I remember the first time I was ever drunk on art. Early in my college career, my Dad called. He was coming to Philadelphia by train and we were going to visit a mysterious place that a friend had told us about called the Barnes Foundation. He secured an appointment and I met him at the station in Merion, PA, about ten minutes outside of Philly on what is familiarly known as "the Mainline."
To get to the Barnes, you must pass the kind of immense mansions and neatly manicured estates that inspired Agnes Nixon to create the people and places of soap operas like All My Children and One Life to Live.
"What the heck is inside this place, anyhow?" we wondered as we walked through the Doric portico decorated with tiles of clearly African motif. Inside? A treasure trove of not just African but Egyptian, Greek, and Navajo art, not to mention some 181 paintings by Renoir, 46 Picassos, 59 Matisses, and more Cezannes than I had ever seen in my entire life. It was like seeing hundreds of old friends -- ones you'd known for years, but had never seen before. We had entered the playhouse of Dr. Albert C. Barnes, educator, art collector, and something of a cranky old codger.
That was back in the early nineties, shortly before the history of this mind-bogglingly priceless art collection took the tragic turn documented in Thomas Gibbons' intriguing play Permanent Collection.
Read more on KQED.org's Arts & Culture site.
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