Saying Goodbye To The Barnes

After nearly 90 years in Merion, Albert Barnes’ world-renowned art collection is down to its last month on Latches Lane. 

For visitors these days, it’s clear that the end is nigh.

In the building’s first floor gallery, Barnes’ painstaking arrangements of Renoirs, Piccasos, Soutines and Cezannes are, in a number of locations, interrupted by sporadic sections of blank wall space. Small manila cards give the title of each missing piece—perhaps 20 in all, and most of them Renoirs—explaining that the paintings have been removed for renovation purposes. 

These and other signs of the times—the closing of the second floor gallery, the move of several administrative offices to Philadelphia—remind visitors of the pieces’ imminent move to a new home on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. 
 

Inimitable

The Barnes Foundation houses perhaps the most impressive private collection of French Impressionist, post-Impressionist and Early Modern art in the world, boasting over 800 paintings. The collection includes 181 works by Renoir, 69 by Cezanne, 59 by Matisse, 46 by Picasso, 21 by Soutine, 16 by Modigliani and 11 by Degas, among works by other well-known artists and some lesser-known. The collection is estimated to be worth $25 billion or more, and includes Van Gogh’s Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin and other iconic pieces that one might expect to be hanging in the Louvre, rather than on a sleepy street in Merion. 

That’s always been part of the collection’s charm. Collector Dr. Albert Barnes founded the organization in 1922 as an educational institution, with the philosophy of making art accessible to ordinary people. He requested that his collection never be moved, toured, or even rearranged.

But as most are well aware, Barnes’ art collection is moving. July 3 is the last day to visit the Barnes in Merion before the gallery moves to the Parkway, where it is slated to open to the public in 2012.

(To read more, please go to the Ardmore-Merion-Wynnewood Patch by .)