Art at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

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We are visiting one of the world's best art museums, the Barnes Foundation located in Philadelphia. It has one of the finest collections of Impressionist painters, for example 181 works by Renoir which is the largest group of his paintings in any museum in the world. They've also got the most Cézanne's of any museum in the world with 69 paintings seven by van Gogh including the Postman. How about 59 by Matisse, who became friends with Barnes and created several versions of the Dance for him. 46 Picassos along with hundreds of other great works by many other important painters.
These are primarily works by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist masters, but the collection also includes many other paintings by leading European and American artists, as well as African art, antiquities from China, Egypt, and Greece.
In addition there is sculpture, furniture, decorative arts, African sculpture, Native American ceramics, old Master paintings, jewelry, textiles and antiquities. Not only is this collection spectacular but it's arranged in a most interesting and unusual way, in groups called “ensembles.” Rather than having all of one artist together in one room there's a variety and mix that really stimulates your eye and gets you thinking about the quality of the work in some new and innovative ways.
All of these works were collected by Dr. Albert Barnes between 1912 and 1951, seen here in a painting done for him by Giorgio de Chirico and a photograph from 1940. He was a visionary collector who went to Europe on many buying expeditions and befriended the artists, and was able to assemble this collection which today is worth at least $25 billion, but in totality should be considered priceless.
Originally Dr. Barnes was purchasing these paintings for his personal enjoyment but soon expanded to a point where Dr. Barnes created an educational foundation dedicated to teaching visual literacies to individuals. And that educational function still continues with this fine art museum. Education is at the heart of everything they do – they serve thousands of K-12 students annually through their educational outreach, they have some affiliations with local universities offering degrees, and they have educational programs for adults. They have art lectures for the general public their staff is available in the galleries to give gallery talks every day.
Here is a partial list of their artists: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Chaim Soutine, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, Edgar Degas, Giorgio de Chirico, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat.

You can see all their artworks and listen to their staff talk about them at their website,

https://www.barnesfoundation.org/