acquiring art up until his death in July of 1951, but no new works of art have been added since then,” said the Barnes official.
“The collection is a permanent collection,” said the key Barnes official. “And [the Foundation] doesn’t lend from its collection.” Thus, the Merion site is the only place where one can view these incredible masterpieces.
“The Barnes has the largest Renoir collection in the world,” stated the official, as we discussed the upcoming Late Renoir exhibit that will debut at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on June 17 and run through September 6. In all, the Barnes Foundation owns 181 works by Renoir, and several are exhibited continuously in its galleries.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibit will feature approximately 80 paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Renoir, as well as works by other artists. It opened at Le Grand Palais in Paris last fall and was at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through May. For more information on this art exhibit, contact Visitor Services at (215) 763-8100 or via e-mail at visitorservices@philamuseum.org.
In celebration of the upcoming Late Renoir exhibit, the Barnes will have exclusive tours of its premier Renoir collection on Tuesday afternoons starting June 22 and running through August 31, at 3:00 p.m.—when the Barnes is closed to the public. $75 per person; $65 for members; call (610) 667-0290, option 5.
“People might want to travel the few additional miles [from Center City—about 5 miles] to see [both collections],” said the Barnes official. “It’s a great way to appreciate Renoir this summer.”
This past January, Judith F. Dolkart, an expert on the art and culture of 19th-century France, joined the Barnes Foundation as its Chief Curator. Dolkart previously served as Associate Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1993 and a Masters of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997.
“We will be moving to the Parkway in Philadelphia in 2012, but we’re still open here in Merion through June 2011,” said a Barnes official. The new, much larger building, with its “Gallery in a Garden” design, created by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, with landscape architect Laurie Olin, will provide the needed additional space for classrooms, an auditorium, painting and research facilities, a café and gift shop, an internal garden, and a 5,000 square-foot Special Exhibitions Gallery with a 16’ high ceiling, but it will also preserve the distinctive nature of the Barnes Foundation and replicate the hanging of the art groups presently on exhibit in Merion. “The new building will include a new Exchange Exhibiting Gallery, something we don’t currently have in Merion, and one of Dolkart’s jobs will be to organize shows for that.”
The Merion site will remain the property of the Barnes Foundation and will house its rich archives. The Arboretum will remain open to the public, and the on-site horticulture programs will be expanded.
“The new building will be finished by the end of 2011, but it takes time to prepare the building environmentally for the paintings and other art,” explained a key Barnes official. While waiting for the new building to be prepared, coming in out of the heat this summer to contemplate the art in this one-of-a-kind collection sounds like an enjoyable and educational way to spend a few hours—or an entire day.
© 2010 by Catherine J. Barrier. All rights reserved.
