The Maverick's Museum: Albert Barnes and his American Dream

Speaker: Blake Gopnik 

Headlined by the New York Times as a “A Vivid, Engrossing Biography of an Art-World Contrarian,” Blake Gopnik’s new life of Albert Barnes (1872-1951) offers  a compelling portrait of America’s first great collector of modern art. Raised in a Philadelphia slum shortly after the Civil War, Barnes rose to earn a medical degree and then made a fortune from a pioneering antiseptic treatment for newborns. Never losing sight of the working-class neighbors of his youth, Barnes became a ruthless advocate for their rights and needs. His vast art collection—181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos—was dedicated to enriching their cultural lives. A miner was more likely to get access than a mine owner.

Gopnik’s research reveals Barnes as a fierce advocate for the egalitarian ideals of his era’s progressive movement. But while his friends in the movement worked to reshape American society, Barnes wanted to transform the nation’s aesthetic life, taking art out of the hands of the elite and making it available to the average American.

The sheer ferocity of Barnes’s democratic ambitions left him with more enemies than allies among people of all classes, but for a circle of intimates, he was a model of intelligence, generosity, and loyalty. 

In Blake’s talk for NNV, he will explore the contradictions at the heart of this great American eccentric.

Blake Gopnik’s latest book is The Maverick’s Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream.” In 2020 he published Warhol, the first comprehensive biography of the Pop artist. He has been the staff art critic at the Washington Post and Newsweek and is now a regular contributor to the New York Times. He has a PhD in art history from the University of Oxford.

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