Horace Pippin. Giving Thanks (detail), 1942. The Barnes Foundation, BF990
About the Event
As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, the Barnes invites you to look closely at the many stories that shape American art. Across exhibitions, installations, tours, and classes, discover artists and objects that open questions about place, identity, exchange, belonging, and how histories are remembered.
These programs do not offer a single story of America. Instead, they create space for many perspectives—some familiar, some unexpected—and invite you to consider how art can help us see the past and present differently.
What’s On
Exhibition
Until August 9, 2026
Through film, video, and installation, five contemporary artists—Arthur Jafa, David Hartt, Garrett Bradley, Ja’Tovia Gary, and Tourmaline—explore American history, Black identity, and the power of imagination. Freedom Dreams invites you to reflect on the past, question the present, and envision new possibilities for tomorrow. On view in the Roberts Gallery.
Installation
Until January 18, 2027
In this site-specific installation, American artist Sky Hopinka explores Indigenous homelands, landscapes, memory, and history. Commissioned by the Barnes in recognition of nation’s anniversary, Red Metal Dust offers a contemporary perspective on the American experience—one grounded in personal observation, layered histories, and Indigenous ways of seeing.
Free and open to the public, the installation invites reflection on the stories a place can hold, and the histories that continue to shape how we understand it.
Tour
Daily, July & August
Trace American artists and influences across our galleries and ensembles—sometimes in unexpected places. See works by artists like Marsden Hartley, William Glackens, Charles Demuth, and Maurice Prendergast alongside furniture, metalwork, and objects made by Pennsylvania German craftspeople and Indigenous artists of the American Southwest. Learn how these works connect to the European paintings and global objects around them while gaining a deeper understanding of Dr. Albert Barnes’s expansive view of creative expression.
Nightlife
Friday, September 4, 6 – 9pm
Pianist and composer Guthrie Ramsey performs Who Hears Here?, a celebration of 250 years of American music. Who Hears Here? invites listeners to time-travel through sound and appreciate the singularity of American music.
Upcoming Exhibition
Opens September 20
At first glance, a chair. A lamp. A textile. A sculptural form. Look again.
Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America brings together work by six artists—Isamu Noguchi, George Nakashima, Leo Amino, S. Neil Fujita, Kay Sekimachi, and Ruth Asawa—whose art and design helped shape the look and feel of modern America.
The exhibition begins with objects that may feel familiar, then reveals the layered histories behind them. These works were shaped by artistic experimentation, cultural identity, material innovation, and, in some cases, the experience of wartime incarceration. Together, they offer a more expansive story of American modernism—one told through the objects, forms, and ideas that continue to influence how we live with art today.
Upcoming Classes
New! American Artists Online Classes
Throughout October
This fall, four online classes spotlight American artists whose work was shaped by travel, place, and cultural exchange:
James McNeill Whistler: An American Painter Abroad
Mary Cassatt: Art, Identity, and Independence
Thomas Eakins: American Realist
Aaron Douglas from Harlem to Philly
Registration opens Wednesday, July 15. See current classes.
Go Further
Freedom Dreams
A meditation on the memories, dreams, and histories of America, featuring powerful works by contemporary moving-image artists Arthur Jafa, David Hartt, Garrett Bradley, Ja’Tovia Gary, and Tourmaline.
Free July at the Barnes
Philadelphia residents can visit the Barnes for free this July and experience our collection, exhibitions, and more.
Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America
Iconic sculpture and design by two generations of Japanese American artists.