Freedom Dreams At The Barnes Foundation In Philadelphia, April 12 – August 9, 2026

As Philadelphia and the nation prepare to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, Freedom Dreams brings together powerful works by artists in film, video, and installation that invite viewers to immerse themselves in the memories, dreams, and histories of Black Americans.

Arthur Jafa. Love is the Message, The Message is Death, 2016. Video still. Courtesy of the artist, Gladstone, Sprüth Magers, and Sadie Coles HQ, London. © Arthur Jafa

The exhibition features works by Arthur Jafa, David Hartt, Garrett Bradley, Ja’Tovia Gary, and Tourmaline, all exploring history, archives, and cultural memory. Freedom Dreams highlights the fluid boundary between past, present, and future and encourages viewers to reflect on how Americans of color have shaped identities and created spaces of resistance, joy, and resilience in the face of systemic oppression. The exhibition is co-curated by Maori Karmael Holmes, Chief Executive and Artistic Officer of BlackStar Projects, and James Claiborne, Fleischner Family Deputy Director for Community Engagement at the Barnes.

For more information and tickets, please visit: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/

Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets Opens At The Barnes Foundation In Philadelphia October 19-February 22, 2026

A once-in-a-generation exhibition. A visionary artist revealed.

Henri Rousseau. Scouts Attacked by a Tiger (detail), 1904. The Barnes Foundation, BF584. Public Domain.

Step into the lush, hypnotic world of Henri Rousseau, one of the boldest forces in modern art.

Born in 1844, and with no formal art training, Rousseau defied the odds to become a cult figure to avant-garde legends such as Pablo Picasso. His paintings—dreamlike, symbolic, and deeply strange—range from imaginative visions of the jungle to portraits that capture his neighbors and loved ones.

Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets is the first major US exhibition in decades dedicated to this pioneering French painter. Featuring more than 60 works—including world-famous highlights like The Sleeping Gypsy, The Snake Charmer, and Unpleasant Surprise—the exhibition invites you to see Rousseau in a whole new light.

Don’t miss this world-premiere exhibition that unveils new research discoveries—including hidden layers beneath some of Rousseau’s celebrated paintings—and brings together, for the first time, the two most important Rousseau collections in the world, those of the Barnes Foundation and the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

Developed in partnership with the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets is curated by Christopher Green, consulting curator, Professor Emeritus at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes, with the support of Juliette Degennes, curator at the Musée de l’Orangerie.

For more details and timed tickets, please visit: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/

The Barnes Foundation Presents "Alexey Brodovitch: Astonish Me" Opening March 3–May 19, 2024

In spring 2024, the Barnes Foundation will present Alexey Brodovitch: Astonish Me, a major exhibition exploring the influence and significance of photographer, designer, and instructor Alexey Brodovitch (1898–1971). Brodovitch is best known for his art direction of the US fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar from 1934 to 1958 and his role in making photography the cornerstone of its visual identity. Curated by Katy Wan, Managing Curator, D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift, Tate Modern, London, this exhibition will focus on the legacy of this overlooked figure, consider his collaborations with many of the major figures of 20th-century photography, and encourage new perspectives on art direction and graphic design.

Alexey Brodovitch: Astonish Me is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal. Key support is provided by the David Berg Foundation and additional support comes from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, Julie Jensen Bryan and Robert Bryan, Hearst, and Donna and Jerry Slipakoff. This exhibition will be on view in the Roberts Gallery from March 3 through May 19, 2024.

As art director at Harper’s Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch transformed the magazine and design fields through his creative layouts—often incorporating surrealist inventions and European avant-garde innovations—and celebrated collaborations with photographers including Richard Avedon and Lillian Bassman. Upon first arriving in the United States in 1930, he taught at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now University of the Arts) in Philadelphia and, later, the New School for Social Research in New York City. Brodovitch’s unique pedagogy influenced an extraordinary number of celebrated documentary and fashion photographers, including Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, and Hans Namuth. He also collaborated with luminaries such as Man Ray and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

“Alexey Brodovitch had a tremendous impact on photography as an artistic medium in the mid-20th century. His influence on the world of design is indelible, but he has been overlooked in the history of art,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President of the Barnes. “He called Philadelphia home beginning in 1930; while Dr. Barnes was building his collection of modern European paintings and introducing it to the city, Brodovitch was introducing leading European design to his students—and later, through his work at Harper’s Bazaar, to a wider audience. We are proud to present the first major US museum exhibition to explore the influence of Brodovitch, along with the first monograph to examine his present-day relevance and pivotal relationships with photographers.”

Born in the former Russian Empire (now Belarus) to an aristocratic Jewish family, Brodovitch dreamed of becoming an artist when he was a young man. After serving in the Russian Civil War, he was exiled to Paris. He lived in Montparnasse, a diverse community inhabited by some of the 20th century’s most revolutionary artists, where he was exposed to myriad artistic styles. Brodovitch’s exposure to vanguard art movements fueled an intense interest in photography and typography. He took on freelance work as a graphic designer, creating posters, advertisements, and restaurant decoration and paraphernalia. His first design success was in 1924 for a Grand Prix poster contest for the Bal Banal, which many artists entered, including one Pablo Picasso.

Brodovitch arrived in the United States in 1930 and moved to Philadelphia to work at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) where he established the Department of Advertising Design. He introduced his students to cutting-edge magazines and other leading European design work and founded his methodology on creative problem-solving, which was unorthodox during the time. In 1933, he established the Design Laboratory, a workshop that used contemporary examples and technology to explore innovative design possibilities.

In 1934, Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Carmel Snow saw Brodovitch’s work in New York City. She immediately suggested the magazine hire him as art director. During the subsequent years, he frequently used surrealist devices in his magazine layouts, which featured constellations of small photographs, a creative use of white space and contemporary fonts, and playful spreads that unfolded like musical compositions. Changes in size, layering, and color provided the viewer with a sequence of experiences, evoking movement and energy on the printed page. Brodovitch also pursued personal projects: from 1935 to 1937, he photographed several performances of the itinerant Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo using a 35mm camera and slow shutter speeds. The resulting images were ethereal—capturing the movement and experience of dance. In 1945, this body of work was published in the boldly experimental photobook Ballet, which became one of the most significant achievements of its medium and the only book of his own work that Brodovitch ever produced.

“Alexey Brodovitch was regarded by his peers as the father of modern art direction. He created unconventional and experimental designs that are common practice today, and the lessons he imparted through his own work and his influence on those he mentored have transformed the worlds of photography and graphic design,” says curator Katy Wan. “Though Brodovitch is not a household name, the images by photographers whom he worked with and influenced are instantly recognizable all around the world. Our hope is that this exhibition affirms his legacy in modern photography and design.”

Featuring more than 100 works from public and private collections around the world, Alexey Brodovitch: Astonish Me is arranged thematically and showcases photographs, prints, works on paper, books, and magazines, including works by artists Brodovitch mentored and collaborated with, including Eve Arnold, Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Irving Penn.

Exhibition highlights include:

Richard Avedon. Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris (1955): This iconic photograph by Richard Avedon is a testament to his mentor, Brodovitch, who challenged artists to “astonish” viewers through surprise and invention. (Richard Avedon Foundation, NY)

Lisette Model. Woman at Coney Island (1939-41, printed 1976): Brodovitch presented Model’s ebullient subject in a Bazaar spread dedicated to the cherished tourist destination of Coney Island. (Tate, United Kingdom)

Henri Cartier-Bresson. Calle Cuauhtemoctzin, Mexico City (1934-35): Brodovitch was allegedly the only art director permitted the crop the photographs of Cartier-Bresson, who famously espoused the ‘decisive moment’ of releasing the shutter. Brodovitch dared to give Cartier-Bresson’s photograph a fresh presentation in Bazaar.

Eve Arnold. Models Limbering Up Backstage before a Fashion Show in Harlem (1950): Brodovitch understood the significance of Eve Arnold’s photography of the Harlem fashion shows in the 1950s, when she brought them to his attention at one of his classes at the New School. (Magnum Photos)

Poster for Bal Banal (1924): Brodovitch’s design won first prize in the poster competition for a soirée organized by the Union des Artistes Russes in Paris. It helped launch his career in commercial art and graphic design. (Collection of Dr. Curt Lund)

Cover image. “The Girl of Tomorrow,” Harper’s Bazaar (February 1939): Brodovitch’s bizarre and fantastical imagery captures the spirit of surrealism. He did not self-identity with the surrealists but was influenced by their aesthetic. (Collection of Vince Aletti)

Photograph. Tricorne (1935): Brodovitch’s emphasis on mood, atmosphere, and dynamism transformed the direction of dance photography. This evocative image was included in his one and only photobook, Ballet (1945). (Philadelphia Museum of Art. From the Collection of Dorothy Norman, 1968)

Floor Chair, Model 1211-C (c. 1948): Brodovitch’s modern aesthetic extended to furniture design. This model won third prize in its category at the International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1950. (Museum of Modern Art, New York)

For more information and to plan your visit, please go to: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/plan-your-visit

The Barnes Foundation Presents "Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris", Opening October 22, 2023- January 21, 2024

In fall 2023, the Barnes Foundation will present Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris, the first major US exhibition dedicated to French artist Marie Laurencin in over 30 years. Co-curated by Simonetta Fraquelli, consulting curator for the Barnes; and Cindy Kang, curator at the Barnes, this exhibition explores Laurencin’s career, from her self-portraits to her collaborative decorative projects; from her early cubist paintings to her signature works—feminine and discreetly queer—that defined 1920s Paris.

Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal and Denise Littlefield Sobel. Additional support is provided by LAGOS. Funding for the exhibition comes from The Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation. This exhibition is on view in the Roberts Gallery from October 22, 2023, through January 21, 2024.

Beginning in the early 20th century, French artist Marie Laurencin (1883–1956) created a unique pictorial world that placed women at the center of modern art. Working in Paris, in an environment dominated by male artists, Laurencin had a highly original painting style that defied categorization. She moved seamlessly between the male-dominated cubist avant-garde, lesbian literary and artistic circles, and the realms of fashion, ballet, and decorative arts.

Laurencin became a fixture of the contemporary art scene in prewar Paris and had a passionate and tumultuous relationship with the poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire. Pablo Picasso had introduced them in 1907, and she immediately became part of the cubist inner circle. Their breakup in 1913, combined with the death of her mother, likely prompted a hasty marriage to the German baron and artist Otto von Wätjen in 1914. The couple fled to Spain during World War I and circulated among other self-exiled artists, including Francis Picabia. In 1921, the couple divorced and Laurencin returned definitively to Paris, having developed her signature style of diaphanous female figures in a blue-rose-gray palette.

Laurencin’s feminine yet sexually fluid aesthetic defined 1920s Paris. She was commissioned by Serge Diaghilev to design the ballet Les Biches and by society figures like Coco Chanel and Helena Rubinstein to paint their portraits. Laurencin’s romantic relationships with women, particularly with the married fashion designer Nicole Groult, inspired intimate paintings that visualized the modern Sapphism of contemporary lesbian writers like Natalie Clifford Barney. One of Laurencin’s final projects was to illustrate the Poems of Sappho in 1950.

“We are proud to present the first US exhibition in over three decades dedicated to Marie Laurencin’s work,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President of the Barnes. “Shining new light on a remarkable artist deserving of a major reexamination, this exhibition is the Barnes’s fourth in an ongoing series exploring the achievements of significant but underrecognized women working in the European modernist vanguard of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Suzanne Valadon, Marie Cuttoli, and Berthe Morisot.”

This exhibition holds a special significance at the Barnes; in 1923, Dr. Albert Barnes named Laurencin one of “the best French women painters” after having acquired several of her works, including Still Life with Bowl and Fruit (1907) on view in Room 10; Woman with Muff (1914) on view in Room 16; and Head (before 1921), on view in Room 11.

“Through this exhibition, we aim to reassess Marie Laurencin’s career, emphasizing the female relationships and networks—the Sapphic Paris—that Laurencin cultivated, which was just as significant to her assertion of modernity as her association with the male cubist avant-garde,” say co-curators Fraquelli and Kang. “We examine how Laurencin’s visualization of a ‘Sapphic modernity’ subtly but radically challenges existing narratives of modern European art. Presenting new scholarship on her life and influence, this exhibition and catalogue tell Laurencin’s story through her art and bring new attention to her significant body of work.”

Featuring over 50 works by Laurencin from public and private collections around the world, Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris showcases paintings, works on paper, illustrated books, decorative objects, and ballet costumes, as well as works by Laurencin’s contemporaries and collaborators such as Max Ernst, André Mare, Jean Metzinger, and Francis Picabia. Arranged thematically and in roughly chronological order, the exhibition examines Laurencin’s interest in self-portraiture; her cubist milieu in prewar Paris; her difficult though productive period of exile in Spain; her designs for interiors and ballets; her fashionable portraits of women; and her inimitable vision of Sapphic modernism.

Select exhibition highlights include:

The Elegant Ball, Dance in the Country (Le bal élégant, La danse à la campagne) (1913), one of Laurencin’s major cubist pictures, exhibited at the 1913 Salon des Indépendants in Paris (Musée Marie Laurencin, Tokyo)

The Woman-Horse (La femme-cheval) (1918), an enigmatic self-portrait of a woman painter in exile that shows Laurencin developing her signature style (Musée Marie Laurencin, Tokyo)

Women with a Dove (Femmes à la colombe) (1918), an intimate double portrait of Laurencin and her lover Nicole Groult (Centre Pompidou, Paris)

Women in the Forest (Femmes dans la forêt) (1920), which reinterprets 18th-century French pictures of romantic intrigue as a Sapphic world devoid of men (private collection)

Spanish Dancers (Danseuses espagnoles) (1920), one of Laurencin’s largest works that depicts her unique aesthetic world intertwining women and animals (Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris)

Portrait of Miss Chanel (Portrait de Mademoiselle Chanel) (1923), a significant portrait of the famed fashion designer Coco Chanel when she was working with the Ballets Russes concurrently with Laurencin (Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris)

For more details, and tickets, please visit: barnesfoundation.org

The Barnes Foundation In Philadelphia Presents William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision, June 25–September 10, 2023

In summer 2023, the Barnes Foundation will present William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision, the first major East Coast exhibition dedicated to the work of self-taught American sculptor William Edmondson (c. 1874–1951) in decades. Though Edmondson was considered one of the most important Black artists of the American South in the early 20th century, in-depth attention to his work has been sporadic. Co-curated by the Barnes’s James Claiborne, Curator of Public Programs, and Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator, this exhibition sheds new light on Edmondson’s practice and artistry and explores the artist and his oeuvre within the context of African American social history.

Major support for William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Additional support is provided by Comcast NBCUniversal, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, and the Henry Moore Foundation. This exhibition is on view in the Roberts Gallery from June 25 through September 10, 2023.

Edmondson made carving his vocation around 1932, having previously worked as a hospital orderly in Nashville, Tennessee. Inspired by a vision—described by the artist as a divine calling—he developed a career making headstones for the city’s Black cemeteries. Soon he expanded his repertoire to include freestanding figurative sculptures, depicting nurses, teachers, angels, and preachers. Following a solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1937—the institution’s first show dedicated to a Black artist—he increasingly found buyers beyond his immediate community, attracting the attention of East Coast intellectuals and collectors. As Edmondson found fame beyond Nashville, media coverage of the artist played into racialized stereotypes about the Southern Black experience, with many journalists framing Edmondson’s sculptures as the work of a “modern primitive.” Such readings may have been encouraged by how white photographers, including Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Edward Weston, captured the artist at work in the 1930s and 1940s.

More than 80 years later, William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision presents over 60 works by Edmondson. Acknowledging the complexities of his early critical reception, the Barnes exhibition also presents a selection of Dahl-Wolfe’s and Weston’s photographs, not as documentary evidence of Edmondson’s practice but as independent works of art that at once celebrate and romanticize their subject. The show reassesses the artist as more than a passive actor in an unfolding drama—a self-taught sculptor “discovered” by white patrons and institutions—and explores how Edmondson’s identity and position within history influenced his life and work.

This exhibition also examines the complex relationship between Black cultural production and the American museum. To further investigate this theme, acclaimed visual and movement artist Brendan Fernandes—who works at the intersections of dance and visual art, addressing cultural displacement, migration, labor, and queer subjectivity—has been commissioned to create a new work, which will activate the exhibition on select dates throughout the summer. In Returning to Before, Fernandes, a classically trained dancer, has choreographed a piece that will employ the techniques of ballet and modern and contemporary dance to respond to and interact with Edmondson’s sculptures. In considering the guiding role that spirituality plays in both his own work and that of Edmondson, Fernandes prompts audiences to interrogate a museum’s capacity to serve as a space for spiritual creative expression. He and exhibition designer Yaumu Huang have created a contemplative display space—constructed as a kind of altar or memorial—that includes a Jacquard tapestry designed by Fernandes. A corps of dancers will activate this environment, evoking, as Fernandes describes, “the innate choreographic nature of Edmondson’s own sculpture making, chiseling, and carving.” Through this collective movement of the dancers and audiences within the Roberts Gallery, the museum space becomes a place for communal homage to the artistic and spiritual legacy of Edmondson.

Returning to Before will begin on July 14, with an evening performance and conversation featuring Brendan Fernandes. Following the opening, performances will take place in the exhibition space on Saturdays from July 15 through September 9 at noon and 2 pm. (Included with admission.)

“Across our programs, we extend and grow Dr. Albert C. Barnes’s commitment to racial equality, social justice, and education. William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision is representative of our commitment to presenting underresearched and underrepresented artists, and to demonstrating the contemporary relevance of historic works of art,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President at the Barnes. “This exhibition expands our understanding of William Edmondson as a major figure in American art and marks the first in a series of collaborations that elevate the role of performance in exhibitions. Recognizing the interpretive potential for performance to build new pathways into historical art, we are expanding and deepening our program, developing our capacity for collaboration and placing performance at the heart of exhibition development.”

