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The
Riddle of The Barnes Foundation
Homa T.
Nasab
The very
essence of civilized culture is that we deliberately erect monuments and
memorials, lest we forget; and deliberately institute, in advance of the
happening of various contingencies of life, devices for detecting their approach
and registering their nature, for warding off what is unfavorable, or at least
for protecting ourselves from its full impact and for making more secure and
extensive what is favorable.
John Dewey, How We Think, 1910 |
The story
of Albert C. Barnes and his incontestably celebrated art collection is riddled
with tales of intrigue, gossip, and scandal. Myriad narratives of different
improvisational capacity have been composed on the history of the Barnes
Foundation since its creation, in 1922. By choice or chance, adverse influences
and prejudices have induced the opinions of the writers and journalists who have
set out to understand the collector’s many achievements, and eccentricities.
Perusing the range of accounts on Barnes’s life, it is a challenge to find the
kind of empathy or affection that biographers often express toward at least
aspects of their subjects’ character, preferences, achievements or
circumstances. Distorting its founder’s philosophy, his Foundation’s notoriously
secretive disposition had contributed to the dearth of scholarly research on a
most remarkable institution, until very recently.
On September
6th, 2007, Oxford University art historian and museologist will deliver a
lecture on the intellectual history of the Barnes Foundation at the Nantucket
Historical Association. In this lecture, she will attempt to shed some light on the Albert Barnes’
aesthetic and educational philosophy and methodology as they informed and were
informed by John Dewey’s contributions to theories of education.
