The Barnes Foundation

Opening Celebration

After years of planning and construction, its time to celebrate the highly anticipated opening of the new Barnes Foundation campus on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Beginning May 19, 2012, the campus will open to the public with ten days of free admission. The inaugural week celebration comes to a spectacular close with a Memorial Day festival weekend starting at 12 noon on May 26 and ending on May 28 at 6 p.m.

Reservations are required. Click here for more information.

The Experience

The new 93,000-square-foot, two-story building, designed by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, is described as a “gallery in a garden, a garden in a gallery.” Boasting a textured grey-and-gold Ramon limestone exterior and a glass canopy that glows at night, the building is a breathtaking addition to the Parkway Museum District.

The four-and-a-half acre landscaped grounds reference the Barnes Arboretum in Merion, which will reopen in the late summer of 2012. In addition, the building boasts a number of sustainable features, including a green roof and permeable surfaces that allow for rain and grey water re-use.

But the true draw is the Barnes Collection featuring 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes and 59 Matisses, along with works by Manet, Degas, Seurat, Prendergrast, Titian and Picasso.

The 12,000-square-foot gallery preserves the scale, proportion and configuration of the original Merion location. The priceless works are symmetrically arranged according to size, and often paired with artifacts and furniture (think: African sculpture, Pennsylvania Dutch folk art, antique Chinese paintings) organized around themes and formal elements. The scheme is the physical manifestation of the teachings of the man who collected the works, Albert C. Barnes.

History

The Barnes Foundation was created in 1922, a school originating with Barnes’ educational experimentation in his Argyrol (pharmaceutical) factory. Barnes and The Foundation’s first director of education, John Dewey, were interested in fostering cognitive development through new approaches to education, and in heightening critical-thinking and problem-solving skills through the study of art. Barnes, like Dewey, was actively engaged in development of an intellectual framework and educational philosophies and practices with many of the best artists and thinkers of his day.

In 2004, a court ruling granted permission for the Barnes Foundation’s gallery art collection to move to a new building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Center City Philadelphia.