THE GHOST OF DR. BARNES

Old Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania

I yesterday visited the old Barnes Foundation (since moved to Center City, Philadelphia), now converted the Frances M. Maguire Art Museum at St. Joseph's University. I was single visitor.

Eerie. The conversion prompted many memories. Old bones. Old ghosts.

—R.D.C.

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John H. McFadden and His Age

Prologue

Will

 1917

On an unusually balmy December day in 1917, John H. McFadden signed his will with a sense of success and modesty. His valet Robert Potts dutifully added his name as one of several witnesses. In 21st-century dollars, the Philadelphia cotton grandee and art patron was a multimillionaire; his estate, at more than $5.2-million ($73-million), [1] was bequeathed to his ‘beloved’ wife Florence and their three adult children. The eldest, Philip, was a high-goal polo player. Alice, the middle child, had a dilettante’s interest in the theatre. The youngest, John H. McFadden, Jr., or ‘Jack,’ was a former U.S. Army officer.

Despite his immense wealth, McFadden was a man of probity. He once told a friend that his aim in life was to create ‘lasting good.’ ‘Then I could die happy.’[2] On 2 December, a day before his 67th birthday, McFadden had that last mission in mind when he put a pen from his favorite stationer, Bailey, Banks & Biddle, to foolscap, and forever sealed the fate of his art collection as a gift to Philadelphia’s cultural patrimony. Or, maybe.

McFadden was an international ‘cotton man.’[3] Among only a handful of such commodity moguls in the late 19th century, he and his older brother, George, reigned over an empire that brokered and shipped raw American and Egyptian cotton worldwide. Millions of cotton bales made their way to mills in England and in New England, and millions of dollars made their way to the coffers of their family firm, Geo. H. McFadden & Bro., Cotton Merchants. [4] By the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the McFadden partnership, headed by George as managing director, had become the country’s largest cotton trading venture.

It further established itself as one of America’s first truly multi-national conglomerates,

with shipping and trading interests in Europe, Africa, and in South America. As the otherwise anonymous ‘Bro.,’ John McFadden headed the company’s key Liverpool subsidiary. A third brother, the youngest, got no billing. J. Franklin McFadden, was, like George, Philadelphia based. Like his nephew Philip, Frank, as he was known, was a poloist, enjoying the sport in the city’s Main Line suburbs and in Florida. Whatever their individual contribution, Geo. H. McFadden & Bro. ballooned into a prodigiously remunerative entity, making the three siblings millionaires many times over.

REVOLUTIONARY

OLD STORY GIVEN FRESH, FRANK APPROACH
Museum of the American Revolution, Philadelphia. ****/5. 

Building exterior, not much. Interior decor and design, excellent. Displays, educational, forthright, and bright.
-- Hotspur for The PJ.

More photos follow

Hello Kitty!

MUTTER MUSEUM REBRANDS AS MEW-TER Please join us in celebrating today's launch of the new MEW-TER MUSEUM.  Today we're excited to announce that we are transitioning from a medical history institution to a museum exclusively devoted to historical feline anatomy! Become a Mew-ter Museum Founding Member! Get your claws into the best yarns from behind-the-scenes, and complimentary guest passes for you and your litter of kitties. Today only, we're offering fans the opportunity to become a Founding Member of the new Mew-ter Museum. Right meow, we will be sharing some of the feline specimens that you can currently see in our galleries, along with their never-before-revealed histories. Be sure to follow along on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!

Posted 1 April, 2017

The PJ depends exclusively on reader support. Please help us continue by contributing directly via PayPal, or by contributing editorial content via PhiladelphiaJunto@ymail.com. Empowered by WritersClearinghouse | S.P.Q.R. 1976 Richard Carreño, Editor Copyright MMXVII. All Rights Reserved.

Soane & Town, Architects

MATCHED SETS

New Spaces Now Open at Soane Museum

Our 7 million pound restoration is now complete.

We’ve just got bigger (and even better!). Our 7-year programme of restoration is complete, returning the Museum to the original design of Sir John Soane. 

Previously ‘lost’ areas have been restored, and new spaces are open for the very first time. These include the Catacombs, the Regency-era kitchens, and our second temporary exhibition space – the Foyle Space. An astonishing 365 objects from our collection are now back on public display for the first time since Soane's death in 1837, and we're thrilled to say that the Museum now has full step-free access. 

