Now on view through February 16, 2015, due to popular demand
Due to popular demand, The Barnes Foundation will extend the highly acclaimed exhibition, William Glackens, through February 16, 2015. The exhibition was originally scheduled to close on February 2, 2015.
“We have been so pleased by the overwhelming response we have received from our visitors to this historic exhibition, the first comprehensive survey of Glackens’ work since 1966,” said Margaret (Peg) Zminda, acting director of the Barnes Foundation. “William Glackens is among the most popular exhibitions at the Barnes to date, and celebrates a gifted artist who was a friend and an inspiration to our founder, Albert C. Barnes. Extending this exhibition will give even more people a chance to enjoy William Glackenshere in Philadelphia.”
Curated by writer and art historian Avis Berman and co-organized by the Barnes Foundation, the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, and the Nova Southeastern University Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL, William Glackens spans the artist’s career and focuses on his most distinctive and adventurous works in all genres, while exploring his wide range of motifs. The exhibition features more than 80 major paintings and works on paper from some of America's finest private and public collections. Long-overdue, this survey introduces Glackens to a new generation of viewers and invites further scholarship on a pivotal figure in the history of American art. The exhibition includes 7 additional paintings not included in the previous showings, and is complimented by 48 works by Glackens in the Collection Gallery of the Barnes, including a renowned painting from the original show of The Eight in 1908.
Highlights of William Glackens at the Barnes Foundation include:
- Vaudeville Team (c. 1908–1909), London Family Collection, which has not been publicly exhibited before and several others which have rarely, if ever, been shown;
- Touchstones of American art such as Girl with Apple (1909–1910), Family Group(1910–1911), and The Green Car (1910); and
- Key pieces from each decade of the artist’s career, such as La Villette (c.1895),Cape Cod Pier (1908), Artist’s Daughter in Chinese Costume (1918), Still-Life with Three Glasses (mid-1920s), and The Soda Fountain (1935).
Glackens was a boyhood friend of Albert C. Barnes (1872–1951), the Philadelphia-born pharmaceutical entrepreneur, self-made millionaire, art collector, and creator of the Barnes Foundation. They knew each other from Philadelphia’s prestigious Central High School, and when they renewed their friendship in 1911, Glackens guided Barnes toward an appreciation of modern French painting. In early 1912, Barnes wrote to Glackens: “Dear Butts, I want to buy some good modern paintings. Can I see you on Tuesday next in New York to talk about it?” The following month, with $20,000 from Barnes in his pocket (the equivalent of $500,000 today), the artist traveled to Paris on a buying trip and returned with works by Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Maurice Denis, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. These purchases became the cornerstone of Barnes’s fabled collection. The two men remained close, and Barnes became his loyal and most important patron. Barnes found Glackens indispensable, stating in 1915, “The most valuable single educational factor to me has been my frequent association with a life-long friend who combines greatness as an artist with a big man’s mind.”
A Philadelphia native, Glackens (1870–1938) studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There, and as an artist for the Philadelphia Press, he became friends with Robert Henri, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan, the core of the group that later formed “The Eight” in reaction to the National Academy of Design’s hidebound exhibition policies. The group exhibited together only once, in 1908, creating the opening wedge in the struggle to democratize the process by which artists could show and sell their work.
At the Barnes Foundation, the exhibition was coordinated by Judith F. Dolkart, the Mary Stripp & R. Crosby Kemper Director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., and former deputy director of art and archival collections and Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes.
Letters and Photographs from the Archives
William James Glackens: An Artist and Friend is a small archival exhibition showcasing the strong friendship between Dr. Albert C. Barnes and William Glackens running in conjunction with the Williams Glackens exhibition. The archival exhibition highlights eight key letters pulled from the Albert C. Barnes Correspondence, which holds communication between the two men from 1913 to 1935. It also includes three photographs donated to the Barnes Foundation from the Glackens family, including a charming image of Glackens with his daughter Lenna.
The letters in this show discuss modern art and the business of art purchases, but they also show the close friendship between the two men. This can be seen in a note from January 7, 1921 regarding the shipment of art work as well as mentioning, more informally, “hootch” that was made on a day Glackens was visiting. Barnes affectionately addressed his letters with his nickname for Glackens, “Butts,” a name which originated at Central High School after Glackens bragged about the brass buttons on his new coat. On December 15, 1915, he wrote to “Butts” asking to discuss in person Stein’s thoughts on a flower piece done by the artist. Glackens wife, Edith Dimock, had her own nickname for Barnes, “Albertus,” which is how she addressed him in a letter in 1938 requesting paintings for a memorial show of Glackens at the Whitney Museum of Art. Barnes loaned The Race Track (BF138), The Raft (BF701), and Armenian Girl. The letters and photographs in the archival exhibition can be seen in display cases on the lower level of the Parkway building.
Exhibition CatalogueA fully illustrated exhibition catalogue, published by Skira Rizzoli in association with the Barnes Foundation, was edited by Ms. Berman, who contributed several essays to the publication. The other essays are by Elizabeth Thompson Colleary, Heather Campbell Coyle, Judith F. Dolkart, Alicia G. Longwell, Martha Lucy, Patricia Mears, Carol Troyen, and Emily C. Wood. Issues previously unexamined in the literature about Glackens and The Eight are considered throughout the text, including: the artist’s sophisticated absorption of contemporaneous French painting, his sense of social observation, his depiction of women, his interest in costume and fashion, his portrayals of women and urban life, and his role as a tastemaker. The publication includes the first complete exhibition history for the artist, a critical contribution to Glackens scholarship.
ABOUT THE BARNES FOUNDATION
The Barnes Foundation (barnesfoundation.org) was established by Albert C. Barnes in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts and horticulture.” The Barnes holds one of the finest collections of post-impressionist and early modern paintings, with extensive works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Giorgio de Chirico; American masters Charles Demuth, William Glackens, Horace Pippin and Maurice Prendergast; old master paintings; important examples of African sculpture; Native American ceramics, jewelry and textiles; American paintings and decorative arts; and antiquities from the Mediterranean region and Asia. The Barnes Foundation’s Art and Aesthetics programs engage diverse audiences. These programs, held at the Philadelphia campus, online, and in Philadelphia communities, advance the mission through progressive, experimental, and interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
The Barnes Foundation (barnesfoundation.org) was established by Albert C. Barnes in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts and horticulture.” The Barnes holds one of the finest collections of post-impressionist and early modern paintings, with extensive works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Giorgio de Chirico; American masters Charles Demuth, William Glackens, Horace Pippin and Maurice Prendergast; old master paintings; important examples of African sculpture; Native American ceramics, jewelry and textiles; American paintings and decorative arts; and antiquities from the Mediterranean region and Asia. The Barnes Foundation’s Art and Aesthetics programs engage diverse audiences. These programs, held at the Philadelphia campus, online, and in Philadelphia communities, advance the mission through progressive, experimental, and interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
The Barnes Arboretum, at the Merion campus, contains more than 2,000 varieties of trees and woody plants, many of them rare. Founded in the 1880s by Joseph Lapsley Wilson and expanded under the direction of Mrs. Laura L. Barnes, the collection includes a fern-leaf beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Laciniata’), a dove tree (Davidia involucrata), a monkey-puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana), and a redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). Other important plant collections include lilacs, peonies, Stewartias and magnolias. The Horticulture school at the Barnes Foundation in Merion has offered a comprehensive three-year certificate course in the botanical sciences, horticulture, garden aesthetics, and design since its establishment in 1940 by Mrs. Barnes.
