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The Barnes Foundation is a gem of impressionist and early modernist art in central Philadelphia. Originally in suburban Merion, Pennsylvania, the art was collected by pharmaceutical millionaire Albert C. Barnes. Biographer and art critic Blake Gopnik—formerly a Newsweek reporter—delves into the life and influence of the museum's founder in his newest book, The Maverick's Museum: Albert Barnes and his American Dream (Ecco). In this Q&A, Gopnik discusses why the Barnes Foundation is unique, what Barnes might have thought of the collection's move to central Philadelphia, why museums are so essential to the appreciation of art and more.
Newsweek: What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching The Maverick's Museum?
Gopnik: I guess I was most surprised by just how important [Albert] Barnes turns out to be in the history of formalist criticism and thought—that is, thought that privileges the look of a painting over its subject matter. We've mostly lost track of the deep influence of Barnes' 1925 book, The Art in Painting. It seems to have had a big effect on America's most famous formalist, Alfred Barr, founding director of the Museum of Modern Art.
Your last book was a biography of Andy Warhol. What drew you to Barnes' story next? Are there similarities between the two?
For an archives rat like me, the most important similarity is that they both left behind vast stores of records, of vital matters in their lives but also of everyday dealings. That lets a biographer build a picture with real subtlety, complexity and accuracy. I went down a deep wormhole in figuring out all the great cars Barnes cherished—and crashed. (And I don't even drive myself.)
Barnes relied on William Glackens to educate him about art and make his initial purchases. When did Barnes start to trust his own tastes more than others, and how did that influence his collection?
Right after the initial purchases by Glackens, Barnes really went it alone, although Parisian dealers like Paul Guillaume were sometimes important in guiding his tastes. It's not at all clear he would have gone so deep into African art without the example of Guillaume. But in those very early years of modern art, things were so much up for grabs that most people formed their own tastes, by simple immersion in the new works.
Barnes had an unconventional approach to art collecting, particularly through his focus on juxtaposing fine art with decorative pieces. How did this reflect his broader vision of art and culture?
One thing I hope my biography will make clear is that the mix of fine and decorative arts, so striking today at the Barnes Foundation, really came about quite late in Barnes' life as a collector and thinker and isn't vital to understanding his tastes and ideas. If anything, when he added decorative arts to his collection it led him to simplify his formalist theories, which before that had been as much about the world and what it means as about mere shapes and colors.
The Barnes Foundation has had a complicated history since Barnes' death, especially regarding its move from Merion. What do you think Barnes would think of the collection's current iteration in Philadelphia and the use of its original location by Saint Joseph's University as its own art museum?
Barnes could work up a head of steam about the most trivial resistance to his desires, so I guess he might have ranted and raved—as much about being disobeyed as about the actual substance of the move. On the other hand, if he had been in charge when it became clear that his galleries out in Merion were in trouble, Barnes himself, an eminently practical man, might have come up with a similarly practical solution. After all, he often threatened to move his collection to some other place if he didn't get just what he wanted; even if those threats were empty, the possibility of a move was on the table.
There are a handful of personal art collections turned museums, such as the Frick Collection in New York City and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. What makes the Barnes Foundation unique?
The Barnes Foundation is unique because it doesn't just preserve the record of a collector's (aka, buyer's) tastes. It preserves the coherent curatorial product of a deep and systematic thinker about art, who wanted to share those thoughts, in precise detail, with others. Whether or not they always enjoyed the sharing is another question—and quite beside the point, as far as Barnes was concerned.
As an art and design critic at Newsweek in the 2010s, and elsewhere, you've covered art from the Old Masters to the most avant-garde. Do you have a personal favorite artist or movement?
I'd say Giorgione and Marcel Duchamp are two artists who interest me especially deeply, because I think, taken together, their works offer clues about the very meaning and definition of Western art. But if someone offered to give me a work by any artist I wanted, I think I'd probably pick a Cézanne, because it's impossible to ever be done with him.
What's on your own walls at home?
As a critic, I've always avoided buying art, or getting involved with the market at all. It just makes things too messy. But I'm married to an artist, and we've inevitably had a few artist friends, so I'm happy to have her works, and their works, all around me at home. But full disclosure: I think museums are where art objects get to do their best work. At home, there are too many distractions for them to compete with, and they can so easily become mere background noise to the rest of a life as it's lived.
