The Maverick's Museum
Albert Barnes and His American Dream
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A fascinating biography of the philanthropist Albert Barnes, whose pioneering collection of modern art was meant to transform America’s soul
From prominent critic and biographer Blake Gopnik comes a compelling new art collector biography of America’s first great collector of modern art, Albert Coombs Barnes. Raised in a Philadelphia slum shortly after the Civil War, Barnes rose to earn a medical degree and then made a fortune from a pioneering antiseptic treatment for newborns. Never losing sight of the working-class neighbors of his youth, Barnes became a ruthless advocate for their rights and needs. His vast art collection—181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos—was dedicated to enriching their cultural lives. A miner was more likely to get access than a mine owner.
Gopnik’s meticulous research reveals Barnes as a fierce advocate for the egalitarian ideals of the Progressive Era. But while his friends in the movement worked to reshape American society, Barnes wanted to transform the nation’s aesthetic life, taking art out of the hands of the elite and making it available to the average American.
The Maverick’s Museum offers a vivid picture of one of America’s great eccentrics. The sheer ferocity of Barnes’s democratic ambitions left him with more enemies than allies among people of all classes, but for a circle of intimates, he was a model of intelligence, generosity, and loyalty. In this compelling portrait, Gopnik reveals a life shaped by contradictions, one that left a lasting impact through the renowned Barnes Foundation.
This definitive biography goes beyond the collection to reveal the complex, controversial man who changed American art.
A Gilded Age Rags-to-Riches Story: Follow Albert C. Barnes from a Philadelphia slum to a medical degree and a fortune built on a revolutionary antiseptic, driven by a ferocious ambition to upend the established order.
The World’s Greatest Modern Art Collection: Discover the story behind the staggering collection—including 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, and 59 Matisses—and the radical vision to make it a tool for educating working-class Americans, not the elite. A Fierce and Contradictory Figure: Uncover the portrait of one of America’s great eccentrics—a ruthless businessman, a fierce advocate for social justice, and a loyal friend whose terrible temper became legendary.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
There’s nothing like a well-researched biography of a fascinating person, and art critic Blake Gopnik more than delivers here. Albert Barnes, son of an alcoholic, disabled Civil War veteran, emerged from 19th-century Philadelphia’s roughest neighbourhood to make millions after inventing an antiseptic. His twin passions were progressive politics and the African American culture he’d grown up around in the Methodist Church. Then, with the help of a high school classmate who’d become a prominent painter, he added a third: modern art. Cantankerous and filled with undisguised contempt for the cultural establishment, Barnes opened Philadelphia’s then-controversial Barnes Foundation, a modern art temple as strikingly original as the man himself. Gopnik captures both Barnes’ personal eccentricities and his egalitarian ideals, as well as his connections to the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and fellow iconoclasts like Gertrude Stein and Bertrand Russell. The Maverick’s Museum is an entertaining look into how modernism flourished in Philadelphia.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biographer Gopnik (Warhol) draws on extensive research for this textured and energetic biography of Albert Barnes, the collector who founded the Barnes Foundation museum and helped reshape notions of American art. Born into a poor family in late-19th-century Pennsylvania, Barnes grew up with a "ferocious... rejection of elites and elitism." After earning a medical degree, he began a career in the growing pharmaceuticals field, co-developing the antiseptic on which he built his fortune and implementing such progressive reforms as offering educational opportunities to employees. He used his fortune to buy art that became the basis for the Barnes Foundation museum, seeking out Renoirs and Cezannes (which, while "safe" by European standards, were still considered avant-garde in the U.S.), North American ironwork, and African sculpture. Gopnik emphasizes how Barnes championed African art not as "the product of some exotic Other" but high art in its own right. In so doing, he helped to make fine art a front in the fight for egalitarianism and the eradication of "old hierarchical ways." Gopnik remains clear-eyed, however, about Barnes's less than savory attributes, including a tendency to attack art world rivals, occasionally in the kind of racist or antisemitic language that he purported to despise. The result is a vibrant and comprehensive portrait of an influential figure in American art history.
