Albert C. Barnes - Operations

Operations

Barnes limited access to the collection, and required people to make appointments by letter. Applicants sometimes received rejection letters "signed" by Barnes's dog, Fidèle-de-Port-Manech. In a famous case, Barnes refused admission to the writer James A. Michener, who gained access to the collection only by posing as an illiterate steelworker. In another, Barnes turned down the poet T.S. Eliot's request with a one-word answer: "Nuts."

The collection was open to the public regularly until 1961, and then just two days a week. That schedule expanded slightly in 1967. Up through the early 1990s, long after Barnes's death, access to the collection was extremely limited. In keeping with Barnes' wishes, the Foundation restricted the reproduction in color of many works, so they could only be seen in person. The Foundation had difficulties raising enough money from attendees to provide for needed renovations to its building, as well as regular operating expenses for the collection. The Foundation decided to send 80 works to be exhibited on a three-year tour to raise money for needed renovations. The paintings and other works attracted huge crowds in numerous cities.

Because of these restrictions, many people never saw works that were part of the "conversation" of artists and history. For example, the critic Hilton Kramer wrote of Matisse's Le bonheur de vivre: "owing to its long sequestration in the collection of the Barnes Foundation, which never permitted its reproduction in color, it is the least familiar of modern masterpieces. Yet this painting was Matisse's own response to the hostility his work had met with in the Salon d'Automne of 1905."