A PHILANTHROPIC DREAM UNDONE: THE SAGA OF THE BARNES FOUNDATION (IN-PERSON)

Albert Barnes was a wealthy man with an eye for collecting works of art by many of the 20th century’s most famous artists. Rather than donating his collection to a museum upon his death, he founded a school in suburban Philadelphia for the study of art and the promotion of interracial understanding, with the art collection as its primary resource. Not long after his unexpected, untimely death in 1951, forces opposing Barnes’s vision began 40 years of litigation that would determine the fate of the school and its art collection. This presentation tells that story.