Member Days: July 23 & 24, 10 am–7 pm, and July 25, 10 am–noon
New health and safety measures for staff and visitors
Spring exhibition extended through August 23
Philadelphia, PA.—The Barnes Foundation has announced it will reopen to the public on Saturday, July 25, at noon, following member days on Thursday, July 23, Friday, July 24, and the morning of Saturday, July 25, with extended hours each day, and new health and safety protocols for staff and visitors. The Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray exhibition, which opened less than three weeks before the Barnes closed on March 13, has been extended through August 23.
“During the past few uncharted and challenging months, the relevance of museums, as spaces that naturally offer respite, rejuvenation, and educational enrichment, has come into sharper focus,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President. “Our planning for reopening has been thorough, involving many conversations with staff, elected officials, medical professionals, and colleagues at cultural institutions across the city and state, and around the world. We have reimagined every aspect of our operations to prioritize and protect the health and well-being of our staff and visitors, and to ensure a comfortable experience that allows for meaningful and enriching encounters with art. Art possesses the power to transport us and to help us heal. It is with deep gratitude and hope for the future that we reopen our doors and welcome back our treasured community.”
The Barnes Foundation’s opening schedule is listed below:
MEMBER DAYS:
- Thursday, July 23: 10 am–7 pm
- Friday, July 24: 10 am–7 pm
- Saturday, July 25: 10 am–noon
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC:
- Saturday, July 25: noon–7 pm
- Sunday, July 26: 11 am–5 pm (10–11 am members-only)
- Monday, July 27: 11 am–5 pm (10–11 am members-only)
After its initial opening days, the Barnes will be open Friday–Monday, with its regular hours of 11 am–5 pm, with 10–11 am reserved for members. Please refer to our website for the most up-to-date information regarding hours. Members can reserve tickets online or by phone as of noon on Monday, July 6, and the general public can purchase tickets online or by phone (215.278.7200) as of 10 am on Wednesday, July 8.
To ensure the safety and well-being of its staff and visitors, the Barnes has introduced new health and safety protocols and changes to on-site operations, including:
- Staff and visitors will be required to wear a mask/face covering and visit a safety checkpoint before entering the building.
- Advance reservations will be encouraged to facilitate contactless ticketing and payment.
- The number of visitors in the building will be limited, with timed ticketing to help facilitate social distancing.
- A one-way flow through the Barnes collection, Roberts Gallery, and some other areas will ensure calm and crowd-free pathways.
- Staff and visitors will be expected to practice social distancing.
- Rigorous cleaning protocols have been implemented, with all public spaces and surfaces cleaned and disinfected throughout the day, and hand-sanitizing stations have been installed throughout the building.
- Plexiglass partitions have been installed at the ticketing desks (to be located at the Guest Services Center on 20th Street, between the Parkway and Callowhill Street), coat check, the Barnes Shop, and the Garden Restaurant, where grab-and-go food and beverages will be available for purchase.
- Guided tours will be limited, but visitors are encouraged to enjoy the Art Team’s pop-up talks about the collection and Barnes history and use Barnes Focus—our free mobile guide—to learn more about the collection during their visit on their personal phones.
- On-site public programs—such as First Friday and Artist Bash—have been temporarily paused until further notice; however, online offerings, such as the Barnes Takeout: Your Daily Serving of Art YouTube video series, will continue and can be found on our website under Barnes from Home and What’s On.
Full details regarding our new health and safety protocols can be found on our website.
“When we closed our doors on March 13, our major spring exhibition Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray had been on view for less than three weeks,” says Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator. “We are delighted to extend this first major presentation dedicated to Cuttoli, the trailblazing entrepreneur who breathed new life into the tradition of French tapestry and helped redefine what modern art could be in the 20th century, through the summer. We look forward to welcoming our visitors back inside the galleries to experience, firsthand, the unparalleled joys of the Barnes collection and all this remarkable exhibition has to offer.”
Groundbreaking entrepreneur Marie Cuttoli (1879–1973) befriended and collected modern artists including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Joan Miró. Living between France and Algeria, she combined her love of Parisian modernism with her passion for the weaving traditions of North Africa by commissioning textile designs from European artists for manufacture in Algeria. As her enterprise flourished and received international acclaim, Cuttoli turned her attention to the exclusive art of tapestry. She persuaded some of the most renowned artists of her time to create designs for the historic tapestry workshops in Aubusson, France, bringing the French tapestry industry into the modern era and contemporary art into mainstream life. Under Cuttoli’s stewardship, designs by artists from Miró to Man Ray appeared in domestic interiors and corporate offices in major cities in the US and Europe.