-- Recent press release, the Sir John Soane Museum, London

Twin Libraries
The following is excerpted from Ithiel Town: An American Original by Richard Carreño, published by the Thompson, Connecticut, Historical Society (1995)


Much of Town's professional and personal life remains murky.  Perhaps the least known aspect of his life bridges his thirty-year career as a private book collector.  What is known is that during that time Town had amassed an architectural library of about 11,500 volumes, one of the premier collections on the topic anywhere.

According to Michael C. Quinn, "Town's fine arts collection had no peer in America, and probably rivaled European libraries of the day in its comprehensive scope of written and visual printed materials."

One measure of the leviathan size of Town's library is how it compared with comparable collections.  When Jefferson's library was sold to congress in 1815, it contained forty-three volumes in its architectural section.  Peter Harrison's collection numbered twenty-nine titles.  Even Bulfinch's library only tallied about twenty-seven texts.

The intimate size of these other libraries was in keeping with an early tradition of the working library.

Instead, Town became a collector -- a massive collector.  Perhaps unbeknownst to him, the British architect, Sir John Soane, was pioneering a similar effort in England.  Soane's collection, at 7,783 volumes, was sizeably smaller than Town's.  Yet both collectors were likely tapping the same book-selling sources in England and on the continent.

"Both men while requiring illustrated volumes for their professions, responded to the architectural book as an object precious in itself," according to Quinn.

In this context, Quinn has also noted Soane's departure from tradition.  His observation also serve for Town.

"Even though Soane certainly drew on the information contained in his architectural books, their sheer number broke decisively with the earlier tradition of the intimately known working library.  Sir John Soane had extended the instinct of the connoisseur and collector beyond actual works of art, to encompass printed materials devoted to architecture and to the fine arts."

In America, Town was the companion piece.  In published catalogs of the holdings, the collection is routinely referred to as "rare," "choice," "costly" "scarce," "valuable," "extensive," "elegant," and "splendid."

Because of Town's meticulous and driven need for acquisition, any definitive reason for Town's decision to dispose of the library in 1842 has remained a constant puzzle.  This, especially, since Town had built a stately house at 6 Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven (razed in 1942) to house his indulgence.

Quinn notes that Town had always planned to sell the collection citing an 1832 will.

Still mystifying is the timing.  Why just two years before his death in 1844 did he undertake the sale?  Did he have a precedent notion of his impending demise?

 

PJ EXCLUSIVE: 'CRY-IN' AT MOMA FOLLOWING TRUMP VICTORY

BOO-HOO: DIRECTOR LOWRY 'DISMAYED 

The Museum of Modern Art | 11 West 53 Street | New York, NY 10019
(212) 333-1273

Glenn Lowry

From: Lowry, Glenn <glenn_lowry@moma.org>
Date: Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 4:22 PM
Subject: Today

I know many of you, like me,  were dismayed by the results of the election last night. I will spend a long time trying to understand what happened and what it means for our future. But I take comfort in a note that I received from Marie-Josée Kravis, our president, first thing this morning who reminded me not to forget what we stand for, and to strive to be a beacon for the values we care about most. As I read her note, I thought about how fortunate we are to have trustees like her. I realized that our mission going forward suddenly had become clear: to be a model of an open, tolerant, and generous institution in everything we do.

NOLA Without the Beads

On the Cheap, That Is




The Cotton Market

Estelle Musson

SEARCHING FOR EDGAR DEGAS

By RICHARD CARREÑO

[WC News Service]

NEW ORLEANS -- What's Edgar Degas, the well-known 19th century French Impressionist, doing in this city, a place otherwise more notably recognized worldwide for its jazz, Mardi Gras, and out-of-towners publicly puking and urinating in the renowned French Quarter? For the casual admirer of Degas (1834-1917) and his iconic ouevre of ballet dancers en déshabillées, female bathers, and louche racetrack railbirds, more natural habitats would surely be the tony bits of Paris, say at the Opéra Garnier, Longchamps, and the intimate boudoirs of the gratin. For ardent and seasoned picture punters, the Musée d'Orsay would do nicely, as well.

