Barnes Foundation

Barnes Foundation museum in Merion, Pa. Founded in 1922, it houses the impressive art collection amassed by Albert Coombs Barnes, 1872-1951, a wealthy Philadelphia physician, patent-medicine inventor, and pharmaceutical manufacturer. Introduced to art by a schoolmate, the painter William Glackens , Barnes acquired thousands of works of art and objects. The collection is particularly rich in impressionist and postimpressionist paintings and in European and American moderns, with Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso especially well represented. Also included in the collection are Old Master paintings and drawings, African sculpture, American folk art, antiquities, Native American artifacts, antique furniture, and metal objects. In addition to its collections, the foundation maintains a library and extensive archives.

Barnes, who scorned traditional museum practice, displayed his eclectic collection in a highly idiosyncratic fashion, envisioning it and the courses offered by the foundation as means of providing art education to the masses. He wrote several books on art and carried on running feuds with various critics and museums. Ten years after his death the collection opened to the public on a regular basis. Barnes left control of his foundation to Lincoln Univ., an African-American institution in SE Pennsylvania, with the stipulation that the collection not be moved or altered. During the 1990s extreme tensions developed between the foundation's president and the university. In 2003, in a move to prevent foundation bankruptcy, Lincoln's board voted to relocate the collection to a new museum to be built in downtown Philadelphia, and a court decision in 2004 permitted the move. In 2006 art historian Derek A. Gillman was appointed director of the foundation, and in 2007 the American architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien were selected to design the collection's new home, where, by court order, the new galleries will replicate those in the original Merion building.

Bibliography: See Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation (1993); H. Greenfield, The Devil and Dr. Barnes: Portrait of an American Art Collector (1987); J. Anderson, Art Held Hostage: The Battle over the Barnes Collection (2003); M. A. Meyers, Art, Education, and African-American Culture: Albert Barnes and the Science of Philanthropy (2003).

Barnes, Dr Albert C. (b Philadelphia, 2 Jan. 1872; d Chester County, Pa., 24 July 1951). American drug manufacturer and art collector. He made a fortune with the antiseptic Argyrol, which he created in 1901 (its success is said to have depended largely on its being adopted as the standard anti-venereal treatment of the French army), and by 1913 he was devoting his life to collecting. His greatest interest was in modern French painting, but he also bought Old Masters and primitive art. In 1922 he established the Barnes Foundation at Merion, Pennsylvania, to house his collection and to provide education in art appreciation, and in 1931 he commissioned Matisse to paint a mural decoration for the building. When the mural turned out to be unusable because of an error in the measurements he had been given, Matisse did a new version; the abortive scheme, The Dance I (1931–2), is in the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the second scheme, The Dance II (1932–3), is in situ in the Barnes Foundation.

Barnes has been described as ‘perhaps the greatest single American art collector of the twentieth century’ ( Joseph Alsop, The Rare Art Traditions, 1982), but he was a highly unattractive character: John Rewald (who was among the distinguished art historians refused admission to the Foundation) refers to his ‘dreadful, crude, and unspeakably stupid manners’, and Kenneth Clark wrote that ‘His stories of how he had extracted Cézannes and Renoirs from penniless widows made one's blood run cold.’ (His redeeming feature was his outspoken promotion of racial equality.) The museum Barnes created was closed to the public during his lifetime, but after his death (in a car accident) legal moves were made to try to force the trustees to open it or lose its tax-exempt status. An agreement was reached in 1960 allowing restricted public entry, but it retained its reputation as a virtually inaccessible treasure house. In his will Barnes had stipulated that his pictures should remain exactly as he left them, but in 1991 a court ruled that this directive could be overruled to raise funds for the upkeep of the building, and in 1993–4 a selection of paintings went on tour to Paris, Tokyo, and several American cities.

Barnes, Dr Albert C. (1872–1951). American drug manufacturer and art collector. He made a fortune with the antiseptic Argyrol, which he created in 1901 (its success is said to have depended largely on its being adopted as the standard anti-venereal treatment of the French army), and by 1913 he was devoting his life to collecting. His greatest interest was in modern French painting, but he also bought Old Masters and primitive art. In 1922 he established the Barnes Foundation at Merion, Pennsylvania, to house his collection and to provide education in art appreciation, and in 1931 he commissioned Matisse to paint a mural decoration for the building. When the mural turned out to be unusable because of an error in the measurements he had been given, Matisse did a new version; the abortive scheme, The Dance I (1931–2), is in the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the second scheme, The Dance II (1932–3), is in situ in the Barnes Foundation. Barnes has been described as ‘perhaps the greatest single American art collector of the twentieth century’ ( Joseph Alsop, The Rare Art Traditions, 1982), but he was a highly unattractive character: John Rewald (who was among the distinguished art historians refused admission to the Foundation) refers to his ‘dreadful, crude, and unspeakably stupid manners’, and Kenneth Clark wrote that ‘His stories of how he had extracted Cézannes and Renoirs from penniless widows made one's blood run cold.’ (His redeeming feature was his outspoken promotion of racial equality.) The museum Barnes created was closed to the public during his lifetime, but after his death legal moves were made to try to force the trustees to open it or lose its tax-exempt status. An agreement was reached in 1960 allowing restricted public entry, but it retained its reputation as a virtually inaccessible treasure house. In his will Barnes had stipulated that his pictures should remain exactly as he left them, but in 1991 a court ruled that this directive could be overruled to raise funds for the upkeep of the building, and in 1993–4 a selection of paintings went on tour to Paris, Tokyo, and several American cities.