About the museum
The story of the Barnes Foundation
The Barnes Foundation was founded in 1922 by the chemist and collector Albert C. Barnes. Since 2012 it has been shown on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, in rooms that reproduce his original galleries.
It holds one of the world's greatest collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early modern painting, including the largest group of Renoirs and Cézannes anywhere.
The collection
Albert C. Barnes, who made his fortune from an antiseptic, built a collection of about 4,000 objects, including 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses and 46 Picassos.
He arranged paintings with African sculpture, Pennsylvania German furniture and ironwork in symmetrical 'ensembles' designed to teach his students how to look, not by school or date.
At ArtLogia you can order 44 of its paintings as hand-painted reproductions, by 11 artists led by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau and Vincent van Gogh.
- paintings to order
- 44
- artists
- 11
- art movements
- 5
- years covered
- 1826–1919
The building
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien designed the Parkway building, opened in 2012, which reproduces the rooms of Barnes's original gallery in Merion within a modern limestone building with a light court.
Masterpieces to see
Planning a visit
The paintings are hung in Barnes's dense 'ensembles' with furniture and ironwork, exactly as he arranged them.