Degas Self Portrait

Though better known by its monikers the Big Easy and Crescent City, New Orleans is also a big chunk of 'Degas country,' thanks to a five-month family visit the artist made here in 1872. Since then, local commercial interests have milked and churned the brief sojourn into tourist fodder for more family-oriented visitors, at least those whose primary interests don't include getting drunk and getting laid.

Voilà! The house where Degas lived with relatives (and where he painted a bit as well), at 2306 Esplanade Avenue, in the leafy Mid-City precinct near the Vieux Carré, has been converted into an upscale bed-and-breakfast. And visitor site. Not far away, at 3127 Esplanade, is the Café Degas, an out-door bistro where 'nobody makes egg dishes better than [its] French chef.'

Picasso Museum, Paris

CROWD CONTROL

By RICHARD CARREÑO

Waiting
Photo: WC News Service

 

PARIS [WC News Service] -- The newly-reopened Musée National Picasso-Paris, closed for expansion and remodelling after an incredible (count em!) five years, is unarguably the world's most comprehensive and numerically superlative collection anywhere of works by Pablo Picasso, the prolific, long-time Parisian. There are, of course, many iconic pieces of the Picasso's canon elsewhere, with pride of place in museums from Madrid to New York. But for sheer number (more than four hundred objects) -- including great examples of the Spanish modern's oeuvre over a lifetime of artistic mastery --  the 'new' Picasso Museum is the place to show up. If you can get in. 

No, the Picasso is not a timed-ticket establishment. But I'm wondering whether it really should be. Actually, putting up with the longish entrance queue is the easy part. (Full disclosure: As a reporter, I got to skip the line in a visit earlier this month). What's harder for everyone, even those credentialed as press, is seeing the works with any ease. Forget contemplation. Communion? Not in this lifetime. Even just trying to get up close and personal with any of the art is a spirited, athletic art form in itself. In weaving and bobbing among other museum-goers (many seem to be garden clubers on private tours), being built like a line-backer will definitely help. So will a periscope to see over the heads of fellow galleristas.

Fondation Louis Vuitton

'Anchors Away!'
Photo: WC News Service/Richard Carreño

ALL HAT, NO CATTLE

By RICHARD CARREÑO

PARIS [WC News Service] -- The super rich and powerful get all sorts things named for them; their fabulous wealth underwriting  ego-centric municipal projects from hospitals and sports stadiums to theatres and, increasingly for those billionaire one-per-centers who also fancy themselves as art connoisseurs, eponymous museums that showcase their putative, ahem, 'connoisseurship.'

 

Step forward, please, France's richest man, one Bernard Arnault, chairman of the luxury goods conglomerate, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, who has also created what may be one of the the world's worst contemporary art museums, the newly-minted Fondation Louis Vuitton, a Frank Gehry-designed behemoth that rises up in Paris' principal park, the Bois de Boulogne.

The mega-million-euro museum, resembling an ocean-going ark with a very large prow, opened in late 2014. I got around to it earlier this month.

True, the museum doesn't bear Arnault's name. Never mind. Arnault is Vuitton, and, in the tony precincts of the 16th, Mayfair, and the Upper East Side, everyone knows it. That, seemingly, is enough for the vainglorious Arnault.

Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

Din Din
Photo: WC News Service

Get Stuffed
Paris (WC News Service) -- The Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, or the Museum of Hunting and Nature, in Le Marais, is something like the Museum of Natural History in New York, even the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. That is, without the dinosaurs and dioramas. And size.

It's the sensibility. The Marais museum, at 62, rue des Archives, is smallish on three-floors, boutique like, and its exhibits are, for the most part, stuffed specimens of small animals hunted by rifle-bearing shooters. Its largest pieces are brown and polar bears and, on the top floor, two gorillas -- who seemingly are about to share the pleasures au table.

Actually, I had hoped for more about stag hunting, the French version of English and American foxhunting. Except for a few statuettes and oil pictures, not much.

More Barnes Kvetching....

Dr. Albert Barnes

Albert Barnes and Paul Guillaume

By Robert Zaller Posted 3 June 2014 BroadStreetReview.com

Robert Zaller

My colleague Richard Carreño compares the Barnes Foundation’s art collection, of which some 800 pieces were hung on permanent display in Merion, to that of Paul Guillaume in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. There are some important differences, however.

