The Most Expensive Personal Art Collection In The World
After establishing his factory, Barnes was able to move his wife into a Tudor style mansion to Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, which is apart of the wealthy suburbs of Philadelphia known as “The Main Line”. Barnes’ wife, Laura, loved gardening, and she took advantage by practicing the art of landscape design on their property. She was so talented at creating gorgeous gardens, that she would later go on to receive an honorary PhD in horticulture.
In 1911, Barnes reunited with one of his best friends from High School, William Glackens. Even though Barnes was athletic and found a career as a chemist, he was truly an artistic person at heart, and he only pursued a career in science in order to escape a life of poverty. The vast majority of his friends were artists, too. Glackens was always a very talented painter when they were young, and he moved to Paris to pursue his artistic career. When he returned to the United States, he founded the Aschcan School of American Art. Glackens told Barnes all about some of the best up-and-coming artists in Europe, and showed him some examples.
Barnes really wanted to have an extensive art collection in his new home, since the walls were looking pretty bare. He gave William Glackens $20,000 and asked for him to bring back a collection of some of the best pieces he could find. When Glackens returned to Philadelphia, he had 30 paintings with him from artists like Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and more. Even though the paintings were all made by different artists, it was clear that Glackens bought each painting with a larger collection in mind. Somehow, the drastically different styles all belong together, and he arranged it a way that was better than most curated shows in any museum.
Over time, the world began to really appreciate and recognize these artists as legends and masters of their craft. William Glackens recognized their talent very early, of course, so Albert Barnes got those paintings for a huge bargain. Back in 1911, $20,000 was more like $500,000 after inflation. Today, the collection is worth $25 billion. (Yes, you are reading that correctly. That’s billion with a “B”.)
Barnes did not want to just keep all of this art to himself. He regularly invited students from local schools into his home so that they could see the paintings, and he allowed guests to visit whenever they wanted. He even hired professors to teach art history classes full-time out of his home, and he published several books about the art in his collection so that other people could see photographs of these pieces, along with all of the details behind the paintings. It was never his goal to earn a profit. He already had plenty of money, and he just wanted young people to appreciate and love art as much as he did.
In the 1940’s, Albert Barnes met a man named Horace Mann Bond, who was the first black president of Lincoln University. For decades, the school was run by white men, even though it is an all-African American university. After becoming close friends with Bond and learning more about the difficulties in higher education, he realized how deeply racist the colleges in Philadelphia truly were. After learning this, he set up an art program with Lincoln University students and invited them into his home on a regular basis. He also wrote into his will that all of the racist universities in the city were banned from bringing their students to see his art collection.
Barnes died suddenly in 1951 from a car accident, but he had prepared for his death in his last will and testament. His employees continued to run the art programs out of his home, and racist schools were still banned from visiting the artwork. After his death, the city of Philadelphia immediately set upon taking the foundation to court, suing for public access to his home. They claimed that paintings should be available to everyone, not just the personal guests to his home. After ten years of litigation, in 1961, it was finally settled that anyone can visit the museum, as long as they make an appointment, first. Since this was on private property, only a handful of people could visit the art each day.