Barnes and Noble Wishes

Last Saturday, my wife and I took our four children to The Barnes Foundation, the current home to one of the finest collections of French, Early Modern and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world. The Barnes Foundation is tucked away off of Route 1 in Merion, Pennsylvania. For five bucks you can oggle over six billion dollars worth of art. It is neither a museum or gallery but rather the extensive private collection of the late Albert Barnes hanging in his residence. If you are starving for art, this collection of art can stop a hunger strike. Dozens of Matisse, Renoir, Seurat, Manet, Soutine, Degas, Monet, El Greco, Picasso, Van Gogh bring the house to life in living color.

I taught the children almost everything I knew about art before the tickets were perforated at the front door. Nonetheless, seeing their faces study fine art was worth being perceived by your offspring as an unequivocal art dummy.

As I kneeled in awe inches away from Egyptian heirglyphics circa 2000 BC, my youngest daughter whispered, “Daddy, why does everyone paint fruit?”

“Hum, I have often wondered that myself.” I answered without explanation.

Like an echo to my art ignorance, I wondered the same thing from the time I was my daughter’s age until she asked me the identical question some thirty two years later. I imagine fruit is a symbol of class and a scene of stasis most people can identify with. That is all I can extract from the rooty-tooty-fruity cross-generational question. So from that awkward moment on, I shadowed a bald geezer who professed to his daughter an intimacy with every last piece on display. This guy knew the emotion, history, and psychology of each art piece. Ah, what I would give to be so cultured. As I followed the geezer around, a Mona Lisa smirk appeared on my face because I wisely saved the $7.00 for the audio cassette tour. I extracted wonders about art other than my basic assumption that Crayola crayons are not a good medium for art.

Albert Barnes last noble wishes were for his paintings to never be moved and for the entire collection to remain intact in the thirteen acre home where he resided. Enough debate to spark a Senate hearing, plans have been finalized to move the entire collection closer to downtown Philadelphia. If Albert C. Barnes has a ghost, we will surely find out with the scheduled trespassing.

In the meantime, checkout art untouched and unhaunted before lawmakers and private interest groups commercialize it into a monolithic museum with a juice bar, children’s birthday parties, and Henry Matisse’s Joy of Life appearing on pre-snot napkins. Come and enjoy the art in its natural undiscriminating state without burly armed guards, bullet-proof Plexiglass, and twenty foot safe distance chalk lines. See the Barnes Foundation before it truly becomes a moving experience. Visit: www.barnesfoundation.org