Arranged thematically, the works in this exhibition are on loan from museums and private collections across the US, including many from the Cheekwood Estate and Gardens in Nashville, which holds the largest collection of Edmondson’s work. In addition to the animals, angels, and other religious iconography Edmondson was known for, exhibition highlights include:

Ancient Egyptian Couple (limestone sculpture, c. 1940), from the Museum of Everything, London Edmondson’s only sculpture of a male nude, made for Sidney Mttron Hirsch: Reclining Man (limestone sculpture, date unknown), from Cheekwood Estate and Gardens, Nashville, gift of Michael LeBeck in memory of Sidney Mttron Hirsch

Important works from the collection of KAWS, including Untitled (Angel) (c. 1940), Untitled (Seated Girl) (date unknown), and Untitled (Crucifix) (c. 1935–45), all limestone sculptures Mermaid (limestone sculpture, c. 1932–41), the collection of Robert and Katharine Booth

12 photographs of William Edmondson by Louise Dahl-Wolfe (c. 1895–1989)

A rare carving of Eleanor Roosevelt (limestone sculpture, c. 1940), from a private collection

“Recognizing the gaps in Dr. Barnes’s collection, we focus on presenting the voices and work of women and artists of color in our exhibition program,” says co-curator Nancy Ireson. “Through this exhibition, we seek to recontextualize William Edmondson, reinstating the importance of community in his work and rejecting narratives that oversimplify his life and practice. As we highlight Edmondson’s position in art history, questions about equity in the cultural sector arise that still resonate today, making the exhibition a space for important discussions.”

“This exhibition is our first to draw a holistic connection between the Barnes’s performance and exhibition programs,” says co-curator James Claiborne. “By bringing Brendan Fernandes’s performance directly into the exhibition, we hope to create new and compelling points of entry for audiences and engage visitors in an active dialogue about multifaceted Black experiences across time and place. We are excited to showcase Fernandes’s new work, Returning to Before, and witness how it brings Edmondson’s sculptures, and the stories they tell, to life in new ways.”

For more details, please visit: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/plan-your-visit

The Barnes Foundation Presents Sue Williamson & Lebohang Kganye: Tell Me What You Remember, March 5 Through May 21, 2023

Philadelphia, PA. —In spring 2023, the Barnes Foundation presents Sue Williamson & Lebohang Kganye: Tell Me What You Remember. Bringing together the work of two of South Africa’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, the exhibition offers a cross-generational dialogue on history, memory, and the power of self-narration in the context of apartheid and its legacies. On view in the Roberts Gallery from March 5 through May 21, 2023, and curated by Emma Lewis, curator at Turner Contemporary, Margate, England, this exhibition is the most significant presentation of each artist in the US to date, and the first time their work has been presented in dialogue.

Sue Williamson & Lebohang Kganye: Tell Me What You Remember is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal. Additional support is provided by the Honickman Family.

Three decades after the dismantling of apartheid began, the generation born during the transition to democracy has reached adulthood and its artists have used their work to navigate their difficult inheritance. At the same time, the distance between their experience and that of an older generation grows. Sue Williamson & Lebohang Kganye: Tell Me What You Remember reflects upon this moment. In their respective practices, Sue Williamson (b. 1941) and Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990) incorporate oral histories into film, photographs, installations, and textiles to consider how the stories elders share—and what they choose to withhold—shape family narratives and personal identities. Exploring the complexities involved in the passing down of memories, their works implicitly and explicitly address racial violence, social injustice, and intergenerational trauma.

“Dr. Albert C. Barnes’s commitment to racial equality, social justice, and education is the historical legacy that we have worked hard to extend and grow in everything we do at the Barnes,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President. “For our first exhibition of 2023, we are proud to present the work of two acclaimed South African artists, Sue Williamson and Lebohang Kganye. Highlighting the ways in which artists are responding to a critical moment in contemporary South Africa, this is a prescient exhibition that invites audiences to consider how the current political and social landscape in the United States has resonance in a global context.”

Williamson’s early works represent her use of first-person testimony as a means of documenting and contributing to the struggle against apartheid; later, she recorded conversations between women with firsthand experience of enforced segregation and their children or grandchildren—the so-called “born frees.” Kganye draws on conversations with her grandmother and aunts to trace her ancestral roots, revealing histories of displacement and dispossession and highlighting storytelling and song as modes of resistance. By inviting these artists into dialogue, this exhibition is a conversation between women of two generations with shared conviction in the profound importance—and complexity—of recording living memories.

This exhibition features 15 bodies of work, including video installations, photographs, sculptural installations, and textiles. Exhibition highlights include:

Three works from Sue Williamson’s series Truth Games (1998), which highlights important cases investigated by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Each piece pictures an accuser, a defender, and the event in question. Text lifted from press reports of courtroom evidence is printed on slats that obscure sections of the work. By sliding these slats across the image, viewers are invited to engage with the event and critique how testimony was disseminated by the media.

Lebohang Kganye’s Mohlokomedi wa Tora (2018), a photographic installation that represents how Kganye’s family’s migration, owing to land acts and apartheid law, resulted in four different spellings of their surname. A central rotating light represents the Sesotho word for light, kganya, which is the etymology of this name. Mohlokomedi suggests the vocation of caretaker, tending to the light that symbolizes her ancestral inheritance.

Two dual-channel video installations by Williamson, What Is This Thing Called Freedom? (2016) and That Particular Morning (2019), from her series No More Fairy Tales. Made 20 years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and shortly after student protests that swept South Africa, when it became clear that many of apartheid’s wounds remain unhealed, these filmed conversations between grandmothers and mothers and their adult children explore intergenerational understanding.

Williamson’s The Lost District (2019), a painted map of the area of District Six, from which 60,000 residents were forcibly removed between 1968 and 1982. Signage and etched glass panels are installed on the map. When lit, these panels cast shadows that describe the area as it once was. The work is accompanied by oral histories and soundscapes that Williamson made in the community in 1981.

Kganye’s Dipina tsa Kganya (2021), a three-channel video installation featuring the artist in two performances inspired by the Sesotho oral tradition of direto, the praise-singing of clan names as a way of passing down the origins of the family story as an act of resistance to historical erasure.

Kganye’s In Search for Memory (2020/2022), in which the artist uses her characteristic technique of cutting out and rearranging archival photographs into stagelike sets to call attention to the gaps, inconsistencies, and fabrications that shape how memories are constructed and passed down. In this series of photographs and accompanying diorama, Kganye creates scenes that imagine a protagonist traveling between apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa and an imagined future to which Nelson Mandela returns. “At a time of intensified interest in how the ‘past’ is written, and by whom, Sue Williamson and Lebohang Kganye’s engagement with oral histories reminds us of the quiet urgency of collecting living memories, especially those that speak across the generational divide. This important task resonates far beyond the contexts in which the two artists work,” says curator Emma Lewis. “By bringing into dialogue their varied work with conversation, statement, story, and song, the exhibition explores the very different ways that art can be mobilized to reveal the power—and partiality—of self-narration.”

To learn more about works in Sue Williamson & Lebohang Kganye: Tell Me What You Remember, visitors can use Barnes Focus, a mobile guide that works on any smartphone with a web browser. To use it, visitors simply open the guide by navigating to barnesfoc.us on a mobile browser and focus on a work of art; the guide will recognize the work and deliver information about it. Barnes Focus also leverages the Google Translate API, so you can automatically translate the guide into a variety of languages. Barnes Focus was created by the Knight Center for Digital Innovation in Audience Engagement at the Barnes.

For more information please visit: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/plan-your-visit

The Barnes Foundation In Philadelphia Presents ModIgliani Up Close, October 16, 2022–January 29, 2023

This fall, in celebration of its centennial, the Barnes Foundation will present Modigliani Up Close, a major loan exhibition that shares new insights into Amedeo Modigliani’s working methods and materials. On view in the Roberts Gallery from October 16, 2022, through January 29, 2023, Modigliani Up Close is curated by an international team of art historians and conservators: Barbara Buckley, Senior Director of Conservation and Chief Conservator of Paintings at the Barnes; Simonetta Fraquelli, independent curator and consulting curator for the Barnes; Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes; and Annette King, Paintings Conservator at Tate, London.

Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) is among the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. While many exhibitions have endeavored to reunite his paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Modigliani Up Close offers a unique opportunity to examine their production and explore how Modigliani constructed and composed his signature works. Featuring new scholarship that builds on research that began in 2017 with the major Modigliani retrospective at Tate Modern, this single-venue exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are the culmination of years of research by conservators and curators across Europe and the Americas. Modigliani Up Close furthers understanding of Modigliani’s approach to his art, refines a chronology of his paintings and sculptures, and helps to establish the locations and circumstances of where he worked.

“We are pleased to present this major exhibition that offers a detailed investigation of Modigliani’s unique style,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President. “Stemming from a multiyear, global research effort, the show has brought the international art community together to create a collaborative vision of the artist’s practice, leaving a lasting legacy for future Modigliani scholarship. The Barnes collection is home to 16 works by the artist, one of the largest and most important groups of the artist’s works in the world, and the project provided a unique opportunity to fully explore their significance. We see once more how Dr. Barnes broke new ground in the history of collecting modern art.”

