Barnes opens in Philadelphia – with more Renoirs, Cézannes than all of France

Philadelphia, the city that gave us Poor Richard, cheese-steak sandwiches and the American Constitution, just opened a new treasure: the Barnes Foundation, one of the premier privately assembled collections of painting in the U.S. with more dreamy Renoirs and searching Cézannes than in the whole of France.

Its arrival in May halfway between the landmark City Hall and Museum of Art on Benjamin Franklin Parkway — Philly’s Champs Élysées — gives visitors a chance to see what was once an almost secret stash of great art.

The catalog is astounding, even apart from Renoirs and Cézannes.

…all previously hard to access, thanks in part to the collection’s former home in Merion, PA, a 45-minute bus ride from downtown. The foundation rarely lent works to other museums, prohibited reproductions and restricted visitation.

Curmudgeonly founder Albert C. Barnes, a medical doctor, chemist and self-made millionaire with a boulder-size chip on his shoulder, once called Philadelphia “a depressing intellectual slum.” He started buying art in the early part of the 20th century and conceived of his collection as an educational institution, not a gathering place for high-society “Sunday” dabblers in art.

It took more than 50 years to give the collection a new home that is open to the public. Not everyone loves it.

 

Keep readingNew Barnes Foundation offers up its treasures in Philadelphia

 

In Vaudeville: Acrobatic Male Dancer with Top Hat - 1920 - by Charles Demuth (American)

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