Barnes Foundation
The 'Barnes Foundation' is an art collection and educational institution promoting the appreciation of art and horticulture. Originally in Merion, the art collection moved in 2012 to a new building on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The arboretum of the Barnes Foundation remains in Merion, where it has been proposed that it be maintained under a long-term educational affiliation agreement with Saint Joseph's University.
The Barnes was founded in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, who made his fortune by co-developing Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound that was used to combat gonorrhea and inflammations of the eye, ear, nose, and throat. He sold his business, the A.C. Barnes Company, just months before the stock market crash of 1929.
Today, the foundation owns more than 4,000 objects, including over 900 paintings, estimated to be worth about $25 billion. These are primarily works by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist masters, but the collection also includes many other paintings by leading European and American artists, as well as African art, antiquities from China, Egypt, and Greece, and Native American art.
In the 1990s, the Foundation's declining finances led its leaders to various controversial moves, including sending artworks on a world tour and proposing to move the collection to Philadelphia. After numerous court challenges, the new Barnes building opened on Benjamin Franklin Parkway on May 19, 2012. The foundation's current president and executive director, Thomas "Thom" Collins, was appointed on January 7, 2015.
History
Albert C. Barnes
Albert C. Barnes began collecting art as early as 1902, but became a serious collector in 1912. He was assisted at first by painter William Glackens, an old schoolmate from Central High School in Philadelphia. On an art buying trip to Paris, France, Barnes visited the home of Gertrude and Leo Stein where he purchased his first two paintings by Henri Matisse. In the 1920s, Barnes became acquainted with the work of other modern artists such as Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Giorgio de Chirico through his Paris art dealer Paul Guillaume.On December 4, 1922, Barnes received a charter from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania establishing the Barnes Foundation as an educational institution dedicated to promoting the appreciation of fine art and arboriculture. He purchased property in Merion at 50 Lapsley Lane from the American Civil War veteran and horticulturist Captain Joseph Lapsley Wilson, who had established an arboretum there in around 1880. He commissioned architect Paul Philippe Cret to design a complex of buildings, including a gallery, an administration building, and a service building. The Barnes Foundation officially opened on March 19, 1925.
The main building features several unusual Cubist bas-reliefs commissioned by Barnes from the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz. Elements of African art decorate the exterior wrought iron and the tile work created by the Enfield Pottery and Tile Works on the front portico of the building. Barnes built his home next to the gallery, which now serves as the administration building of the Foundation. His wife, Laura Leggett Barnes, developed the Arboretum of the Barnes Foundation and its horticultural education program in 1940.
Art education programs
In 1908, Barnes organized his business, the A.C. Barnes Company, as a cooperative, devoting two hours of the work day to seminars for his workers. They read philosophers William James, Georges Santayana, and John Dewey. Barnes also brought some of his art collection into the laboratory for the workers to consider and discuss. This kind of direct experience with art was inspired by the education philosophy of John Dewey and planted the seed that eventually grew into the establishment of the Barnes Foundation. The two met at a Columbia University seminar in 1917 becoming close friends and collaborators spanning more than three decades.Barnes's conception of his foundation as a school rather than a typical museum was shaped through his collaboration with John Dewey. Like Dewey, Barnes believed that learning should be experiential. The Foundation classes included experiencing original art works, participating in class discussion, reading about philosophy and the traditions of art, as well as looking objectively at the artists' use of light, line, color, and space. Barnes believed that students would not only learn about art from these experiences but that they would also develop their own critical thinking skills enabling them to become more productive members of a democratic society.
The early education programs at the Barnes Foundation were taught in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. The courses at Penn were first taught by Laurence Buermeyer, who held a philosophy PhD from Princeton, and later by Thomas Munro, a philosophy professor and one of Dewey's students. Each served as the associate director of Education, while Dewey served in the largely honorary position of Director of Education.
