In the Spirit of Albert Barnes, What Do the Masses Think?

The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Rathe Miller

Everybody's a critic. Each of us walks into a museum and says, "I like that!" or "You call that art?"

Albert C. Barnes would approve.

Barnes (1872-1951) feuded with the art establishment of his day and disliked most art historians and academic aestheticians. It was the unschooled lover of art he welcomed to his great art collection grounds in Lower Merion. His principal interest, he wrote in 1920, was education, first for himself, "then for those less fortunate ones around me, then in the education of the public."

Today marks four years since the opening gala welcoming the Barnes collection to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Though some still mourn the loss of the Lower Merion experience, no one can deny the change of venue has furthered Barnes' goal of reaching the public. Attendance has increased fivefold, to more than 300,000 visitors a year.

"Barnes didn't want art to be for just one elite class," says Martha Lucy, deputy director and curator. "You can come in knowing nothing about art and still be moved and get so much out of it."

So, in Barnes' egalitarian spirit, we asked visitors, "What do you like the most - and why?"

Sister Amanda Marie Russell lives in the motherhouse of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Immaculata, Pa. She was moved by Renoir's Washerwoman and Child, seeing echoes of the Madonna and Christ child. Emily Mattessich, a college student from Ridgewood, N.J., had driven down with her father. She was delighted to find Two Figures - Sphinx, a tiny sketch by 9-year-old Lenna Glackens, hanging in the same room with the paintings by her father, William Glackens.

Gary Odle, a stonemason from Landenberg, Pa., chose a pair of andirons like ones in his kitchen that a blacksmith friend made for him.

Matt Hanczaryk, 39, of South Philadelphia, likes Negro Figure by Luigi Settanni. "There's movement. This feels active. . . . She's vibrant, she's moving, she looks like she's in the middle of something that's giving her pleasure. Yeah! It's like a selfie before there were selfies."

Carol Allen, a psychotherapist from Gladwyne, loves Henri Rousseau's View of Montsouris Park for its stillness. "The whole scene puts the people in perspective - they're so tiny," she says. But that's how the universe is - we are very tiny. It's overwhelmingly green. . . . There's something about the stillness that just moves me."

But isn't all this a little impressionistic? Even Barnes wanted people to learn more about the formal qualities inherent in fine art, didn't he? Or does the judgment of just folks deserve a place equal to that of the art aficionado?

"Of course," says Thom Collins, director of the Barnes. "We can offer objective skills of visual analysis and interpretation based on the historical record. But in terms of emotional response, we can't teach people what to feel, and we don't tell people what they should and shouldn't like."

You can't argue taste . . . but we do anyway.

"Taste is a complex thing," Collins says. "Whether we have the same level of education or come from the same socioeconomic background, we can start the conversation by sharing the vocabulary to reading these objects."

The results of our admittedly less-than-scientific poll? The paintings most often mentioned were Van Gogh's Postman, Cézanne's The Card Players, and Monet's Studio Boat (no surprise there: It is the best-selling postcard in the gift store). The 181 Barnes holdings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir helped earn him first place as the most frequently mentioned name.

And many couldn't narrow it down. Lawyer and painter Jeff Thomsen of Broomall says all of Room 15 "has everything that Barnes wanted people to contemplate." He thrills to "these charming Chinese fans above these European landscape paintings. The American folk-art component, that was very important to Barnes. You have these Jacques Lipchitz sculptures, which harken to African art. And I love the Dutch chest. Look at that! Gorgeous!"

When it comes right down to it, Lucy says, "art is a psychological and emotional experience."

Amen to that.