Albert Coombs Barnes (January 2, 1872 – July 24, 1951) was an American chemist, businessman, art collector, writer, educator, and the founder of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Early life and education Albert Coombs Barnes was born in Philadelphia on January 2, 1872 to working-class parents. His father, butcher John J. Barnes, served in the American Civil War in Company D of the 82nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. He lost his right arm at the Battle of Cold Harbor. After the war John Barnes received a disability pension of $8/month, and took jobs such as inspector, night watchman, and letter carrier when he could find them. Albert Barnes' mother, Lydia A. Schaffer, was a devout Methodist who took him to African American camp meetings and revivals. The family lived first at 1466 Cook Street (now Wilt Street) in the rough working-class neighborhood of what is today Fishtown, and later in a slum area known as "the Neck" or "the Dumps".
Albert Barnes completed elementary school at William Welsh Elementary School in 1885. That year Barnes was one of two boys from his school who were accepted at Central High School, a public school highly respected for its rigorous academic program. Barnes graduated at age 17 on June 27, 1889 with an A.B. degree, part of the 92nd class. At Central, Barnes became friends with William Glackens, who later became an artist and advised Barnes on his first collecting efforts.
Barnes went on to attend medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, enrolling in September 1889 and receiving his degree as of May 6, 1892. He earned his way by tutoring, boxing, and playing semi-professional baseball. In 1892, he interned at Penn's Graduate Hospital then known as Polyclinic Hospital in Philadelphia and at the Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh. He also is listed as having been an assistant physician at the State Hospital for the Insane in Warren, Pennsylvania in 1893. His experience as an intern convinced him that he was not suited to clinical practice. Although he obtained the degree of medical doctor, he never practiced.
Barnes decided instead to pursue an interest in chemistry as it applied to the practice of medicine. He traveled to Germany, then a center of chemical research and education, studying in Berlin around 1895. Returning to the United States, he joined the pharmaceutical company H. K. Mulford in 1898. The company sent him back to Germany to study in Heidelberg, a city that Barnes described as "a loadstone [sic] for scientific investigators of every land." According to the Archiv für Experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie he was among those receiving firsts and seconds, given June 26, 1901, from the Pharmakologischen Institut zu Heidelberg.
Career In 1899, he went into business with German chemist Hermann Hille (1871–1962), and created Argyrol, a silver nitrate antiseptic which was used in the treatment of ophthalmic infections and to prevent newborn infant blindness caused by gonorrhea. The two left H.K. Mulford and Company to organize a partnership called Barnes and Hille. This new company was founded in 1902. Hille ran production and Barnes ran sales. The company prospered financially, but the relationship between the two men waned. In 1908 the company was dissolved. Barnes went on to form A.C. Barnes Company and registered the trademark for Argyrol.Declarations and Statements: Trade-Marks Registered in the United States Patent Office from June 2-9-16-23 and 30th, 1908, vol. 127, part 169, 247-69, 499. Trademark registration no. 69,328. In July 1929 Zonite Corporation of New York bought A.C. Barnes Company. The move was well timed as the stock market crashed in October that year.
Marriage and family Barnes married Laura Leggett (1875–1966), daughter of a successful grocer in Brooklyn, New York City, but had no children.
When the Barnes Foundation was established, Laura Barnes was appointed as vice president of the board of trustees. Following the death of Captain Joseph Lapsley Wilson, she became the director of the Arboretum. In October 1940, she began the Arboretum School of the Barnes Foundation with the University of Pennsylvania botanist John Milton Fogg Jr. She taught plant materials.“Biographical Note,” Laura Leggett Barnes papers, The Barnes Foundation Archives, 2012. https://www.barnesfoundation.org/whats-on/collection/library-archives/finding-aids She regularly corresponded and exchanged plant specimens with other major institutions, such as the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
She succeeded her husband as president of the Foundation after his death in 1951. She died April 29, 1966, leaving her art collection to the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Her work was recognized by the 1948 Schaffer Memorial Medal from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. In 1955, she became an honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. She received an honorary doctorate in horticultural science from St. Joseph's University of Philadelphia.
Art collecting
In 1911, Barnes reconnected with his high school classmate William Glackens and in January 1912, just after turning 40 years old, Barnes sent him to Paris with $20,000 to buy paintings for him. Glackens returned with 33 works of art.
Following the success of Glackens' buying campaign, Barnes traveled to Paris twice himself, the same year. In December, he met Gertrude and Leo Stein and purchased his first two Matisse paintings from them.Judith F. Dolkart, “To See as the Artist Sees: Albert C. Barnes and the Experiment in Education,” in The Barnes Foundation Masterworks, Judith F. Dolkart and Martha Lucy (Philadelphia: The Barnes Foundation, 2012), 11. Barnes purchased his collection of African Art from art dealer Paul Guillaume (1891–1934), who served briefly as the Barnes Foundation's "foreign secretary."
