This first biography of Dr. Albert C. Barnes was serialized on the front page of thePhiladelphia Inquirer when it appeared in 1960. In it, arts journalist William Schack interviewed dozens of people who knew the famously pugnacious art collector as he assembled his world-famous collection outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Schack traces the life of Albert Coombs Barnes (1872-1951), from childhood to his student days in Germany where he met the chemist with whom he developed Argyrol, a medication that made Barnes rich and allowed him to become an art collector. After applying for a charter to establish his collection as a public educational institution, Barnes established a highly erratic policy of admission and battled dozens of people and institutions regarding access to it. Art and Argyrol is written in the journalistic style of a bygone era yet retains its fascination for anyone interested in the history of this astounding collection and in Barnes himself. “William Schack, research chemist, journalist and art writer, has done the first full-scale study of Dr. Barnes, NOT an ‘authorized’ biography... this is a remarkable book about a remarkable Philadelphian” — The Philadelphia Inquirer “[Dr. Albert C. Barnes] is an important, as well as a colorful, figure and [...] Art and Argyrol — the first full-length biography of Barnes — is of considerable interest.” — Max Kozloff, Commentary Magazine

Biography of Dr. Barnes, one of the most colorful, bizarre, and visionary figure in the American art world in the last century.

The eloquent and intimate biography of one of the most significant figures of the last century. Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and won the Nobel Prize for literature. Born into the high world of the Whig aristocracy, among people for whom Waterloo was still almost a personal memory, Russell lived to inspire the campaign against nuclear warfare. He was imprisoned in 1918 for his Pacifism. Ronald Clark, with access to a mass of material, provides a fascinating and graphic portrait of the man. There is virtually no aspect of Russell's long life to which something new - and often unexpected - is not added by this remarkable and incisive book.

Modern Art on Display: The Legacies of Six Collectors is structured as a sequence of case studies that pair collectors of modern art with artists they particularly favored: Duncan Phillips and Augustus Vincent Tack; Albert Barnes and Chaim Soutine; Albert Eugene Gallatin and Juan Gris; Lillie Bliss and Paul Cézanne; Etta Cone and Henri Matisse; G. David Thompson and Paul Klee. The case studies are linked by a thematic focus on the integral relationship between the collectors’ acquired knowledge about the work they amassed and their innovative display models. This focus brings a new perspective to the history of collecting and interpreting modern art in America for nearly half a century (1915-1960). By examining the books the collectors themselves read and analyzing archival photographs of their displays, the author makes a case for the historical significance of how the collectors presented the art they acquired before their collections were institutionalized.

By restoring interracial dimensions left out of accounts of the Harlem Renaissance--or blamed for corrupting it--George Hutchinson transforms our understanding of black (and white) literary modernism, interracial literary relations, and twentieth-century cultural nationalism in the United States.

“Money, pretension, horrid behavior by cultured people” (New York) —John Anderson’s tale delivers it all in fabulously juicy detail. This is the story of how a fabled art foundation—the greatest collection of impressionist and postimpressionist art in America, including 69 Cézannes, 60 Matisses, and 44 Picassos, among many priceless others—came to be, and how more than a decade of legal squabbling brought it to the brink of collapse and to a move that many believe betrayed the wishes of the founder, Dr. Albert C. Barnes (1872—1951). Art Held Hostage is now updated with a new epilogue by the author covering the current state of this international treasure and the endless battle over its fate.