Featuring nearly 50 works from major collections, and organized into thematic sections, the exhibition presents paintings and sculptures alongside new findings that have resulted from the technical research of collaborating conservators, conservation scientists, and curators. Using analytical techniques, including X-radiography, infrared reflectography, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), conservators and conservation scientists reveal previously unknown aspects of Modigliani’s work. Visitors will feel closer to Modigliani as an artist, seeing his work through the eyes of the experts, catching glimpses of the artist’s hand hidden beneath the surfaces of his work.

“Thanks to the work of conservators and curators from museums around the globe, Modigliani Up Close offers an unrivaled opportunity to understand how the artist made his iconic paintings and sculptures,” says Nancy Ireson. “The exhibition is a perfect demonstration of how, in addition to producing innovative research, the Barnes Foundation brings together colleagues in the field to share their findings and thoughts.”

This exhibition holds a special significance at the Barnes, as Dr. Albert C. Barnes was one of Modigliani’s earliest collectors in the United States and helped shape the artist’s critical reception in this country. In addition to works on paper, there are 12 significant paintings and one carved stone sculpture by Modigliani in the Barnes collection. With 12 paintings each, the Barnes and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, have the largest collections of Modigliani paintings in the world.

Modigliani Up Close is sponsored by Morgan Stanley and Comcast NBCUniversal. Additional support is provided by the David Berg Foundation, Sue Perel Rosefsky, Alter Family Foundation, Pamela and David Berkman, Julie Jensen Bryan and Robert Bryan, Laura and Bill Buck, Marianne Dean, Dietz & Watson, Roberta and Carl Dranoff, Deborah Glass, Anne and Matt Hamilton, Pamela and James Hill, Amy Donohue-Korman and John Korman, Sueyun and Gene Locks, the Samuel P. Mandell Foundation, Yasmina M. Moukarzel, Nicole and James Schaeffer, Joan Thalheimer, Harriet and Larry Weiss, Margaret and Tom Whitford, Randi Zemsky and Bob Lane, and other generous individuals.

To learn more about works in Modigliani Up Close, visitors can use Barnes Focus, a mobile guide that works on any smartphone with a web browser. Previously only accessible for works in the Barnes collection, Modigliani Up Close marks the first occasion Barnes Focus can be used to explore loaned works in an exhibition. To use it, visitors simply open the guide by navigating to barnesfoc.us on a mobile browser and focus on a work of art; the guide will recognize the work and deliver information about it. Barnes Focus also leverages the Google Translate API, so you can automatically translate the guide into a variety of languages.

For more details, please visit: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/plan-your-visit

The Barnes Foundation Presents Isaac Julian: Once Again (Statues Never Die), June 19 – September 4, 2022

Philadelphia, PA —This summer, in celebration of its Centennial, the Barnes Foundation will debut a newly commissioned film installation by artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien, CBE RA (b. London, 1960). On view in the Roberts Gallery from June 19 through September 4, Once Again (Statues Never Die), a five-screen installation, explores the close relationship of Dr. Albert C. Barnes, Barnes Foundation founder who was an early US collector and exhibitor of African material culture, and Alain Locke, a cultural theorist known as the Father of the Harlem Renaissance.

This exhibition is sponsored by the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms Initiative, Comcast NBCUniversal, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and is made possible by Agnes Gund, Emily and Mike Cavanagh, Marjorie Ogilvie and Miller Parker, Brenda A. and Larry D. Thompson, Darrell and Melenese Ford, and Ronald Blaylock.

Once Again (Statues Never Die) stars actor André Holland (Moonlight and Passing) as Alain Locke, Danny Huston (Succession and Marlowe) as Dr. Barnes, rising star Devon Terrell as sculptor Richmond Barthé, and Sharlene Whyte (Small Axe and Lessons of the Hour) as the curator. It also features a special appearance by singer and songwriter Alice Smith.

“This project explores Dr. Barnes’s and Alain Locke’s storied relationship, its mutually formative critical dialogue, and its significant impact on their work as cultural critics, educators, organizers, and activists on behalf of various African American causes,” says Julien.

Once Again (Statues Never Die) examines the significant and often neglected place of African objects in numerous collections of western art museums. Utilizing poetic reparation and historical archives—drawing on Julien’s extensive research in the archives of the Barnes Foundation—the film explores the impact of Locke’s political philosophy and cultural organizing activities on Dr. Barnes’s pioneering art collecting and his democratic, inclusive educational enterprise. Additionally, it looks at contemporary debates around statues with recourse to the 1953 film by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, Les statues meurent aussi (Statues Also Die). Combining the original script written by Isaac Julien and Martina Klich with recently discovered archival footage from the 1970 film You Hide Me by Nii Kwate Owoo about the African sculptures in the British Museum, the film engages with the current critical debates on African art collecting and repatriation of the sculptures.

Exploring Locke’s engagement with the Barnes collection, Isaac Julien aims both to honor Locke’s important contribution to the arts and to open critical conversations regarding the African art works that influenced the Black cultural movement. The installation spotlights Dr. Barnes’s subsequent writings on the meaning and value of African material culture and its import to the African diaspora, which were reproduced in such Harlem Renaissance periodicals as Opportunity. In the film, Julien revisits some of the themes he approached in his landmark 1989 film Looking for Langston and continues his exploration of the queer subculture of the Harlem Renaissance by exploring the relationship between Locke and sculptor Richmond Barthé with a staging of Barthé’s sculptures at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). A selection of Barthé’s sculptures will also be presented in the Barnes exhibition.

“A visionary collector and pioneering educator, Dr. Barnes was also an advocate for the civil rights of African Americans, women, and the economically marginalized,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President and exhibition curator. “Committed to racial equality and social justice decades before the advent of the civil rights movement, he established a scholarship program to support young Black artists, musicians, and writers—including Locke’s associates such as poet Gwendolyn Bennett and artist Aaron Douglas—who sought to further their education at the Foundation and beyond. It is this important and lesser-known chapter of the Barnes Foundation’s history that Isaac Julien—with his distinguished career as a maker of deeply compelling and thoughtful video installations, his sustained commitment to investigating African diasporic politics and culture, and his abiding interest in the Harlem Renaissance—is bringing to light.”

Following its debut at the Barnes, Once Again (Statues Never Die) will be presented during the Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present in the United Arab Emirates in March 2023.

The Barnes has engaged cultural partners across Philadelphia, including The Fabric Workshop and Museum; Institute for Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania; and BlackStar Projects to present other works by Isaac Julien during the run of Isaac Julien: Once Again (Statues Never Die) and beyond. Related programming is listed below. Visit the website for more details.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum In Focus: Isaac Julien August 16, 2022–April 2023 On view in the First Floor Gallery, In Focus: Isaac Julien presents a selection of works from the museum's permanent collection displayed in conversation with Julien’s Paradise (Omeros) #2, a photographic multiple created for The Fabric Workshop and Museum in 2002.

Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania Poetic Cinema: Isaac Julien and the Sankofa Film and Video Collective Curated by Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Penn Live Arts at the Annenberg Center, and BlackStar Projects. A programmatic series of three works, developed in concert with artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien, from the Sankofa Film and Video Collective screened in-person at Penn Live Arts at the Annenberg Center and the Prince Theater. Each screening will be accompanied by a conversation between a scholar and artist or filmmaker providing context and building on the works presented.

Looking for Langston (1989, 45 min) June 13, 2022 Prince Theater Guest speakers in conversation: Isaac Julien, artist and filmmaker; Kaja Silverman, Katherine Stein Sachs CW'69 and Keith L. Sachs W'67 Professor Emerita of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania; and Ja'Tovia Gary, artist and filmmaker.

Territories (1984, 25 min) and Who Killed Colin Roach (1983, 35 min) July 11, 2022 Prince Theater Guest speakers in conversation: Maori Karmael Holmes, CEO & Artistic Director of BlackStar Projects & Thomas Allen Harris, Senior Lecturer, African American Studies & Film and Media Studies, Yale University.

The Passion of Remembrance (1986, 80 min), newly restored and premiering as a 4K version August 3, 2022 In conjunction with the BlackStar Film Festival. Zellerbach Theater, Penn Live Arts, Annenberg Center Guest speakers in conversation: Karen Alexander, writer, educator and freelance curator & Louis Massiah, documentary filmmaker and Founder/Director of Scribe Video Center.

BARNES RELATD PROGRAMMING:
Barnes on the Block Sunday, June 19, 4–8:30 pm Presented by PNC Arts Alive, and in partnership with Mural Arts Philadelphia, Barnes on the Block returns for another round of outdoor fun for the entire family. This year’s event coincides with Juneteenth, Father’s Day, and the opening of Isaac Julien: Once Again (Statues Never Die). Meet us on the Parkway for visual art displays, live performances, food trucks, a beer garden, and more.