The collection changed throughout Barnes' lifetime as he acquired pieces, moved them from room to room, gifted pieces, and sold them. The art works in the Barnes Foundation reflect how they were hung and placed at the time of his death in 1951. There are over 4,000 objects in the collection including over 900 paintings and nearly 900 pieces of wrought iron. Some major holdings include: 181 works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 69 works by Paul Cézanne, 59 works by Henri Matisse, 46 works by Pablo Picasso, and 7 paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. In 1923, Barnes Purchased Le Bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life), a painting once owned by Gertrude and Leo Stein, bought from Christian Tetzen-Lund through Paul Guillaume for 45,000 francs. In 1927, he purchased Renoir's The Artist’s Family from Claude Renoir through Galerie Barbazanges for $50,000.Martha Lucy and John House. Renoir in the Barnes Foundation. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), 2012), 299. The collection also includes many other paintings and works by leading European and American artists, as well as African art, art from China, Greece, and Native American peoples.
Barnes Foundation
Barnes had a longtime interest in education; he held two hour long employee seminars at the end of the day in his factory.Albert C. Barnes. “Dr. Barnes of Merion Tells His Story,” radio address broadcast on station WCAU Philadelphia, April 9, 1942. At the seminars, his primarily African American workforce would discuss philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics reading James, Dewey, and Santayana.Laurence Buermeyer, "An Experiment in Education", The Nation 120, 3119 (April 1925): 422-423. With friend and mentor John Dewey he decided to expand his educational venture. In December 1922, the Barnes Foundation received its charter from the state of Pennsylvania as an educational institution. He hired Franco-American architect Paul Philippe Cret to build a gallery building, residence (administration building), and service building. The gallery served as a teaching tool for students to study art using a method based on the scientific method. Barnes consulted with attorney Owen Roberts (1875–1955) when setting up the by-laws and the indenture. In 1925, the buildings were completed and the Barnes Foundation opened. The collection is not hung traditionally, instead they are arranged in "ensembles" which are organized following the formal principles of light, color, line, and space. The focus of Barnes's teachings were on the art itself rather than its historic context, chronology, style, or genre. Barnes did not provide documentation on the meaning of each arrangement.
Operations Since the Barnes Foundation was an educational institution, Barnes limited access to the collection, and often required people to make appointments by letter. He often declined visitors who wrote and asked to visit. He especially did not appreciate the wealthy and entitled requesting visits and would often rudely answer them. In 1939, Barnes sent a letter, posing as a secretary, informing Walter Chrysler he could not visit because he (Barnes) "is not to be disturbed during his strenuous efforts to break the world's record for gold-fish swallowing."
Influenced by the Philadelphia Museum of Art's handling of the donated art collection of his late lawyer, John Graver Johnson, Barnes wanted to make his intentions clear in the Foundation's indenture and trust. It stated, "all paintings should remain in exactly the places they are at the time of the death of Donor [Barnes] and his said wife."“Relocation of the Barnes Collection Fact Sheet” in the Philadelphia Opening Press Kit, The Barnes Foundation, 2012 https://www.barnesfoundation.org/press/press-releases/move-press-kit-2012 From his death in 1951 the specific arrangement of the paintings and art remained the same until, at the request of the Barnes Foundation, the Montgomery County Orphans' Court overruled the indenture in 2004.David D'Arcy, " 'Selling everything but the wallpaper' — auction reopens old wounds over Barnes legacy" The Arts Newspaper, 3rd June 2019
Litigation to open the Barnes Foundation to the public began seven months after Barnes' death. In March 1961 it was opened to the public on Fridays and Saturdays, then expanded to three days a week in 1967, after Mrs. Barnes' death in '66, and remained that way until the 1990s.“Administrative History,” Central File Correspondence. The Barnes Foundation Archives, 2006. https://s3.amazonaws.com/barnes-images-p-e1c3c83bd163b8df/assets/CFC_Pkwy.pdf Barnes also had strong feelings against color photographs of the collection as the quality was not up to par with the then current technology. In regards to a request for color photographs Mrs. Barnes wrote to Henri Matisse: “Despite the improvement of the photographic process, it does not faithfully reproduce the exact colors of the artist. And there is further difficulty in making color plates for a book.” The stance is often criticized. The critic Hilton Kramer wrote of Matisse's Le bonheur de vivre: "owing to its long sequestration in the collection of the Barnes Foundation, which never permitted its reproduction in color, it is the least familiar of modern masterpieces. Yet this painting was Matisse's own response to the hostility his work had met with in the Salon d'Automne of 1905."Hilton Kramer, "Reflections on Matisse," in The Triumph of Modernism: The Art World, 1985–2005, (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 162.
Relationship with art world