The House of Barnes (Paperback)

The life and times of extraordinary Philadelphia art collector Albert C. Barnes

Philadelphia art collector Albert C. Barnes (1872–1951) is renowned today for collecting many of the world’s most important impressionist, post-impressionist, and modern paintings, and displaying them alongside African masks, Native American jewelry, Greek antiquities, and decorative metalwork. The museum that bears his name holds more than eight hundred paintings, with a strong focus on Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso, as well as other European and American masters.

In The House of Barnes, Neil L. Rudenstine provides the first scholarly study on the historical, art historical, and political context during which Barnes purchased his masterpieces and attempted to redefine aesthetic education. Inspired by his good friend John Dewey’s educational philosophy, Barnes held art-appreciation classes for the workers in his factory. His successes there led him to establish the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania―more as an educational experiment than a typical museum.

In 2012, the Barnes Foundation moved to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia. Rudenstine presents the controversial events surrounding the Barnes Foundation’s move to Philadelphia, including an analysis of the Foundation’s financial plight, a review of the major court cases over the decades, and a characterization of the fervent reactions following the court’s decision to allow the move to take place.

The House of Barnes chronicles the life and times of an extraordinary collector and the continued endurance of the Barnes Foundation long after the death of its founder. Originally published in 2012, this new edition contains sixteen pages of full-color reproductions of masterpieces from the collection, a new preface from the author, and a foreword from the prominent art historian Yve-Alain Bois.

Neil L. Rudenstine graduated from Princeton University (1956), was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, earned his PhD in English Literature at Harvard, and remained on Harvard’s faculty until 1968. After two decades as Professor, Dean, and Provost at Princeton, he was President of Harvard University from 1991 to 2001. He was a trustee of the Barnes Foundation and was chair of the boards of ARTstor, the New York Public Library, the Rockefeller Archive Center, as well as vice-chair of the board of the J. Paul Getty Trust. His several books include Sidney’s Poetic Development; English Poetic Satire (with G. S. Rousseau); In Pursuit of the PhD (with W. G. Bowen); and Pointing Our Thoughts. He lives in Massachusetts.

Yve-Alain Bois is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. A specialist in twentieth-century European and American art, Bois is recognized as an expert on a wide range of artists, from Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman, and Ellsworth Kelly. He has curated and co-curated a number of influential exhibitions, including Piet Mondrian, A Retrospective (1994); L’informe, mode d’emploi (1996); Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry (1999); and Picasso Harlequin 1917–1937 (2008). His books include Ellsworth Kelly: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Reliefs, and Sculpture: Vol. 1, 1940–1953 (2015); Matisse in the Barnes Foundation (2015); Art Since 1900 (with Benjamin Buchloh, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss, 2004); Matisse and Picasso (1998); Formless: A User’s Guide (with Rosalind Krauss, 1997); and Painting as Model (1990). Bois is currently working on several long-term projects, foremost among them the five-volume catalogue raisonné of Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings and sculptures.