The Order of Things at the Barnes Foundation

Barnes arranged his paintings and decorative objects into ensembles that expressed his aesthetic theories, which were based on his understanding of the philosophy of John Dewey (who helped draw up the original mandate of the foundation), William James, and George Santayana. He also set up an educational enterprise to teach students how to look at the ensembles, which themselves, not surprisingly, became objects of his control: One of the terms' requirements of building the new museum was that the displays reproduce, to the fraction of an inch, the way he had arranged them in Merion.

Barnes’s ensembles — and the fetishization of them — sum up the entire complicated Barnes story. (Frankly, it’s easier to write this summary than to talk about it — in person, I’d be tempted to indulge in a little eye-rolling.) So it was gutsy of the Foundation to commission three contemporary artists to respond to the idea of the ensemble — they presumably knew that there might be some eye-rolling involved, and there is. There is also some interesting commentary on the collecting impulse.

What does it mean to collect?

Mark Dion’s Incomplete Naturalist is the most successful of the three pieces. He compares Barnes’s drive to master art history with that of an imagined scientist concerned with natural history. He places the collecting tools — nets, guns, shovels, jars — in a highly symmetrical array that reads equally well from a distance and up close (check out the brand names on the cigar boxes).

Fred Wilson creates a mini-Barnes within the gallery space, setting up “readymade ensembles” from the Merion office — a desk with a phone, lamp, and blotter; a coatrack with a plastic poncho on a hanger — and creating his own exhibits with objects from the collection’s storehouse. The latter, with its sound collage of African music, highlights, and comments on, Barnes’s proclivity for native sculpture and masks.

Judy Pfaff’s piece goes the furthest afield from classical Barnesianism — it’s an exuberant, asymmetrical sprawl of steel structures and art glass. Titled Scene I: The Garden. Enter Mrs. Barnes, the piece nods to Albert’s wife, who created the arboretum at the Merion campus. In her artist statement, Pfaff says that, like Barnes, “I pull inspiration from so many different sources.” The connection to Barnes wasn’t entirely clear to me, or maybe I just don’t care for steel structures and art glass, but I found this the least effective of the three works.

Also on display is Barnes’s Dutch Room, a small installation removed from the Merion building 20 years ago when an elevator was installed to comply with ADA regulations. It spices up the contrast with the works commenting on Barnes to have this side by side with them.

Above right: Mark Dion, The Incomplete Naturalist (detail), 2015. (Image © The Barnes Foundation. Photo: Rick Echelmeyer.)

Above left: Judy Pfaff, Scene I: The Garden. Enter Mrs. Barnes (detail), 2015. (Image © The Barnes Foundation. Photo: Keristin Gaber.)