Curated by associate curator Cindy Kang and presented in the Roberts Gallery, this exhibition traces Marie Cuttoli’s pioneering career and features large-scale tapestries and paintings, drawings, photographs, clothing, rugs, and archival material. Spanning the 1920s through 1950s, the exhibition includes works by Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Le Corbusier, Natalia Goncharova, Fernand Léger, Jean Lurçat, Man Ray, Louis Marcoussis, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Rouault. By uniting important paintings and drawings with the resulting tapestry, the exhibition shows their true purpose, revealing modernism’s profound dialogue with the decorative arts.
This exhibition holds a special significance at the Barnes; when a selection of the tapestries Cuttoli commissioned toured the US in the 1930s and ’40s, Dr. Albert C. Barnes was one of her most vocal advocates and patrons. The three tapestries he bought after designs by Picasso, Rouault, and Miró form the basis of this exhibition. Among the rich archival materials included in this show is a digitized national radio broadcast of Dr. Barnes speaking about Cuttoli.
LIST OF ARTISTS
Georges Braque
André Derain
Raoul Dufy
Le Corbusier
Natalia Goncharova
Fernand Léger
Jean Lurçat
Man Ray
Louis Marcoussis
Joan Miró
Pablo Picasso
Georges Rouault
EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION
Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray is organized by the Barnes Foundation and curated by Cindy Kang, associate curator at the Barnes.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Cindy Kang is associate curator at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. Her research and publications have focused on the relationship between painting and decorative arts in late 19th- and early 20th-century France. She served as managing curator for the Barnes presentations of Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist (2018–19) and Renoir: Father and Son/Painting and Cinema (2018). She previously held curatorial and research positions at the Bard Graduate Center, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Frick Collection, and was a scholar-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute. She received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
CATALOGUE
Published by the Barnes Foundation and distributed by Yale University Press, the exhibition catalogue for Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray features new research and scholarship from specialists in France and the US, including essays by Cindy Kang, Laura Pirkelbauer, Virginia Gardner Troy, K. L. H. Wells, and Bruno Ythier.
SPONSORS
This exhibition is sponsored by
Additional grants are provided by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne and The Coby Foundation, Ltd.
Generous support comes from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and Aileen and Brian Roberts.
Critical support for all exhibitions comes from contributors to the Barnes Foundation Exhibition Fund and other individual donors.
The exhibition catalogue is made possible with generous support provided by the Lois and Julian Brodsky Publications Fund.
ABOUT THE BARNES FOUNDATION
The Barnes Foundation is a nonprofit cultural and educational institution that shares its unparalleled art collection with the public, organizes special exhibitions, and presents programming that fosters new ways of thinking about human creativity. The Barnes collection is displayed in ensembles that integrate art and objects from across cultures and time periods, overturning traditional hierarchies and revealing universal elements of human expression. Home to one of the world’s finest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and modern paintings—including the largest groups of paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne in existence—the Barnes brings together renowned canvases by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and Vincent van Gogh, alongside African, Asian, ancient, and medieval art as well as metalwork, furniture, and decorative art.
The Barnes Foundation was established by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts and horticulture.” A visionary collector and pioneering educator, Dr. Barnes was also a fierce advocate for the civil rights of African Americans, women, and the economically marginalized. Committed to racial equality and social justice, he established a scholarship program to support young black artists, writers, and musicians who wanted to further their education. Dr. Barnes was deeply interested in African American culture and became actively involved in the Harlem Renaissance, during which he collaborated with philosopher Alain Locke and Charles S. Johnson, the scholar and activist, to promote awareness of the artistic value of African art.
Since moving to Philadelphia in 2012, the Barnes Foundation has expanded its commitment to diversity, inclusion, and social justice, teaching visual literacy in groundbreaking ways; investing in original scholarship relating to its collection; and enhancing accessibility throughout every facet of its program. The Barnes’s current hours and ticket prices are listed on our website. Members can reserve tickets online or by phone as of noon on Monday, July 6, 2020, and the general public can purchase tickets online or by phone as of 10 am on Wednesday, July 8, 2020.