First Friday! Friday, July 1, 6–9 pm

PECO Free First Sunday Family Day Sunday, July 3, 10am–5 pm

Exhibition Tours Thursday–Monday, beginning in June 1 pm

Education Initiatives
Online Class: Understanding Video Art Instructor: Matthew C. Feliz, Lecturer, Bryn Mawr College July (dates will be listed on website) Explore key works of video art and learn about the theories behind them. This is a four-week class that takes place online.

Workshop: Isaac Julien In Focus Instructor: TK Smith, curator and writer Tuesday, August 2, 10 am–4 pm This one-day workshop, at the Barnes, explores key works in Julien’s oeuvre leading up to Once Again (Statues Never Die). Students will have access to the exhibition.

Community Engagement
Barnes West Barnes Presents! Harlem Renaissance in Review August 18, 5:30 pm Jazz performance at Saunders Park in West Philadelphia featuring classic Harlem Renaissance standards.

EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION
Created and directed by Isaac Julien, and co-written with Martina Klich, Once Again (Statues Never Die) is commissioned by the Barnes Foundation and the Ford Foundation, with additional support from the Sharjah Art Foundation, Linda Pace Foundation, Carol Weinbaum & The University of California, Santa Cruz. This exhibition is presented at the Barnes Foundation and curated by Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President. Advisors to the project are Dan Hicks, Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum; Jeffrey C. Stewart, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke and MacArthur Foundation Chair and Distinguished Professor of Black Studies at UC Santa Barbara; curator, filmmaker, and writer Mark Nash; and Chika Okeke-Agulu, a Nigerian-born artist and scholar based in Princeton, New Jersey. The work is executive produced by Mark Nash and produced by Andrew Fierberg.

ABOUT ISAAC JULIEN
Isaac Julien, CBE RA (b. London, 1960), is a filmmaker and installation artist who currently lives and works between London and California. His multi-screen film installations and photographs incorporate different artistic disciplines to create a poetic and unique visual language. His 1989 documentary-drama exploring author Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance titled Looking for Langston garnered Julien a cult following, while his 1991 debut feature Young Soul Rebels won the Semaine de la Critique prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Julien has participated in the Venice Biennale; the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea; Prospect 1, New Orleans; Performa 07, New York; and documenta 11, Kassel. His work is held in significant collections around the world. Julien has taught extensively, holding posts such as Chair of Global Art at University of the Arts London (2014–2016) and Professor of Media Art at Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe, Germany (2008–2016). He is the recipient of the James Robert Brudner ’83 Memorial Prize and Lectures at Yale University (2016). Most recently he received the Charles Wollaston Award (2017), for most distinguished work at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and in 2018 he was made a Royal Academician. Julien was awarded the title Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s birthday honors, 2017. In 2022, he was awarded the prestigious Goslarer Kaiserring Award.

Isaac Julien is Distinguished Professor of the Arts at the University of California Santa Cruz, where he leads the Isaac Julien Lab together with critic and curator, Mark Nash. The Isaac Julien Lab was designed to mirror the Isaac Julien Studio in London and is a platform where students learn about the strategies behind the production of moving images, photographic works, exhibitions and publications. The Lab aims to create innovative pedagogical methodologies, visual and sonic languages for production, exhibition and installation while examining the various aspects that concern contemporary artists and curators working in the field of media art and moving image, in relationship to current modes of research, development, exhibition, production and scenography of moving image artworks.

The Barnes Foundation Presents Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art In Community

Philadelphia, PA.—This spring, the Barnes Foundation will present Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in Community, a major exhibition of historic and contemporary Southwest Native art, including Pueblo and Navajo pottery, textiles, and jewelry. Exploring living artistic traditions that promote individual and community well-being through their making and use, this exhibition is the Barnes’s first dedicated to Native American art and will be on view in the Roberts Gallery from February 20 through May 15, 2022.

This exhibition is sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and Comcast NBCUniversal. Additional support has been provided by Citizens and the Coby Foundation.
Terra Foundation for American Art,
Co-curated by Lucy Fowler Williams, associate curator-in-charge and Jeremy A. Sabloff Keeper of American Collections at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, and Tony Chavarria (Santa Clara Pueblo), curator of ethnology at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in Community features approximately 100 works, including objects that Dr. Albert C. Barnes collected in New Mexico in 1930 and 1931, as well as works by contemporary Native American artists that highlight the connections between historic pieces and modern practices.

“We are delighted to present this exhibition showcasing objects from the Barnes collection and exploring their artistic, cultural, and historical contexts alongside works by contemporary Native artists. It is a fitting show to kick off the Barnes’s centennial year and the tenth anniversary of our home in the heart of Philadelphia as it exemplifies what we strive to accomplish through our exhibition program: to provide thought-provoking, educational experiences and scholarship that explores our collection and resonates with our history,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President. “We hope this project will bring Southwest Native art to the attention of a broad audience and forge new pathways for study and collaboration between Native and non-Native communities long into the future.”

Dr. Albert C. Barnes initially traveled to the Southwest for the health of his wife, Laura. On their first trip in 1929, the couple was hosted in Taos, New Mexico, by American art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan and her Pueblo husband, Tony Lujan, who introduced them to artists and activists who defended Native rights to land and religious practices. Archival correspondence reveals Dr. Barnes’s relationship with leading figures who influenced his collecting, including artist Andrew Dasburg and archaeologists Kenneth Chapman and Jesse Nusbaum (then director of the Museum of New Mexico), along with prominent traders across the region. In a letter to the French painter Henri Matisse, Dr. Barnes wrote about the harmony, religious seriousness, and communal nature of a Pueblo winter deer dance that he attended.

“Each part of this exhibition examines the histories and ideas that Dr. Barnes and other non-Native visitors to the Southwest were likely unaware of but that influenced the lives of Native peoples and the materials, forms, and design of the art objects they admired and collected,” say Lucy Fowler Williams and Tony Chavarria. “One of our goals with this exhibition is to uncover the importance of the ongoing generative practices of these arts within the contexts of their home communities, where they have adapted and quietly continued over generations, despite innumerable challenges. These art forms endure today as material expressions that mark meaningful connections to places, histories, and life forces, and their making and remaking bind, rebind, and renew essential relationships that nurture individual and community health and well-being.”

The exhibition is organized into five main sections—evoking the four cardinal directions surrounding a central dance plaza—including Pueblo pottery, Navajo weaving, silver jewelry making, and Dr. Barnes’s experiences in the Southwest. A final section examines the importance of the Pueblo dance as an enduring practice essential to communal health and well-being.

Exhibition highlights include:

Storage Jar (c. 1780), San Ildefonso Pueblo. The oldest Pueblo vessel in the Barnes collection, featuring designs of the cardinal directions and sacred wild turkey feathers.

Serape with Poncho Slit (c. 1840–60), Navajo. One of the oldest Navajo textiles in the Barnes collection, it will be on view for the first time in more than 20 years.

Squash Blossom Necklace (c. 1910–15), Navajo. One of 25 squash blossom necklaces collected by Dr. Barnes, who loved this symbolic jewelry form.

Virgil Ortiz’s (Cochiti Pueblo) clay work Tahu (2011) reclaims and retells histories of resistance to Spanish oppression in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

Melissa Cody’s (Navajo) 4th Dimension (2017) features a vibrant palette that speaks to Navajo weavers’ courage and survival after the destruction of their homes, sheep, and land by the federal
government in the 19th century.

Charles Loloma’s (Hopi) Beauty Within Bracelet (1976) combines turquoise and silver as signs of water, sky, and beauty hidden within.

Cara Romero’s (Chemehuevi) photograph Water Memory (2015) recalls the drought that brought her family’s ancestors to their present location on the land.

Roxanne Swentzell’s (Santa Clara Pueblo) Pin-da-getti (Strong Heart) (2021), a new sculpture that reminds us to renew our connections to the earth.

EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION This exhibition is organized by the Barnes Foundation and co-curated by Lucy Fowler Williams, associate curator at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Tony Chavarria (Santa Clara Pueblo), curator of ethnology at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe.

ABOUT THE CURATORS

Lucy Fowler Williams is associate curator-in-charge and Jeremy A. Sabloff Keeper of American Collections at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia. A cultural anthropologist, her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania examined the production and meanings of Tewa Pueblo textiles and embroidery in New Mexico. Before coming to Penn, she trained at the Indian Arts Research Center of the School of American Research, Santa Fe, and at the University of New Mexico. Some of her recent curatorial projects include the Penn Museum exhibition Native American Voices: The People—Here and Now (2014), the Louis Shotridge Digital Archive about the work and collections of a Tlingit Alaskan Indigenous curator (2011), and the exhibition Paths of Beauty: Pueblo Embroidered Garments of Isabel Gonzales and Shawn Tafoya at the Poeh Center Museum, Pojoaque Pueblo, New Mexico (2015). Foregrounding collaborative methodologies, her work examines issues of Native American identity and revitalization, museum histories of collecting and representation, textiles, and material culture.

