Barnes Foundation Lauded for Plan to Publish Collection : Art: The praised works will be documented in two separate books. Only limited public access and black-and-white reproductions were allowed in the past.

The Barnes Foundation’s recent decision to publish its acclaimed art collection for the first time in full color has been greeted as long overdue good news by the art world. An announcement that Alfred A. Knopf has finally broken the Barnes Foundation’s ban against color reproductions will not only make the collection available to a broad audience, it signals a new resolve to raise funds for a financially strapped institution whose directors had threatened to liquidate part of the collection to pay operating expenses.

Including highly revered works from the Renaissance to the modern era, the Barnes collection, housed in a limestone villa in Merion, Pa., is widely considered one of the best private collections to have been assembled in the 20th Century. It was amassed by Dr. Albert C. Barnes, a Philadelphia physician and patent-drug manufacturer who died in 1951. Barnes was an eccentric art lover who was hostile to the art world establishment and shrouded his foundation in secrecy and restricted access to it.

“I think it’s wonderful that the Barnes Foundation is re-examining its educational responsibility and public access,” said John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. But the big news, he said, is not simply that foundation trustees have finally allowed the collection to be published. Couched in that announcement--and the simultaneously reported news that Lincoln University, a small nearby college that administers the foundation, had received a $2-million donation from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation--is a new determination to raise funds by methods other than selling artworks, he said.

“The collection is a great, interesting creation and it deserves to be kept together,” Walsh said, noting that museum directors generally take the ethical position that a museum should not sell works from its collection for purposes other than buying other works to upgrade the collection.

“We were all waiting for Richard H. Glanton (head of the Barnes board) and the rest of the board to start raising serious money. There’s no doubt they need it, and I think it’s out there,” Walsh said. While book sales will help to alleviate the foundation’s fiscal woes, the $2-million gift from the Newhouse foundation--which was established by the father of S. I. Newhouse Jr., chairman of Advance Publications, the owner of Knopf--indicates a new level of fund-raising savvy.

A Barnes Foundation spokesman has indicated that Knopf had been the publisher of choice long before the gift was made, but art world insiders speculate that the donation probably tipped the balance.

Knopf plans to publish two books on the Barnes Foundation’s collection, the first concentrating on selected masterpieces and the second a fully documented catalogue of the entire collection, said Bill Lovett, director of publicity for Random House, Knopf’s parent company. No publication date has been set, but Lovett estimated that the project will take several years. All the works must be removed and photographed, which is a time-consuming task. In addition, texts must be researched and written. Writers have not been selected for either book, he said.

Although he offered no details of the forthcoming books, Lovett said, “Both will be of extremely high quality. They will be superbly printed. This will be a very big publishing event.”

The collection of 800 paintings and 200 sculptures contains a staggering number of works by major artists, ranging from Renaissance masters Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca to modern giants Matisse and Picasso, plus Asian and African art. Among the best-known treasures are 171 works by Renoir, 57 Cezannes, 54 Matisses, 19 early Picassos and eight Van Goghs, Lovett noted.

During his lifetime, Barnes reigned over the foundation with an iron fist, refusing to loan works to other institutions or to move them from the spots where he originally placed them. The foundation’s hours were severely limited and prominent scholars and serious students were often denied access to the collection.

“There were a lot of funny rules. You couldn’t take notes while looking at the collection, you couldn’t talk, (women) had to wear a skirt,” recalled Judi Freeman, curator of 20th-Century art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Other scholars say that questions regarding the peculiar management were not welcome.

Barnes’ proteges continued to run the foundation according to his dictates long after his death, but the foundation has become more accessible by increasing hours of operation. Black-and-white photographs were permitted, but the ban on color photography continued, frustrating curators who wished to reproduce foundation works in catalogues and instructors who wanted to use slides of the works in lectures.

As it turns out, the trust does not prohibit color reproductions of the collection; the restriction was imposed by Barnes’ disciples.

The board’s decision to publish the collection is “an enormous breakthrough,” said Freeman. “Even though the collection is well known, it is not well visited because it’s difficult to get to, and the number of people admitted and the hours are limited. This will make the collection available to a broad audience,” Freeman said.

The decision will also make curators’ lives easier, she said. Freeman made repeated efforts to get permission to photograph Henri Matisse’s “Joy of Life” painting for “The Fauve Landscape” exhibition, which she organized for the County Museum of Art. “To give you some idea of how hard I worked on this, we had even made arrangements with a Philadelphia photographer to photograph it at a moment’s notice,” she said. Permission never came through, so “we had to publish it in the catalogue in glorious black and white.”

Although it isn’t clear yet if the Barnes Foundation will release color photographs for purposes other than its own books, Freeman said, “If this decision had come through two years ago, I would have been on the first plane to Philadelphia.”