Barnes Foundation
Post-Impressionist and early Modern collection hung in Albert Barnes's original wall ensembles.
Albert C. Barnes, a chemist who made his fortune from an antiseptic compound, began buying modern French painting in 1912 and chartered his foundation in 1922 as an educational institution rather than a public museum. He installed the collection in a gallery at Merion, outside Philadelphia, arranging pictures in dense symmetrical 'ensembles' that set paintings beside metalwork, furniture and African sculpture to draw out shared qualities of line, colour and space rather than chronology or nationality.
After lengthy litigation the collection moved in 2012 to a new building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, clad in fossil-flecked Negev limestone and wrapped around a light-filled court. The gallery rooms reproduce the Merion sequence, proportions and ensembles exactly. Holdings include 181 works by Renoir, 69 by Cezanne and 59 by Matisse, among them 'The Dance' mural, alongside Seurat, Modigliani, Soutine, Pennsylvania German ironwork and a notable group of West African sculpture.
Highlights
- Barnes's original symmetrical wall ensembles, reproduced room by room
- 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes and 59 Matisses in one collection
- Matisse's mural 'The Dance', painted for the Merion gallery
- Limestone-clad 2012 building with light court and reflecting pool