Tony Chavarria (Santa Clara Pueblo) is curator of ethnology at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe. He has over 30 years’ experience collaborating with tribes and curating Native material culture. He has curated many exhibitions at the museum, including Comic Art Indigéne (2008) and What’s New in New: Recent Acquisitions (2013). He is also co-curator for the first Native exhibition at Epcot Center, Creating Tradition: Innovation and Change in American Indian Art (2018–23). When possible, he is an occasional potter and artist.

CATALOGUE

This exhibition is accompanied by a 224-page catalogue published by the Barnes Foundation in association with Yale University Press that will serve as the collection catalogue to its Southwest art collection. A major new contribution to the field, this book offers the first in-depth scholarly examination of this outstanding collection within the cultural, historic, and artistic contexts of its source communities.

This book includes introductory essays on the formation of the collection based on extensive new archival research and on the experience and significance of Pueblo dance. Each medium—pottery, textiles, and jewelry—is studied in a dedicated section with entries on the objects including the most up-to-date technical information about each and the use and meanings of the objects for Native practitioners. This publication interprets the works from the perspectives of its makers and users within their lived contexts of circulation and meaning.

Developed in close collaboration with Native and non-Native scholars and practitioners to emphasize the perspectives and voices of the communities in which the objects were and continue to be made, this fully illustrated catalogue includes contributions by co-curators Lucy Fowler Williams, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Tony Chavarria (Santa Clara Pueblo), Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, artist TahNibaa Naataanii (Navajo), and specialists Kenneth Williams (Arapaho/Seneca), Laurie D. Webster, and Robert Bauver.

For more details, please visit: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/plan-your-visit

Cézanne in the Barnes Foundation: Landmark New Publication Dedicated To One Of The World’s Largest And Most Significant Cézanne Collections

Philadelphia, PA—The Barnes Foundation announces Cézanne in the Barnes Foundation, the first publication dedicated to its expansive collection of works by the renowned artist Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)—one of the largest and most significant in the world.

Cézanne in the Barnes Foundation is made possible through the generous support of Acquavella Galleries, Inc, John Alchin and Hal Marryatt, Edward and Gwen Asplundh, Lois and Julian Brodsky, Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation, Katherine Sachs, Joan Thalheimer, Margaret and Tom Whitford, The Honorable Constance H. Williams and Dr. Sankey V. Williams, Robert N. Wilson and Michele Plante, and other individual donors.

Co-published and distributed by Rizzoli Electa and edited by André Dombrowski, Frances Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Associate Professor of 19th-Century European Art at the University of Pennsylvania; Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; and Sylvie Patry, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Collections at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, this landmark 432-page volume catalogues the 69 works by Cézanne in the Barnes collection, which include 61 oil paintings and eight works on paper.

“The Barnes is home to the largest single group of Cézanne’s paintings in the world, an impressive collection that spans every stage of the artist’s career,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President. “During Dr. Barnes’s lifetime, access to the collection was limited and the works in the galleries went understudied. In keeping with our commitment to advancing scholarship about the collection, we have prioritized the examination of our holdings through a variety of research initiatives. Cézanne in the Barnes Foundation is the next in a series of major volumes dedicated to our collection, following our books on African art, Matisse, and Renoir. This catalogue is born of many years of research, examination, and collaboration with colleagues around the world, and we are thrilled to share this long-awaited book with audiences everywhere.”

“Dr. Barnes felt a strong affinity for Cézanne’s work and collected it voraciously from 1912, the year that artist William Glackens helped him to purchase works that formed the basis of his collection,” says Nancy Ireson. “With deeply insightful contributions from preeminent conservators and art historians, this volume will serve as a key resource for everyone from students to researchers to art lovers for generations to come. We have dedicated it to the late Joe Rishel, our great friend and colleague, in recognition of his lasting impact on Cézanne studies in Philadelphia and beyond.”

Dr. Albert C. Barnes began collecting works by Cézanne from major art dealers in Paris including Paul Durand-Ruel and raised appreciation of the artist in the United States. The Barnes Foundation’s extensive Cézanne holdings—never before published in their entirety—span every period of the artist’s career and include his largest rendition of The Card Players (1890–1892) and one of three versions of The Large Bathers (1895–1906).

The Large Bathers in the Barnes collection, which Dr. Barnes acquired in 1933, now emerges as perhaps the earliest of his monumental Bather paintings (the other two are housed in the National Gallery, London, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, respectively). The technical examination of this painting and others in the collection was made possible by a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project in 2018–19. The findings of this study as presented in the catalogue greatly enhance our understanding of Cézanne’s materials and working methods.

This landmark publication features more than 400 illustrations and includes contributions by Carol Armstrong, Nina M. Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Barbara Buckley, John Elderfield, Cindy Kang, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Nancy Locke, Martha Lucy, Jennifer Mass, Christopher Riopelle, Joseph J. Rishel, Fabienne Ruppen, Anya Shutova, and Jane Warman.

Cézanne in the Barnes Foundation is the sixth volume in a series of books that chronicle the Barnes collection’s holdings. Other publications include: American Paintings and Works on Paper in the Barnes Foundation (2010), by Richard J. Wattenmaker; Masterworks of the Barnes Foundation (2012), by Judith F. Dolkart and Martha Lucy; Renoir in the Barnes Foundation (2012), by John House and Martha Lucy; African Art in the Barnes Foundation (2015), by Christa Clarke; and the three-volume, award-winning Matisse in the Barnes Foundation (2016), including essays by Yve-Alain Bois, Barbara Buckley, Karen Butler, Claudine Grammont, and Jennifer Mass.

Cézanne in the Barnes Foundation is now available in the Barnes Shop.

https://shop.barnesfoundation.org/collections/books-media/products/cezanne-in-the-barnes-foundation

Title: Cézanne in the Barnes Foundation

Publish Date: October 19, 2021

Format: Hardcover

Category: Art - Individual Artists - Monographs

Publisher: Rizzoli Electa

Trim Size: 10 x 11-1/2

Pages: 432

US Price: $85.00

CDN Price: $115.00

ISBN: 978-0-8478-6488-1

The Barnes Foundation Presents Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel; September 26, 2021 Through January 9, 2022

This is the first exhibition dedicated to the French artist and model Suzanne Valadon at a major US arts institution. The first self-taught woman to exhibit at the Salon de la Sociéte Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Valadon challenged behavioral codes with her art and lifestyle, breaking new ground with her unapologetic portraits and nudes. On view in the Barnes’s Roberts Gallery from September 26, 2021 through January 9, 2022, this exhibition considers Valadon’s rich contribution to the early 20th-century art world and features representative works from all stages of her career.

From a childhood marked by poverty and neglect to a career as a popular artist’s model, Suzanne Valadon (born Marie-Clémentine Valadon, 1865–1938) defied the odds to become a successful painter. Passionate about art from an early age, she modeled in her teens for artists including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Edgar Degas encouraged her earliest artistic efforts, praising the use of line in her drawings and introducing her to printmaking techniques. Later, when she turned to painting, she exhibited her work regularly at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne. Valadon made a living from her art at a time when women faced countless obstacles to professional success, but despite these accomplishments, her work has received scant attention outside of France.

Curated by Nancy Ireson, the Barnes Foundation’s Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator, the exhibition features 54 works, including paintings, drawings, and prints created between 1890 and 1937. The exhibition is structured around a series of themes, including the artist’s representations of her family and her exploration of the female body. Refusing to follow artistic trends and continuously faithful to figurative representation, Valadon developed a distinctive pictorial language characterized by decisive lines and bold coloration.

CATALOGUE

The exhibition is accompanied by a 160-page catalogue edited by Nancy Ireson, which explores the new ways of looking at Valadon presented in the show. Published by the Barnes Foundation in association with Paul Holberton Publishing, London, the fully illustrated book includes contributions by Ireson, Martha Lucy, Denise Murrell, Adrienne L. Childs, Lauren Jimerson, and Ebonie Pollock that tackle the artist’s treatment of the female figure, her navigation of the art world, and her depictions of an as-yet-unidentified Black model. Additionally, an essay by South African artist Lisa Brice reflects on her interest in the painter, finding resonance between Valadon’s pioneering work and contemporary artists and events, and a chronology by Marianne Le Morvan presents a fascinating overview of the artist’s turbulent life.

The Barnes Foundation 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway Philadelphia, PA 19130
https://barnesfoundation.org/

The Barnes Foundation Presents "Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel" Opening Sept. 26

First major US exhibition dedicated to Suzanne Valadon, groundbreaking French model and painter

September 26, 2021–January 9, 2022

Philadelphia, PA. —This fall, the Barnes Foundation will present Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel, the first exhibition dedicated to the French artist and model Suzanne Valadon at a major US arts institution. The first self-taught woman to exhibit at the Salon de la Sociéte Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Valadon challenged behavioral codes with her art and lifestyle, breaking new ground with her unapologetic portraits and nudes. On view in the Barnes’s Roberts Gallery from September 26, 2021, through January 9, 2022, this exhibition considers Valadon’s rich contribution to the early 20th-century art world and features representative works from all stages of her career.

Major support for Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Additional support is provided by Comcast NBCUniversal and Denise Littlefield Sobel.

