The Legacy of Albert C. Barnes. Part 1. The Tempestuous Life of a Scientist / Art Collector

Throughout the past year, I have written about the many fme works of art we have gradually acquired for ISP’s headquarters in Philadelphia. 14 It is gratifying to find that many art lovers now recognize that the “1S1 gallery” is unique and gaining in stature. But now I’d like to tell you about one of the most intriguing and impressive collections of art in the world. Also located in the Phdadelphla area, it is just a short drive from the 1S1 building on Market Street. I refer not to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, nor the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Though all of them are superb, I have in mind the Barnes Foundation in the Phdadelphla suburb of Merion. The Barnes Foundation possesses what is probably one of the most comprehensive collections of French modem paintings in the world, as well as works by such masters as Rubens, Titian, Bosch, Goya, El Greco, and others too numerous to list here. In 1%1, the collection was conservatively estimated to be worth $300 mi~lon; 5 its value today is perhaps in the bWlons. Yet the Barnes Foundation, once a common subject of Philadelphia-area newspapers and weU known to the general public, has now retreated into obscurity, apparently remembered only by art intellectuals, cultural elitists, and the wealthy residents of Philadelphia’s Main Line suburbs. Ironically, these are precisely the kinds of people whom Albert Coombs Barnes, (creator of the Foundation that bears his name, detested and gleefully fought throughout most of his adult life. In this essay we’ll examine his tumultuous liie, whale a future essay will focus on his Foundation and the fabulous art collection Barnes bequeathed to it. Barnes was such an eccentric, controversial figure, and was so often in the public eye under such bizarre circumstances, that it is difficult now to distinguish between truth and legend. Barnes was apparently not one to shy away from saying what he thought, and it seems that what he thought of people with credentials or pedigrees was generally unprintable. Certainly he did not endear hnself to many of the powerful or influential people of the period from World War I to World War II, and articles about him from that time are likely to be biased. Thk is especially true of the art press, which Barnes regularly blasted as, at best, posturing and incompetent. On the other hand, even information given out by Barnes about himself is suspect, since he took no pains to be accurate with most journalists. Thus, although most accounts of him agree on certain major points, they vary widely in detail. Depending upon what account of him you read, he was either a modemday Robin Hood, full of rugged individualism, or an egomaniacal demon. Barnes was born in Phdadelphia in 1872. His father, a butcher by trade, was chronically unemployed as a result of