The Barnes Foundation
July 14th, 2010 by admin received No Comments »On Saturday, I went to the Barnes Foundation in Merion (a Main Line suburb west of Philadelphia), which is the art collection of Dr. Albert Barnes and his wife housed in a beautiful mansion. Dr. Barnes was a medical doctor and native Philadelphian who became rich after inventing some kind of infection-preventing medicine (pre-penicillin) and bought art and taught art appreciation classes. Classes in art appreciation and horticulture are still taught at the Foundation.
The Barnes
The collection is moving to a new location (from the original location in Merion—not sure what I think of that) on the Parkway in Philly, near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this fall, so some of the galleries were closed to move the pieces. I still spent about three hours in the collections, and was thoroughly impressed. When I first entered, I was a bit overwhelmed, because the paintings line very tall walls, and although the Foundation provides small plates at the bottom of each frame with the artist’s last name, they don’t provide information about the pieces, years finished, titles, etc. I’m not really sure what I think of that, because I always read the information that museums provide about pieces and was a little discombobulated when I didn’t have any information to read. However, I have noticed that sometimes I get into reading and then just glance at the pieces about which I’m reading, and this definitely did not happen at the Barnes. I elected to get the audio tour, which talked about a few of the pieces on display, but not a large percentage of the collection.
After my initial shock at the amount of art stuffed into the galleries and the lack of information on the pieces, I relaxed and began to enjoy the art. The Barnes has huge collections of Renoir, Matisse, Rousseau, Prendergast, and Picasso paintings and drawings and looking at these collections allowed me to realize that there is tremendous variation between works by a single artist. In other words, Renoir painted wispy women in hats (like I saw at the Philadelphia Museum of Art), but he also painted very representational portraits and blurry landscapes and drew/watercoloured simple designs. In addition, apparently Picasso didn’t just paint crazy abstracts—he too painted representational portraits and drew representative sketches.
In addition to the collections by those artists, the Barnes also had paintings from many different time periods and artists—including the medieval religious paintings that I enjoy as well as 12th Century Chinese paintings and African masks. Another feature of the Foundation I should note is that paintings are not arranged chronologically or by region/artist, so sometimes the Chinese paintings, medieval typtychs, and Degas drawings would be next to each other on a wall. Barnes stipulated the arrangements, but he had very specific (and articulated) reasons for those arrangements—one gallery had a wall tied together by red accents in the pieces, another was unified by the idea of a spoke and wheel, yet another had a small side table whose legs echoed the curves in the painting above it, etc. Isabella Stewart Gardner (of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston) would have done well to learn from Dr. Barnes—she organized her collection in a way that made sense to her, but no one can figure out why she did what she did.
Paintings that stood out to me were an abstract by Picasso of a violin and sheet music as well as Renoir landscapes, a Monet painting of a boat on a river, and of course the medieval religious paintings. I wish that the exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art had had more landscapes. Obviously, that exhibit had pieces from his late period, which didn’t include as many landscapes, but I didn’t realize how much I enjoy those landscapes until I saw them on Saturday.
After visiting the galleries (four of which were closed already to prepare for the move to the Parkway), I went outside to explore the Arboretum that surrounds the Barnes. Unfortunately, it was raining men outside, but the native Oregonian in me didn’t care about the moisture and really wanted to see the gardens. Needless to say, I was the only visitor to the gardens, but I had my umbrella with me, so I didn’t get too wet. The gardens, pond, and tea house were all beautiful, and I think would have been even more lovely had it not been raining.
The pond in the Arboretum (note the raindrops)
After about 20 minutes in the gardens, I decided that I had had enough and began my walk back to the Merion R5 station. That afternoon was the annual (satirical) storming of the Bastille at Eastern State Penitentiary. I decided not to go, because it was raining and the storming is an outdoor event, but I attended last year and had a great time (and would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in going next year). Last year, the woman who played Marie Antoinette resigned at the last minute (right after Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska) before she was beheaded, and at when she said “Let them eat cake,” people playing members of the French aristocracy threw Twinkies down into the crowd from the top of the walls of the Penitentiary.
Marie Antoinette and Co. at Bastille Day at ESP (July 2009)
While I was busy not going to the Bastille Day festivities, I met a friend in the city for dinner at one of the restaurants I had on my list of places to go—Café L’Aube, which is a small crepe place at 15th and South. I had a very yummy turkey/gouda/honey/walnut crepe for dinner, and after walking around Center City a bit, we walked back to Suburban Station to take the train back out to the burbs.
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