Albert Barnes
Albert Barnes (1872-1951) was a Philadelphia pharmaceutical entrepreneur whose fortune, made through the antiseptic Argyrol, funded one of the world's greatest collections of impressionist and post-impressionist art, now housed in the Barnes Foundation he established in Merion and relocated to Philadelphia. His collection, valued in the billions, includes masterworks by Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso displayed according to his idiosyncratic arrangements that remain largely unchanged since his death. His combative personality, which alienated the Philadelphia establishment whose approval he seemed to crave and reject simultaneously, created conflicts that continued long after his death in disputes over his foundation's management and location.[1]
From Argyrol to Art
[edit | edit source]Albert Coombs Barnes was born on January 2, 1872, in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, his working-class origins providing the outsider perspective that both drove his success and fueled his resentments. His education at Central High School and later at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School demonstrated abilities that his circumstances might have constrained. His partnership with Hermann Hille to develop Argyrol, a silver nitrate compound used to prevent infant blindness, created the fortune that his collecting would absorb.[2]
His sale of Argyrol to Zonite Products in 1929, just before the stock market crash, secured the fortune that subsequent collecting would require. His early interest in art, developed through friendships including that with William Glackens who advised his initial purchases, evolved into systematic collecting that assembled masterpieces whose value has multiplied exponentially. His purchases during the 1920s, when impressionist and post-impressionist works were still affordable for the wealthy if not the ordinary, created a collection that later collectors could not replicate.[1]
His Philadelphia location, which he maintained despite the art world's concentration in New York, reflected both loyalty and antagonism toward a city whose establishment he felt had rejected him. The Main Line mansion where he housed his collection, and the foundation he established to provide art education, demonstrated ambitions that extended beyond personal enjoyment to educational mission. His Merion galleries, designed to display art alongside metalwork and furniture in "ensembles" that reflected his aesthetic theories, created viewing experience unlike any conventional museum.[2]
The Barnes Foundation
[edit | edit source]Barnes established the Barnes Foundation in 1922 as an educational institution whose purpose was art appreciation rather than mere display. His arrangements of paintings, which juxtaposed works by different artists to illuminate formal relationships, reflected theories developed with John Dewey and expressed in books that Barnes authored or co-authored. The Foundation's educational programs, which emphasized direct experience over art historical knowledge, provided the justification for its existence that tax-exempt status required.[1]
His restrictions on access, which limited visitors and prohibited loans, protected the collection while frustrating the public whose exclusion Barnes seemed to enjoy. His feuds with critics, with art establishment figures, and with Philadelphia society generally demonstrated a personality that accumulated enemies as readily as masterpieces. His refusal to permit certain individuals to visit, and his enjoyment of the power that ownership provided, revealed characteristics that his educational mission did not fully explain.[2]
His indenture of trust, which specified that his arrangements should remain unchanged and that the collection should remain in Merion, created constraints that decades of litigation would eventually overcome. The Foundation's relocation to a new building in Philadelphia, completed in 2012 after years of legal battles, fulfilled the public access that Barnes had resisted while violating the wishes his documents specified. The collection's survival, regardless of location, preserves the assemblage that his fortune and taste created.[1]
Legacy
[edit | edit source]Albert Barnes died on July 24, 1951, in an automobile accident, his foundation continuing under the restrictions his indenture specified until legal and financial pressures forced changes he would have opposed. His legacy includes the collection that remains one of the world's greatest assemblages of impressionist and post-impressionist art, the educational mission that the Foundation continues, and the controversies that his personality and his restrictions generated. Barnes represents both what Philadelphia wealth could achieve in cultural acquisition and the complex psychology that collecting at such scale sometimes reveals.[2]