Company Profile
The Barnes Foundation
Company Overview
The Barnes Foundation was established by Albert C. Barnes in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts and horticulture.” The Barnes holds one of the finest collections of post-impressionist and early modern paintings, with extensive works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Giorgio de Chirico, as well as American masters Charles Demuth, William Glackens, Horace Pippin, and Maurice Prendergast, old master paintings, African sculpture, American paintings and decorative arts, antiquities from the Mediterranean region and Asia, and Native American ceramics, jewelry, and textiles. The Barnes Foundation’s Art and Aesthetics programs engage a diverse array of audiences. These programs, occurring at the Philadelphia campus, online, and in Philadelphia communities, advance the mission through progressive, experimental and interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
The Barnes Arboretum, located in Merion, Pennsylvania, contains more than 2,500 species and varieties of trees and other woody plants, many of them rare. Founded in the 1880s by Joseph Lapsley Wilson and expanded under the direction of Laura L. Barnes, the collection includes a dove tree (Davidia involucrata), a Japanese wheel tree (Trochodendron aralioides), a monkey-puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana), and a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). Other important plant collections include stewartias, magnolias, lilacs, peonies, ferns, hostas, and medicinal plants. The Horticulture Education program at the arboretum has offered a comprehensive, three-year certificate course in the botanical sciences, horticultural practices, garden aesthetics, and design, and a well grounded scientific learning experience since its inception in 1940 by Mrs. Barnes.
Company History
DR. ALBERT C. BARNES
Dr. Albert C. Barnes Caption Link
Born into a working-class family in 1872, Albert Coombs Barnes grew up in Philadelphia. While at Central High School, Barnes may have been introduced to art through his friendship with William Glackens. From Central, he went on to the University of Pennsylvania for his medical degree, then to Germany to study physiological chemistry and pharmaceutics.
By 1901, Barnes was back in America and married to Laura Leggett. He experienced professional success when he and Herman Hille developed Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound used in the prevention of infant blindness. Barnes went into business for himself in 1908, and the A. C. Barnes Company flourished thanks to Argyrol's efficacy and popularity.
Meanwhile, Barnes made his first art acquisitions and began to develop theories—drawn from the ideas of William James, George Santayana, and John Dewey—about how people looked at and learned from art. In 1922, he established the Barnes Foundation for the purpose of "promot[ing] the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts." Both his art collection and his educational theories grew and changed throughout the course of his life.
Barnes died in a car accident in 1951 at the age of 79.
The daughter of a well-to-do family from Brooklyn, Laura Leggett married Albert Barnes in 1901. Though the origin of Laura’s interest in horticulture is unknown, there is evidence that she managed the gardens at the couple's first home in Merion, Lauraston. When they moved to the Barnes Foundation's new home in Merion, Laura devoted herself to the development of its Arboretum.
Laura Barnes became director of the Arboretum in 1928, and founded the Arboretum School in 1940, where she was an instructor. She was responsible for the acquisition of plants for the gardens, and she corresponded and exchanged specimens with many other notable collections, including the Arnold Arboretum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Mrs. Barnes also maintained a personal library of horticulture books, which are now held in the Foundation's Rare Books Collection. In recognition of her horticultural efforts, she was awarded the Schaffer Memorial Medal from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in 1948, became an honorary member of the American Society for Landscape Architects in 1955, and received an honorary doctorate in horticultural science from St. Joseph's University.
Following her husband's sudden death in 1951, Laura Barnes succeeded him as president of the Foundation. Though her primary legacy lies in her contributions to the living collections of the Barnes Foundation, she also purchased art. Her private art collection was donated to the Brooklyn Museum after her death in 1966.