Barnes Foundation

The Barnes holds an exemplary collection of impressionist, post-impressionist and early modern paintings, with many works by Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse,  Picasso, Henri Rousseau, Modigliani, Soutine, and Giorgio de Chirico, as well as American masters Charles Demuth, William Glackens, Horace Pippin, and Maurice Prendergast; old master paintings, African sculpture, American paintings and decorative arts; antiquities from the Mediterranean and Asia; and Native American ceramics, jewelry, and textiles.

This was Dr. Albert C. Barnes' collection, and for many years it was displayed at the former Barnes mansion in the suburb of Merion. Dr. Barnes' bequest stipulated that his carefully-considered display plan -- based on his theories about how people looked at and learned from art -- was never to be changed. Thus, when the modern facility was built in the downtown "Cultural Corridor" of Philadelphia, the display galleries were constructed to replicate original rooms of the Barnes home in Merion.