Overview

A physician who applied his knowledge of chemistry to the manufacture of a widely used antiseptic, Albert Barnes is best remembered as one of the great American art collectors. The Barnes Foundation, which houses his treasures, is a fabled repository of Impressionist, post-Impressionist, and early modern paintings. Less well known is the fact that Barnes attributed his passion for collecting art to his youthful experience of African-American culture, especially music. Art, Education, and African-American Culture is both a biography of an iconoclastic and innovative figure and a study of the often-conflicted efforts of an emergent liberalism to seek out and showcase African American contributions to the American aesthetic tradition. Mary Ann Meyers examines Barnes's background and career and the development and evolution of his enthusiasm for collecting pictures and sculpture. She shows how Barnes's commitment to breaking down invidious distinctions and his use of the uniquely arranged works in his collection as textbooks for his school, created a milieu where masterpieces of European and American late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century painting, along with rare and beautiful African art objects, became a backdrop for endless feuding. A gallery requiring renovation, a trust prohibiting the loan or sale of a single picture, and the efforts of Lincoln University, known as the ""black Princeton,"" to balance conflicting needs and obligations all conspired to create a legacy of legal entanglement and disputes that remain in contention. This volume is neither an idealized account of a quixotic do-gooder nor is it a critique of a crank. While fully documenting Barnes's notorious eccentricities along with the clashing interests of the main personalities associated with his Foundation, Meyers eschews moral posturing in favor of a rich mosaic of peoples and institutions that illustrate many of the larger themes of American culture in general and African-American culture in particular.

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9781412805636

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Reviews

""Meyers's compelling and cogent analysis of the back story of the Barnes Foundation shines a bright light on the long-running debate over the proper place for one of the world's most distinguished art collections.....Well written and provocative, [it] isa must read for anyone who would understand the present controversy - a work of importance."" - Elijah Anderson, Charles and William L. Day Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania ""This illumination of the character of Barnes, whose collection of Impressionist paintings is currently the focus of a lengthy legal struggle, helps us understand the significance of that outcome for all concerned about art's history.... Recommended."" - Choice ""Meyers' biography [is]...the most complete, measured and scholarly portrait of Barnes to date."" - The Pennsylvania Gazette ""The author combines a researcher's patience, a journalist's eye, and a novelists timing in skillfully weaving the sociological, artistic, political, societal, and philosophical ingredients that comprise the story of the Barnes Foundation.... An engaging book for a long and leisurely... read."" - School Arts Magazine""

Meyers's compelling and cogent analysis of the back story of the Barnes Foundation shines a bright light on the long-running debate over the proper place for one of the world's most distinguished art collections.....Well written and provocative, [it] isa must read for anyone who would understand the present controversy - a work of importance. - Elijah Anderson, Charles and William L. Day Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania This illumination of the character of Barnes, whose collection of Impressionist paintings is currently the focus of a lengthy legal struggle, helps us understand the significance of that outcome for all concerned about art's history.... Recommended. - Choice Meyers' biography [is]...the most complete, measured and scholarly portrait of Barnes to date. - The Pennsylvania Gazette The author combines a researcher's patience, a journalist's eye, and a novelists timing in skillfully weaving the sociological, artistic, political, societal, and philosophical ingredients that comprise the story of the Barnes Foundation.... An engaging book for a long and leisurely... read. - School Arts Magazine

Author Information

Mary Ann Meyers is secretary and a director of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and the senior fellow at the John Templeton Foundation. She is the author of A New World Jerusalem: The Swedenborgian Experience in Community Construction and a coauthor of Religion in American Life and Coping with Serious Illness.

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