 

Read More....

http://broadstreetreview.com/art-architecture/albert-barnes-and-paul-guillaume

 

FOLK GOES BROKE

Folk Museum: Going... Gone

How MoMA Trashed West 53rd Street

By Catherine Smith

[WritersClearinghouse News Service]

New York 

In 1961 a folk art visionary conceived and established the Museum of American Folk Art and, with his collections and other donations, endowments and support, inaugurated

the museum in 1963 on the rented parlor floor of a brownstone on West 53rd Street. The collections, endowments, subscribers and visitors grew. 

 

In 1979 MAFA purchased two brownstones on West 53rd Street. In its quirky, somewhat  ramshackle venue the museum gained renown and clientele, and, to the surprise of all, began to become a destination. Growth and popularity continued. Exhibitions gained favor. The Clarion magazine succeeded. Notable art, collections and quilts and textiles continued to be donated.

Hilary Spurling on Henri Matisse

The PJ depends exclusively on reader support. Please help us continue by contributing directly via PayPal, or by contributing editorial content via PhiladelphiaJunto@ymail.com. Empowered by WritersClearinghouse | S.P.Q.R. 1976 Richard Carreño, Editor Copyright MMXIV. All Rights Reserved

Tale of Two Museums

Chez Paul at 22 ave Foch

L'Orangerie

 Musée de l'Orangerie and Barnes Foundation Share the Same Muse
By Richard Carreño Bio
[WritersClearinghouse News Service]

Paris

The stats have an eerie familiarity: Scores of paintings by Chaim Soutine, Pablo Picasso, Jean Renoir, Henri Mattisse, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani and other Impressionists and post-Impressionists, and all assembled by a fiercely independent collector who pioneered new ground in introducing modern art to 20th century audiences. The Barnes Foundation collection in Philadelphia, maybe? In considering the numbers and artists, American museum-goers can be easily forgiven for free-associating with that Philadelphia institution, the world's largest repository such modern works. And, of course, they would be wrong. At least, in Paris.

Welcome to the Musée de l'Organerie, home of the Walter-Guillaume Collection, an array of 145 paintings that rivals the Barnes as a showcase of many of the same modern artists who once called upon Paris for inspiration and livelihood. For Philadelphians, especially those seeped in the lore of the Barnes collection and its visionary founder, the eccentric, taciturn Dr. Alfred C. Barnes, the Orangerie is a kind of foreign pilgrimage to a place that can rightfully be called the Barnes' French 'bookend,' even its precursor.

That the two museum collections are almost a matched set, in presenting a similar catalogue of artists and their works, is hardly coincidental, in that Barnes (1872-1951) and the Orangerie collection's founder, Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), equally admired and promoted the same favored artists. Similarities between the collectors, who were in equal parts friends, competitors, and business associates, don't stop there.

Don't Go!

Welcome to the Mona Lisa conga line, snaking through galleries.
Photos: WritersClearinghouse News Service/Richard Carreño 

Louvre Visitor Survival Guide

By Richard Carreño

[WritersClearinghouse News Service]

Paris

The Palais du Louvre, which used to house the royal families of France and now houses the art treasures of the country's citizens, is less a museum than a obstacle course. My best recommendation to any visitor to Paris: Don't go!

 

'Hey, Maude, watch the eyes
 -- and your wallet!'

Of course, if you must enter the admission maelstrom at the Musée du Louvre ('What, are you nuts,go to Paris and not visit the Louvre?'), there are ways to arm yourself against the hordes of tourists who crush the immense galleries, making the experience on any given summer day more like people-packing on a Tokyo subway than a serene, contemplative communion with some of the world's greatest artworks.

 

Strategizing a visit to the Louvre, the globe's most frequented museum, is of upmost importance. Nothing to take lightly. Almost 10-million souls (I'm sure you understand why I hesitate to call them 'art connoisseurs') visit the Louvre each year, also making this Paris landmark the world's single most-visited tourist site. Welcome to mile-long queues, shoving that makes the Times Square Shuttle seem like child's play, and packs of Chinese package-tour visitors who apparently have never learned in grade-school that jumping the queue in some parts of the world (that is, notably everywhere except the People's Republic of China, it seems) is a hanging offense. Welcome to crazy!

