In Barnes’s museum, all of these different types of artworks are mixed together throughout the galleries. To Barnes, it all fit together perfectly.Ĭhest over Drawers by John Bieber (American, Pennsylvania German), 1789.
He also collected old master paintings, antiquities, lots of American folk art, and art from Africa, Asia, and indigenous North and South America. However, Barnes appreciated more than just European modernism. Perhaps the most famous objects in the collection are Matisse’s Le Bonheur de Vivre and The Dance (not to be confused with the more famous one at MoMA), the latter of which was a Barnes commission. The Barnes Foundation owns an impressive 179 Renoirs and 69 Cezannes, as well as paintings, drawings, and sculptures by artists like Picasso, Van Gogh, and Modigliani. Both are represented in the collection.īarnes’s collection is most closely associated with modern art, and he had the money and desire to purchase the best examples available on the market. He built his diverse collection with the help of his school friends William Glackens, a painter in the 20th-century American realist movement known as the Ashcan School, and Alfred Maurer, a Fauvist. Like many rich entrepreneurs, Albert Barnes turned to art collecting as a hobby after making his fortune. The Collection The Large Bathers by Paul Cezanne, c. He displayed some of his holdings in his factory for their enjoyment and offered free art appreciation classes to them on-site. The primarily African-American workers at his pharmaceutical factory were the first students to benefit from Barnes’s art collecting. In particular, he is closely associated with the African-American painter Horace Pippin (1888-1946), whose work he collected and whose career he helped promote.
He was a big admirer of African and African-American art and music and a passionate supporter of Black artists and causes. Despite that, he was deeply committed to social equality for everyone. Image via The Barnes Foundation.īarnes was not a particularly pleasant man, and he was notoriously difficult to deal with. Barnes Company, which was revolutionary for its progressive and employee-centric labor practices. After spending a period of additional study and research in Berlin, Albert Barnes returned to Philadelphia and made a fortune as a co-inventor of a silver-nitrate antiseptic called Argyrol. Barnes by Carl van Vechten, 1940, via WikimediaĪlbert Coombs Barnes (1872-1951) grew up in poor areas of Philadelphia but received a good education at Philadelphia’s Central High School and then got a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
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