Another collaborator was Violette de Mazia, who was born in Paris and educated in Belgium and England. Originally hired to teach French to the Foundation staff in 1925, de Mazia became a close associate of Barnes, teaching and co-authoring four Foundation publications. After Barnes' death, she became a trustee and the Director of Education of the Art Department, continuing to express Barnes' philosophy in her teaching. The Violette de Mazia Foundation was then established after her death, and in 2011 the Barnes Foundation came to an agreement with them to allow the de Mazia Foundation student access to the collection for art education after its move to the Parkway. In 2015 however, the de Mazia Foundation ceased its operations and was absorbed by the Barnes Foundation.
Barnes created detailed terms of operation in an indenture of trust to be honored in perpetuity after his death. These included limiting public admission to two days a week, so the school could use the art collection primarily for student study, and prohibiting the loan of works in the collection, colored reproductions of its works, touring the collection, and presenting touring exhibitions of other art. Matisse is said to have hailed the school as the only sane place in America to view art.
Post-Barnes era
After a decade of legal challenges, the public was allowed regular access to the collection in 1961. Public access was expanded to two and a half days a week, with a limit of 500 visitors per week; reservations were required by telephone at least two weeks in advance. Harold J. Weigand, an editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, with the consent of, but not directly on behalf of, the Pennsylvania Attorney General, had filed an earlier suit for access but had been unsuccessful.Financial crisis
In 1992, Richard H. Glanton, president of the foundation, said the museum needed extensive repairs to upgrade its mechanical systems, provide for maintenance and preservation of artworks, and improve security. The old Philadelphia firm J.S. Cornell & Son was the contractor of choice. In order to raise the money, Glanton decided to break some terms of the indenture. From 1993 to 1995, 83 of the collection's Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings were sent on a world tour, attracting large crowds in numerous cities, including Washington, D.C.; Fort Worth, Texas; Paris; Tokyo; Toronto; and Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.The revenue earned from the tour of paintings was still not enough to ensure its endowment. By fall 1998, Glanton and fellow board member Niara Sudarkasa were suing each other. Lincoln University, which according to the Barnes Foundation's indenture, controlled four of the five seats on the board of trustees, began an investigation into the Foundation's finances. The Foundation's board believed that a similar investigation was warranted for activities during Glanton's tenure as president. In 1998 the board of directors began a forensic audit conducted by Deloitte, which was released upon completion after two years of investigation. It criticized Glanton's expenses and management.
In 1998, Kimberly Camp was hired as the foundation's CEO and first museum professional to run the Barnes. During her seven-year tenure, she turned the struggling foundation around and provided necessary support to the petition to move the Barnes to Philadelphia.
Proposed move
On September 24, 2002, the foundation announced that it would petition the Montgomery County Orphans' Court to allow the art collection to be moved to Philadelphia and to triple the number of trustees to 15. The foundation's indenture of trust stipulates that the paintings in the collection be kept "in exactly the places they are".The foundation argued that it needed to expand the board of trustees from five to 15 to increase fundraising. For the same reason, it needed to move the gallery from Merion to a site in Center City, Philadelphia, which would provide greater public access. In its brief to the court, the foundation said that donors were reluctant to commit continuing financial resources to the Barnes unless the gallery were to become more accessible to the public.
On December 15, 2004, after a two-year legal battle that included an examination of the foundation's financial situation, Judge Stanley Ott ruled that the foundation could move. Three charitable foundations, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Lenfest Foundation and the Annenberg Foundation, had agreed to help the Barnes raise $150 million for a new building and endowment on the condition that the move be approved.
On June 13, 2005, the Foundation's president, Kimberly Camp, announced her resignation, to take effect no later than January 1, 2006. Camp had been appointed in 1998 with the goal of stabilizing and restoring the foundation to its original mission. During her tenure, she began the Collection Assessment Project, the first full-scale effort to catalog and stabilize the artworks; brought in exemplary professional staff; created the fundraising program; restored Ker-feal and the Barnes Arboretum; and worked with the board to approve policies and procedures to make the foundation viable. In 2002, Dr. Bernard C. Watson began the proposal to move the Barnes.
The foundation pledged to reproduce Barnes's artistic arrangement of the artworks and other furniture within the new gallery to maintain the experience as he intended.