From a childhood marked by poverty and neglect to a career as a popular artist’s model, Suzanne Valadon (born Marie-Clementine Valadon, 1865–1938) defied the odds to become a successful painter. Passionate about art from an early age, she modeled in her teens for artists including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Edgar Degas encouraged her earliest artistic efforts, praising the use of line in her drawings and introducing her to printmaking techniques. Later, when she turned to painting, she exhibited her work regularly at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne. Valadon made a living from her art at a time when women faced countless obstacles to professional success, but despite these accomplishments, her work has received scant attention outside of France.

“Placing Suzanne Valadon’s work in dialogue with the late 19th- and early 20th-century French paintings in the Barnes collection—created primarily by her male counterparts—raises questions of representation and access throughout art history,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President of the Barnes Foundation. “Through this exhibition, we aim to draw attention to the ways in which many artists of merit are unjustly neglected because of biases surrounding gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class. We are proud to present the first major US exhibition dedicated to Valadon, a remarkable and underexplored artist, and bring renewed attention to her significant body of work.”

Curated by Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator, the exhibition features approximately 55 works, including paintings, drawings, and prints created between 1890 and 1932. The exhibition is structured around a series of themes, including the artist’s representations of her family and her exploration of the female body. Refusing to follow artistic trends and continuously faithful to figurative representation, Valadon developed a distinctive pictorial language characterized by decisive lines and bold coloration.

Exhibition highlights include:

Adam and Eve, 1909 (Centre Pompidou, Paris, Gift of the State, 1937): In the early stages of her passionate relationship with André Utter—a man more than 20 years her junior—Valadon made this self-portrait in which she depicts herself as Eve to Utter’s Adam. When the work was first exhibited, it did not include the fig leaves, which she added at a later stage. Self-Portrait, 1927 (Private collection, on deposit to the Musée Utrillo-Valadon, Sannois): Valadon painted frequent self-portraits and, as she aged, did not shy away from changes in her appearance. Here, as a middle-aged woman, she addresses the viewer unapologetically.

The Blue Room, 1923 (Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’Art Modern/CCI, Paris, on deposit to Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges, Gift of the State, 1924): Seen by many as Valadon’s finest work, The Blue Room reinvented artistic traditions, with its sumptuously decorated interior that envelops a clothed, smoking woman.

Family Portrait, 1912 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris, on display at the Centre Pompidou – Musée national d’art modern/CCI, Gift to the Musées Nationaux by M. Cahen-Salvador in memory of Madame Fontenelle-Pomaret, 1976): Head of an unconventional household, Valadon paints herself at the center of her family: her young lover by her side, her elderly mother behind, and her melancholy son in the foreground. Black Venus, 1919 (Centre Pompidou, Paris, – Musée National d’Art Moderne/CCI, Paris, on deposit to Musée des Beaux-Arts de Menton, Gift of M. Charles Wakefield-Mori, 1939): In one of a series of works that feature an unidentified Black model, Valadon seems to challenge classical tradition, a subject that is discussed in detail in the exhibition catalogue.

“Little known in the United States, Suzanne Valadon produced works in the early 20th century that even now challenge viewers with their unapologetic exploration of female desire and the challenges of marriage and motherhood,” says Ireson. “Though Valadon’s portraits and nudes were groundbreaking, their reception was often overshadowed by reactions to her personal life. Her second marriage to a far younger man was met with disapproval, and her fame as an artist was eclipsed by that of her son, Maurice Utrillo. This exhibition and catalogue tell Valadon’s story through her art, shining new light on her important work and career.”

RELATED PROGRAMMING

Public Programs:

Curatorial Talk Saturday, September 25, 2021 A talk by curator Nancy Ireson about the exhibition.

First Friday! October 1, 2021, 6-9pm First Friday! at the Barnes takes place on the first Friday of each month and programming in October will include a performance by a female-identifying performer.

PECO Free First Sunday Family Day October 3, 2021, 10 am–5 pm The Barnes’s monthly PECO Free First Sunday Family Day offers free admission and, in October, programming will explore exhibition themes related to women breaking boundaries through the creative lens.

Lecture Series: The Female Gaze in Contemporary Art and Media October and November (Three evening talks, dates TBA) Everyone is familiar with the “male gaze,” whether or not they know the term. It is ubiquitous in Western art and media, in the way that paintings, movies, films, television, novels, and ads depict the world from a masculine, heterosexual point of view, presenting women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male spectator. But what happens when women interrupt the male gaze and use art—visual or otherwise—as a space for expressing their own perspectives and desires?

Inspired by Valadon’s taboo-breaking paintings, this lecture series features contemporary women artists working in a variety of media who turn the tables on this entrenched power dynamic. In their works, women occupy the position of gazer (rather than gazed-at), expressing a view on the world—and on sexual desire—that is not often seen. Among the questions these talks will address: why does the female gaze provoke societal discomfort? Why is female lust still so bizarrely off-limits in mainstream American culture—think of the reaction to Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B. How do race and class factor into these questions?

For more details, please visit: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/plan-your-visit-new

Six Philadelphia Cultural Institutions Jointly Announce 2021 Reopening

Continued health & safety measures for staff and visitors, extended hours, and special exhibitions announced or extended

Philadelphia —Following the recent temporary closures mandated by state and city officials to limit the spread of COVID-19, in effect since November 20, 2020, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, the Barnes Foundation, The Franklin Institute, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art have jointly announced plans to reopen in January with continued health and safety measures in place for staff and visitors. Eastern State Penitentiary plans to reopen in March and the Rodin Museum will reopen later in the spring.

The Franklin Institute plans to reopen on Wednesday, January 6, followed by the Academy of Natural Sciences on Friday, January 8. The Barnes Foundation also plans to reopen on January 8, with extended hours on select days to provide additional opportunities for visitors to experience the Elijah Pierce’s America exhibition, which has been extended through Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 18, 2021. The Philadelphia Museum of Art plans to reopen on January 8, with new Friday through Monday hours and pay-what-you-wish admission on Friday evenings. PAFA plans to reopen on Thursday, January 21. All plans and reopening dates are subject to change based on guidance from state and city officials.

Cultural institutions along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Eastern State Penitentiary, and PAFA first reopened in late summer, following thorough planning and close coordination with elected officials, medical professionals, and one another. The institutions will continue vigilant, carefully developed health and safety protocols as they once again welcome visitors for rejuvenating cultural experiences, with the well-being and safety of staff and visitors as the utmost priority. Comprehensive health and safety protocols are posted on each institution’s website.

Further details on opening dates and special exhibitions on view, are listed below:

The Franklin Institute – Public opening: Wednesday, January 6, 10 am – 5 pm

World-premiere exhibition, Crayola IDEAworks: The Creativity Exhibition, opens February 13. Hours: Wednesday – Friday, 10 am–5 pm; Saturday – Sunday, 10 am–6 pm; closed: Mondays and Tuesdays, with the exception of Monday, January 18, 10 am–5 pm.

Academy of Natural Sciences – Public opening: Friday, January 8, 11 am – 5 pm

Permian Monsters: Life Before the Dinosaurs opens January Hours: Fridays – Sundays, 11 am–5 pm, with members-only from 10–11 am each day Monday, January 18, 11 am–5 pm, with members-only from 10–11 am

The Barnes Foundation – Public opening: Friday, January 8, 11 am – 5 pm

Saturday, January 9 – Monday, January 11, 11 am–5 pm Thursday, January 14, 11 am–5 pm (ADDITIONAL OPEN DAY) Friday, January 15 & Saturday, January 16, 9 am–6 pm (EXTENDED HOURS) Sunday, January 17 & Monday, January 18, 11 am–5 pm Regular open hours: Fridays–Mondays, 11 am–5 pm, (10–11 am members-only hour) Elijah Pierce’s America (Extended through January 18, 2021)

Philadelphia Museum of Art – Public opening: Friday, January 8, 10 am – 8:45 pm

Saturday, January 9 – Monday, January 11, 10 am–5 pm Friday, January 15, 10 am–8:45 pm (pay-what-you-wish) Rodin Museum – A spring reopening will be announced at a later date.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts – Public opening: Thursday, January 21, 10 am –4 pm

Hours: Thursday – Friday, 10 am–4 pm; Saturday – Sunday, 11 am–5 pm; closed: Mondays through Wednesdays World-premiere exhibitions: Taking Space, Only Tony, and Roll, Press, Pull

Eastern State Penitentiary – Public opening: March 2021

The Barnes Foundation Presents Soutine / De Kooning: Conversations In Paint

World premiere of exhibition exploring affinities between the work of artists Chaïm Soutine and Willem de Kooning March 7–August 8, 2021 Philadelphia, PA, —In March 2021, the Barnes Foundation will present the world premiere of Soutine / de Kooning: Conversations in Paint, an exhibition organized with the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, exploring the affinities between the work of Lithuanian artist Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943) and Dutch-American abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning (1904–1997). On view in the Barnes’s Roberts Gallery from March 7 through August 8, 2021, this presentation considers how Soutine’s paintings, with their built-up surfaces and energetic brushwork, served the art of de Kooning and helped shape his groundbreaking abstract figurative works in the late 1940s and beyond. Soutine / de Kooning: Conversations in Paint at the Barnes is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional support comes from the David Berg Foundation, Marsha and Jeffrey Perelman, Dietz & Watson, Robbi and Bruce Toll, and Sueyun and Gene Locks.

