In Philadelphia, we know the story of Albert Barnes as one of stubborn brilliance: He reserved his vast collection of 20th Century European and African art for the education of regular Philadelphians, away from the snooty avenues of high brow art museums and their well-heeled patrons.
But long before he began collecting art, Barnes was a maverick in a different way: At a time when most jobs available to African Americans were menial and dead-end, Barnes hired Black men to work in his chemical factory. He paid them about 50 percent more than the average for American chemical workers, most of whom were White; ensured they had pensions, helped them buy houses, and entrusted them to be leaders of their peers.
As Blake Gopnik writes in his new biography of Barnes, The Maverick’s Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream:
He later put this into proper prose: “I have worked in a chemical factory for over twenty years where the only men were negroes and I have learned to appreciate how much they have contributed to the success of our business both from the financial and the social standpoint.” Barnes went on to raise one Black man to the position of plant superintendent — saying this Jim Gray had “more skill in running the factory than any of the rest of us” — in an era when it was widely agreed, at least among whites, that no person of color should be given anything like a supervisory role.
Gopnik’s biography covers the well- and little-known aspects of Barnes’ life, from his rough childhood in South Philly, to his success as a pharmaceutical manufacturer, to the formation of his vast art collection now on display at the Barnes Foundation. It centers Barnes as an early civil rights thinker, a progressive who used art and informal education — including on the factory floor — as a way to uplift average people.
It’s a story with clear resonance for today, when the arts and social justice and the fight for equality are all under threat — and when we are searching for the kind of high-minded and open-hearted advocate that Barnes became over the course of his fascinating life. As Gopnik writes:
Barnes’s thought and work as a social and cultural reformer, even eventually in the field of race, have been overshadowed by the glorious art he bought and the eccentric path he took in making it public. But he conceived of his collecting as very much part of his era’s new movement toward reform, toward a world that “grows better because people wish that it should and take the right steps to make it better,” in the words of the great progressive Jane Addams. Barnes’s high-handed manner, easily read as pure egomania, can make it hard to place him in the reformist ecosystem, but he really was committed to improving things.
Gopnik, an art critic for magazines and newspapers, is also the author of a popular biography of Andy Warhol. On Thursday March 20, he will talk about Albert Barnes at the main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, with Alison Boyd, the director of research and interpretation at the Barnes Foundation.
The event is part of the Free Library Foundation’s author series, of which The Citizen is a media sponsor. Books will be available for sale on site by Uncle Bobbies.
Thursday, March 20, 2025, 7-8:30pm, $5, Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine Street (between 19th and 20th Streets on the Parkway). Register here.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the author’s name a few times. It is Blake Gopnik.
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