Wheels Down...

...Over Fly-Over Country
By Harriet Eser Phillips
[WritersClearinghouse News Service]
Kansas City, Missouri

Listen up, you habitual "fly-over zone" travelers from the East to the West Coasts.  It's time to have wheels-down in Kansas City.  You are cheating yourselves out of a terrific time.  There is life -- prosperity, entertainment, beauty, culture, yummy and varied eats, and, yes, general bonhomie Everywhere. This is The Heartland, folks.  Where darn near everybody chats with you, smiles at you, and only infrequently does not hold a door open or stop the car to let you cross.  How exciting an idea is this? 

      The Greater Kansas City area consists of over two million souls, hardly a back-water. Founded in 1838 at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, where Lewis and his pal Clark stopped in 1804, deciding it's a perfect place for a fort. In 2012, Forbes Magazine declared Kansas City's downtown as one of America's finest.  Did you know that?  Of course not. 

      Having slogged through museums, parks, town squares, zoos and bars in Europe, it's amazing to discover that KC ranks second only to Rome in the number of fountains in the city and second to Paris in the boulevard count contest.  And it's so easy to access as the Kansas City Airport is modern, efficient, and only twenty minutes from downtown.   

Alain de Botton: Arts Help Us Live and Die

Alain de Botton

Why We Need National Museums

Alain de Botton: We need art to help us to live and to die » Spectator Blogs

The PJ depends exclusively on reader support. Please help us continue by contributing directly via PayPal, or by contributing editorial content via PhiladelphiaJunto@ymail.com. Empowered by Writers Clearinghouse | S.P.Q.R. 1976 Richard Carreño, Editor Copyright MMXIV. All Rights Reserved

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Architect Louis Kahn in the auditorium of the original building of the Kimbell Art Museum.
(Circular speakers, at top, were designed by architect David Traub of Philadelphia).

What if they built an art museum and forgot the art?
 Richard Carreno reports from Fort Worth, Texas

ARTLESS

BY RICHARD CARRENO

[WITERSCLEARINGHOUSE NEWS SERVICE/BIO]

Step forward Fort Worth's Kimbell Art Museum 2.0, the recently rolled out new addition that, so far, seems to be all about the building's architect, the Italian Renzo Piano, than the art that's supposed to be displayed there. 

OK, 'so far.' To be fair, the new addition, a bookend to the original Kimbell, designed in 1972 by the celebrated Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974), is still in its infancy, only opening in November, 2013. And, yes, one gallery, the West Gallery, is in full swing with a presentation of Asian art. Otherwise the addition -- actually a separate building divided from the Kahn building by a broad plaza -- is presently mostly just library, gift shop, and cafe.

Kimbell Art Museum

Architect Louis Kahn poses in the auditorium of the Kimbell Art Museum's original building, which he designed. (Note the two circular-shaped speakers, top, designed by David Traub, a young colleague of Kahn in the 1970s).

Artless
Can a prominent and respected art museum open a new wing and forget to populate it with art? The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, seems to be doing just this -- at least, temporarily -- in its new addition designed by Renzo Piano. PJ Editor Richard Carreño explains.

COMING SOON TO THE PJ!

Never Cry Wolfsonian

The Wolfsonian's smallest gallery
Photo: Richard Carreño/WritersClearinghouse News Service
SEE MORE WOLFSONIAN IMAGES IN THE RIGHT GUTTER

I THINKISM, THEREFORE I AM-ISM

BY RICHARD CARRENO

[WRITERSCLEARINGHOUSE NEWS SERVICE]
Miami Beach, Florida | I've always been wary of private museums founded by individuals -- always rich dudes with oversized egos -- who are eager to present their art their way.

Some of their institutions are above suspicion, ie. the Morgan in New York, the Rosenbach in Philadelphia, and the Huntington and Getty on the West Coast. (NB. All eponymously named). Others can get my goat, the like Barnes in Philly and the Gardner in Boston, endowed by patrons who were more bullies than quirky. Not, certainly, BFF candidates.

That said, I approached my first encounter at The Wolfsonian, a South Beach art preserve housed in an astounding 1927 Mediterranean Revival building, with some reserve.