Co-curated by Simonetta Fraquelli, consultant curator for the Barnes Foundation, and Claire Bernardi, chief curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Soutine / de Kooning: Conversations in Paint features approximately 45 paintings and explores key moments in the history of the reception and interpretation of each artist’s work. The exhibition is structured around a series of themes, including the oscillation between the figurative and the abstract; the conflation of figure and landscape; the artists’ mutual fascination with painting flesh; and the similarities in their working practice. “Rooted in the rich holdings of Soutine’s work found at the Barnes and Musée de l’Orangerie, the genesis of this exhibition arose from the desire to contextualize our collections for modern-day audiences and to promote deeper study of the historical links between artists in Europe and America,” says Fraquelli. “In uniting these paintings by Soutine and de Kooning—two important figures in the history of art who never met one another, and who hailed from very different, individual universes—we witness a remarkable visual dialogue unfolding between the works.” The expressive force of Soutine’s paintings, coupled with his image as a struggling bohemian artist living in Paris during the interwar years, imparted a particular influence on a new generation of postwar painters in the United States. Soutine was viewed by many as a herald of American abstract expressionism, and his gestural, richly impastoed canvases were presented as an antecedent for contemporary American painting. This exhibition considers how Soutine’s work had a decisive impact on the development of de Kooning’s art, especially following Soutine’s celebrated posthumous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1950, which de Kooning undoubtedly visited. In 1977, de Kooning declared: “I think I would choose Soutine [as my favorite artist] . . . I’ve always been crazy about Soutine—all of his paintings.” De Kooning, more than any other artist of his generation, understood the tension between the opposing poles in Soutine’s work: a search for structure and a passionate connection to art history. De Kooning was the only abstract expressionist who continued to praise Soutine throughout his career and to credit him with being important for the development of his own work.

“Dr. Albert Barnes played a decisive role in Soutine’s career,” says Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes. “In 1922, he discovered one of Soutine’s pastry chef portraits and quickly became enamored with his expressive paintings. He began voraciously collecting Soutine’s work and, in doing so, played an integral role in establishing the artist’s popularity and helping bring about a spectacular rise in Soutine’s prices, which served to protect the artist from financial hardship for the remainder of his life. Also, it is clear that a significant turning point in de Kooning’s work—evident in his lauded Woman paintings in the 1950s—coincided not only with the MoMA’s retrospective but also with de Kooning’s visit to the Barnes with his wife, Elaine de Kooning, in June 1952. We hope this exhibition will shine a light on the importance of artistic influences over generations, which is something that Dr. Barnes himself had a keen interest in highlighting through the arrangement of his collection.” Exhibition highlights include key paintings by both artists, including:

Soutine’s Hill at Céret, c. 1921 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), a well-known example of the artist’s Céret landscapes, which were singled out as precursors of de Kooning’s paintings by later critics; Examples of Soutine’s portraits of bellboys and pastry chefs, such as The Little Pastry Cook, 1922–23 (Musée de l’Orangerie), which appealed particularly to Dr. Barnes; Soutine’s Portrait of Madeleine Castaing, c. 1929 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), an incisive portrait of the artist’s other great patron; Soutine’s Winding Road, Near Gréolières; Landscape with White Building; and Landscape with House and Tree, c. 1920–21, works from the Barnes collection that are not usually on display; Woman paintings by de Kooning from the early 1950s—for which he is perhaps best known and which reveal his admiration of Soutine’s art—such as Woman II, 1952 (Museum of Modern Art) and Woman as Landscape, 1954–55 (private collection); and North Atlantic Light, 1977 (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), one of de Kooning’s later, more abstract works, painted in the 1970s at a time when he was revisiting the art of Soutine. Following its premiere at the Barnes Foundation, Soutine / de Kooning: Conversations in Paint will be on view at the Musée de l’Orangerie from September 15, 2021, through January 10, 2022. EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION This exhibition is organized by the Barnes Foundation and the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. It is co-curated by Simonetta Fraquelli, consultant curator for the Barnes Foundation, and Claire Bernardi, chief curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

ABOUT CHAïM SOUTINE Born Haïm Itche Zalamanovitch Sutin in Smilovitz, Minsk province, Western Russia, in 1893, Chaïm Soutine was the tenth of 11 children of a Jewish tailor. From an early age, he took an interest in drawing, encountering opposition in his community for his defiance of the Talmudic interdictions concerning images. At age 16, Soutine left for Minsk, and between 1910 and 1913, he studied at a small academy in Vilna (now Vilnius) that accepted Jews, where he learned about Russian art and its avant-garde movements. A brilliant student, Soutine dreamed of going to Paris and, in 1913, he joined his fellow students Pinchus Krémègne and Michel Kikoïne in the French capital. He lived in La Ruche, the artists’ residence in the Montparnasse where he met Marc Chagall, Ossip Zadkine, and other immigrant artists, many of whom would later be known as the École de Paris. He enrolled at the École des Beaux Arts and studied under Fernand Cormon but quickly realized that his visits to the Louvre―where he discovered Fouquet, Tintoretto, El Greco, Raphael, Goya, Ingres, Courbet, and Rembrandt―were for him a more fruitful form of study. In 1915, Soutine was introduced by Jacques Lipchitz to Amedeo Modigliani, with whom he formed a close friendship. Modigliani helped Soutine socialize and showed a keen admiration for his work, which at that time consisted of portraits and still lifes of food. Food was an obsessional theme for Soutine, corresponding both to its central role in Jewish ritual and to the shortage of food he had experienced during his childhood and subsequently in Paris and in Southern France. Subjects favored by him later, such as plucked poultry, alluded to the omnipresence of death in his childhood. Soutine was foremost a landscape painter. He was sent to the Midi, France, by his dealer Léopold Zborowski in 1918, and he subsequently moved to Céret until 1922, where he painted intense gestural landscapes that prefigured the violent brushwork used by artists of the Cobra avant-garde movement and the abstract expressionists, such as Willem de Kooning. Beginning in 1925, Soutine produced a series of portraits that were markedly more attractive and serene than his early work. Soutine shared some of the last years of his life with the German refugee Gerda Groth and, from 1940, Max Ernst’s first wife, Marie-Berthe Aurenche. His health declined rapidly with the news of the German persecutions of Jews, and he died during a surgical operation. The mixture of humor and despair, of passion and mockery in Soutine’s paintings—often inadequately described as expressionist—contributed to his stature as a modern master.

ABOUT WILLEM DE KOONING One of the 20th century’s most influential artists and leading figures of abstract expressionism, Willem de Kooning was born in 1904 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Born into a working-class family, he showed a keen interest in art at an early age, diving into studies in design and fine art. Set on living the American dream, he made his way to the United States in the mid-1920s and swiftly established himself as a commercial artist, becoming immersed in the New York art world and circle of avant-garde artists. After the Great Depression hit in 1929, de Kooning found work in the 1930s with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and dedicated himself full-time to painting. His work was both figurative and abstract, often fusing forms and subjects and challenging ideas around gestural abstraction and figuration. In the years following, his circle grew to include contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. This group notoriously rejected stylistic norms and adopted more abstract gestures. Creating work coined as “action painting” or abstract expressionism, this group broke new ground and commanded the art world’s spotlight. De Kooning was known among his peers as an “artist’s artist,” and he began gaining critical acclaim with his solo shows in the late 1940s. The first of these exhibitions, held in 1948 at the Charles Egan Gallery, was essential for establishing de Kooning’s reputation as a major artist. Not long after, he saw significant sales of his work and was awarded the Logan Medal and Purchase Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago. While he embodied the image of a macho, wild artist, he was in fact dedicated to careful thought, training, and knowledge of the art historical masters that he admired. The artistic influences of Picasso, Soutine, Arshile Gorky, and others can be traced in many of his individual works and series―most notably his Woman paintings, a subject he returned to continuously throughout his career. He and his wife, Elaine de Kooning, visited the Barnes Foundation in 1952, remarking particularly about the impact of seeing the Soutine paintings in the collection. Shortly after, in 1953, de Kooning shocked the art world with a controversial group of paintings of women that were aggressively abstracted and experimental in approach. This was a pivotal moment, with the art critic Harold Rosenberg maintaining he was convinced of de Kooning’s relevance and, conversely, critic Clement Greenberg abandoning his support of the artist. De Kooning’s rise to prominence during this period would be the first of many celebrated moments of his career, which continued, unwavering, for the next four decades. His inquisitive spirit was steadfast, and he abandoned artistic doctrine as he continued to paint until 1991; he died in 1997 at the age of 92. De Kooning’s compositions have been included in numerous exhibitions at national and international venues, such as the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate Gallery, London. They have also been acquired for the permanent collections of the world’s finest institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.