Philadelphia; Liberty, Art (Part Two); September 2019
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Albert Barnes, M.D., was a very successful pharmaceuticals entrepreneur who amassed a fortune in the early 1900s and then amassed a fortune in Impressionist masterpieces. He carefully created the Barnes Foundation in 1922, chartered as an educational institution, and had a building purpose-built in Merion, Pennsylvania, to house his collection. Dr. Barnes strictly limited the foundation's purposes, prohibited moving any of the art outside the private gallery that housed it, and also drastically limited public access. His collection included (and still includes) 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos, 16 Modiglianis, seven Van Goghs, 21 Soutines, 18 Rousseaus, 11 Degas, and six Seurats. Also (!) works by Rubens, Titian, Gauguin, El Greco, Goya, Manet, Monet, and Utrillo. (How often do you say someone, in addition to his "main" collection, "also" has some Manets and Monets, plus some bits by Rubens, Titian, El Greco, and Goya?)
The collection is presently worth about 25 billion - not million - dollars.
Dr. Barnes died in 1951 in an auto accident. There were prolonged and unpleasant disputes and challenges to the limitations he had carefully adopted for his educational foundation; Philadelphia elite had long been at odds with Dr. Barnes over his collection. The disputes ostensibly centered on making his collection accessible to the public, but a less-high-minded power struggle was really in play between Dr. Barnes's intentions, as reflected in the airtight limitations he had carefully adopted, and the wealthy Philadelphia families who had long wanted to make the collection the focus of Philadelphia's arts legacy (and who also may have coveted control over yet another aspect of Philadelphia society). An acclaimed movie eventually addressed the disputes and the aftermath: "The Art of the Steal" (2009), detailed the power struggle and shamed the Philadelphia elite. A counter-narrative, "Barnes and Beyond: In the End, Truth Prevails" (2015), was issued by (not surprisingly) the reconstituted foundation board after Barnes's restrictions were avoided and a new building housing the collection was constructed.
The ultimate downside was that Albert Barnes's restrictive concepts, validly adopted under Pennsylvania law, were overridden, arguably without legal justification; the upside was the public now has much better access to what is arguably the world's finest collection of post-impressionist and modern art. And although the collection was moved from Merion (contrary to Barnes's binding instructions), it is now housed in a building that exactly replicates the somewhat eccentric way Barnes himself had very carefully hung the collection. So in that way, his wishes were at least partly respected. And the collection remains intact, despite earlier efforts to break it up.
The new building is near the Rodin display and is itself striking and functional if not very warm and welcoming. The Merion building is more gracious.
But we're beyond all that now: We had access that would have been denied 20 years prior. This is the finest such collection in the world.
Rodin
Botanical sculpture at the Rodin Museum; it could be bronze.
The Barnes Foundation building, pond, sculpture
The collection inside is beyond belief and full comprehension.
Barnes placed artifacts and iron-work bits around the paintings. The thermostat post-dates Dr. Barnes. But he might have approved. He took great care in selecting paintings to be hung in proximity.
Above right: Toulouse-Lautrec painted this fabulous portrait of Carmen Gaudin, one of his favorite models.
This gallery holds these and a few more Philadelphia and Barnes Foundation photos: https://www.zenfolio.com/bobeastaughimagery/p619280034
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After a lifetime of mainly expressing myself with words, my postings here will mainly rely on images. They will speak for themselves to some extent, but I'll usually add a few comments of explanation. I've taken photographs for decades, since the 1950's, inspired in part by my father's photographic skill. Four years of photo assignments and quality darkroom time eventually gave way to decades of casual and family picture-taking. I re-immersed myself when I left film and turned to digital.