The Barnes Foundation

If you have never heard of the Barnes Foundation and it’s scrumptious art collection, it’s not surprising. One of the art world’s best-kept museum secrets in the United States lurks in an upper crust neighborhood in Philadelphia’s Main Line area. The Barnes Foundation was the home and museum of Albert C. Barnes, a talented and eccentric art collector and doctor. Barnes was one of the first American art collectors to purchase the artwork of European artists Auguste Renoir, Chaim Soutine, Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani and Giorgio de Chirico. 

 

The Barnes Philosophy

Barnes imposed extreme restrictions on the artworks in his museum. The artwork was not allowed to be reproduced in color, and the artwork could only be reproduced up to modest sizes in black and white. The art in the Barnes Foundation was not allowed to travel to other museums. Albert Barnes wanted you to come to him and believed that art should be seen in person, not merely viewed in a book.

 

Museum Row in Philadelphia

Thanks to many years of legal maneuvering this has all changed and the Barnes Foundation is moving to what is becoming quite the Museum Row in Philadelphia. The Benjamin Franklin Parkway is the home of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum. Recently the PMA bought a beautiful, old Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company building across the street and turned it into an extension of the museum known as the Perlman Building.

 

The New Barnes Foundation Museum

Philadelphia continues to move forward with the new Barnes Foundation museum at 20th Street and the Ben Franklin Parkway. In 2004 a judge gave the Barnes Foundation permission to leave its original home in Upper Merion, Pennsylvania. In October 2008 the ground was finally broken of the new Barnes Foundation Museum. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has promised that that state will throw $30 million into making the new Barnes a reality.

 

Creating Community

By grouping these museums together within close proximity, Philadelphia is building something like the Mall of the Smithsonian museum complex in Washington DC, except with less green space. It builds the heart of Philly by adding, museum to museum like a cell dividing and creating community. 

 

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien are the veteran museum architects chosen to design the new Barnes Foundation building. The creation of the new Barnes has a $100 million dollar price tag and no completion date, so stay tuned for more information.

 

Read more about the Barnes Foundation here.